30 Eleasias
There was a chance. Tamoko prayed for the divination with gravedust taken from the temple, with dried tea-leaves she had preserved and taken from her own country long years ago, with her own blood from a cut scored at her breastbone. She lit four joss-sticks to fill the room with heavy incense and smoke to sear her eyes. There were two boons she would ask through the corpse's dust: that she gain sure knowledge of the half-sister of Sarevok, and that none other should be granted the same. Among all god-servants within his service, especially those that claimed to serve directly the son of the Lord of Murder, she was the highest. Divine blood protected when it did not annihilate.
"I pray to the four cardinal points: kita, minami, higashi, nishi." This was of her homeland; it represented ineffable ordering, and a circle that bounded what she cast. To the north; the south; east; west.
Dosan, traitor, despicable, a shard of hope despite yourself.
"I pray to the changing seasons: natsu; aki; fuyu; haru. Time runs and ever guides to mortal fate." Summer; autumn; winter; spring. It was still summer in these lands, not even yet the time for blood-red and burnished gold leaves to fall. In her homeland a time of warmth and green growth, wet air and bright festivals, chrysanthemum-beaming stars by night and shining sun by day. With Sarevok, summers had been long comfortable nights outdoors in a drier heat, sparring together, plucking wheat-grains raw in golden fields, wandering as if they had no concerns. False friends wanted to see the end of that boy. In pretty western words they concealed their cruel ambition, as crow's claws tore flesh to eat.
The vile mortal father; the taint; I swear that death is not the first way to rid of it.
"I pray to the dead that rest elsewhere and below: that this request is to disturb the sleep of but one, and they lie in their places still." There were bodies buried in so many of the estate-spaces controlled by Sarevok; bodies buried, and fragments of golden dust in the wind for those others he had destroyed. Tamoko needed one strong enough for him.
The most poisonous influences have been those who still live.
She drew a tantō dagger, covering the blade with dark, moist earth from the shore of the Lake of Tears. She cut the shape of the answer she craved between the dust of the grave, the last remains of one of the faithful of that old, dead god; the kanji of her homeland rather than western letters she had never felt entirely comfortable with. Divine powers read the intent of the mind above form. Black lines marked over pale, yellowish dust.
Mortals choose their winding journey if not its end.
A shape of a skull rose and floated into the air. Dust gathered for the shape it formed. Empty sockets of eyes and nose; dull, ragged cheekbones; a jaw opened. Tamoko held the ritual prayers in her mind.
"Speak," she ordered.
—
No, the girl was an empty-headed, spoiled fool. But she had lived this time so long, and would wish to live a human's span of days. Tamoko's hope was, fragile or no, that the same could be true for Sarevok; to break him nigh to death but not beyond, to go quietly at night to him when none but her would remain to truly care for him, and take him far elsewhere to live the span of a mortal life and true friendships. His sibling included two warriors among her companions, Dosan's daughter strong if lacking in discipline, the other more sober and with the exotic pale blue eyes she thought so unnatural on humans. A red-haired mage with a distant look in her brown eyes; a drow; a young druid with tangled hair.
"Kill me, and you will be found by the very people I have kept from seeking you out; promise me, or I will reveal nothing," Tamoko said. "I care for Sarevok."
"Who could?" burst out the western child, almost petulantly; "After everything he's done—"
"Promise to spare him if you can," Tamoko said. She let the power she had asked gather around her; she was stronger than the drow, and her domain of death was directly opposed to that of the druid. It cowed the spoilt pair of girls well enough. "If he becomes human once more, I have the power to take him far away. I wish him to remain human."
"You were there when the Grand Dukes were murdered, weren't you?" she said. "His mistress—"
"No," Tamoko said grimly, "but I can tell you of that one. She has papers in her possession that will give you knowledge; I can tell you the routine of guards posted by her laboratory."
"Traitor," sneered Dosan's daughter, the red-haired warrior; it was true enough. There were other slurs she had endured.
"Well, you were there that other time," the girl said. She looked to the mage as if to defer to her; her only strength was that the light of madness did not shine from her eyes. "Imoen."
The mage hesitated, and then strangely enough seemed to lead. "All right. Tell us what you wish," she said; in her bearing was some semblance of strength, and Tamoko judged her at least honourable. Of other mages Semaj was madly sadistic, Perorate devoured by his visions, Cythandria unutterably corrupt, Angelo as much a betrayer—as Tamoko herself, though for different reasons. But the barbarian warrior would have given her word and as swiftly and easily broken it, Tamoko thought; the blood of the father told. As for the girl who had thought herself born to a noble family, she would weakly shatter any oaths at convenience while lying to herself that she had reason; the druid was silent as if she would never have given her oath in the first place; and as for the boy, eyes that shade of pale blue were in her sight featureless and impossible to read behind. The wizard spoke her word as if she meant it.
"You know of your heritage," Tamoko said, and that brought a scowl from the boy.
"Evil; corrupt; and Anchev has made choices to fester that corruption. I fight that. But I... I accept that you could care for him." He carried an animal tucked within his cloak and glanced at it; yet he did not seem to be a servant of nature or a wizard.
"I know of my heritage," Sarevok's half-sister repeated foolishly. The red-haired girl nodded slightly in confirmation.
"Fear of death is strength. Love is strength. Family is strength. A family that loves death is strong indeed. Can you feel him?" Tamoko said. "You must know he hates you."
"He hates everything," the girl said, "he wants to ruin everything. I'll do what Imoen says, but I don't have to love him for what he's done."
"You knew nothing of it," Tamoko told the child; she was young and soft despite the recent calluses that marked her skin. "Sarevok came from the streets of Sembia. Before Rieltar he had no one, and Rieltar was a monster without even the excuse of the taint in his ear. Can you see why he came to draw strength from hatred? His divine blood hungers for it. He serves another, but he does not know it." She fingered the dark sun at her waist.
"Voices and whispers," the girl said. "It is true I would not have been better, only less strong. But I know Imoen. And my friends." She held the mage's hand as if for support.
"The...woman of the Iron Throne. She holds much power in this matter," Tamoko said. Her encouragement; a lover's push sending him to madness, flung from a high cliff to jagged rocks below and the feast of crows.
"We need to know of the Undercity," the girl said, all but witless. No—it was a question with reason. Tamoko conquered her tatters of pride.
"Understand him first," she said. "Whether I tell you true; whether you have the honour of keeping your promise."
You must trust me, for by standing with you without murdering you or dying myself, my life is forfeit; and you are the last chance before there is nothing behind Sarevok's eyes but gold.
"We spare people if we can because it's right," the mage said. Dosan's daughter and the drow glanced at one another in dark amusement that Tamoko understood well. Tamoko looked at the grime of the inn's walls; the dark dust on the stones was almost the colour of old blood.
Old dark blood dripping from the walls, Tamoko thought she glimpsed through chounouryouku, other-sight; but the single thing she was not was mad.
For Sarevok, though he comprehends it not.
"Cythandria," the girl repeated. "Does she have another name? Not Cythandria Swandon?"
—
Imoen loved. She hadn't been able to love the folk she vaguely remembered for bringing her up, Auntie—not her aunt—Gamarie with her polka-dot scarf over her hair and porridge-boiling cauldron; Likki-Bell who taught how to get at pockets from his suit all bells; Saavi-Nicker the boy who liked to push her into the mud and laugh. She couldn't even remember their faces any more. But Puffguts was next-best to family, Phyl, Shistal, Dreppin with the cows, Mr G., Tethtoril—not much children like her, but she'd grown up thinking she was normal and wanting friends her age, wanting to love and be loved—it didn't have to be that way, just best friends or sisters and that love was as wonderful and unbreakable as any other. Family. Protecting her with a sword, jumping in front of her to help; letting her cast her magic spells. Even if she'd gone crazy enough not to remember it all she was looking out for her and Imoen was looking back.
Adventuring with them. She'd wanted it, fun and travel and dashing rogues in a world so much bigger than Candlekeep, and what she'd wanted hadn't ever been murder even though she'd found it easier than some, but because of knowing the truth now she'd had to go back and think over if she'd started falling wrong—
But in the end she fought not to kill but for all the people she loved; and while Sarevok didn't deserve any more mercy than his slaver guards or his bandits or that he'd given people, people like Imoen's own uncle—
She could accept that the Kara-Turan woman loved, and not killing him didn't mean they couldn't lock him up in some hellhole to think about what he'd done for the rest of his life, or just put it to the hands of the Flaming Fist, or let the woman be alone with him and without his essence for good. Mr G., I do know you and Puffguts raised me to be kind and with mercy—
Most of Imoen's family stood by her side. Shar-Teel looked down at Skie with almost maternal pride at how well she was killing things now; that assassin's sword shone in Skie's right hand, the Burning Earth in her left. There were large hobgoblins summoned, two giant ogres. Ajantis raised the shield strapped to his left hand and winced at the strike of a hobgoblin's sword; then swung Varscona to easily pierce its neck. Faldorn hissed at one of the ogres, growing vines from the polished wooden surfaces of the building to hold the creature in place, destroying floors and walls. As for Viconia the Selunite-killer, commanding down a hobgoblin—Viccy, who might be on Shar-Teel's side even if she wasn't on any other of their sides. The conjurer-woman reached in one of her lab drawers for a series of small, spherical objects. Imoen recognised them.
She reached in the Weave-threads to bind a flame-arrow together; the quicker to finish this the better, for sooner or later there'd be more guards to come. Bright red, yellow, gold braided together, sent perfect-aimed to the woman who played with basilisk eyes. But the conjurer-mage'd seen what she was doing to the Weave; instead of summoning-stuff she reached to the nasty liquid in the backs of eyes, vitreous humours like liquid and like shield. Imoen'd no choice but to release the flame arrow anyway, hoping it was strong enough. It passed into the silver and dissolved. There were more of the eyes in the conjurer's plans; Imoen knew she didn't even have the spell to protect, not even potion. She plucked a flask of water from her robes. What kind of transmuter couldn't—
"Don't look at the basilisks!" she shrieked as the conjurer called them from thin air. She'd already begun her transmutation: water, thickening, finesse desperately needed—what else was a rogue for? One of those ogres was coming too close to her; her mirror-images wavered. Viconia was in the middle of crying out some other clerical invocation to Shar. Imoen kept her concentration; water thickened to pea-soup glue, delicately sticking atop the eyelids of all four of the evil basilisks—and she'd done it, Imoen thought, nobody would be turned to stone even though despite her mirror images the ogre was too close to her, its heavy spiked club coming brutally through the air.
Skie jumped up in some crazy acrobatic trick Imoen'd probably taught her in the first place and got both swords in the ogre's neck, ten feet up off the ground; then scraped them down, falling herself. The ogre roared and turned on her. Imoen stepped away, trusting Skie to protect her, seeing the conjurer on another spell—
Viconia's voice stopped and she toppled backward. Her skin was suddenly grey instead of black: a stone statue of a drow. Basilisk teeth lashed out at all of them, but because the eyes were still blocked the spell'd come from the woman. Not bad, Imoen thought, and then on the Weave a white wave washed toward her and all her pretty mirror images she'd summoned instantlike with the dark-dream-power— Cythandria dismantled those by a neat quick thought like a whip's careful angle. Precise. Imoen couldn't stand that in an enemy. She saw Skie drop between the ogre's legs, moving forward under its wide tree-trunk legs—and then stab upward into the groin. Made sense for the relative heights; Shar-Teel'd approve of that one. Imoen aimed off a chroma-orb that she'd barely had to think about, simple and quick to keep Miss Cythie occupied with it. 'Jantis was coming closer to her, fending off basilisks and hobgoblins, maybe to take mage-protecting duties from Skie— Faldorn's fire-sword burned a basilisk's scales. Skie was moving forward, trying to get the caster, dancing through basilisk teeth.
Then the world in front of Imoen's eyes went black. She screamed in her first terror like she'd gone blind; she couldn't even see the Weave any more even though she'd just been using it— No, that meant it was mage-darkness, that was all. She heard Shar-Teel swearing. Infravision spell, Imoen thought, reaching through her memories; craft it and pierce the darkness—
She got it up, just before a basilisk bit her leg. "Fireball!" Imoen screamed at the others to duck; she somersaulted under it herself, her leg hurting. The light bloomed around them in horrifying power. That'd sure grab heaps of attention— They'd made their own escape route first: a sewer passage Dyna'd set up, not Madam Tamoko, for the sake of common sense.
She could hear Ajantis' scream; he'd gone below a basilisk to shelter him, but in that armour he must be cooking— Shar-Teel and Faldorn simply yelled out battlecries. Faldy's wolf howled. Imoen cast the spell again on Skie, ahead, intangible in that weird dream-ability she'd gotten, intangible to fire but not intangible to magic itself; and Skie looked back with her hands signalling that Imoen'd made it. The conjurer's missiles whipped into Skie; but then she was close enough to threaten her with blade at her throat. The magical darkness disappeared with Cythandria's scream. Shar-Teel could see well enough to cut a hobgoblin in two, and push her blade deep into the second ogre's chest.
Cythandria Swandon, I used to know her! Skie'd explained; Almost Eddard's age. Then her father lost all his money through speculations or something like that and she was poor and disappeared. We used to call her Sissy-Cyth because everything frightened her, even I could run the lip of the fountain without falling in and I was much younger... That was really cruel of us, wasn't it?
Yeah, well, Imoen answered her, if'n everyone who'd got an evil childish nickname grew up to kill Grand Dukes and set up doppelgangers and encourage their boyfriends to start wars to become a god there wouldn't be many dukes left. Or boyfriends. Depended on how much you believed Tamoko.
"Remember me, Cythie? Did you put those doppelgangers on my family?" Skie said coldly; the conjuress crumpled.
Imoen recognised the woman too, to her own surprise; you never saw the enemies properly until after the battle was done. She was blonde-snobby-lady, there at Candlekeep a couple months before Skie'd turned up. With a scholar called Koveras, silly as that alias was. She'd been terribly rude, and kept complaining about the frogs and spiders and snails that mysteriously appeared in her bed in a strange sort of cycle related to how rude she was to the innkeeper's girl about it. Well, wasn't worth contemplating now; meant there wasn't a mistake on what she was. Imoen threw a set of missiles to make sure a fallen hobgoblin wouldn't get up.
"Please! Do not kill me... As if what you were born was not enough, you have that power." Imoen judged that hatred in the woman's voice. "Tamoko...it was that treacherous whore who put you onto this, didn't she?" Skie kept up the threatening. "I...I will tell you where to find my lord if you do not kill me." Shar-Teel stood in a sea of odd basilisk parts, blood-soaked.
"Give us your documents," Skie said calmly. Faldorn examined Viconia's charred statue, muttering to herself about whether she should shape the stone to heal the wounds before dispelling the magic.
From Cythandria's robes came papers and a book; Imoen stepped up to check them. Spell scrolls, notes giving instructions, the book in handwriting in a language she didn't know, perhaps in a cipher of some sort. Understand him first, Tamoko had said; and because Imoen was a mage she could see that point. She flipped through it; her eye caught a roughly drawn map, across from a sketched skull-symbol, bones drawn and by swords flashing in the air. She nodded to Skie.
"Thank you," Skie said. "If I was a diviner or something I guess I could have an idea of what you've actually done, Cythie."
"—My life is forfeit anyway." The woman cringed away from Skie's blades. "He will kill me for my lack of courage."
"But we won't," Skie said; and used the hilt to knock her out through her jawbone. Shar-Teel scowled. And the career of Sarevok's blonde gifted mage-mistress who was mean to servants in Candlekeep Inn was over, just like that.
—
And so to understand what shaped him.
I wasn't him; tall, ambitious, gifted. I wasn't him; isolated in a wealthy home wasn't growing up abandoned. If we fail to learn history and to understand the reasons for the present, the future will destroy us. You learned to feel for the history of Sarevok through deciphering the Sembian code of his journal after I broke the lock; and you learned about what he learned from the prophecies.
I hear voices in my dreams that tell me I have the power. That I can punish Father, punish Brunos, punish everyone who ever dared slight me or try to starve me. I am stronger than any other boy and I can fight them. I can fight to kill. It impresses Winski even if not Father, but I know that my fighting is why Father has me for his son. Winski knows I am meant for something powerful.
They say gods are dying and dead. I took a fever and spent days in bed; Father and Winski were both angry at me. The Weave was disrupted for them by the gods' wars and for some time they were powerless. With my strength I will never be made powerless. I do not remember the illness at all. In the old days Mother would have spent time over me. But I must not brood. I know what he did to her and I will not forget.
Tamoko. I cannot speak her tongue, but I can speak her name. She's a warrior like me. One of Father's bodyguards but she could be so much more. She's not a shrieking Cyricist like that maniacal female Zeela; she worships death—and honour. Even if the world is not honourable; even if we fail ourselves at times. The strong can kill the weak in a fight. The weak are so because they do not work hard enough. Everything dies, but she is so strong that I think it will be a long time for both of us. I would spend more time with her...
My Deathbringer training is nearly finished. I blame Tamoko for some of it; techniques from her land gave me an edge. I killed Flavias in sparring, but my tutors only praised me for it. They are dark men who understand power. I enjoyed watching his life end. I think the first time I killed was upon the streets; an old beggar had filched coin that day and had bread in his robe as well as the alcohol he had already drunken to send him into a stupor. I drove a piece of splintered wood through his throat. There was more blood than I had expected him to hold, and then I ran away and ate that day.
I want more; I cannot wait and passively accept fate. Tamoko is a fatalist in that way: she is strong but refuses to go beyond what she sees as natural. As if she were some foolish tree-hugger! She could become more than what she is, but if she will not support my ambition I will have to show her. Winski has been researching my power and my resistances to magic, and though he does not yet know why he has taught me to use it. I have abilities that none other has. I will not show Father, one needs to keep something in reserve. He taught me as much as he intended about the act of a clever bargain. Why will not Tamoko support me? She is the only one I...
I have carried out further researches in Silverymoon of what I am like. There is a girl there; Tamoko is far from the only woman in the world. A scholarship student; she has had some struggles in life like me, she understands envy and ambition. Her mind is brilliant as Winski's and her hair is almost the colour of the gold in those dreams of power. Softer. Prettier. She will come to me once she exits the academy; Father will make her an offer simply based on ability. Winski tells me he has found more information of interest. He sees already that I am powerful enough to succeed Father and improve upon what he has done. My new sword and armour are to be made for me alone. I wield power; Tamoko and Winski both can divine something of what it is truly like. I wanted to be powerful enough to hurt those who hurt me, but now I am mature enough to know that goals can be stronger than that.
A child of Bhaal. Cythandria is thrilled, though Tamoko saddened. For what reason? She ought to be happy that I am a demigod. Perhaps Cythandria craves my power to increase her own, but she blushes at strange moments when I am near and calls my name in her sleep. Her demigod. Perhaps more, in time. I will find more about the prophecies and I will make it so before time, because patience can be weakness. Wars are never won by long delays. Winski will show me the grand destiny I am truly meant for, I am sure of it.
The deaths the children bring shall awaken the father, the prophecies of Candlekeep say. The deaths the children bring shall awaken them to become the father. Every time I kill I feel stronger. Cythandria agrees when she is not carping of the insolence of the inn's servant-girl. I begin to see what I must do. Death. Enough to cover the land. Enough to make a god.
The monk Gorion troubles me and I feel he suspects. I have listened to him and heard of his links with various secret movements; he may be my enemy. I must have him removed.
I dreamed last night of my mother, Rieltar's cord about her neck. Her face bloated and discoloured and turned into Tamoko's. I did nothing to stop her death. After such dreams of death I find myself stronger when I spar. I must return to the city sooner or later lest my mortal father grow impatient before his time.
Bhaal was worshipped in this city before it was built and at last Winski has uncovered it for me. My temple. A place to take those acolytes loyal to me. I lay a hand upon the throne and it is warm and pulsing below me—as if it was living, but it is a tool of death. I took Cythandria there with me and had her atop the throne itself. She sees the power that lies behind the rubble. I was not wrong that my blood called to me here. The father shall be awakened in the person of the son. A god is a high enough ambition.
I have eliminated all siblings in my path bar for this one. Gorion's whelp was all I first knew of her, but the Red Wizards tell me otherwise. That one. I was utterly indifferent to the girl those few times we have met in public; they say she maintained a secret life of associating with the underworld and folk of ill reputation. Perhaps that is her gift: hiding from me. It is scarcely a gift enough to win: I could fit one hand about her neck, snap her in two with a bare-handed blow. She's barely the height of my chest. Small, spoiled, brat.
The other Red Wizard I would have killed, but Tamoko requested I stay my hand. I think I will give him to Cythandria as an assistant, if she finds him competent; he is less powerful than her. Treacherous and ambitious and cowardly: by the second part he might remind me of myself, were I such a weak traitor. But since I will be a god there is none I could betray but my own self and ambition.
I can see for myself that the Throne of the Undercity grows in power and pulses with each new death. It grows for my force of acolytes too: they have divine power to draw upon, my divine power. They believe in me alone. I will have far more followers than these when I become a god, but they fill most of the highest echelons of the Iron Throne even now. My mortal father will perish before he can end my plans. A garrotte will be suitable.
She lives, my foolish small sister; had she perished somewhere distant I think that I would know from what I have felt in dreams. She danced with a brown howling wolf and drew a flaming sword—incomparable to my own blade of chaos, I am sure. Waves toss her back to me and to her final death. If she is an important flagstone in my temple—as if her skull must needs fit underfoot to form the pattern of the floor—she will come to our destiny sooner or later. My people are incompetents and I will punish them for this.
My dream last night was of three: three tall and strong avatars, as unlike the girl as werewolf from mouse. I know them well from my research: the corpse of the Slayer, the horned shapeshifter of Kazgoroth, the giant of the Ravager. I see the last as the most powerful, and as a god I shall have it.
I spent today once more in my temple in the Undercity. Bhaal's symbol glows in the floor; I have remade my own. I will have Winski take up the stones to replace it with the deathshead of Sarevok the Lord of Murder. The death of the father only helps the son. I will be a god. I am a god.
I cannot remember what my mortal mother's face was like. I made love to Tamoko in rooms behind the temple last night and it was better than when I was still human. She doesn't understand it but she says that she loves me. Love itself is for mortals; strength is more than that. I wanted her for her strength in the first place. Power can be an infinitely more vivid rush through one's blood and veins. Fear of death is not strength, death of others is strength. Gods do not have to die. Those who lack faith in them will.
—
Imoen traced a finger across the pages. "Can see how he didn't have Puffguts bringing him up," she said, "can also see he went out to lunch and never wanted to come back."
"Good at hiding," I repeated. Why not? Even better: good at hiding Imoen, for he knew her not. Sarevok's map of the Undercity showed two entrances to his temple: one from an estate he owned and used for that purpose, and the second through a disused maze that the Thieves' Guild used as a distraction. Not his temple: Bhaal's temple by the Stream of Tears. Sarevok was...there, and waiting. His mother died; my mother died. "Let's go, Imoen."
—