AN: Thanks from the very southernmost reaches of my heart must go to Eponymous Rose, who suggested the idea and then gave me Christmas Past and Present; and to Jade, who sacrificed most of her afternoon to this beta. I will never forget walking away from the computer, distantly shouting back, "What about 'tremulous?'" and hearing faint, incomprehensible shrieks of approval.
This work is presented with temperate apologies to Charles Dickens and the Muppet Christmas Carol.
Cazador was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. Astarion had plunged a very beautiful knife a dozen times or more into his gut and left him in tattered shreds upon his ritually carven floor. The compulsion which had haunted the farthest reaches of his memory had vanished like mist with his master's death.
Mind! It cannot be implied that there is a particular similarity between a vampire lord, who is un-dead, and a dead vampire, despite the mimicking shape of those descriptors. Neither bears real facility of life, true, with a beating heart and a cheek which might yet blush, but the one may wield an un-life never again to be possessed by the other, who will do little more than lie still and rot away into new earth. Cazador was a corpse, mouldering beneath the ground. In all ways he had been flung across that lofty river into the mundanity of real and final death. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing that follows will seem wondrous.
Astarion was a vampire's spawn—in particular, one of the seven chief spawn of Cazador, turned in a night of violence to beget many more nights of violence in his master's name. Oh! He was a complicated fellow, Astarion! a selfish, cruel, lustful, ornery, old sinner; for two hundred long, lonely years he had been bound to his master's craven commands, and the wintry rime of his master's heart had settled solidly within his own. Indeed, for many of the last decades he could not have said whether some of his petty cruelties had come of his own will or of Cazador's, even if he had wished, even with a knife against his throat.
But Fate, or Providence, had seen fit in these last months to turn Astarion's suffering into some new transmutation of pain, for on one evening in a city called Baldur's Gate, Astarion had been taken by illithids, who were fearsome creatures with mouths like the dangling reaching feelers of an Octopus, and these illithids had forced into his brain a worm. This was all according to a grand design of their own, naturally, but for Astarion it provided the unexpected boon of freedom from all his master's cruel commands, and over the next days—tendays—months—and more, Astarion found himself in the unenviable position of having become, quite against his will, an Adventurer.
A great many exciting quests and riots and feats of perilous defiance had followed, all beyond the scope of this little tale, but over the course of these travels two key events had occurred of nearly equal import: Astarion had killed Cazador, and Astarion had fallen in love.
She was a woman named Tav, and like Astarion she had been taken up by the illithids (or, as some have called them, mind-flayers) and given a brain-worm of her own. She was a canny creature, prone to certain selfish tendencies of her own, but their love story has been described elsewhere and better. Let it suffice to say that they had learned to make each other better than they were, that their strengths shored up the places where the other was weak—and that despite the difficulties of their beginning they had discovered the weights they each carried could be borne much more easily when they wove themselves together, like flaxen cords twined tightly into a braid, rather than each dragging those terrible memories boulder-like behind their feet, alone.
Astarion, therefore, was happy. His master was dead, and a woman of worth loved him; what more could be wanted by any man in this good old world?
Once upon a time, on the longest night of the year—Midwinter's Eve—Astarion sat in bed, reading a book by candlelight. Tav was asleep beside him, the thick bedcovers pulled high to her ears; outside the inn the snow howled and spat like an alley cat, smashing against the window-glass and scraping nails of ice down the doorjambs. They rarely stayed in establishments so fine—alas, among Tav's flaws was a miserly reluctance to part with even a scrap of a copper coin—but the weather had turned foul and mucky over the course of the afternoon, and the elders of their party—among which, despite his age, Astarion refused to count himself—had insisted for the sake of their creaking bones that shelter be sought indoors for the evening.
Shelter had been sought accordingly, and rooms paid for and distributed, and across the way Astarion could hear the various sounds of snores and light breathing from the rest of their party, of deep sleep and shallow trances, each according to his habit. It was a lonely hour, the inn dark and still, bound up in that heavy silence which only comes when a single soul sits wakefully among many others. A fog crept against the window, thick as wool over the raging storm; the flickering light of his candle stirred fretfully in some unseen breeze, nearly went out, then steadied.
"A cheap candle for a fine inn," Astarion thought with annoyance. With one of his many knives he trimmed a bit of wax from the top to better expose the wick, and the flame grew stronger. Satisfied, he went back to his book, but shock arrested him in the moment he looked upon it. The book was an old book of necromantic Thayan spells, almost certainly holding within it a great and evil power, and Astarion had been studying it for some time. Upon its cover had been wrought a face with a mouth open in a scream, a predictable pantomime from unimaginative necromancers of yore, and until tonight he had done little more than roll his eyes every time he broke the binding seal. However, as he set his hand upon the cover, the face shifted as if in life, the mouth yawning open wide and wanting, and for a moment it took on the clear and unmistakable aspect of his old master Cazador's face.
"Astarion!" the face cried, and he flung the book from him in terror.
Tav stirred beside him. "Astarion?" she said, very sleepy, small red creases marked into her face from her pillow.
With a shudder he rose from the bed and fetched the book from where it had fallen against the nightstand. Its cover was still again, the carved scream familiar and comforting, and any resemblance to his master in the flickering candlelight was gone.
"I'm perfectly fine, my dear," he said at last. "Go back to sleep."
"No arguments here," Tav told him, and she rolled over and returned to rest within moments.
Shaken, Astarion returned to bed, though he set the book aside for the evening. He was not a man frightened easily, both by nature and by training, but Cazador had made a profession of cheating death in all its forms, and to be confronted so suddenly by one who should not have only been Un-dead, but Dead, had left him doubting.
He had just nearly persuaded himself into believing the whole thing a trick of the light when a wind rose in the room. There was no source—he could see the windows were closed, and the banked fire in the hearth still flickered without a trace of disturbance—but he felt the breeze drag over his cheeks like a stiff, dead leaf. The candle went out abruptly, leaving only the dim light of red coals and the few feeble flames from the fireplace.
Astarion sat bolt upright in bed. By chance, his eyes fell upon Tav's belt which had been laid over the back of a chair; tied there was a small silver bell which she had received from a pixie in the shadow-cursed lands. In the darkness it shone little more than a gleaming curve; but as he watched in silence, it began to swing. Back and forth it moved with no hand upon it—the wind had died away entirely—and then as if a great hand had seized it, it flung itself into the air and shook violently. The ringing was loud and clear, though Tav did not stir in the slightest, nor any other soul in the inn, and for about a minute it trembled and sounded in the dark. At last, it fell still and dropped again upon its string.
"Fuck you, dog-shite!" came the pixie's tiny voice, faintly and at a great distance.
"Rotten little thing," Astarion said, lip curling in derision, for surely it had only been a pixie's trick after all. He rose again and went to throw the little bell away—Tav would be unhappy, but he would take her on the morrow to rob the proprietor of the Devil's Fee utterly blind, which would assuage all tender wounds—but as he set his hand upon the bell the flames in the hearth gave a mighty surge.
A face rose out of the flames. It was ghastly in appearance and manner, mouth twisted in agony, long black hair in disarray. A golden chain about its shoulders hung broken and snapped; its dark eyes were full of horror.
Cazador's Ghost—for so it was—loomed before him. "Astarion!" it cried in a voice choked with pain. "Hear me, child!"
"Certainly not," Astarion said caustically, and he took up the washbowl from the nightstand and flung the water over all the embers.
Cazador's face vanished in a smoky, popping hiss. With the final vestiges of life, it gasped out, "Three spirits will visit you tonight! I would just as soon have them destroy you, wretched thing, but Kelemvor has compelled me to deliver this message to you. Little brat!"
"You'd better have exhumed yourself and come in person, so I might have stabbed you all over again."
"Ungrateful child!" said the last pitiful wisp of smoke from the sputtering coal-bed, and then Cazador's Ghost vanished with a distant scream of agony.
"Ugh," Astarion said. "Now the wood's soaked through."
But in the moment of speech a light sparked in the heart of the wet logs. It was not firelight; rather it was cold and white as dawn, impassive as a star, and it grew and grew until Astarion was forced to throw his hands over his eyes and turn away. Finally it ebbed, receding with terrifying silence, and in its place stood a small boy of seven or eight years.
Through his tears he could see Tav still asleep in bed behind him, though she had grown very still. Indeed, the candle's flame had paused mid-flicker, and the snow outside the window had frozen in one great blast against the glass, as if the entire world had been set in a clear resin to preserve this moment into eternity.
The boy gestured at him with a staff twice his height. "I am the spirit of Midwinter Past. You were warned of my coming, Astarion."
"You're not the spirit of Midwinter's anything. You're that boy Halsin was going on about forever." Astarion snapped his fingers. "Thaniel!" He frowned. "Aren't you the spirit of a forest, or the land itself, or something equally and pathetically pastoral?"
A second boy stepped out of the first, easy as crossing a threshold, and they stood beside each other. They were both the same age and had similar features, though the second boy had an eye which glowed green as spring in the dark room. "We are the ghosts of Midwinter Past," they said together, quite severely.
"I don't care," Astarion said. "Halsin is across the hall if you'd like to talk to him. He may be a bear tonight, I don't know."
"We have come for you, Astarion," the second boy said. Astarion couldn't remember his name. O—something. Owen. Otis. Octavion. "We have come to redeem your soul."
"Thank you, no," Astarion said. "I've been redeemed already, you see."
"That can't be right," said the spirit.
"Oh, most assuredly I have," said Astarion. "My master is dead. My lover lies here behind me. I've been told by a number of reputable sources I have in fact learned the art of altruism for its own sake. I have even, once or twice, performed a Good Deed of entirely my own will and volition. Thank you, I'm quite redeemed. No more is needed."
The two boys exchanged worried glances, then seemed to come to some silent accord. They turned as one and approached him, each extending towards him his free hand.
"No, no, no," said Astarion, arms thrown up in defence, but the spirits clasped his elbows in a single sharp motion, and he was swallowed up completely in the light.
—
When Astarion opened his eyes again, they were standing in a city in broad daylight. It was not Baldur's Gate. Even given the strangeness of regarding its towers and alleys in the light of the sun, the stonework and wood-carvings of the buildings were unfamiliar to him. Snow had fallen freshly in the night, draping the nearby inns and houses and workhouses in white, glittering mantles. The streets had only just begun to have their snow trampled into grey mush, and many citizens passed by and through them, bundled toe to pointed ear-tip against the frosty cold.
They had landed at a crossroads, and on the other side of the bye-way was a larger house, set back from the road a ways behind a fine iron gate, and it was to this house that Thaniel and the other boy drew Astarion. Beyond the gate he could see a small boy playing on the beautiful front lawn of the house, stamping and tramping in the snow, building up a great ball of packed snow and ice as high as his own head. A maid looked on indulgently, her muffler wrapped around her nose.
"I'm going to go play," the O—Something boy said abruptly, and he passed ghost-like through the gate and ran up to the boy in the yard.
Thaniel, whose countenance bore a significant air of annoyance, only said, "Do you recognize this place?"
"Not at all."
Thaniel blinked. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, quite sure."
"Well!" Thaniel said, though he appeared now uncertain, and he drew Astarion through the iron gate as simply as a shadow passing over a hand. "This is where you grew up. Your childhood home."
"Really?" Astarion surveyed the manor with new, proprietary regard. It was a lovely house, tall and well kept, with glimpses of gardens beyond the walls. Perhaps some faint memory raised itself in his mind; little was left to him of his years before Cazador, but if he tried—if he really tried—he might persuade himself to recollection. But, Astarion realized abruptly, if this was his home, then that meant the little boy was—
"Oh, look at me!" he cried, delighted, as he surveyed the two boys playing in the snow. One head was dark; the other boy was pale, his hair even now a mess of light curls. "I was adorable. How wonderful to see some things never change."
Sternly, Thaniel said, "You mistake our purpose in coming here, Astarion. Remember! the redemption of your soul!"
But Astarion was not listening. He clambered through the snow, kicking drifts out of his way, clutching the lapels of his second-best dressing gown around him against the cold, as Tav had stolen his best the night before. "Here, boy—Astarion. Look at me. What color are your eyes?"
"They cannot see you," Thaniel called with a growing irritation. "They are shadows only, memories of the past."
"They can see him," Astarion said, gesturing at Oscar. Otto. Oden, maybe. The boys were playing together, stacking up great snowy spheres atop each other, calling out to each other merrily in the cold air. The maid ducked a thrown snow-ball and shook her head.
"Oliver doesn't listen to rules," Thaniel said in aggrieved tones.
"Oliver!" said Astarion. "That's the one!"
"Never mind," Thaniel sighed, and he waved his hand. The scene melted away like ice in spring, and Astarion let out a cry of anger, but in the last moments before it vanished his younger self looked up, almost at him, and smiled. A peculiar feeling rose in his chest to see his own face in softened miniature, but the smile was sweet, and the young eyes were clear and bright. And the color—exactly as he had expected. Satisfied, Astarion stepped back, and the boy Oliver came with him, though he grumbled and shook the snow from his shoulders.
"I wasn't done playing," the boy said petulantly.
"That doesn't matter," Thaniel said, and as he shook his staff a new world settled around them like sifting flour. "Regard, another Midwinter!"
The light descended, then grew very dark. Astarion waited, but it grew only blacker and blacker with every passing moment, and soon became so dark that even Astarion's elf eyes could not make out any details beyond the vaguest sense that they stood on worked flagstones. He thought the room they stood in was very small, and he thought he could hear something wet dripping in the distance, but other than that Astarion stood at a loss.
"Well," he said at last. "This seems…nice."
"I'm bored," Oliver said.
"You do not recognize this place either?" Thaniel said from somewhere behind him, a little desperately.
"Should I?" He felt along the wall until his bare foot kicked something hard and cold. He found a low surface at near waist-height, the flat of it carved beautifully from some sort of cold marble. His fingers seized upon something raised and smooth; after some exploration, he came to the understanding that it was the toe of a marble boot. That in fact he stood alongside a sarcophagus with a heavy stone lid, which meant most likely they were in the one place of all his greatest horrors. "Oh, damn," he said faintly.
"Yes," Thaniel said with measurable relief. "You know this place."
Astarion rapped twice upon the sarcophagus lid. It made an echoing clang, though there was no answering knock from inside. "Hallo! Can you hear me, you wretched creature?"
"I've told you already—they cannot hear, or see, or sense you."
"Then this will be a very quiet affair," Astarion said acerbically. "If this is the Midwinter I think you've chosen, then I'm somewhere into the third month of a five-month silence. I neither moved nor spoke nor slept." He gestured broadly in the blind dark. "Unless you have a way to light up this little cell of terror? Or perhaps some plan to reveal yourself to the handsome scoundrel in the grip of total madness inside that tomb? I think I should have remembered your speaking to me, but maybe I wrote you off as only one more vivid hallucination."
There was a long, pained silence. Astarion picked at a chip on his thumbnail and smoothed it on the sarcophagus's marble surface. He felt a fearful repulsion at having been returned so forcefully to this place, but it came as if at a great distance, like a towering wave seen from a faraway cliff, where it might crash and crash and still pose no danger at all. He was conscious of the nature of this illusion as illusion, and could not be swayed in whole or in part that it was real, or that he was in any danger. In fact, half his mind was still back in the inn's room with Tav, in the feather-bed wrapped up in its heavy quilts.
"Well, then," Thaniel said in tones of total defeat. "We'd better move on."
Astarion felt the staff wave again, and in a moment the darkness had faded away, supplanted by a new, dank cavern. Astarion surveyed the gloomy engraved walls, the thuribles dangling from a distant carved ceiling, their hearts lit with dim purple flames. Behind a crumbling barricade, he could see the peaky rise of familiar tents.
"Shar's temple?" he said, baffled. "This wasn't Midwinter. This was only a few months ago."
"Look!" Thaniel said loudly. "For your soul, Astarion!"
Astarion blinked, and he watched in some surprise as Tav came around the barricade with himself, her fist hard around his upper arm. Her face was black with temper; his own was little better, though Astarion was immediately distracted by the observation of his own appearance. Pale, noble, arrogant. Unmarred by blemish or wrinkle. Yes—a handsome face. A very handsome face indeed. He might adjust how the one curl fell across his forehead, perhaps; just a little longer, and he might be able to flick it coquettishly from his eyes when it was called for.
"Pay attention!" Thaniel hissed.
Astarion jumped. Tav had leaned close to him in the vision, her own hair ruthlessly pulled back from her eyes, and her cheeks were red with anger. He himself was lounging casually against the crumbling barricade, arms crossed, though he and the spirits stood close enough he could read the tension hidden in his own shoulders. A peculiar recognition; he remembered this fight well.
"I'm sorry it upset you," Tav was saying, her voice as tight as if through squeezing fingers, "but I'm not going to apologize for doing it. He had the drop on us. An orthon and a dozen merregons all with the high ground, and we were four and flat-footed and already hurt. I'm not going to get us all killed if I can help it!"
"No, no," the other Astarion said, with a sneer that made him grimace. "You'll settle for breaking all those pretty promises instead, won't you? Of course I'll help you, Astarion. Of course we'll kill this orthon for Raphael. Whatever you need for your deal, I promise—unless it poses any kind of danger to us at all, and then we'll turn tail and run for the door."
"We're still going to kill him!"
"I'll believe it when I see it, my dear." The other Astarion gave a cold, cruel laugh. "Honestly, at this point, someone actually keeping a promise to me would be a novelty."
"Hm," Astarion said, watching. "I might have phrased that better. 'Actually fulfilling an oath,' I think. Or is that too verbose?"
"Can you take none of this seriously?" Thaniel said with real despair. "The land keeps these memories for us so that we may learn from them!"
Astarion waved his hand. "I told you, spirit of—whatever. The lessons have been learned already. She learned how to communicate, I learned how to trust, we both offered sincere apologies and had some very excellent—had a lovely night together. The orthon Yurgir was slain with tremendous prejudice and sent back to devilish Hells from whence it came. What more do you want of me?"
"No more, no more," Thaniel cried, and waved away the image of Tav like sweeping cobwebs from the eaves with a broom. Astarion watched her go longingly, but Oliver skipped merrily through her ghost and shredded away the last of her form, and when that was through he skipped right into Thaniel until they were a single, whole little boy once more. "I'm going back to the forest," he declared, with a weariness that might have made Astarion feel a trifle guilty were he not so elsewise occupied. "Good luck with your soul. I pray you treat the spirit of Midwinter Present more kindly than you've treated us. Me."
"I haven't tried to stab you even once!" Astarion said indignantly, but a terrific light smeared over his eyes before he could finish the sentence, and when it vanished, Thaniel was gone.
—
Astarion found that he stood upon a blank expanse of rock. It stretched as far as he could see—which was not very far in this strange place—before dwindling away into shadow. Above him, though, stretched the most beautiful expanse of starry sky he had ever seen. It was more glorious than a thousand strands of tinsel, more bright and lovely than any glittering wreath, and in the middle of the sky the moon shone like an enormous silver mirror.
"Ho!" cried a voice behind him, and Astarion turned to find Dame Aylin in full plated armor, her sword-tip planted in the stone before her, her hands resting upon its hilt. "I bid you good evening, stranger, peculiar as it may have been and may yet be."
"Stranger? I was right there when we freed you from Ketheric's chains. We fought the avatar of Myrkul together. You quite literally kicked me off his little platform at one point—which, I might add, I certainly hold no grudge over after so long, even if it really, really hurt."
"And I?" Dame Aylin continued as if he hadn't spoken. "I, on this sacred Midwinter's Eve? I am the spirit of Midwinter Present. I am the daughter of Selûne, O Child of Night, chargèd in Her name to bring most holy moonlight to those in direst need. Regard yourself! Come, spawn, are you not Her own mislaid? Have you not always been your strongest beneath Her gaze? Bask in Her silver glow and be redeemed."
Dame Aylin spread her arms—and wings—in full, shining glory before him. Her eyes closed in beatific radiance.
Astarion waited.
Dame Aylin glowed peacefully.
He fidgeted. He crossed his arms and uncrossed them again. He shifted his weight to his back foot, then to the front.
Nothing.
"Er—" he said at last, "I'll be going then, shall I?"
Dame Aylin opened her eyes and pinned him with a ferocious, pitying stare. "Such resistance!" she cried. "Such a hold Evil keeps upon your heart! You will be saved, creature of the dark, if I must smite your very soul to do so."
"Now, really—hang on a moment—" Astarion began, incensed, but Aylin snatched him up by the arm like an annoyed housemaid seizing a feather duster, and with a mighty beat of her wings she dragged him into the light.
Astarion rubbed his eyes—he was rapidly growing tired of all these bright, blinding flashes—and found himself staring at a glowing blue mushroom the size of a horse. "Oh, gods above, not timmask spores," he said, scrambling backwards, for he did not much feel like laughing, but the mushroom remained compliantly unmoved. A hand like iron tongs landed upon his shoulder and turned him, easily as directing a child.
They stood in the Underdark. It was not a part of it Astarion knew; spread out before them was a vast underground lake brimming with glowing blue lichen. Torchstalk blooms lined the lake in lovely, dangerous stands; up the stony walls crawled moss and sunless ferns of every gleaming color: red, green, yellow, purple. Nearby, on the bank, was a ruin of a small stone tower. It was to this tower that Dame Aylin guided him inexorably, and as they had passed through the iron gate before, so did they pass through the crumbling wooden door into the tower's main hall.
"Regard!" Dame Aylin said with bombastic grandeur. "See how your kin scorns you on this Midwinter's Eve, and let your hard heart be softened with shame!"
"I beg your pardon!"
But here came Dalyria down the ruined tower stairs, and Astarion fell silent in surprise. Leon was with her, just behind, holding a tray of something covered in silver; and from the back room at the base of the tower came Aurelia to meet them, wiping her hands clean on a cloth. They all three looked well—indeed, better fed than he had ever seen them, Astarion thought with unexpected gladness—and they came together at a small table set before a towering unlit hearth. They were still in their finery from Cazador's estate, but a rip in Leon's shoulder had been mended beautifully, and the fabric was pressed and clean.
"Well?" Leon asked, setting the tray upon the table. "How did it go?"
"Well enough," Aurelia said. "We managed to bring down a handful of duergar who were harrying the edges of the southernmost group. They fed well, especially the children. We lost three spawn to a cliff's edge when it crumbled away, but we managed to get the rest to safety. They'll be all right for a few days. And you?"
"Quite well." Dalyria began fetching a ladle and wineglasses from a crooked, half-broken cabinet. They were all mismatched, but they were real bronze, and the metal shone clean and polished in the torchlight. "We've added three more willing mortals to our little circle of donors. Leon swears by them. I suppose they were ready enough to sign the contracts of secrecy, which is all we can ask."
"Cazador's gold will cover us for centuries." Leon said with tremendous satisfaction, and he whipped the silver cloche from the platter with fantastic zeal. A basin of scarlet blood lay in its place, enormous and hot. "And will for centuries more, if we invest carefully and wisely. But for now, dear sisters, let us drink!"
They did so with polite ravenousness, the desperation of their thirst not so severe as to prohibit the use of their wineglasses like civilized vampires. They each drained two glasses; on the third Aurelia paused, her napkin held delicately to her lips, her glass raised in the air. "I wonder if we should have a toast," she said.
"A toast?"
"To the founder of the feast," she said, "such as it is. To Astarion, who killed the master and set us free."
"I'd no sooner toast to that runt than I would to the bottom of a shoe," Leon said forcefully, but Dalyria gave him a look so severe he cringed and relented. "Or, so I'd have said before he killed the master in his own house."
"Exactly so," Dalyria said, but a smile had begun to play about the corners of her mouth. "And why not? None of this would have been possible without him."
"Without that mortal woman he trots around with," Leon grumbled, but waved away the words at Aurelia's look. "To Astarion, then. For saddling us with thousands of feral spawn and bollocking off at the first chance he got. I hope he snaps every one of his silly picks in the next lock he tries."
"To Astarion," echoed the women more sincerely, and they drank to his health.
"There!" said Dame Aylin, whom Astarion had quite forgotten was standing beside him. "Are you not moved, night's spawn? Do you not care to repent for your wickedness?"
"Repent for what?" Astarion asked, now seriously perplexed. "I'm sorry, are you saying my freeing Cazador's spawn was a good thing, or a bad thing?" He glanced once more upon his siblings' feast, and though he could not have admitted it to Aylin, and barely could to his own self, he felt a faint pleasure rise at their continued survival. Perhaps he could convince Tav to spread surreptitious word of their need for mortal blood. He did not think it would be difficult to persuade her, and if it would help the spawn he had freed, it might be worth the doing.
"I see you are fearsome in your stubbornness," Aylin said with grievous pity. "We must away, then, to another place. Mayhap there you will come to see the truth."
"See what truth?" Astarion asked, but between one blink and the next, the world had flashed once more into something new.
Ah—this time it was the familiar inn, the Elfsong Tavern, deep in the heart of the Lower City. The storm still raged outside, the windows rattling here and there with righteous blasts of wind; but indoors the great room was warm and cozy, beautifully lit with chandeliers and candles, and the fire burning in the stony fireplace was bright and hot. Tav would not have easily paid the coin for another night in such a fine establishment, but she would have less easily forced their party out into the wintry inhospitality, and Astarion was not surprised she had committed them for another evening. The girl Yenna was ladling soup out into bowls spread before the hearth; the tatty ginger cat she kept with her stepped carefully between each one, peering in its surface for crumbs or flaws, before moving with soldierly determination to the next.
He surveyed the room and found each of their party one by one. Minsc sat with Jaheira and Halsin on a low step before the fire, telling some ridiculous story with small words and enormous gestures, the rat he kept near him scurrying around their feet. Lae'zel had taken a seat across a table from Wyll, a handful of playing cards held close to her chest and a fierce expression in her eyes. Wyll, in his turn, was openly concerned as he surveyed his own hand—no face for cards, that one—and Karlach looked on from the side, laughing uproariously. Shadowheart was sitting at a window, staring out thoughtfully into the storm, teacup held to her lips. Gale had found himself an armchair near the fire—from where, Astarion had no idea—and had tucked himself in it with a great tome and a glass of something golden at his elbow. Even as Astarion watched, the ginger cat leapt up to the overstuffed arm of the chair, deftly dodged Gale's idle, petting hand, and curled into an unblinking loaf.
It was all disgustingly convivial. Astarion felt his lip curl, appalled at both the sentimentality and his own shocking, nascent desire to join it. Two hundred years of torture lay behind him, twisting all he was into perversion and petty cruelty—and yet, how easily he could imagine slipping into the room to join them all, teasing a card or two into Wyll's sleeve as he passed, surprising Gale so that he lost his place on the page, searching out a glass of very expensive wine along with—
Tav, who came into the room, stamping her booted feet, with a frown creasing her face and a snowy cloak thrown over her shoulders. Karlach came to meet her, helped her shrug off the icy glaze, and wrapped both arms about Tav to thaw away the chill. "Thanks," Tav said, and shuddered. "No luck, I'm afraid. I can't find him anywhere."
"He'll turn up," Karlach said bracingly. "Don't worry, soldier. He's a tough fellow, and he knows this city better than all of us put together. He'll be just fine, and then you can kill him for making us all worry like this."
Tav laughed, a sweet and generous sound, and dropped her head against Karlach's shoulder. "I've only just got hold of him. If I lose him now, it might tear the heart right out of me. Sorry. Bad choice of words."
"Go on, stop this nonsense." Karlach took her to the fireplace and purloined Gale's golden mead, ignoring his voluble complaints. "Drink up. Catch hold of yourself right now, before you fret yourself silly. Astarion is fine, and you know it."
"I am," Astarion said, his heart aching despite its dubious function otherwise, and he went to stand behind Tav at the fire. He laid his hands upon her shoulders and they passed through her like smoke. "I'm right here, darling. Or at least, I will be. I'm not going anywhere. As soon as these preposterous ghosts let go of me."
"Yes," Tav said wanly, but she shook her head as she threw back the stolen mead, and in short order her cheeks had brightened considerably. "All right, all right. Fine. I'll stop this worrying—for now. Yenna, how's the soup? Is it ready? The kitchens have prepared a glorious goose for us—I saw it as I passed by. I'll have them bring it up straightaway."
A chorus of cheers greeted this pronouncement, all merry and ready for the feast, and they gathered before the fire in a riot of color and cheer. Only Astarion saw how Tav kept herself at a slight remove, just long enough for Wyll to come alongside her and say in a voice not nearly as low as he intended, "He'll be all right, my friend. We'll save him a plate, all right?"
"For what purpose?" Astarion said scornfully, but he was secretly pleased to have been so considered. Tav, regardless, covered Wyll's hand on her arm with his own, then went with him to the kitchens to fetch the goose. In their wake, the topic of Astarion's absence rose quickly. Lae'zel wished to go out and hunt for him immediately; Halsin and Gale, more temperate minds, recommended patience until the storm broke. Karlach offered to melt the snow away from whichever path they took, but as Jaheira pointed out, such measures would do little against the raging winds and black skies. Agreed, then; they would wait until first light, and then all would go out in search of their missing friend together.
Dame Aylin, who had been unduly silent throughout most of this, came forward now with a look of consternation on her face. "Peculiar!" she cried, and rested her hands again upon her sword before her. "How loved you are already, Child of Night. How adored!"
"Well, naturally," he said, with great offhandedness, though he felt very warm. "You expected otherwise?"
"Indeed! Many hundreds of Midwinters have I seen over the centuries—barring those of my imprisonment by that wretched dog, Ketheric Thorm—and many more will I see yet. I return for each with glorious inevitability, just as the day does each year. So has my mother, the goddess Selûne, charged me. And yet—traditionally—my charges are—" The great Dame Aylin could never be lost for words, but there was a lengthy pause before she finished, "—more melancholy when so confronted by their friendless state."
"Perhaps," Astarion began, but even he could not be so bold as to suggest to Dame Aylin the goddess Selûne had made some grievous error. "Regardless. As I told Thaniel, I am satisfactorily redeemed already. If you'd see fit to restore me to my body—which, I may remind you, has only been truly mine for a number of months—I have my own darling to adore for a few hours. Preferably more."
Dame Aylin gave a short laugh like a teakettle piping, and then a broad, warm smile spread across her face, which had the appearance of clay shards mended together with gold. "Yes!" she cried. "I pronounce you redeemed! Moonmaiden, I declare this soul unburdened by darkness and doubt. Let him return to the true world and be loved."
"Thank you," Astarion said fervently, but Dame Aylin did not respond. In fact, she had grown still—very still—still as the grave, her hand frozen in the middle of the air outstretched. Every part of the room had gone equally unmoving, the door caught mid-rebound as Tav and Wyll re-entered with a platterful of golden goose, a handful of nuts hanging fixed in the air where Minsc had tossed them.
A mist surged along the ground, grey and cool and rolling as ferociously towards him as a tide. All the lights in the room faded and went out. A robed figure rose, solemn and still within the mist, and it lifted a skeletal, pointing hand towards him.
"No," said Withers, with a voice as dry and dusty as bones, and the world went black.
—
The air had become nothing but descending ash and soot, and Astarion coughed prodigiously as it swirled and tossed around him. At last, the grist settled to the floor, and Astarion looked up to discover he stood in a fine, well-appointed antechamber draped in black bunting, and Withers stood beside him in solemn state. A number of guests in black crinoline and grey suits filed through the far doors without paying any mind to Astarion in his dressing-gown.
"Gods damn you," Astarion said, and he coughed once more. "What are you doing in all this, you creaking skeleton? She was going to send me back. She—Tav was worried, and you—you derelict worm, you've dragged me off again."
"Yes," Withers said coldly, and he gestured to the doors.
"No," Astarion said, and he crossed his arms firmly over his chest. "I shall be going home straightaway, and you'll be taking me there."
Withers looked at him, his eyes bright as glass beads in his dry, wrinkled face. He tilted his head, and all at once he and Astarion had been transported into the enormous hall on the other side of the fine doors. Guests still trundled in with mournful state; atop the dais at the far end had been laid a golden bier, draped in cloth-of-gold and ocean blue. A priestess of Lliira stood in powerful dignity before the bier, her golden robes embroidered with the three stars of her goddess.
"Well?" Astarion asked impatiently. "Who's died? Shall I pretend to care, for your sake? If I shed a few dainty tears, will that be enough to let me go?"
No answer, save a lifted, pointed finger.
"Fine, you blasted creature," Astarion said, and he went with great fury to the front of the chapel—for chapel it was, light streaming in crimson and azure rays through tall, stained window-glass, the wooden pews tumbling through kaleidoscopic chaos as clouds passed over the sun and faded away once more. Then realization struck him like a poker across his brain, and he stumbled to a halt near the front of the aisle.
He knew those heads in the row of chief mourners, even greying and aged as they were. There was Gale, his hair shot through with silver and his robes much finer than Astarion remembered; and Wyll, now bald as his father, his face lined with wrinkles as he looked beside him. And Karlach, too, her other horn now broken—but alive, her hand over her heart where something cool glowed in place of the clanking mechanism she'd had before. Halsin, Jaheira. Lae'zel, tall and severe with one eye scarred shut. His friends, here. He searched for his own face and could not find it.
Surely not. Surely he had not managed to die, immortal creature that he was; surely he had not managed to succumb to whatever abject stupidity Withers seemed to be implying. Two centuries under Cazador's booted heel, and only a handful of decades of freedom afterwards—impossible. Unbelievable. Not in the realms of the greatest fantasy he could imagine. Astarion scoffed and threw up his hands.
"I thank you all for coming," the priestess said, and the rustling crowd grew quiet. "We've gathered here to honor a dear friend, a beloved savior of the city."
Astarion sneered. Kind words, thoughtless, perfunctory. He deserved better, frankly, than some gormless impersonal funeral with a priestess from a god he barely knew. Where was the debauchery, the silks and satins, the sultry laughter in dark corners? Where was the revelry?
"How pathetic," he said out loud, and strode up to sit upon the bier atop the stage. He crossed one leg over the other and surveyed the audience. At least it was well attended, he thought, mourners crammed into every nook and cranny of the chapel, more peering through the windows. Many pressed handkerchiefs to their cheeks. Odd, if flattering. He could be gratified his absence would be so strongly felt; he could only hope it had been a spectacular death.
"I know for many of you, your grief may feel immense, immeasurable. It is impossible to trace out the lives touched, the paths altered; it is unimaginable that we will never see that goodwill done again. Lliira calls us yet to joy." The priestess smiled as Astarion rolled his eyes. "But the example has been set for us. We can take the model of generosity which she laid out for us, and pass it on to the next, as she would have wished for us to do."
A great horror came upon Astarion, as if all the stone in the world had come crashing down atop his heart. With leaden limbs he rose from the bier, but before he could turn and read the engraving upon its lid, Withers stood from the back of the chapel and pointed at him once more.
"What is this?" Astarion asked, his voice loud and echoing with fear. The chapel had gone grey and misty, the priestess's golden stars transformed black as night. Her mouth had fallen still mid-word. "What have you done? What have you done?"
"Thou shalt come now with me," Withers said, like sand running through a clenched fist, and the world dropped away from him like leaves from a winter tree. Astarion wrenched his face away with a grimace of fear.
And then, abruptly—grass. High brick walls, a open night sky, and a cobbled path—and headstones, protruding from the earth like a beggar's jagged teeth. A familiar graveyard, even if he'd only visited it once, and very recently at that. A cold wind rose, sudden and sharp enough to blister skin and fleck paint from wood. The mist simmered and seeped at his feet, thick enough to disguise the ground and leave oily trails in his wake where he stepped.
"Withers," he said in a trembling voice, for this was not only Withers, but Midwinter Yet to Come, and for the first time all evening he felt a prickle of real and frightening danger. Terror crept up his spine and seized his heart. "What have you done?"
Withers's face turned grimly to a grave a few rows away. The grave-dirt had been freshly turned, the headstone laid with new, crisp carvings. Only the other day he had knelt here, right here, only one place over, had pulled the ivy from the rock and chiseled fresh life into his old grave-marker. And now, just beside his headstone, beside the grave where his coffin had laid for centuries, in what had been an empty, unclaimed place—
Astarion fell numbly to his knees. A light dusting of snow had fallen in the last hour or so; he swept it away with his hand, already knowing what had been etched beneath it, and he found there the name he most feared to see, Tavish Gale.
"What is this?" he said again, staring, though the words were flat and frozen. "Why have you brought me here? To remind me she is mortal, and I am not? To proclaim that someday she will end, and I will fail to mourn her death? No, no," he said, and laughed bitterly as he stood and reached for the knife at his waist. But, no, he was in his dressing-gown; his blades had been left behind in bed, where Tav yet lay, sleeping soundly. It came as cold comfort. "Whatever you foreshadow here, spirit, it can be changed. I'm proof enough that even the most inevitable powers can be toppled. You didn't bring me here to show me something fixed in stone."
"No," said Withers, and he pointed again to Tav's grave. Astarion realized suddenly that there was movement beyond it, and with stumbling haste he flung himself beyond the marker to discover a man sat there with his knees bent haphazardly, his head reclined back against the marker, his eyes shut.
Astarion had come face to face with himself. There was still no mark of age upon the pale face, no blemish to the brow or cheek, but his beauty had grown remote and cold, unfeeling as the stone behind him, and it frightened Astarion to look upon it. He could not tell how long this Astarion had sat there; snow lay upon his shoulders and his feet, and he was struck with the terrible thought that this creature might never rise again.
"What, then?" Astarion said, hands clenched like steel at his sides. "She dies, and I live? This is your great generosity, spirit of whatever-you-are? Reminding me that no matter what happens, no matter what I've suffered, I will end up yet alone?"
"No," said Withers again, and he fixed his eyes like gold pebbles severely upon Astarion. "I am but a humble scribe, as is known to thee and to thy companions. A list is mine to keep, long and ever-lengthening: a record of names. Thy name, Astarion Ancunín, has been recorded upon this list many years past. And yet here thou stands, walking and speaking amongst the living."
The fear rose within his breast once more, and with it came an unfamiliar, faint awe. Something in Withers's mien had grown stern with power, a divine Providence which pressed with inchoate strength upon all around him. It held Astarion now within its might, as if he had been taken up rose-like into a dispassionate fist; one thoughtless strike, and all he was would be ended. But to ascribe intent to such a blow would be to overestimate his importance; he was nothing to this power, would never be anything at all, and yet it held him apart, examining him alone in the light.
"Well!" Astarion said, throwing back his head in defiance. "How observant you are, for someone who does nothing but point portentously at things."
"Yes," said Withers, unoffended. "Thou art an offense to the balance of the world, Astarion Ancunín, for as long as thou livest this life of stolen immortality. I will not strike thee down. Indeed, I could not even if I wished, for I am bound by laws greater even than those of your world."
Astarion gestured broadly. "So all this, then, was to tell me with a number of elaborate divine visions that you'd very much like for me to die?"
"Yes."
"Oh," Astarion said, somewhat taken aback.
Withers's face changed. It was not a face meant for expressions of pleasure and delight, but Astarion thought it was a fair attempt at a smile. "I am owed a death, Astarion Ancunín. Thy death. It need not come swiftly, nor soon, but it must needs come eventually, and I will claim it from thee when the time is right. But I will deal fairly with thee, as I deal fairly with all mortals, and I will present to thee a bargain worth its price."
"A bargain?" Astarion laughed coldly. "After all I've done to tear my life back out of everyone's hands clutching onto it? After everyone I've killed for trying to take it from me—after every scrap of fighting to deal with this wretched tadpole, what could you possibly give me that you think I'd want?" His voice broke once, against his will.
A bony hand lifted, pointing to Tav's grave. The voice was kind.
"Time."
A series of visions came to him all at once, tumbling before his eyes like pinwheels. Midwinters came and went, some phantom book laid out before him, the pages turning so rapidly he could catch little more than glimpses here and there. One he perceived more strongly than the rest; there he sat next to Tav on some windowsill, both of them peering out at an evening snowfall. Her face was a little more lined, a few strands of white threading her hair, and upon his own face he saw with surprise similar signs of age, the creases around his mouth a little deeper, the marks at the corners of his eyes a touch more pronounced. Another Midwinter rose to the forefront, and though he glanced at no calendar and could count no hours, he could sense as dreamers sense that a great many decades had passed. They sat at the same windowsill in this vision, regarding a similar fall of snow; and yet age still sat upon them both lightly, not as if time had stopped for them, but as if it had slowed.
Another future fell upon him, a Midwinter so far away that he could not begin to guess when it would come. He had aged mightily in this vision, his face lined to every corner but, he was pleased to note, as handsome as ever; and beside him on a low sofa sat Tav, her head leaned against his chest, her snow-white hair tumbling gloriously over her shoulder. For an instant she looked up to meet his eyes, and he realized with a tremulous wonder that she saw him, as none of the other spirits had yet seen him tonight, and she smiled. The long-engraved lines framing her mouth grew deep; her eyes crinkled with joy; and she was beautiful not in spite of the time which had passed for her but because of it.
Astarion, struck suddenly dumb, could only stare. How much time? he desperately wished to ask, but the words would not come, as if his tongue had stuck to his teeth. A hundred years? A thousand? How much time?
The answer came regardless, clear as daylight. Enough.
His ears roared like a river, throttling all sound but the wispy rattle of Withers's voice. His aged face seemed to grow large, that smile still faint and very gentle. His eyes pierced Astarion with an ancient clarity.
"I will ask thee the same as I have asked your companion," he said at last. "What is the worth of a single mortal life?"
Astarion's voice, when he found it, trembled. "A rather weighty question for a simple scribe, I think." He pressed a hand to his cold, dead heart, as if he might coax it to beat by will alone. "You already know my answer."
Withers inclined his head, and in the quiet of the graveyard he lifted his hand once more. Not a pointing finger this time, no ponderous accusation; instead he opened his wrinkled palm to Astarion as if in offering, as if in peace. "Come, Astarion Ancunín. I will redeem thy soul."
"Yes," Astarion said, quite shaken, and he laid his hand upon the spirit's hand. The fingers closed around his own, a deep strength in the grip belied by their fragile appearance. A great wind swept up around them, closing out the graveyard and Tav's headstone and the all-but-dead figure crouched beyond, and Astarion clenched his eyes shut. The wind roared as if all the world would end with it, then went suddenly silent, and Astarion fell to the ground, senseless.
—
"Astarion?" A hand on his hand, tugging fruitlessly. "Astarion, wake up. Dear heart, you're crushing me—"
Astarion snapped suddenly into full wakefulness, shuddering. At first he could not make sense of what he saw; then he realized he was in the feather-bed at the Elfsong Tavern, that the bedposts were as they should be, that the heavy quilts were as they should be, that Tav was in his arms, alive and well and squirming eel-like to escape his grasp.
"Darling," he gasped, and buried his face in her hair.
Tav, who seemed to sense Astarion was quite overcome, only held him tightly to her, running soothing hands up and down his back, murmuring comforting nonsense in his ear.
"A dream," he said when she asked, "only a dream," and though neither of them believed it, she did not press him for more. "Darling, what day is it?"
"Midwinter's Day, I should think," she told him doubtfully, and when he still shook she made him sit up and hold her hand and take a pint of blood until she was satisfied with his color again. "Are you quite all right?"
"Yes," he said, much stronger now, and he stood and drew her up with him. They'd done it all in one night—of course they had. Of course. "Listen, my dear. You must know I love you."
"Yes," she said, red rising to her cheeks, though she held his hands fiercely. "I love you, Astarion."
"Then come with me today. Forget the Absolute. Forget the damned army, and Gortash, and whatever new way the city's dreamed up to destroy itself overnight. Let's spend a little time together, just the two of us."
"Astarion," she said, shocked, but he could see she was entranced by the idea. "How could we? I mean—that is to say—could we?"
"Yes. Let Lae'zel take Wyll and Gale and Minsc down into the Undercity, like they wanted. They won't go far—it's the shortest day of the year." He drew her into his arms, held her tightly enough he could sense her heart beating like a hammer in her chest, and rested his chin upon her head. "Let's go to the Devil's Fee and steal everything she has. And Sorcerous Sundries—I saw how you looked at sad little Rolan's face the other day—and Dammon, and every scrap of gold and silver on the docks behind the Counting House. Let's take it all."
"Not Dammon—I promised Karlach." She leaned back and touched his face with careful fingers. "Astarion, are you quite all right?"
"Yes," he said, sure now that he was, or would be, and he kissed her lightly on the mouth. "Yes, I am, with you. Come on, let's go, before anyone catches us."
She laughed, but her eyes were bright with gladness, and in very short order they had dressed and armed themselves for the day. Tav insisted on putting on the kettle for the rest before they left, and Lae'zel, who was the only other early riser besides Tav, heard their plans with faint disapproval, but she only shook her head and brushed them away rather than dissuade them.
Astarion let Tav precede him at the door to the hall. A thought had struck him, and he looked back to see Withers watching him from the far side of their rented room. The ancient fellow stood near the window, and a clear, cold morning light fell upon his face, streaking like white fire through the gold bound across his forehead. He held Astarion's eyes for a long, searching moment, and then Withers smiled, and he inclined his head, and the moment passed.
Astarion nodded in return, a new, fragile delight spreading warmly through him. He turned to where Tav was waiting for him in the hall, her brow lifted and her hand outstretched. He took her hand and went with her downstairs, where no one had yet risen, not even the cook, and when the door to the world opened they went gladly together into the brisk, cold air, and their boots were the first to break the morning's new-fallen snow.
—
end.