The two woke disoriented, but unhurt, though Adahni had to go vomit in the bushes for a bit, Yuri being kind enough to follow her and hold her head over the ground and her hair out of the vomit. The vertigo that she had not felt in the dream came back full force as she remembered hurtling into an infinite sea of blue on the back of a creature dreamed up by Gann. When she returned, a clean, glistening Davy approached her and dropped the shimmering corpse of a telthor rabbit and her feet. She gratefully picked it up and, allowing the presence within her to overtake her, blacked out for a moment as the curse took what it needed from the spirit. This time it was a little harder to force her way back into her body, but she was thankful that the ouster had not sent her back to the Wall of the Faithless.
"Well?" Safiya asked, as she returned to the group, seated by the wells as they had been beforehand.
"She's out of it," Adahni said.
"What did you do, anyway?" the wizard asked.
"I talked to her," Adahni said.
"That's it?" Safiya said, furrowing her brow.
"It wasn't an ordinary madness. She'd fixated inward. She wanted a way out but forgot how," Addie replied, "I would imagine she's got a touch of night hag blood herself. She's got extraordinary powers of the mind, but absolutely no idea what to do with them."
"How strange," said Safiya, annoyed, but handed her a vial of something minty, "Don't you you should check on her?"
"I don't know that setting her eyes on Gann again is the best idea," Adahni said, "If that's all it took for her to withdraw into…"
"Seconded!" Gann added, "Wouldn't want to cause a second bout of madness. No, not at all."
"Very well. Now, we've gone as far as the Wells, me following you the whole way, never yet understanding exactly what went on within the Slumbering Coven," Safi reminded them, "All you told us was that we needed to somehow get back to my Academy, you never told me why. Or what part the Red Wizards are playing."
"Oh!" Adahni exclaimed. She thought back on her ordeal in the city beneath the lake, and remembered the the wizard and the bear had not accompanied them there. The nonverbal conversations she'd been sharing with Gann had become so easy, so natural, she forgot she didn't have the same sort of line between herself and the rest of her companions, "Well… there were two red wizards. One I believe was Lienna, and the other… your mother. Nefris."
Safiya nodded without emotion.
"They sought knowledge of the spirit eater's curse from the Coven. And they gained it. The curse was a punishment meted out by Myrkul. I can only imagine whatever they uncovered must be somewhere in the academy."
"A dead God," Safiya mused, "Sounds like the sort of thing my mother would tangle with. She was never one for avoiding issues of the metaphysical. I used to think she was a big of a megalomaniac, always wanting to tinker with the essence of the world, but now I can sort of see the appeal."
"That doesn't make me at all nervous," Adahni replied, arching one eyebrow.
"Better I be by your side then, eh?" the wizard said, slyly.
They arrived back in Mulsantir as the sun went down. After such an arduous journey, Adahni bid her companions take the day and night to rest before starting for Thay at midnight on the next day. While the innkeeper of the Sloop was not terribly thrilled to have not one, but two hagspawn staying at his inn, he relented when he saw how much longer his female customers stayed in the tap room - and how much more they drank while they were there - while either was there, acting as charming as they could.
Restless and in no mood to drink, Adahni found herself wandering the dark streets of Mulsantir, replying her time at the Wall of the Faithless again and again, not particularly paying attention to where she was going. When her feet brought her to the doors of the temple of Kelemvor for the third time, she figured they were trying to tell her something. Finding the door locked, and the windows too high for her to scramble through, she retreated back to the stables, and gripping the shadowstone in her pocket, walked through to Shadow Mulsantir. She retraced her steps in the colorless mirror of the town to the Temple of Myrkul.
There, where she had first seen her, stood Kaelyn the Dove, staring at the mural on the wall as though waiting for the meaning to appear before her.
"How long have you been here?" asked Addie.
"I have always been here," Kaelyn replied, her voice hollow. She turned and fixed her black eyes on Addie. Something in her face made Adahni's skin crawl.
"Seriously, Kaelyn," she said, backing up, "I thought…"
"You've seen it yourself, haven't you," Kaelyn said. She took Adahni by the hand and led her to a bench to the side of the main sanctuary. Adahni tried to forget that the whole thing was made bone and concentrate on the celestial's question.
"I've seen what?"
"The Wall of the Faithless," she replied, "I can see the knowledge in your eyes."
Adahni nodded.
"So you see?" Kaelyn exclaimed. There was a manic undertone to her voice, "You see how cruel it is?"
"When's the last time you slept?" Adahni asked.
"No matter," she said, "Tell me, tell me what you saw."
"I saw myself," she said, "I am in two places at once. I don't know how."
"You are not one but two," Kaelyn said, echoing the words of Dalenka. Of Gul'kaush too, Adahni realized. But that's not what they had said. They had said she was three. Not two. One sat in the Temple of Myrkul. One lay imprisoned in the Wall of the Faithless. And the third?
"He was there too," she said, "But he could still speak. He said he was not dead. Like I am not dead. But he had utterly left his body… I don't know what it means. He said the red woman and the white woman had taken him and put him there. And that the souls in the walls knew that a chance was coming, a second crusade." Kaelyn began nodding, slowly first, and then vigorously. With the last word - 'crusade' - she began to guffaw shrilly.
"Wonderful!"
"Not wonderful," Adahni sighed, "It means that this stupid shit lays squarely on my shoulders just like the last stupid shit."
"Oh admit it," Kaelyn said, in a tone more intimate than she customarily used with Adahni, "Part of you relishes it. Growing up, you sang all the songs, recited all the epics, and yes, you pretended you preferred to just read the books and learn the stories, but secretly, you just love being the hero."
"No!" she protested, though Kaelyn was, of course, right.
"You can't lie to me," Kaelyn said, "At least about that. I'm so glad you've agreed though. About the Second Crusade." The celestial scooched up on the bench and threw her arms - and then her wings - around the baffled aasimar.
"What aren't you telling me?" Adahni asked, her voice muffled by feathers.
Kaelyn was silent for a long moment before Adahni heard her snore and realized that the cleric had fallen fast asleep, her face against Adahni's shoulder. The bard sighed. Like her namesake, the Dove was smallboned and light, despite her great height. Barely shifting her, Adahni picked her up like she would a sleeping baby, carried her up and out of Myrkul's temple, out into regular Mulsantir, and to the Sloop, where she put her into a bunk and tucked her in. She woke up a moment before drifting off again, looked at Addie with her black eyes, and said, "Remember. The Second Crusade."