"I gave the baby to my master, of course. Your wife ... was the easiest way to get one."
The lich Lagole Gon owned land outside the city. Cernd snapped the chained lock on the gate with his bare hands. He was first through, looking like a hulking furred beast on two legs, ready to kill anything in his way.
Kasimir of Candlekeep didn't blame him, as she focused frantically on letting protective and aggressive enchantments fill her mind. Her foster father Gorion would've done the same for her, she was sure; he had done the same for her when he saved her as an infant. The lich had Cernd's child and Cernd was going to rescue him. Even though Cernd hadn't known the baby existed, until just now, for he'd left his wife and gone to live in the wilderness as a druid ...
Now they were in a hedge maze, surrounded by thickets twice as high as Cernd's werewolf form and deep enough to deaden all sound around them. "Start burning?" Imoen asked, a fire spell ready to hand. Her half-sister was more impetuous than ever before, Kasimir knew. Both of them were Bhaalspawn with souls ripped out of them by the roots, murderous children of the god of death with raw wounds on them inside and out. Kasimir had to hold it together for both of them, had to be the strong one. She raised a hand to mark the signal. Not yet. Better be cautious.
"There's an ugly sight." The warrior Shar-Teel gestured ahead of them at the approaching man in spiked black armour. Kasimir tensed out of instinct. It wasn't him; this man murdered her father and he was dead. She'd been there when Shar-Teel's sword went through his heart. Sarevok, her half brother, drew the Sword of Chaos and called a battle cry out of his dark helm. It was a pretty poor imitation of the original.
This had to be a doppelganger, plucking their worst fears out of their minds to shapeshift into. They hunted in packs and there would be more. Imoen flung something green and dripping ahead of them, which smashed on the ground in an explosion of toxic gases. It made the fake Sarevok stagger. Then his friends joined him from behind - Kasimir drew in a gasp as she saw the wizard with the skin mask who tortured them, his sister the vampire, and behind her another mage with his hands raised in a spell - Oh no. Gorion. Father. Fake version. She and Imoen would have a hard time fighting him.
Then an explosive bolt shot over their heads and left a vicious cloud of smoke over the enemies. Jan Jansen, gnome illusionist and light-fingered gadgeteer, loaded another Flasher Master Bruiser Mate into his crossbow. He gave Kasimir a cheerful little wave. Kasimir knew she had to capitalise on the distraction. She sent tendrils of her mind out on the Weave, trying to bend these monsters to her will, and she signalled Imoen and Faldorn to cast while there was still a chance.
Imoen peppered their enemies with bolts of conjured arrows, invoking a hail of pain. Faldorn the druid scowled and snapped out her call to Silvanus, god of nature. She tried to bend the hedge-thickets to her will and failed due to the magery laid on them - unnatural things - but then she summoned wicked thorns from the dirt, sharp enough to pierce through boots and impale bone. Kasimir felt Faldorn's bitter anger as she did so. Holding Faldorn was a constant effort in her strained mind on top of everything else. A geas could be painful to both sides.
Faldorn was her companion once, when they fought and slew Sarevok Anchev in the Undercity below Baldur's Gate. She'd only joined them due to the mess his minions made in the Cloakwood, building a toxic mine in the forest. As a Shadow Druid, Faldorn was an enemy to all kinds of civilisation. Though just a young girl, even younger than Imoen, she was brave and powerful. She left the city a few days after Sarevok's death, and Kasimir hadn't known what became of her until an Amnian village asked them for help against animal attacks. Faldorn was now the leader of a group of Shadow Druids: they wanted that village razed to the ground. The only way to defeat her was to have Cernd challenge her for control of the grove.
Cernd won that fight. But Kasimir wanted to see no more death. As little death as possible. So she uttered a geas spell, similar to one with which a dead comrade was bound. They didn't have to kill Faldorn while she was contracted to serve Kasimir's will. She'd only hold the geas long enough until they could free Faldorn where she wasn't likely to try to kill them again, or so Kasimir told herself. She just wanted their old comrade to live.
The fake Bodhi launched herself into close range, rushing with impossible speed. Cernd met her with a savage howl, claws slicing flesh before Shar-Teel even had a chance with her sword. Bodhi fell and Cernd leapt on Irenicus' semblance behind her, then Gorion - Kasimir turned her head to the side as the false Gorion's throat was ripped to bloody ribbons. Shar-Teel viciously decapitated Sarevok's shade.
"Cernd!" Kasimir called him. They walked past the dead shapeshifters' bodies, bleeding purple and silver over the ground spattered with Faldorn's thorns. "Back to human shape. You - " The last time Kasimir had seen such ferocity was from herself below Irenicus' prison. She'd changed against her will to the Slayer monster and ripped apart anything within range. She had to pluck bits and pieces of intestines out of her teeth for days afterwards. She never wanted to see or be anything like that again, and Cernd's condition was approaching that mindless rage and fury.
The huge werewolf turned back to her with Cernd's eyes green and glowing with fury. On the thread of her enchanter's senses, Kasimir felt him on the edge - she dared to delay him, command him, when all he needed to do was save his child. The very nature of his shape gave him violent impulses that he chose to set free. Kasimir met his gaze measure for measure, refusing to back down. A spell was on the tip of her lips but she refused to cast. Let her win this one by will and choice and nothing else.
Cernd breathed out. The werewolf lost a little of his height, but no more than that. "If you think to delay me I will have none of it," he said, the words forming harshly in his beast's throat. "We learnt from Deril that this creature has my son. If you do not wish to follow me, I will go on alone."
He had slain Deril, killed the lich's factotum who'd taken in Cernd's pregnant wife and maybe caused her death in a fall down the stairs. Kasimir had only just started to reach for a spell when claws and teeth had ripped Deril apart. Normally Cernd was slow and gentle, even lazy, but this was different.
"I only mean you to go on using the wisdom that you have," Kasimir said. "You've lost control. Believe me, I know what that is like." I know what I have lost. She'd allowed herself to trust the wrong man, share her body with him, brush over and even rejoice that many parts of his mind were not visible to her. Then he betrayed her and then he died. And she became the Slayer.
"He has your son that you have never seen," Faldorn said, baring sharp teeth at her once rival. Defiantly she looked up at Cernd as if she wanted to curse him and all of them. "Call yourself a man of nature, and not even know the changes in your woman's nature when you left her behind?"
"I did not know ... That ... " Cernd hesitated. He snapped back at her and Kasimir both. "The matter of a moment can cause the rain to fall too deep and drown a young lamb in mud. There is nothing to talk of, only to move." He turned. Shar-Teel stayed half a step behind him, likely planning for Cernd to take the brunt of any traps before her. Perhaps he is right, whispered part of Kasimir's jangled mind, Lagole Gon is a lich and the less time he has to prepare the better.
"Faldorn! Summon a swarm to look ahead," Kasimir ordered. The girl's hostility crackled tangibly against the bond between them, worsened by the magic in this place and other things.
"Yes, master," she said, with bitter sarcasm, and insects buzzed ahead of them to give warning of monsters. Faldorn snapped her fingers and a large black wolf flowed out of the shadows to her side. Her dread wolf, an undead creature, stayed faithfully by her side and obeyed her in all things.
Almost as soon as the insects had taken off, they hit something. Kasimir and Faldorn both stumbled and pressed a hand to their foreheads. Kasimir called ahead: Stop! It was something harsh and fierce, a wind blowing into the swarm and tearing it apart faster than Faldorn could press it back together -
"I - don't like this!" Jan Jansen panted, catching up with the rest of the group on his shorter frame. "Changing faster than the buffet table at Uncle Scratchy's reunions! Not an illusion, neither - transmutation mixed with necromancy or wild magic or worse! Lass, either of you - any chance - "
"Can't overpower this," Imoen said. "Not Kaz neither. Better go with the flow - one more step - "
Scorching sands hit their faces. The thickets were now a desert at night. Kasimir looked backwards - they hadn't walked so very far, the entrance was somewhere over there - but she saw nothing. Everything about the old hedge maze was gone like it never had existed. She blinked up into dark fog.
Light blasted over the sands from Imoen's right hand. It wasn't a moment too soon. A giant black scorpion reared on the sands before them, its stinger bigger than Cernd's body. It looked like it had been carved out of obsidian. Cernd and Shar-Teel charged.
"Jan, explosions," Kasimir said, giving orders in battle again, "Faldorn, you and me on protection magics, Imoen, find a breach or make one - " Shar-Teel's sword hit the scorpion's side. It didn't pierce through. Shar-Teel swore and shifted away from a blow from one of the hind legs.
"Got it, sis! Sneaking's my thing." Imoen raised her hands and a series of pale globes spread out from them. Light shone over the beast's body. Then she drew a cloak over herself that blurred her shape and features, took her sword, and slipped into the shadows -
Faldorn sent her dread wolf to harry the scorpion's limbs. The wolf was already dead and could not die from poison or wound. She made her calls to Silvanus and the nature she worshipped answered her back. Kasimir felt Faldorn's power leap to Cernd and Shar-Teel, sand particles stiffening like iron in the air around them so that any blows from the scorpion would be blunted. Kasimir cast her own spell, granting speed and strength to the fighters to let every blow count. There wasn't much she could do with her enchantment here, against an enemy which barely had a mind, but she'd learnt on the road to be more than flexible in a fight. Jan's illusions also wouldn't help them here, but his launcher and explosive armament packed a punch.
Cernd rushed at the stone scorpion, wild and enraged, trying to dismember it with claws and sheer willpower. It was just one more thing between him and his son. He got between its pincers and Kasimir yelled a spell to bring weight out of nowhere, slow the claw and give him a chance to fall back. Shar-Teel hammered at the scorpion with her sword until at last a piece of it chipped off, then she dodged the tail. Imoen raised a wand and blasted the gap with what she could. It didn't slow the creature at all. Then one of the scorpion's legs caught Imoen - a vicious blow to the side - and Kasimir shouted for help as her sister fell.
Cernd was the closest but he didn't seem to notice, and the trampling legs would soon crush Imoen. Jan fired a barrage of explosives over Imoen's head but she still didn't get up. Kasimir left her spells, raced forward - she knew she wouldn't be in time - and she heard Faldorn laugh at the pain of the woman who'd enslaved her. Laugh in ferocious triumph, also, as if there was something she knew that the rest of them did not -
How to defeat the monster. It came rushing into Kasimir's mind as well. But Imoen was most important. Kasimir reached out, knowing she would fail anyway as the scorpion's giant body rose to trample her sister. Then, impossibly, Imoen's body moved. Kasimir made her last flying leap, broke the neck of a potion bottle to pour what she could down Imoen's throat. The dread wolf's claws and teeth were on Imoen's leg and shoulder, its fur covering her like a shroud. The wolf had dragged her away. It came to Kasimir that she had given Faldorn orders to that effect - Protect Imoen at any cost less than your own life. The geas had saved her.
The broken clay shards left bloody lines on Kasimir's fingers. Imoen jerked and raised her head. She coughed over the potion and got to her knees, her hands already moving into a new spell.
Kasimir turned back and met Faldorn's eyes. "Bring it to life - for all our sakes," Kasimir asked. Cernd's fury was impossible to pierce so she was the only one who could save them all. She felt Faldorn hesitate, knowing that because of the geas the distinction between asking and commanding was a hair's breadth and at any moment Kasimir could make it worse for her. Grimly Faldorn turned her druid's gifts to the problem before them.
The scorpion felt like it was made from obsidian or stone, a magical creature without true life. Faldorn's ability was to call on life. She found that spark inside herself and in the others, in the very air that blew past them and the tiny traces of water within it. Life was heat and light and change and Faldorn found a crack in the scorpion's stone heart, forced her magic into it and filled it. Life was hunger.
Stone melted into flesh. The scorpion's stinger swelled with fresh poison. Its mouth watered with acid juices and its jaws clanked to pull prey into its stomach. Its guts inflated with blood. Cernd's claws raked deep and for the first time it felt pain. Shar-Teel's sword penetrated its chitin and blue fluid ran down its flanks. She gloated to the song of her battle cry: if it bled, she could kill it!
Cernd's claws swept into the scorpion's eyes. The vicious fanged chelicerae gave him bleeding wounds that he ignored. Together, Imoen and Jan caught the tail with a rope of sticky spiderweb and held the stinger back until Shar-Teel's sword struck it from the body. Kasimir's enchantments dulled its senses and reflexes. It had already begun to die after living so briefly, but Cernd did not stop ripping through it until long after its last twitches had stopped.
Cernd's shape shrank back to human and he looked bewildered down at many wounds. "I think I can taste too much of it," he muttered, vaguely, and began his own set of healing spells. Kasimir helped Imoen and Shar-Teel patch up as best they could. She muttered acknowledgements to Faldorn, but the girl pretended not to listen.
As they walked on - there was no forward or back any more, only fog and greyness - the shifting sands around them began to change to brown dirt. The air became moist and sunlight showed through again. Soon the brown became green, then colourful, and heavy scents of roses and fennel and thyme and other things, strange plants shaped like tiny elephants and smelling like peat and even stranger vines blooming into striped trumpet-shaped flowers. Faldorn nodded almost approvingly at the evidences of nature.
"Are these real plants?" Imoen asked. "Or more fake spell-things, like the thicket and the scorpion?"
"They exist but are affected by magic, perhaps summoned from elsewhere," Faldorn said. "Their roots are real, I can feel it. I can do a lot in a place like this. Some of these are very rare, precious and powerful. One of the red berries on that tree would kill all of you in half a moment." She grinned as if that thought pleased her.
"Dragon's teeth plant," Cernd said, pointing out a small group of yellow tufts that grew above the ground. "Very rare and valuable - " He knelt and plucked out a long bulbous thing, bright orange in colour, tucking it into his pouch. Then he looked ashamed of himself for the distraction.
"This is like my old grove," Faldorn said. Here the trees grew darker and deeper, with a cold tang in the air. "Not the one where we fought and you made me into your slave. The one I grew up in, at the North. I was a Black Raven of the Uthgardt tribe, trained by the Shadow Druids in a place like this. It is home ground."
"I have heard of the Black Ravens. They are famous for violence," Cernd said. "No wonder they became close to the Shadow Druids."
"We serve nature more truly than soft mushy squealers like you," Faldorn said. It was her usual reply when Cernd spoke of the differences in their druidry. Both served nature and preferred wilderness to cities, but only Shadow Druids would raze and burn human settlements.
This was like how the doppelgangers had imitated her and Imoen's worst memories, Kasimir thought. This place was shaping itself toward Faldorn and Cernd now. She wondered with fear how powerful the lich Lagole Gon must be, to set all this in motion to guard his gate. Could they outfight such a creature or somehow outfox him into restoring Cernd's child?
Cernd raised his head and sniffed like a dog. "That perfume over there is to be avoided," he said. " - But I do not see any way to avoid it if we are to reach the end. I can smell our path and we have no choice but to fight. As a pard crouches in the trees before it strikes, some plants have the power to attack as well as defend!"
"I have also heard of this kind," Faldorn said, baring her teeth, "it will be useful to add to my knowledge of nature."
The vines here were dark and bulbous, and as they walked on it was as if the plants deliberately cut off the light from the group. Shar-Teel spat insultingly at one of the outcrops of vegetation. "Never thought I'd be led into a trap by damned topiary."
Kasimir and Imoen and Jan considered wands, potions, ready to use up anything they had that could save all of their lives. Cernd gestured that they must be ready to fight. Light above them and around them was almost blotted out entirely. Then, a section of one of the plants unspooled itself from its tree and came creeping toward them, changing as it went.
It was a shadow that happened to look like a young human girl. It had skinny arms and legs but tossed back its hair and raised its fists like it expected a fight. Red petals sprouted over its head and melted into something like hair. The plant-face grew a familiar scowl that hated the world.
They all recognised her. "Oh, fuck me," Shar-Teel breathed, and drew her sword on what had to be a younger shade of herself.
"If it's her then I bet it's all of us ... why, lasses, look, there's a handsome young gnome just coming out there," Jan said. "This reminds me of Uncle Scratchy's family reunion when I was just a young gnome, all of us Jansens and honourary Jansens and family friends gathered together over turnip ragout served with turnip hot sauce and turnip beer, and Lissa lost her hair ribbon playing games in the turnip field, so I stayed past sunset searching over the fields for it, and little did I know that Second Cousin Dollyovine Jansen was experimenting with her interdimensional summoning device off from across the field ... aargh!"
The handsome young gnome started shooting sharpened seed-pods from a crossbow at them all. Kasimir flung up a mage's shield and winced as the gnome peppered it with powerful blows.
Then came a human man, looking as if he wore a city-dweller's robes, and three young girls.
"Hey ... " Imoen said to the one with pink flowers for hair, "do we have to fight? You're like the younger version of me - that was a good time, right?"
"So good that you had to take it away from me," her shade hissed. "Just had to leave Candlekeep, didn't you, idiot? You stole my home and safety away and now you're a soulless monster."
As Kasimir approached her own incarnation, she felt the same regrets. She braced herself against her mage's staff and prepared for battle. She left Candlekeep and her foster father Gorion died because of her. Ever since then, she'd lived on the road with peaceful times too few and far between. Like Imoen, an important part of her had been broken and so often these days she felt she was hanging onto sanity by the last shreds of raw skin on her fingertips. So many things she'd done and become that Gorion wouldn't approve of, so many desperate choices made in the name of survival when there were no good options. Her shade attacked her mercilessly with staff techniques she'd learnt from her tutor Arkanis back in Candlekeep.
"You, my old self?" Faldorn taunted. Without hesitation, she thrust her staff into the centre of the plant-thing and created fire by her will. "You were young and weak and I reject you."
"I am you as you were, and you as you could be again," Cernd's old self said. "You were a prosperous trader with coin drafts unspent and a good house and wife. You threw away Galia and your child. You are here because of your mistake."
Cernd faltered, listened, waited instead of fighting. The plant-creature advanced on Cernd with its face from his past.
Faldorn, her hand sharpened to claws, tore through its form from the back. "Why wait to destroy it?" she demanded Cernd. "You left to serve a greater cause, I am your enemy in druidic practice but you are better than that pathetic city dweller. Just as I am better than the weak child I was."
Ice-flowers bloomed from Imoen's hand and overtook the plant-self she fought. Imoen's younger face now appeared frozen below a blanket of ice. It stilled in place. "Faldorn, the way you were before wasn't that bad!" Imoen said. "Sure, you refused to sleep in beds and you nearly got us hanged for horse theft when you set the Nashkel stables on fire and you repeatedly cast insect plagues on Ajantis after you said he would father strong offspring and he said he was saving himself for marriage and you threw away all our soap-cakes, but hey, we beat Sarevok together. You gotta ... maybe accept your past?" she suggested.
"Our past is trying to kill us." Shar-Teel lopped off a head that looked like her own. But then another grew in its place.
Jan lifted a lightning wand and began the words for the trigger incantation. Kasimir hastily locked her own foe in place - enchantment loop to make the same five seconds happen for her over and over again - and stepped back. Shar-Teel gave one last cruel blow then leapt away. The ball lightning flashed through all their plant-enemies. Blackened leaf litter lay on the ground.
" ... Anyway, back then with Lissa, Second Cousin Dollyovine Jansen's device went off and summoned magical duplicates of the clan from an alternate dimension, but the problem was that they were all evil and homicidal, our complete opposites in fact! That was when I knocked the platoon of fake Lissas on the back of the head with a turnip and replaced their hair ribbons with radish peel, so I brought back new ribbons for Lissa." Jan said. "After all, fair exchange is no ribbonery." He sighed. "I liked that handsome young gnome and the old happy times he had, but I'm just as happy with old Jan Jansen nowadays."
"My creature was right," Cernd said. "My son - Wolves in packs travel together and protect the cubs. I failed."
"It is natural in many kinds for the male to leave its mate and offspring behind," Faldorn lectured. "You are no different. My tribe gave me to the Shadow Druids as an infant, so I became part of the cycle of nature."
She had spoken of her past back when she travelled in Baldur's Gate with Kasimir. The Shadow Druids charged the Black Ravens to pay tribute so their tribe would not be destroyed, and every few years the tribute must include a child to raise in the way of the druids. It was a harsh way.
"Then I am sorry that your parents left you, Faldorn," Cernd said gently. "I would not ... I do not ... I wish to raise my son, especially now he has nobody but me. His mother would have wished me to do this."
Faldorn's face darkened in anger. "If it had not happened I would not have become powerful. You are weak not to understand. Maybe if the lich raises your child then he too will become more powerful, and that is what most people want. Is that what you want?"
But even to her hostility, Cernd's tone was still gentle, as if instead of an angry fanatic standing there he saw only a girl in need of protection. "I want someone to speak kindly to my child. As I wish that someone had once done for you. Kasimir, I know you are not cruel-hearted. We should have left Faldorn to run free a long time ago."
"Don't pretend I wouldn't have had a pack of dread wolves rip out your throats while you slept," Faldorn snapped. "I hate all of you. I hate all of you."
Around them, the lich's mad maze had changed even as they spoke. The forest was no more. Now there were only corridors, filled with creeping cold that dropped in temperature all the time. Kasimir wiped the end of her sleeve on the wall and rimes of frost scraped away on it. She saw a fragment of her own reflection in metal and by her side her dead lover Yoshimo, a shining memory of a happier time. She looked away quickly. She was reminded of all she'd been and all she'd done, all that she regretted about herself. The anger in Faldorn's face was jagged in a series of reflections all around them, mixed with Cernd's dark shadow and the red flare of Shar-Teel's hair, Jan's colourful robes and Imoen's sadness.
Kasimir felt in her bones that they neared the end of whatever this was. Imoen was right to question and praise our younger selves, she thought. This whole place was geared toward making them remember who they were. First the doppelgangers, then a challenge of strength and life, then a confrontation with themselves. Now they marched through a cold forking path full of mirrors, turning left or right as if by instinct. Jan was right too, she thought. This isn't an illusion. Transmutation and necromancy mixed with something else, something like wild magic.
And what comes after knowing who and what you are? That was the riddle Kasimir couldn't solve. She caught up to Imoen and took her by the arm.
"It's cold, so cold, but it feels warm," Imoen muttered. She wiped a section of frost off the wall and stared at her own reflection. "Look, Kaz, it's old Puffguts from Candlekeep. That's the Pink Party he threw for me when I was feeling down after Ulraunt made me scrub the stables for three tendays. It was a great party, you were there and I was there and the people who cared about us. Wouldn't it be good to just rest there?"
Kasimir saw another piece of her own reflection out the corner of her eye. Vicious spikes the colour of brown-rusted blood and glowing yellow eyes. Within her was the Slayer monster that could destroy them all. Imoen dropped to her knees, taken by the cold.
Kasimir slapped her sister's face. The vicious blow stung droplets of blood from Imoen's face into the frosted air. "Get up," she demanded, hurting her sister for the first time on purpose. "Stand up and move on. I won't let any of us perish here." Her fingers tightly gripped each other around Imoen's sleeve and she pulled her own.
"So bad to stay here ... " Jan muttered to himself. "So cold that it feels warm again, looping back around. When Lissa and I went skating out on frozen Turnip Pond ... "
"Not you too!" Kasimir shouted. She poked him from behind with her staff, which made him jump. They came close to Cernd, tall and furred, his shape granting him at least some protection. "We need warmth ... we need to survive ... "
Shar-Teel turned back to face them. "Who's afraid of a little cold?" she laughed at them. "Faldorn agrees with me, don't you, little druid? She's tougher than you soft-living wizards."
"Of course I do. I respect your combat abilities despite your hostility toward nature," Faldorn said. "Strength is the law of nature, and I have it. I have always had it," she said, but on repetition some uncertainty had crept into her voice. "Weren't you beaten by that weak man Khalid in a sword fight once, Shar-Teel? I thought he was a fitting mate for Jaheira."
Kasimir knew what was happening. Faldorn took her momentary weakness and turned it against others as a vicious blow. She and Imoen missed Jaheira and Khalid, Gorion's old friends who had become their companions, and were brutally murdered by Irenicus.
Shar-Teel answered that in kind. "Hey, druid-brat, didn't that wretched excuse for a wolf-man over there hand you your tail in your duel? Literally. He's a typical man and a typical father, the child doesn't matter to him except when it suits his ego."
"Part of me wants to rip your throat out for that, Shar-Teel," Cernd said with a cold and deadly frost in his mouth, "but I understand that as the storm shakes standing-stones to reveal hidden caverns, this very place is designed to provoke us."
Provoke - Cernd had part of it but only a small part. A test, a provocation, a matter of finding the will to step further into danger even when there was nothing left of you but will. Transmutation, necromancy, and something else ... something wild. Kasimir's frozen fingers stuck to her mage's staff and she leant on it for support. Cernd felt it, had felt it all along while he led them forward. Kasimir began an enchantment, hoping it would be the last one needed in this place. She peeled her frozen skin off the staff, leaving bloody prints on it, and reached in her pouch for a length of thread she used to mend rips in their clothing. She spun out the thread and infused it with magic: her mind brought symbols for guidance, mending, taking a broken thing and making something new when it was pieced back together again. Before Irenicus Kasimir liked to embroider extra shapes when she sewed her companions' linen, pink rhodelias crossing Imoen's once-torn clothes and bears for Jaheira and wolves for Faldorn. Not that anyone but Imoen appreciated her follies.
She had the spool of thread that guided people along a maze. She stepped to Cernd's side, raised the silver dagger she used in casting, and notched a line across his shoulder. Blood soaked the thread and completed the spell. Necromancy - it was blood calling to blood and reaching out for the secret of the maze.
"Cernd, it's all right, I've found - " Kasimir began to explain, her breath still clogged by frost even as the wintry cold dissipated - by instinct Cernd pushed her away and she landed hard on her back.
All along, the maze was transmutation and necromancy and something else - something wild. Something new. A baby.
In the centre of the maze there was a cradle, and in the cradle lay Cernd's son of the same blood. He picked him up.
That was when the lich got up from his crystal ball in the corner. He was a tall skeleton, impossibly tall as if he hadn't been human even when he was alive, richly garbed in jewelled mage's robes with a crown on his head and blue fire gleaming within his dead eye sockets. He clapped his dead hands together, making a ringing, drumming sound.
Lagole Gon. The lich master of this place. Terror clouded their minds just to look at him, but they were all experienced adventurers enough to identify and master their magically induced fear. He clapped as if to sarcastically applaud their progress.
"I ought to have instructed Deril to procure an orphan infant, not one with adventurers' pedigree," said Lagole Gon. "He told me its father was a failed merchant who ran away. Instead it is a werewolf. Next time, perhaps ... although I presume I can no longer use my servant Deril."
"We will fight you and we will win," Cernd breathed. "We have to."
"Why did you do this?" Kasimir asked. She thought she already knew but she played for time, played for an edge she could spread thickly across an enchantment to lay bare the lich's mind.
His jawbone moved over his dusty, creaking voice from the grave. "I am Lagole Gon, once of Narfell, set as a dead man in a tomb long age ago, doomed to walk the earth. Thousands of years become boring and you freeze up and wither along with your bones. A living infant knows how to change, none better in fact. Thus I made the baby's mind the heart of my spell. The Maze responds to any who traverse it and forces them to confront what they are. Either you perish in the maze while staring at your old self, or change to surpass it, that was the only rule. I traversed it myself with positive results. You broke the spell with a blood connection - cheating, in a way."
"Monstrous to use a child!" Jan said, crossbow ready to go off. "Make no mistake, creature, you'll go the way of others who dared harm little ones."
"I have no doubt you will try," said Lagole Gon. "But I am a wise creature and aware of your repute. Farewell, Kasimir of Candlekeep."
They knew what he was going to do. The spellcasters had already triggered bolts of lightning and flame and magical force the lich's way, and Shar-Teel and Faldorn ran forward to slay the creature who'd given them so much trouble -
But the lich had vanished in a swift teleport, and in his wake the maze he'd enspelled about his mansion had already begun to melt away. It was better that they not face a fight they had little chance to win. Now there was only the child left, in his father's arms. He seemed to like the feeling of Cernd's soft fur and reached upwards to tug on his father's snout. For a long moment, there was only the two of them, nothing of battle weariness and blood, nothing of anything they had endured but this moment where a man found his child.
"Ahsdale," Cernd said, and at first they did not know what he meant. "His name is Ahsdale. It was the name of his mother's father. I think Galia would want that much. I see - he likes his stomach tickled. And this." He gently puffed air in the child's face while the babe laughed. He took out the orange plant he'd saved earlier from a pouch and let his son gum it. "The dragon's teeth plant is used for infants to blunt their first teeth on. It is highly safe and nutritious in digestion."
"I daresay you will dump him on some weak wet-nurse in the grove and travel to the Nine Hells to follow Kasimir's mad wizard," Faldorn said. "You shouldn't pretend to a bond that doesn't exist!"
Cernd's moss-green eyes looked up at her, liquid and expressive behind his muzzle. His gaze encompassed all of them, weighted with what they had endured.
"It is time for a change," he said. "For all of us."
