Adahni's fatigue had lessened somewhat, and she was able to enjoy being on the water again as the witch-boat skimmed over the waters of the river and lake. Her companions were pleased, because her being awake meant that they could wheedle songs and stories out of her to pass the time. She found herself rather enjoying herself, singing something besides songs to pull on ropes to. She realized she had grown rather fond of Safiya, the two of them had a similar attitude, though Safiya had not been hardened by life quite as much as Addie had at her age. Still, what had occurred while the curse had taken over her body troubled her. On the day before they expected to pull into port in Mulsantir, she cornered Kaelyn in the bow, where she was stretching her wings.
"How can I help you?" she asked, seeing Adahni approach. The two of them hadn't really conversed with each other that often, and never about anything serious.
"Something happened to me, when I had that episode, back in Ashenwood," she said.
"When you went around gorging on spirits?" asked Kaelyn, "I confess I have always wondered how it feels to you, but I felt it would be impolite to ask."
"The first time, I blacked out. I don't know what happened. The second time, it was as though I were floating above the fight, outside the walls of Mulsantir. This time... at first I was floating above it, but then, it was as though I was waking from a dream, and I saw a place I've never been." She thought for a moment, trying to recall with detail what she had seen, but as she saw it in her mind's eye, she realized that it really wasn't all that remarkable, "It was a landscape, a flat rolling plane. I was looking out over it, over this vast and empty place... but that wasn't what was so strange about it. It was that I was trapped, my body was lodged in place and I could not move for the people around me. And I felt despair and heartbreak, and nothing I could do would ease my pain... and then I was back here."
Kaelyn's face grew troubled, her black eyes searching Adahni's expression. "It sounds as though you are describing the Wall of the Faithless."
"What would I be doing there?" she asked, "I'm not religious by any stretch of the word but I hardly qualify as faithless."
"That's a good question," Kaelyn said, "Another question is what your soul would be doing there when your body is still alive and walking the face of the world. My guess is, more likely, while the curse drove you from your body, you experienced a vision of sorts, a glimpse into the Fugue Plane."
"Strange indeed," Adahni said, "I thought the Wall was one of Myrkul's devices. Didn't Kelemvor get rid of it along with the other creepy shit?"
"Kelemvor has seen fit to retain it," Kaelyn said, her voice tight.
"You disagree with this decision," Adahni observed.
"Who am I to disagree with a God?" Kaelyn asked, a chord of bitterness struck through the still air of the lake, "I suppose I can understand. All of the chaos of Cyric's reign over the dead had left us all a little insecure."
"You're the first person I've heard acknowledge Cyric. Why does everyone always forget that part, conveniently?" asked Adahni, "That Cyric came between Myrkul and Kelemvor?"
"It was a time of a great upheaval on the Fugue Plane," Kaelyn replied, "We don't much like to talk about the reign of the Mad God. Souls, good and evil, chaotic and lawful, running through the planes willy nilly with no rhyme or reason or rules to keep anything in place. Perhaps that's why Kelemvor kept the wall."
"Because of Cyric? Isn't Cyric the perfect example of a path that is worse than faithlessness?" Adahni asked.
"Gods see us differently than we see ourselves," Kaelyn said, "I suppose when you become one, it changes you."
"You say we as though you and I are cut from the same cloth," Adahni said.
"We are," Kaelyn said, "I thought about it long, after you and I spoke on the rim of Immil Vale. You may deny your heritage, but that does not make it any less true. You may have been raised human, but that does not make you entirely human."
"I am at least three quarters human," said Adahni, "According to your siblings. Farishta is my father's name."
"Farishta!" exclaimed Kaelyn, chuckling, the bitterness at her talk of the Wall of the Faithless dissipating like thin ice in a rushing stream, "That explains a lot."
"What, you know him?"
"Yes," Kaelyn said, "Farishta, the trickster angel."
"He seemed quite somber when I met him," Adahni said, "Your brother and sister said they didn't know him."
"He's a strange creature, is Farishta. His own father was human, Amnese, I think. He was raised among humans. I think he finds the angels entirely too stuffy, so he's always trying to put one over on us. Fathering you was another act of rebellion, I would imagine."
Adahni thought of the very strange hours she had spent in her father's house. Nothing about him had seemed anything but serious, "He said that he fathered me because he was supposed to. Because the King of Shadows and all that nonsense. He said he saw my mother dying on the edge of a battlefield, and he knew that he must save her, and send her back home with me in her womb. He didn't seem mischievous at all to me."
"Well, he never was good at moving among the planes," Kaelyn said, "For whatever reason, it affects him, in the head. It may be that his nature changes when he goes from one plane to another. When he is on the Fugue Plane, he's all practical jokes. Kelemvor is not very fond of him, for obvious reasons"
"The more I learn about the man, the less I understand about anything," Adahni sighed, "And Kelemvor sounds like a real downer. I can see why you did not want to follow him. Why you chose Ilmater I suppose I will never understand."
"Do you not know the feeling of guilt?" Kaelyn asked.
"Of course I know what guilt feels like," Adahni said, "But it seems pretty unhealthy to let it weigh on you so."
"And what do you feel guilty about?" asked Kaelyn.
"Why would I tell you about it?" asked Adahni.
"Because that's what I do now. I no longer guide the dead to the City of Judgment, nor to the Wall of the Faithless. I am a Painbearer. I bear pain."
"What don't I feel guilty about is a better question," Adahni chuckled.
"Why did you laugh, just then?" asked Kaelyn.
"If you don't laugh, you cry," Adahni said, "And anyway, isn't it funny? Just a little bit? How seriously we take our feelings, when in the end, perhaps the pain we have caused wasn't really all that big of deal?"
"For someone who trades in emotion, you don't seem to take them very seriously," Kaelyn said.
"Well, considering how easily they can be manipulated, I've learned not to trust them implicitly," Adahni said.
"What about love?" Kaelyn asked.
Adahni chuckled again, "Love is a little hard to manipulate, you don't think?"
"Is it?" Kaelyn asked.
"If I could make a man fall in love with me, I would have done it long ago. No, I could always charm a man into wanting me for the night, or for an hour, for however many silver he would give me. But no, you cannot manipulate love. Love is entirely its own entity. It has a mind of its own, it doesn't care a whit for your plans, or what you would have happen," she said.
"I suppose it's rather comforting that you're not entirely cynical, given what you've been through," Kaelyn said, "Do you still feel that it might be better to lay down and die?"
Adahni felt her shoulder's slump, "I wonder... I wonder that when Bishop snatched me from the jaws of death two years ago, if he cheated death somehow. I think sometimes that that was my time, in the bowels of the Mere of Dead men, with my companions dead around me. It is such a different world I live in now, like night and day. These last two years have been stolen. I did not deserve them. They were not mine to have been living."
"And you think the curse is..."
"Death taking me back," Adahni said.
Kaelyn said, "I admit, considering my former line of work I am not terribly familiar with the nature of death, as a philosophical matter. If anything, I feel like you mortals have a better handle on it than we do."
"There's a song they would sing, whenever a plague struck us, back in Neverwinter Territories," Adahni said, "About how you cannot bargain with death. Death will have his way, for everyone, and none may escape it, not even kings and princes."
"Or gods," Kaelyn said, "Even a god may die. Would you sing that song for me? I've always been fascinated with how you deal with death. Considering how many funerals I've been to, stood beside the spirit of the dead before I took him from this place... I've seen a million deaths in a million families and not once have I truly understood."
Adahni thumped a rhythm on the wood of the deck and sang the song.
As I walked out one day, one day
I met an aged man by the way.
His head was bald, his beard was grey,
His clothing made of the cold earthen clay,
His clothing made of the cold earthen clay.
I said, "Old man, what man are you?
What country do you belong unto?"
"My name is Death—have you not heard of me?
All kings and princes bow down unto me
And you fair maid must come along with me."
"I'll give you gold, I'll give you pearl,
I'll give you costly rich robes to wear,
If you will spare me a little while
And give me time my life to amend,
And give me time my life to amend"
"I'll have no gold, I'll have no pearl,
I want no costly rich robes to wear.
I cannot spare you a little while
Nor give you time your life to amend,
Nor give you time your life to amend"
In six months time this fair maid died;
"Let this be put on my tombstone," she cried,
"Here lies a poor distressed maid.
Just in her bloom she was snatched away,
Her clothing made of the cold earthen clay."
As she let the last note die out over the water, the sun slipped beneath the waves and the world grew dark. She could see, off in the distance, the twinkling lights of Mulsantir. She wondered if she had it in her to keep going, if she could continue to steal time from Death.