“Delryn!”
“Yes?!” the annoyed voice of Anomen Delryn yelled; at which, the face of his captor beamed. “No more noble suffering in silence?” Sarevok Anchev asked with a light trace of amusement in his voice. “And it took just one dryad to untie your tongue…”
“Now,” he said before the other man had a chance to respond, “the question is if it was also enough to make you listen. I did listen. I heard you acknowledge my sister’s innocence, Delryn. Do you believe in it?”
“Yes, you murderous swine,” the fuming squire replied, “I do believe that the Lady Imoen was implicated in your sin only through an evil wyrm’s most foul play!”
“Good,” his interlocutor growled. “Swear on your honour as a nobleman and a squire of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart that you will do all within your powers to clear her name.”
The other man recoiled. “What?! I shall give no word of mine to a baseborn outlaw!”
“Then give it to my sister,” the Son of Murder replied. “If you refuse, I will tie you again.”
-----
So, I now have my own knight in shining armour, the sister in question smiled as she graciously accepted the fumbling oath Anomen produced; for a moment, she wondered if she should, perhaps, give the squire a lock of her hair. But he already had a lock of Vaelasa’s, now tied around his right forearm, his shield arm’s forearm; and that would serve him much better in the future to come— If he survived the encounter with Sarevok, her, and a dragon, that is.
If he did, he would have so many exploits to boast about later, she thought, amused: saving maidens. Avenging his master’s death. Slaying a dragon. Perhaps the paladins would even knight him for his mighty feats?
And, now, apparently, Sarevok and she would not even have to drag him all the way to his fame.
-----
Coran was not the kind to swear oaths; it had taken a bit of work to convince him to save the life of his daughter.
It had not been all bad, Imoen decided; it could not have been, otherwise it would not have lasted so long as it had, even over Jaheira’s all objections— You have Khalid, Kivan has Deheriana, and Irene spends half the time we’re not fighting learning magic with Xan! she remembered through the mist of her memory; Very well, child. But when he breaks your heart, you know where to find me. She did; and when, after they saved Brielbara’s child, Coran took one look at her face, then at Jaheira’s face, and then, at everyone else’s faces, and loudly announced that he was not going to listen to a third tongue-lashing in one day, and that he was leaving the company and the city anon, Jaheira did— something. What that was, Imoen could not exactly remember. But the world wasn’t bad afterwards.
But it had not been all bad; and she had certainly learnt many thieving tricks from him.
Now, he was looking at her, completely unconcerned by the little scene unrolling between Sarevok and Anomen: they were men. They mattered little to him. She wondered whether little enough that he had not even recognised Sarevok’s name; and, if he had, if he understood what it meant that she was Sarevok’s sister; and, if he did, what— No. She already knew what his reaction in such case would be. After all, great peril yielded great beauty; and life was either adventure or nothing; and luck was, always, with the romantics.
“Stay here,” she told the elf, “with— Can I call you Anomen?” she asked, turning to the squire.
“Aye, my lady,” replied he, blushing lightly. “Please do!”
“With Anomen, then,” she finished, looking back at the elf. “We will help you, but, first, I have to speak to my brother.”
Sarevok was already reaching to Grasshopper’s saddlebags. “Do you favour the sword or the staff, Delryn?”
The squire blinked, nonplussed. “What’s it to you, Anchev?”
“A simple one-word answer would suffice, Delryn,” Sarevok replied dryly. “For your information, since, apparently, your knightly education did not involve fighting werewolves. They require enchanted weapons to be permanently dealt with. Your mace is not enchanted.”
Behind his back, Imoen sighed. This was said by the man who, not a sen’night ago, had wrestled with a werewolf; in fact, she would bet that it had been on that occasion that he had learnt this precious nugget of information he was now boasting about.
“In that case, the sword!” Anomen replied, a bit too suddenly for Imoen’s tastes; but Sarevok was already removing the Burning Earth, Dalok’s flame tongue, from their bags of holding, and saying, “In that case, feel free not to destroy it. Stay here, and guard the property,” he said, casting an extremely pointed look at the elven thief.
That was when Imoen noticed Pangur and Altair’s absence.
-----
“Elves have good hearing,” Sarevok noted.
“Enough,” Imoen replied, halting. They were almost at the edge of the meadow again, back where it turned into nothing but thorny weeds growing in the cracks of the sandstone floor.
“We will help the elf,” her brother said noncommittally.
“We will help the woman. We are going that way,” Imoen replied. “And those are Firkraag’s werewolves. But I want Coran out of my life as soon as possible, little brother.”
“I see,” Sarevok replied, appraising her intent with a look and a gaze. “Shall I kill him?”
Imoen glared at him with cold, purposeful fury. “You are my brother, not a hired thug, and don’t you ever dare forget that, Sarevok.” She grimaced. “But I must ask you one thing, little brother. When we find that Safana, whoever she is, I will tell Coran and her to leave. Don’t argue with me then.”
Sarevok cocked his head. “The elf hurt you that much?”
The question was, thankfully, asked dryly, without emotion; and so, Imoen smiled. “You hurt me more, little brother. It’s not that. I don’t care for what he did, anymore. I simply don’t want him in my life. Not even as future dragon fodder, or whatever it is you were planning to use him for.”
Sarevok drummed his fingers. “I see,” he repeated, folding his arms and looking at the ground; and then, with a sudden, almost furtive, look, back at his sister. “You do realise that this means that, instead of in five, we will be fighting a red dragon in three.”
“You didn’t know that we would be fighting in five, brother.”
“I didn’t know that we would be fighting a red dragon, either,” Sarevok laughed. “I have, at most, spirit armour. Delryn has splint mail. Perhaps we should return to Trademeet.”
Imoen eyed the lengthening shadows, and said, “Let’s try to find that woman first.”
-----
The chick likes me!
Imoen blinked. Pangur was… If a cat could be bouncing, he was.
You know… I have no idea whether you want to eat her or make love to her, she told the cat as, with a thanks and a smile, she picked Deneb’s reins from Anomen. The knight and Coran were pointedly not looking at each other.
For that matter, how do you know? she added. It’s not like you can talk to each other, or anything.
Can see it in her eyes! The way she looks at me! She wants me!
She wants to eat you, she thought as she put the cat on Deneb’s back. She decided to walk for a bit; between Coran and Anomen, they would be moving at a walking pace, anyway.
They would have to backtrack at least half a league, because it had been in that area, Coran was saying, that Safana and he had been when they had separated. Sarevok released Altair to search for the way further northeast through the labyrinth of rock and water; Pangur’s tail was lashing left and right as he followed intently the bird’s disappearing silhouette. He let out a short, unselfconscious meow which sounded very much like a dog’s bark, before replying, Nope. She wants me. Me as in me. She’s jus’ real’ shy, y’know?
Shy? Imoen laughed. Pangur, she’s a twenty-pound man-killing eagle. How can she possibly be shy?
That’s why, the cat replied, and stubbornly refused to say where he and Altair had disappeared before.
Imoen, lost between Coran and Anomen Delryn, courteously allowed the latter to speak of his exploits as Keldorn Firecam’s squire during the campaign against the Hillgnasher Giants.
-----
“Once we found Shandalar’s cloak, its magic took us back to Ulgoth’s Beard. And that’s how I met Safana!” Coran finished merrily.
“What a load of lies, knave,” Anomen snorted contemptuously. “An island which traps overconfident wizards?! Crafted by the gods themselves? Ridiculous, I say! The Order—”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Delryn, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” the voice of Imoen’s brother replied cheerfully. Sarevok, who had gone forth to scout, had returned; dismounting swiftly and taking Grasshopper by the reins, he added, “We have reached our destination, I believe.”
Ten minutes later, they all stood at the entrance to the gorge: two high walls of almost bare stone, with just enough place at the bottom for a trickle of a stream and a few shrubs and weeds; and even, occasionally, a tree. There were cracks in the sandstone sides of the canyon: cracks which must lead to the caves where, once, humans used to bury their kings, and where the werewolves, the orcs and Firkraag himself now lived. A deep shadow lay over the bottom of the gorge: an hour or two still remained till sunset, but here, it was already dark.
“Those two caves, side by side, nearby,” Sarevok said, pointing them out: they were in the western, shaded wall of the canyon, across the shallow stream; but, because the valley took a large turn, they were almost squarely in front of the party. “Others are much deeper into the gorge. Tufts of fur on shrubs here, fewer further on. No werewolves in sight there.”
“How convenient,” Imoen said. “Coran?”
The elf beamed, and asked, “What do you bid, little sweetheart?”
Imoen ignored the attempt to annoy her, as well as Anomen’s indignant cry, and asked, “Which one do you pick?”
“I would never pick a thing over you, little sweetheart!” Coran replied; to which, Imoen said, “All right. Take the one on the right, I take the left,” and, not looking back, went forth, alone, to the accompaniment of a squire’s wrath and a brother’s complete lack of response to it.
The cave was damp and cool; and was very much a cave, and not a burial chamber, inhabited or otherwise. There was a length of a stony corridor leading down, the kind of which did not permit at all to see whether it was frequented or not; and, at the dead end of it, a wider chamber with water gathering in a niche. It was empty.
Empty; but there was an odd mist hanging in the darkness, over the pool of water. As Imoen eyed it, she had the eerie impression that the mist was thickening, coalescing into ghost-like shapes— Never one to take intuition lightly, she did not wait to see into what kind of monster it would turn, but started to backtrack from the cave. The werewolves were not here. It was enough. They may investigate the rest later, together.
Halfway upwards, she heard the first sounds of the fight.
She crouched in the entrance to the cave, trying to take in the battlefield; for, in the brief spell of time which had passed since she had gone into the cave, the peaceful canyon had turned precisely into—this: a sea of rolling, barking fur surrounded Sarevok and Anomen on all sides. Wolves and werewolves, a whole pack of them: Coran must have slipped up, somewhere, and those two had had to come to help him.
The two men were standing back to back; the former was wearing the rest of his stone skins, fighting; the latter’s splint mail was shimmering in the shadow with the armour of his faith as he prayed for some divine boon.
Coran was standing far on the other side of the shallow stream, picking carefully at the werewolves at the fringe of the fight with his piercing arrows; as Imoen watched, one such hit a wolf nearby her in the throat: it died with a gargling sound. Altair, too, was furiously screeching as—
A voice to the left, just next to her, “No, don’t! I’m telling you! He is the one Bodhi wanted! The other one can’t be far away, either!”
Imoen peeked out behind the corner of the cave. Two men and two women were standing not a few steps from her. The woman who had just spoken was standing with her front to her: her mouth was still open, her head was lightly inclined; and, judging from the sparks in her shrill, brown eyes, she was very definitely annoyed.
Imoen eyed her up and down; found no obvious weapons; reached for her scroll case; the darkness behind her started to feel much colder; a raspy voice next to her ordered sharply, “Grancor! Falik! At them!”
The men were gone; in their place, two giant beasts, one grey, the other black, leapt into the fray before. As Imoen found what she had sought, the raspy voice next to her yelled at the other woman, “I don’t care about what any Bodhi wanted! You promised to me that Coran would come. Where is he?! Where is my love?! Where is my Coran?!”
In the background, a massive rain of pure brilliance pierced the shadow of the gorge, falling from the sky on top of the werewolves’ and the fighters’ heads; on the other side, in the darkness of the cave, something moved; Imoen paid heed to neither. The spell—
“You self-serving, lying wench!” the raspy voice roared out. “Die!”
The shimmering globe of Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere enveloped Safana just in time to make her immune to the blow of the giant werewolf; Lanfear, disoriented, looked around for the caster; but Imoen was now invisible, and no more in the entrance of the cave. In her place there stood four vague shapes born of white and crimson mist.
Tendrils of life-draining coldness stroked the werewolf, lovingly.
-----
A bit of poison on the tip of a dagger; mirror images to protect self once she became visible; hasting self with Arbane’s sword; jamming the dagger into one of the greatest werewolf’s backs, to help Sarevok, fighting him up front; running, still hasted, to where Coran stood; casting what little there remained in the memory of offensive spells, those magic missiles and the chromatic orbs, and whatnot; the bow—
Anomen Delryn did not know how to fight with the sword. It was blindingly obvious. He waved around the fire-shrouded sword in a multitude of small, nervous, unnecessary moves; he forced Sarevok to avoid him, or step around the edge and the heat which followed the edge; he fought no better than a barely taught novice; or Imoen. Who could fight well with a sword, for a thief. For a thief, not one who made fighting his profession.
It might be the Burning Earth’s oddly balanced grip, which strained the unaccustomed hand just the slightest bit too much to be truly an efficient weapon; or it might be something else, Anomen’s own predilection and preference for clubs and maces. But the result was one: both Sarevok and the squire were now bleeding from so many wounds that it was a blessing that, once the mist creatures finished with Lanfear, they turned first on the nearest living creatures: the remaining werewolves.
“Fall back, Delryn!” Sarevok bid curtly once they, too, were dead and the mist’s attention turned to the two men. Anomen hesitated, and, readying his sword and shield once more, stayed.
“Fire arrows, little sweetheart?” Coran asked brightly.
“Enchanted,” Imoen replied, eyeing the mist. Was it even possible to kill something like this? With arrows? Wouldn’t they pass through?
“So am I,” the elf intimated; Imoen, adamantly, paid no attention. Sarevok slashed at the sole crimson creature, and was rewarded by a shriek of agony. So, the mist could be hurt; the mist could be killed.
Anomen jabbed wildly in the direction of one of the two beings attacking him, leaving himself, and Sarevok’s back, clearly in the open; pale wisps reached, and enveloped both men—
-----
“We will talk later, you hideous cretin,” Sarevok growled at the ashen-faced, trembling man sitting on the ground with bowed head: Anomen looked as if his colour had been drained from him; as if he almost deserved the insult. “First. Do you know how to restore yourself?”
“I… forgot,” the man said, looking up, wide-eyed, without the slightest trace of his customary bluster. “I forgot how to pray properly… I knew how to do it, once, but I forgot…” He was as shaken by this sudden realisation as by his physical predicament: his fingers clutched the sheath of the Burning Earth so tightly that their knuckles were white.
“Sister,” his questioner said, coldly, not taking his eyes off the squire.
“Here, brother,” Imoen replied, pulling out one of the very few scrolls remaining in her tube with a sigh: it turned out that the day had contained an unusual amount of magic practice. Although this one scroll, in particular, they had never intended to practice upon. They had only decided that forearmed was forearmed, and that, if Waukeen’s temple in Trademeet sold blessed scrolls which allowed one to restore one’s drained energy, only a fool would not make a stock of them.
“Here, Delryn,” Sarevok repeated, smoothly bowing, unclenching the shaking man’s hands from the sword, putting the scroll into them, and straightening himself. “Heal yourself. There is no reason to waste my words on you until you are lucid. Now, you,” he turned to the tall, voluptuous brunette leaning against Coran with a lopsided, roguish grin.
“Safana,” the woman said, in a voice of velvet and honey. “And may I just say what extraordinary pleasure it is to meet such a… giant… man like you?”
Imoen decided that, perish the thought as she may, she had just met Coran’s female twin, if not his doppelganger. Even the way the woman’s eyes wandered around Sarevok’s body as she spoke was twin to Coran’s own.
“The pleasure is all yours, Safana,” Sarevok replied dryly. “You were not bound.”
“What she was was hired by Bodhi to find us,” Imoen said softly. “Coran?”
“Bodhi?” The elf seemed genuinely perplexed. “No,” he shook his head. “I once knew a Bodhi, but that was in Suldanessellar— What a magnificent woman that was,” he sighed dreamily. “Very… forward.”
Imoen rolled her eyes. Safana was a good model of the sort of forwardness Coran had in mind. “This Bodhi is a— What’s on with her?”
Safana was shaking, trembling, quivering in a sudden fit; clearly asphyxiating, grasping for air, she reached to her throat. Coran’s hand, wrapped loosely around her waist, tightened to support her; Imoen reached to her own belt. A green bottle; a simple antidote to most poisons—
She poured the liquid into the half-open, froth-covered mouth; in the corner of her eye, she could see Anomen, now again lively, and not ashen-faced, quickly get to his feet and start upon a prayer.
He did not finish it: there was no need for it, anymore. One more spasm; the woman’s eyes rolled; and Safana was dead.
-----
The limp body drooped from Coran’s arm; the elf stood, dumbstruck, uncomprehending.
Then, slowly, he put the body on the ground, sat next to it, and asked it, “Safana?”
Then, he demanded, “Safana? Sweet, honey, Safana— She’s dead,” he said slowly, with disbelief. “She’s dead. We’ve barely had the time to get to know each other, and now, she’s dead… She had the most beautiful—”
“Yes, she is dead, elf,” Sarevok interrupted, irritated; eyeing the battleground, with its some twenty human and lupine corpses scattered around them. The day had been good for killing, Imoen thought as she followed her brother’s gaze; perhaps following also her brother’s thoughts. “This does not imply that we have to hear about her physical attributes. I would rather know what killed her.”
“Aye,” Anomen added suddenly. “Your,” a brief pause: it was obvious that the next word had some difficulty in leaving the squire’s mouth, “lady died a most painful and unusual death. I fear she was slain. It behoves thee to bring her murderer to justice!” He cast a look in Sarevok’s direction.
“It might be Lanfear’s revenge,” Imoen vouched, unconvinced. “It seems she was another of your old flames, Coran, and she caught Safana to bait you. She might have wanted to make sure that, if she couldn’t have you, neither would Safana. Lanfear’s the one lying there, by the caves, by the way.”
The elf on the ground took one look at the greyish fur of the giant werewolf and, wide-eyed, shuddered. “That is a she?”
“I don’t think she looked like this when she met you,” Imoen supplied. Then, she reconsidered, and added, “Although, on the other hand, a wolf has, I think, five pairs of—”
“No!” Coran cried out. “I don’t want to hear it!” He paled. “The hair! The—hair! You are a cruel, cruel woman, little sweetheart, for even implying that I would—” He shuddered again. “Dragons, werewolves, and now this— This adventure has gotten out of hand. I’m calling it quits.” Briskly, he stood up to his feet, and started to pick up his bow and quiver from the ground.
Sarevok smiled. “What of Safana, elf?”
Coran shrugged. “I loved her. But that was in another country. And, besides,” he added, looking warmly at the body spread on the ground, “the wench is dead.”
A clamp-like hand landed on Anomen Delryn’s shoulder. “Stay, squire,” Sarevok said coolly, without bothering to look at the young man. Then, turning to Imoen, he said, “Why don’t you go with the elf, little sister? Fetch the horses. Your cat should be guarding them where we left them.”
-----
Pangur was, indeed, guarding the horses, which were exactly where Imoen had last seen them. He yawned at her.
“Adieu, little sweetheart!” Coran said as the woman picked up the horses’ reins. “I’m really sorry that it didn’t turn out as it might,” he continued sadly, “You deserved the chance to rekindle our passion! Alack, the company you keep— I never particularly liked the concept of the elder brother,” he added pensively, before finishing, merrily, “But, perhaps, one day, we will meet again, without any overgrown obstacles in our path!”
Imoen laughed. If there were one thing one must like about the thief, it was his overbearing, callous optimism. “Where will you go now, Coran?”
The elf smiled. “Wherever fate takes me, of course! Athkatla, I think. I’ve heard that there are plenty of bored, beautiful women there!”
“I’m sure there are,” Imoen smiled back; though she did not add, Lady Maria Firecam, for one thing.
Then, for a moment, the elf hovered, undecided; until Imoen took him out of his misery. The kiss was brief and chaste—and then, Coran left her life again, heading, whistling; not looking back—never looking back—into the sunset.
-----
Later, Imoen often wondered what would have happened if, on that particular evening, she had not forgotten that, whatever self-imposed proviso made her brother treat her as his fellow, it certainly did not stretch over to the whole of humanity.
She was walking slowly back through the valley of shadow, with the cat before her, and the eagle above her, and the horses’ reins in her hands. Sarevok and Anomen will probably hide the bodies in the mist cave, she was thinking, the other will smell of the wolves, but it will be larger, so we’ll stay there. Now, how to make Grasshopper and Deneb enter—
Her brother’s voice was furious. “Immature cretin! Did you imagine you would deceive me?! That I, Sarevok, would stay blind to your incompetence?! I?! Four knights issued against me, and yet you would fool me with a neophyte’s skill?!”
Sarevok was speaking so loudly, even Imoen, outside the cave, could hear him. She hastened her pace.
“No. Had you thought, this would prove you had brains at all. And you defied me. Me. My direct command— Are your Order’s standards so low that they accept any insubordinate scum into their ranks?!”
This time, Imoen heard the equally furious reply. “You are not my master, Anchev, and I am not bound to obey you! I knew what I faced—”
“So did I, fool,” she heard as she descended the steps: this cave was a burial chamber. “Why else should I order you to fall back?! You disobeyed me, and barely escaped with your pitiful existence. You bring shame on your master’s memory, Delryn!”
“So speaks the beast which murdered him!” Anomen Delryn, standing in the middle of the oblong chamber filled with bedrolls, hay and dry leaves, hissed out viciously in the red, dim light of the fire.
“You,” Sarevok said, unfolding his arms and starting towards the squire, slowly, purposefully, as he spoke, “are pledged to my sister, knight. You are avowed, Delryn, and do not dare think that I will not exact that vow. Your will,” he growled as he drew close to the other man and as Anomen, wild-eyed, started to back off before him, “is irrelevant. You must survive long enough to testify. If need be, you will hear Firkraag’s confession and witness his death enclosed in a sanctuary of your own making.”
“You, knight—you, Helmite—are under oath,” Sarevok repeated as the other man encountered the chamber’s far wall; and, as if hypnotised by the speaker’s wildly burning eyes, halted there, thinking to move neither left nor right. “And you, you imbecile—” the speaker, all of a sudden, roared out; snake-like swift, a fist shot out and pummelled into Anomen’s face and him into the wall.
Sarevok bent; grabbed the copiously bleeding man from the floor by the throat; heaved him, now puppet-like, to his own level; started to yell, deafeningly loud, straight into his face, “—You almost forfeited your oath merrily letting yourself be bled dry of life, fighting with a weapon you barely know how to fight, all the while disobeying a direct command— If you die, Delryn,” he rolled on, tightening his grasp, oblivious to the strangling man’s weak attempts to free himself, “who will clear my sister’s name?!”
“Good point,” Imoen said weakly.
She felt as if she had been whacked over the head.
At the sound of her voice, her brother turned his head towards her, quickly, intently, as he always did when he sought another enemy in a fight. For a moment, he only looked at her wildly, as if he did not recognise her at all; in his grasp, Anomen still thrashed about, beating ineffectually at the tightened fist—
Then, Sarevok blinked, shook his head, opened his hand, slowly, weakly, hesitantly—and, finally, started, in a rush and a hurry, passing her on the way outside.
