9 Mirtul, evening, Adratha’s cottage, swamp near Trademeet
…Cernd also has a son…
There were trolls.
There were trolls, and giant trolls, and spectral trolls; and ettercaps, and spiders.
To put the afternoon in a word, it was busy; not exactly eventful, but busy.
Perhaps its only interesting feature was the changing expression on Cernd’s face as he watched troll after troll and spider after spider fall to Sarevok’s blade and Imoen’s magic. By the end of the day, by the time they reached Adratha’s hut, the druid started to comment quietly that trolls were also a necessary part of the ecosystem, and that the depletion of their population on the swamps would—
At which point Sarevok interrupted calmly, saying that if the troll population of the swamps did not want to become entirely extinct, it had better stay put that particular day; for, as Cernd might recall, Mother Nature suffered no fools; and nor did he. Which rather did away with the discussion at issue.
There was the feeling that the day and the swamp would not end, ever; that this patchwork of hummocks and hollows, of land and water, would go on forever and ever; that forever and ever would they go, with Cernd in front, setting the path; Sarevok right behind him; and Imoen in the back, watching the trees and the reeds and the birds and the insects, and trying to remember if she had ever seen anything exactly like this before. And the only shade on this travel—apart from the sweat, and the hunger, and the fatigue, and the mosquitoes, and Sarevok—was this: that both siblings were novice wizards only, and that Cernd would summon only ever so many flame blades.
Which was why, when finally the sun lay low and the shadows lay long, and they came out of a patch of trees and saw a stream of running water under a stone bridge in front of a rather large, wooden cottage which had a garden with herbs and vegetables and flowers in front of it; and what looked, for all things in the world, like a cow-shed, and which in the end turned to be a goat-shed, next to it; and even, most impossibly, smoke rising merrily from its chimney into the sky above it—everyone was relieved.
Even though Imoen could not restrain herself from asking, and only half-jokingly, at that, “Are you sure she’s not some evil witch, Cernd? It almost looks too good to be true.”
Cernd smiled. “It does, doesn’t it? Adratha does work some magic, but only to prevent this place from getting overgrown by the swamp. She lives here alone, because she does not enjoy company; she works her potions and trades them with my people when we come here for the rituals. But she’s not evil. No,” he said; and, for the very first time since Imoen had met him, he laughed. The very idea was, apparently, absurd.
“You said that she’s a ranger,” Sarevok commented.
“She is,” Cernd replied. “She cares for these lands, and is, I think, somehow bound to them. Although how precisely is a matter between her, the land, Nilthiri and Gragus… Let’s go. Like a weaned cub desires its mother’s milk, I, too, am thirsty for news.”
Imoen laughed; and together, the three of them descended the last slope and crossed the stone bridge which led to Adratha’s cottage.
-----
The door was wooden and rough; and the feel was that whoever lived inside did not especially care for the city polish; and that, thus, Sarevok had done well in shedding his golden silk for Kyland Lind’s dark deer-hide garb.
Cernd knocked on the door: once, twice, thrice. “Adratha?!” he called out. “It’s Cernd.”
The door opened, and an old lady’s face appeared in it. “Cernd?” she asked. “Welcome! Come in.”
They entered, and the door closed; the inside was nice, dark and warm, with a fire buzzing in the fireplace, and a smell of sage, parsley and garlic in the air; and two young men sitting by the square wooden table in the middle of the small room. “My grandsons,” Adratha introduced them.
“Grandsons?” Cernd asked. “I didn’t know you had grandsons!”
At that, Sarevok’s eyes glimmered slightly in the darkness; and Imoen’s wandering attention, too, was caught.
“They have come here recently,” Adratha explained.
“They have?” Cernd asked. “To visit you? That’s wonderful! I have brought friends with me, too. I hope that we can stay here overnight?”
Adratha grinned widely. “Yes. Of course. You can.”
Cernd blinked. “You have such large eyes, Adratha,” he said. “I never noticed that you have such large eyes.”
Imoen frowned, squinted, and pinched herself. For a moment, something glimmered in the place where Adratha was; something much larger, and with much larger eyes.
She pulled out her dagger, as surreptitiously as she could, and cut herself on the palm, deeply, drawing blood. The pain sobered her; and now, she could see clearly what stood in Adratha’s place.
A head of a tiger; a dress of silk and muslin, completely amiss in this drab, simple cottage; and, perhaps worst of all, the palms reverted so that they were on top of hands—
Adratha was looking straight at her. “And so, the godchild sees me as I am,” she said. “No matter. Saadat! Jalaal! Come! Today, we shall feast on the flesh of gods!” And with that cry, the creature discarded the illusion in which it was shrouded, and revealed its true shape for all to see.
Imoen, almost by reflex, shot out at it her last spell: a volley of magic missiles; as it turned out, to completely no effect. Sarevok had somewhat more luck; unable to reach his sword, he bore down on the creature, swiping it off its feet; then, he sought the blade again, and finally managed to get hold of it; and impaled the tiger just as Imoen unsheathed her own sword; right on time to defend herself from Adratha’s ‘grandsons’.
A large shape passed her then, furry and almost bent in half under the low ceiling, and threw itself on one of the feline shapes which were now afoot and trying to pass through Imoen’s defence; and a moment later, a rabid, spitting ball of fur not unlike that a cat fighting with claw and tooth a dog started to roll through the small space. Imoen would have possibly laughed; if, that is, she were not still occupied with defending herself from the claws of the last tiger, ducking and dodging, left and right, trying to find cover behind the table and an opening to strike. Which, in the end, she found; and Saadat, or, possibly, Jalaal, lay, too, gutted, and dead.
And, shortly, the ball of fur eased and parted in two; and the werewolf tore off from the last tiger’s throat. For a moment, he looked straight at Imoen, with a curious expression in his golden eyes; Imoen looked back—at them; and the long snout; and the black, blood-covered and, in some places, torn-out fur; and then, she wasn’t looking at a werewolf anymore; but at Cernd.
“Wow,” she said.
Sarevok laughed.
-----
The first thing they then had to do was to clean the room.
This was done, by unspoken agreement, without any allusions being made to one’s lycanthropy; or, possibly, divine descent. For Cernd was a discreet man; and the time for momentous revelations, it was understood, would come after the cottage was cleaned, and the bodies of the tiger-creatures taken out of it; after a meal was prepared and the true Adratha; or rather, her body—was found. The day had been long and trying as it was; and everyone was tired. There was no need for tempers to run wild at this hour.
“Calishite silk,” Sarevok said, touching the fake Adratha’s clothes. “And Calishite steel,” he added, eyeing appreciatively the long scimitar the tiger-creature had not managed to pull out before he had killed her. He undid the ornate buckle of the belt which held the, equally ornate: ruby and emerald-set—sheath. “Druid?” he inquired. “Sister?”
“No,” Cernd replied, “I don’t want it.”
“I don’t want it, either,” Imoen added.
Sarevok shrugged lightly. “As you wish.”
He pulled off the belt from the corpse; sheathed the scimitar; put it in the corner of the room where they had dropped off their bags and weapons; then, the men pulled the bodies out through the back door, to the yard; to the dung heap by the outhouse.
Imoen remained in the main room of the cottage, fixing the odds and ends which had fallen off the shelves when the werewolf and the tiger had fallen into them; she had just lifted one of the sturdy, heavy chairs when Sarevok returned to the cottage for the last body. “Come with me, sister,” he said flatly; and, forestalling any possible questions or objections, added, irritated, “The druid found the bones.”
Imoen, marvelling at the simple fact that her brother still had the shreds of decency to admit that he was not the best person to have around after one found the body of one’s friend, followed him to the yard; wherein she saw Cernd, carefully picking human bones out of the stinking dung heap and putting them onto a spread of white muslin. The bones, she noticed when she came closer, bore bite marks: deep, elongated indents.
Sarevok dropped the last body and made himself scarce; Imoen, suppressing the sudden urge to gag at the sight and the smell of the heap, approached their companion, and crouched in the mud next to him.
“Death is a part of the great cycle,” Cernd said quietly, not taking away his eyes from the dung heap, the bones and the white muslin. He had found the skull: it was shattered and caved in from some great impact, and there were bits of flesh still clinging to it. “But this… is possibly too much death in one day.”
“I will have to meditate on this,” he added a moment later.
Suddenly, Imoen wanted to cry. But this was not her grief, she reminded herself; this time, again, like after Gorion, she would have to be the comforter. Her own grief… that was in Athkatla’s cemetery, safe and secure with the priest of Kelemvor.
“You will bury her,” she said slowly over the white muslin, half-asking and half-assuring.
“Yes,” Cernd replied. All the larger bones were now lying on the cloth; a gruesome puzzle, a toy for some necromancer to resurrect. “When I learn what happened to my people. There is too much unrest in my mind for now. There is time for all in the cycle of seasons, and the time for grief, too, will come.” He started to wrap the bones in the muslin.
“Is it… possible that I join you then?” Imoen asked hesitantly. “There is— It’s Jaheira,” she said suddenly, “She’s dead, and Khalid’s dead… And I’ve promised myself—” She broke off, irritated; so much for being the comforter; so much for not pressing herself on Cernd’s grief.
Cernd finished the wrapping; and looked at her at last; and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “But now, I think that it is the time we thought of the living. The goat has bleated. They have not killed her. But she must be hungry. And she must be milked.”
Together, they returned to the cottage; Cernd put away the bundle among his own things, in the corner; then, found a pail; then, still together, they went to the goat-shed; where they found, bound and unconscious, a druid.
-----
“Pauden?!” Cernd asked, stunned, as soon as he opened the door. Imoen peeked into the dark inside of the shed: a large, black-and-white and rather angry she-goat in the corner; an ancient, bald and wiry; almost monkey-like—man on the ground.
“He’s alive. And fine. Just unconscious,” the druid told Imoen as, kneeling, he ran a cursory check of the old man’s body. “Can you call your brother? Take him to Adratha’s bed; he should recover soon. I will deal with the goat. Or will try to,” he added, eyeing askew the bleating, baaing, irate creature. “She is angrier than a bear awakened midwinter.”
Imoen blinked and frowned; and then, returned to the cottage; in whose main room-cum-kitchen, Sarevok was cooking.
This was, possibly, the one thing which irritated her the most; she was willing to accept that her brother was human, insofar as that meant that he was mortal, and she might kill him one day, when she so chose. She was, therefore, willing to accept that he must eat; but, in her opinion, he simply should not cook. Eat food prepared by servants, fine; cook, no. There was a limit; and it riled her to see it broken. Murderers of one’s family and friends should not be seen cooking. It made them too human. It was unfair on their victims.
“You are needed in the goat-shed, Sarevok,” she said flatly. “Cernd found someone.”
-----
They put the druid called Pauden in Adratha’s bed in the side room; Imoen stayed with him while Sarevok returned to the kitchen and Cernd, to use his own expression, dealt with the she-goat.
Whatever the deal was, it paid off; for, not ten minutes later, Cernd appeared in the kitchen, carrying a pailful of warm, steaming milk; and that milk, they later gave to the almost toothless druid as themselves they ate the horrible stew Sarevok had prepared.
“—Cernd,” the monkey-like man said in a raspy voice as he opened his webbed eyes. “Or are you Cernd? You—and these two—” He squinted and noticed Imoen and Sarevok. “Ah.”
“If we were those shapeshifters,” Sarevok said coolly, looking out through the window and drumming his fingers on the window frame, “you would not be now lying in the bed, old man.”
“Pauden,” Cernd, sitting on the bed by the old druid, added placidly, “I know your name. I know you. I know Verthan, your twin brother. I am myself.”
“Can’t you cast a spell, or something?” Imoen vouched from her own spot on top of a large wooden chest standing next to the bed.
“Yes,” Cernd nodded. “Cannot you open your mind’s eye and see us as we truly are?”
The old druid frowned, and, stubbornly silent, started to think. Imoen, crestfallen, dropped her head and sighed. This was not how interrogation was supposed to go. In particular, this was not how interrogation after a too busy day after a too busy night after a far too busy day was supposed to go. “Cernd,” she said, finally giving up. “Do you have anything restorative? Any herb? Drink? Whatever? I’m tired.”
This quite concentrated the attention of everyone in the room on her; even Sarevok stopped drumming his fingers on the window frame, and looked at his sister. A moment later, without bothering to drop a word, he stormed out of the room.
Cernd, too, rose slowly from the bed. “I think I can find something. I, too, am tired, like an overworked ox. Though my yoke is fairly sweeter than an ox’s,” he smiled; there were now mischievous sparks in his eyes.
Imoen blinked; and, as Cernd left the room, wondered if, in some oblique druidic way, she had just been complimented; or if it had been just the delusion of an overtired mind.
-----
She remained in the room, watching the old druid; who, in turn, was squinting at her suspiciously, clearly trying to determine if she was a human-eating monster and utterly oblivious to the fact that if she, indeed, were one, she would have probably discarded him already for being too wiry and too old—
She remembered the illusion of Adratha. Adratha had not been young, either.
That rather sobered her.
And just in time; for, shortly, her brother strode back into the room, holding something. “Old man,” he growled out; and, having thus captured the druid Pauden’s attention, he put what he was holding right under the aged, half-blind eyes. “Look. See. Touch. Smell. Taste the blood of your enemies. And choose. And choose correctly. As my sister may tell you—”
“Don’t,” Imoen interrupted him frigidly. “Don’t you dare finish, brother. If you do, then, I swear, whatever it takes, you won’t survive the night.”
She wasn’t even looking at him; instead, she was looking at his offering to the old man: three feline heads, held in one massive fist by the long, luxurious fur of their crowns.
“Little sister,” she heard a voice which was not amused, “you may be aware that I do not take kindly to threats.”
“Well, neither do I, little brother,” she heard herself reply. “And I especially do not take kindly to threatening an old, defenceless man with the death of another.”
“Defenceless?!” An indignant snort. “Gorion was hardly defenceless—”
“Excuse me—?” A small, unsure voice interrupting.
“Yes?” Two voices, speaking almost in unison; two heads turning and two looks cast towards the door, where Cernd stood, holding three cups with something hot and steaming inside them. Imoen wondered how much he had heard. Judging by the thickness, or rather, thinness, of the walls in the cottage, everything.
-----
Whatever was in the cups, it served well to calm tempers, soothe minds and let everyone focus on the matter at hand; and Imoen wondered transiently if she was not simply drinking a bitter, faintly herbal-tasting version of the Potion of Clarity; not a potion she could yet prepare, but one she had heard Edwin— No.
No; in any case, Sarevok’s bloody offering served well to assuage also the old man’s wrath: the druid Pauden looked at the tiger-creatures’ heads with a vengeful expression in his webbed eyes; touched them; smelled them; and, finally, to Imoen’s incredulity—for, if nothing else, this bespoke a frame of mind completely alien to her—tasted the blood dripping off their necks onto the soft deer hide under which he was lying. Then, and only then, was he satisfied that his enemies were dead.
By that time, it had grown dark already; and so, they lit the bees’-wax candles in Adratha’s bedroom; then, took for themselves the stew, and warmed the milk for the druid; who, before long, started to speak.
“Cats,” he said; and cackled. “Three cats. Three cats were enough to put me down. Me, who once wrestled with bears and won! Old age, my boy,” he told Cernd, “is no easy piece of bread.”
“Old age, Pauden,” Cernd replied, with a small smile playing on his lips, “only hardened you, like the oak. But don’t let’s speak of it: I have more questions for you than there are ants in an anthill! What were you doing here? And what has Gragus been thinking? Why is everyone here, instead of the forest? Kyland attacked us as we were passing through the swamps,” he added, much more serious now.
“Kyland? This isn’t Kyland?” the druid Pauden asked, squinting at Sarevok, who had retaken his stand by the window. “He smells of Kyland,” he added defensively as Imoen restrained herself from laughing for the sake of the old man’s pride.
“No, Pauden,” Cernd, meanwhile, replied evenly. “Kyland is dead. He attacked us, and I would know why. These are my friends from the city, Imoen,” he said, nodding at the girl on her wooden chest, “and her brother, Sarevok,” he said, pointing at the man.
“From the city?” the druid asked suspiciously. “From Trademeet? You brought two of those rats here? How? And why? We won’t accept submission, girl,” he told Imoen in a voice suddenly hard. “This is more than a mating display. Trademeet must perish. Whatever Faldorn is doing, my boy,” he finished with conviction, looking back at Cernd, “in that, she is right.”
“Faldorn?” Cernd asked to this; even as Sarevok inquired, “Trademeet?” and Imoen, “Perish?”
The old man, content at becoming the object of attention of everyone in the room, shifted in the bed and stroked his hairless scalp; Imoen could almost see in his place an old tom cat licking his fur, smug and self-satisfied after a victorious fight. “So,” he cackled. “You youngsters really know nothing? Well. Bring me more milk, because I’m parched—ah, what insult, that I, who once ate the raw, steaming liver of a bear freshly hunted should now drink milk!—and I will tell you all.”
-----
They brought him milk; and once again, the druid Pauden started to talk.
“It started almost a month ago, just after the previous full moon,” he said. “Then, Faldorn and Dalok came to us from the north. Faldorn challenged Gragus to a fight—and what a fine fight that was!” A tear glimmered in his eye as he fell silent; no doubt he was reliving the clash. “She won, and ascended to leadership. Then, of course, we learnt that they both were Druids of Shadow,” he added glumly.
“Shadow Druids?” Cernd repeated, clearly disturbed. “They preach that cities and artifice are a cancer which must be cleansed from the healthy tissue of the land,” he explained, turning to the siblings. They both nodded; they had had their own, if separate, dealings with the Shadow Druids before.
“And they are right, my boy,” the old man, meanwhile, stated complacently from the bed. “They are right.”
“Pauden,” Cernd pled. “Not now. Verthan and you can discuss it as leaves grow and fall, but now I must know what happened… I take it that the Shadow leader ordered that outsiders be attacked on sight? That is why Kyland assailed us?”
“Yes,” Pauden replied, and, sighing deeply, added, “And then, no. My boy,” he said gravely, looking sympathetically at the younger man, “Faldorn has Malika. And Ashdale.”
“Ashdale?” Cernd asked calmly; though Imoen noticed that the skin of his palms had suddenly gone white, so tightly had he rolled his fingers into fists. “What do you mean, she has Ashdale?”
“It is full moon tomorrow,” the old man replied sadly. “And Faldorn, we now know, is insane. Oh, no one questions what she is doing in Trademeet—”
“And what is she doing in Trademeet, old man?” Sarevok rumbled from his corner.
“No,” Cernd said urgently. “Tell me of Ashdale, Pauden. What is she doing to my son?”
He was nearly yelling now, like a wounded, trapped animal, Imoen noticed through the daze of surprise; somehow, the news that Cernd was a father amazed her in a way that even learning that he was a werewolf had not. Perhaps it was the way he had completely avoided the topic until now, even after he had learnt that something was amiss in his homestead— But Cernd was a discreet man; and everyone had secrets they would rather not disclose to strangers.
In his corner by the window, she saw Sarevok’s eyes narrow and glimmer; and then, return to their previous indifference. He had filed away the fact; he now had a pressure point to use on Cernd in the future, if he so desired; Imoen hated him.
Cernd himself was now pale and earnest, and oblivious to all but the druid Pauden’s old, dried-out face; and the old man, gently, but firmly, as if he were dealing the blow of mercy to an animal beyond salvation, told him what, by now, everyone knew.
“She says that the new leader of a pride of lions kills the cubs of his predecessor; and so, she will sacrifice Malika—Gragus’ daughter,” he said, adding for the siblings’ sake in an unprecedented display of consideration. “Tomorrow at the henge, as soon as the moon appears. She wanted a boy to pair with her. And, well,” he shrugged, “no one wanted to let go of their blood children, and you, my boy, were gone. You must understand them, Cernd. They are—we are,” he corrected, “all afraid of her, like hares in fear of a fox.”
“I gave him to you for safekeeping!” Cernd yelled out in the small room. “Is that how promises are kept among the druids of Amn?”
“Cernd, she has bonded with the grove,” the old man said quietly; upon which, Cernd, wide-eyed, fell silent.
“I came here,” Pauden spoke on, in the same tone, “seeking Adratha’s aid and counsel. She was the only one with enough power on these lands to possibly counter Faldorn’s influence. But Adratha met her own fate. Cats!” he laughed bitterly. “Never trusted them.”
Cernd, without further word, rose and stormed out of the room.
After a moment of silence, Imoen followed.
