“Ow! Imoen, wh—”
A contingency stone skin fires off, and Sarevok starts: in the spot which his sister shares with her girlfriend, as remote from the rest of the party as it is possible within the close quarters which the eight people and the three animals must share— They are fighting, those two; and Nalia is fighting for her life. The last illusion of intimacy, carefully established through mutual, benevolent deception, must shatter.
He finds it difficult to restrain his sister; she is strong, purposeful and cunning, and easily sliding out of his grasp, like a young cat cornered by a hunter; and has reached deep into her taint, and is cold like a shard of ice. Showered in blood, she almost burns him when he touches her.
He carries her to the fire, acting more on blind, animal instinct than on any conscious knowledge: Imoen is cold. She must be warmed.
-----
Imoen is cuddled next to him, with her head bowed and her familiar in her lap. (“I believe that my sister and I would benefit from a moment of privacy,” he snarled at a halfling, shattering another illusion.) He lifts his sister’s chin to look at her; she looks terrible, brown-haired and brown-eyed and scarred and little and sad; she looked into Nalia’s face when she finally became half-human again, and said, in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Nalia.” “It’s all right,” Nalia replied. “But this is something I must talk about with my brother,” Imoen finished desperately. “I really do.”
“We fight, little brother,” she is telling him now, in the yellow light which is the party’s only defence against the gloom, the depression, and the creeping shadows of negative energy; not any decent shadows in which a decent thief can decently hide, Imoen complained before— “There is Pangur, and there is Irene, and we try to escape, and we try to fight—”
“The dwarf fights on your side?” he asks, sincerely surprised; Imoen, equally surprised, answers matter-of-factly, “Yes. Didn’t I tell you this before, brother? She does.” She makes a small mouth, before adding, more cheerfully, “I think that she likes you, now, you know. Or, at least, she forgives you, as long as you are a good brother to me— She fights against you, doesn’t she?” she now asks in turn, as in turn she must see his face. “She’s not free in your place… Well, that’s the truth,” she asserts, forcibly, earnestly. “She doesn’t hate you, now. Whatever she’s telling you.”
The other truth is that he does not care. “I cannot aid you, sister,” he repeats; then, amused, adds, “But, I believe, Father is worried about you. He wished to make amends with me on your account.”
Imoen lifts her head higher. “Oh? He did? So what you’re saying is that he’s afraid more of me than you now, brother?” she asks, trying for playfulness and hitting him low. “Perhaps,” he replies, brotherly pretending a lack of concern—or is it: pretending a lack of brotherly concern? And then, because he has spoken his part, he adds, before he is dismissed, “I think that you should speak to Nalia, sister.”
Nalia, Duchess d’Arnise, wizard, attractive redhead, his sister’s woman, is sitting glumly amidst the silence of two other women and a man with a hamster; Sarevok, with Altair on the hand, tells her, “She would speak with you, duchess.”
He is stirring, master.
“And the man is waking up, I believe,” Sarevok adds smugly for Mazzy Fentan’s benefit. The halfling attempts to be adamantly unimpressed by his ability to see behind his back.
-----
The man is still tall, dark and handsome; but, unfortunately, he opened his mouth.
“What’s this? Some kind of trick?”
“We are real, I assure you, my good man,” Mazzy Fentan replies, giving him water. She is standing in front of the man, with her left hand, as usual, tapping the hilt of her sword; he, now sitting, pointing at each of her squatting company in turn, accuses with heavy, deep suspicion, “Real? Then how do you explain this? This is an orc. And this? Hamster. And,” the condemning finger shifts to Sarevok, “his eyes are glowing.”
“Orc?! Kriemhild is no orc!” Minsc bridles up; Sarevok eyes calmly the finger, hovering far too close to his chest to his liking, and adds, “The Rashemi is right. You will apologise to my wife, once you are lucid and properly aware of your transgression. With your permission, Fentan,” he nods, flawlessly, to Mazzy, as he returns to his feet.
“Fentan? You are Mazzy Fentan?” he hears then, and halts; the stranger is looking at the halfling, who is looking at him, and— A fairly long moment passes before the stranger shakes his head. “Excuse me,” he says, in a changed tone. “Where are my manners? I’m Valygar. Valygar Corthala.”
“We found your note,” Mazzy Fentan answers, without taking her eyes off the man; and, then, suddenly, there is the impression that some small part of the world which, for a moment, ran on its own time, is now speeding up to join with the rest, as Valygar Corthala repeats, slowly, “My note;” then, asks, “Did you bring priests?”
“We have a priest,” Mazzy replies, mildly surprised at the urgency in the man’s voice.
“The Shade Lord—” Corthala looks around the four assembled faces.
“He is the source of Imnesvale’s problems. We know,” Mazzy assures him.
“—He possesses the bodies of those he kidnaps,” the man on the ground speaks hurriedly. “He uses them as conduits, as containers for his power. Their souls become wraiths, to be bidden at his command, and he raises the skeletons —”
“Slow down, good man Valygar!” Mazzy tries to intervene; but the man interrupts, “I was to be his next vessel. But you—you have brought him even more fodder!”
“The stone gives us light,” Kriemhild says, slowly, “We are—” A desperate obsidian look. “Safe?” she hazards.
“Safe,” Mazzy nods. “Protected.” The man is watching Kriemhild curiously. “I see I will have to apologise again,” he mutters to himself.
“Yes,” Minsc threatens, “Minsc and Boo will check that you do that!” Sarevok adds, cheerfully, with barely a warning undertone, “I knew that you would be made to see reason, Corthala.”
Mazzy smiles. “In that case, how about a round of proper introductions?”
In the background, Sarevok’s sister and her lover are kissing.
-----
“I saw him in Merella’s body,” Valygar now says, as introductions have been made and the party are seated together near the fire; and as, voraciously, he eats and drinks. “He takes the bodies to establish a link and stay—” He shrugs and looks around the bleak room. “Here.”
“On the Prime Material Plane,” Nalia supplies.
Corthala nods. “But because he is undead, a shadow—” Another shrug, with a look in Nalia’s direction; “From the Plane of Negative Energy,” this time, Imoen finishes.
“Yes, that,” Valygar continues, with private distaste, “He exhausts the bodies of his hosts. The more power he uses here, the quicker he wastes his vessel.” He looks around the gathered faces. “He brought a dragon.”
“A dragon?” Mazzy asks; not alarmed, much.
“A dragon,” Valygar nods. “I heard it just before I was captured.” He takes a swig of water and wipes his mouth. “I also didn’t see anyone else alive here. Make your own guess where they went. Filthy magic,” he mutters. “Filthy, undead, magic.”
He looks up, abruptly. “Which one of you is the priest?”
“I-I am,” Aerie replies timidly. Her hair is still tousled after her sleep; the man eyes her critically. “Well, since you just saved my life, I can’t deny that you have power,” he mutters, but is clearly discontent by the elf’s slight, and pregnant, appearance.
“You might thank her, you know,” Nalia glares at the man.
“I-it is not necessary, Nalia,” Aerie scowls.
“How come it isn’t necessary?” Nalia bristles. “You did just save his life.”
“He may save hers tomorrow,” Mazzy intervenes curtly, ending the incipient quarrel. Then, she looks at the gobbling man again. “You will fight with us, good man Valygar?”
He swallows, and nods. “If I have my sword, yes.”
“Fine,” Mazzy nods in approval. Then, she looks around the party. “I think that, since we are in a dead end, we will have to retrace our steps until we find another corridor… Back to the entrance of the temple, if I remember correctly,” she sighs.
Minsc stirs. “An evil dragon!” he announces happily, “Now isn’t this great, Boo?! To slay it will be so mighty a deed that bards will sing of the glory of Minsc and Boo and friends for ages to come! Aah—”
“Big,” Kriemhild grunts with laconic pessimism. “Dragon is big. Hot. Loud… Hard for kill,” she adds after a moment’s contemplation. “It is not great. Not before kill.”
-----
From the entrance of the temple, they enter the opposite passage; the left-hand, winding walkway, which takes them again into collapsed halls filled with sterile darkness; with echoes, debris and rubble, and paintings and statues, of sun and darkness; the sun is now winning over the darkness under the high ceiling of the cold colonnade—
Skeletons and another bone golem attack them from a niche, from surprise; Corthala fights well, though he would fight better with a second sword. The party move on through the dead temple; shadows flicker and amass around them.
“You say, Valygar, that the shadows here are the souls of the villagers?” Imoen asks. “And the original worshippers, I guess?”
“Yes,” the man nods. “I saw the Shade Lord pass from some woman’s body into,” a brief hesitation, followed by an angry, “Merella’s.”
“That would explain the god’s demand, brother,” his sister looks at Sarevok coolly.
“Yes, sister,” replies he, absently, adjusting his Shadow’s graphite cloak— “And if the undead takes over the bodies of his victims, we now know why the area has been sealed off. To prevent contagion. However. I wonder why the seals have not held.”
“I-I think that it’s terrible,” Aerie pipes up, capturing the siblings’ shared attention. “W-we can’t fight the shadows i-if they are slaves—”
“We must,” Mazzy Fentan interrupts.
-----
The shadows dancing on the fringes of the sunstone’s spotlight flicker and darken; finally, they resolve into a silent, tightly closed ring of twisted humanoid shapes; a silent ring, and behind the ring, one feels, a silent swarm: dozens, if not hundreds, of shades, filling the corridor side to side, before and behind; cutting off both the way back and the way forth. Tendrils of darkness reach into the speck of daylight, hesitantly, withdrawing quickly; the wraiths hiss and snarl in visceral anger—
“Don’t worry, my friends!” Mazzy encourages, and there must be some little Arvoreen’s blessing behind the simple words: the party is now once again a purposeful ring of bared weapons and ready magic, waiting for their enemy to come to them, to measure sheer numbers against expertise and skill—
Room. Straight ahead, hundred steps.
“Doorway. Ahead, hundred steps,” Sarevok repeats with sharp, sudden understanding: if there is any symmetry to the temple, the chamber behind the bottleneck is the end of the corridor. And also, since they passed no other on their way here—
“It’s a dead end! We’ll be trapped there,” Nalia objects. “If we manage to bar the door.”
Mazzy appraises Sarevok briefly with a look. “We will run for it. Nalia, hasten us. Minsc, you will take Aerie. Aerie?”
Aerie sighs. “Yes, Mazzy.”
For a moment—too long a moment—she stands, with her head bowed and her eyes closed, considering; around them, the cold darkness weaves and snarls, by the minute bolder. Then, the elf sighs again, deeply, and begins her prayer.
That is in the elven tongue again, slow and harmonious, and long, and repetitive; Mazzy Fentan shoots the elf a curious, angry look, a look lacking understanding. “Can’t she hurry up a bit?” Valygar hisses, eyeing the dark crowd; this is exactly Sarevok’s sentiment.
He considers; there is a spell which holds the undead— Imoen looks at Nalia, oddly; the spell Nalia is casting is not the one to haste; Imoen begins to mutter the haste spell herself. Sarevok finds himself casting the necromantic spell, silently, surreptitiously.
When the elf ends her prayer, he lets his spell fall and sputter away: because, once again, Aerie called a divine wind to herself, this time a strong, silent gale which affects only the shadows around the party, not the party itself— Repulsed, repelled, carried off by the storm, the shadows are swept outwards away from the living, are made fall into one another, into the walls, disoriented; Imoen has finished her casting, and the party, bewildered, are hasted.
“Boo says we should hurry up!” Minsc says, suddenly, and picks up the elf.
Kriemhild starts into the breach and for the open door.
-----
They run; he grabs a protesting Mazzy Fentan, and they run; Aerdrie Faenya’s silent wind accompanies them, tearing the shadows off the ground and off the party’s path. Mazzy must look rather ridiculous dangling from his elbow, and weighs, even in her golden armour, almost nothing.
He sets her, indignant, in the chamber at the end of the corridor; puts the stone, now hot and searing, on the floor; takes a quick look around the room; it is a dead end; yet there is no ambush— He bolts, together with Minsc, for the heavy altar; they push it in front of the doorway; Valygar and Kriemhild come to help them; Mazzy mutters a few words; Imoen drinks a potion; they, too, strain; and the statue crashes, loudly.
The divine wind dies out when the dust falls; the wraiths, sneering, hissing, begin to gather their wits and themselves on the other side of the blocked opening; Sarevok is curious whether they have intelligence enough to climb the barricade. He does not think so; he is, apparently, correct.
There is a brief flash of magic, and the shades closest to the party are still.
“Tell me what happened here,” Nalia speaks out in clear, loud tones, looking intently at the dim mob behind the mass of wreckage.
“Since when do you dabble in necromancy, Nalia?!” Mazzy, betrayed, accuses; Nalia pays her no heed. “Tell me,” she orders forcefully the shadow crowd. “What was the sacrilege?”
There are droplets of sweat on her face, and, under her azure cape, her image jumps wildly in nervous excitement; yet, finally, the creatures obey and hiss, “The blood of Amuana… on the holiest of altarsssssss…”
“Amuana? Who was she?”
“Amuana. The powerful. The new light. The child priestessssss…”
“And she was killed? Where is that altar?”
“Where the Lord isssss…” the wraiths reply; Nalia clenches her fists, looks firmly at the crowd, and, as her image stills, demands, “Who was your god?!”
“The Yell—”
“—llow God. Ama—
“—mauna—”
“—ator—”
“—ator—ator—ator…” the shades struggle and murmur; “Amaunator?!” Nalia demands; “Yessss…” the shades hiss and snarl, and the mental connection is broken; Nalia, pale, releases her breath, takes another, deep one, and lets her eyesight drop.
“Since when do you dabble in necromancy, Nalia?” Mazzy Fentan repeats quietly; on the other side of the barricade, the shadow twists and coils.
“Since after Patrick died,” Nalia replies dryly. “And don’t start on that ‘you’re too young and inexperienced’ speech, Mazzy,” she adds furiously. “I am not as inexperienced as you think. I’m not that young, naive Nalia you found in that tavern, escaping with barely a gold piece to her soul! I have grown up.”
“Less than you think,” Mazzy replies viciously. “How can you—” She shakes her head; the braided, wiry hair bounces. “Necromancy?” she pleads, almost. “Is that what I taught you? I don’t recognise you, Nalia!”
“Wizards,” Valygar Corthala mutters angrily. “Meddling with forces they do not understand.”
“Get used to it,” Nalia rejoins, with a snort, “Both of you.” She walks off into a corner; Imoen shoots a meaningful look in her brother’s direction: listen for me, brother—and, with her cat in tow, leaves to comfort her girlfriend.
He watches; Mazzy blinks; then, her bewildered attention turns to Aerie. “And you, Aerie? Can you explain to me what it was you did? It’s not that I’m not happy that you did it, but I would have been grateful for some advance warning!”
Aerie, clearly rather discomfited by the whole scene, stutters, “W-well, I-I thought that i-if the shades a-are slaves, w-we can’t—”
“Oh, get over it!” Mazzy snaps; then, immediately, says, “I’m sorry, Aerie— I’m sorry.” But Aerie bursts into tears, and starts into a different corner of the chamber.
“I must go comfort my witch,” Minsc says, eyeing Mazzy Fentan askew; the halfling, caught in the events, does not say anything, even when Minsc says, “Do you want to go with Minsc and Boo?” and Kriemhild replies, “Yes, I want.”
Sarevok finds the sudden outbreak of hysteria almost amusing. It is caused to no small extent by the abundance of the negative energy around the party; like Imoen’s depressed dream before— He looks at Mazzy Fentan, looks at Valygar Corthala, and decides that he is the superfluous man between the two remaining in the halfling’s cortège.
-----
Everyone has a shadow.
Isn’t it a bit too late for the philosophy lesson, Altair?
The druids interpret the shadow as the balance between light and darkness. Very little is good or evil, or begets only good or evil. Everything is a shadow. But balance must be still sought.
The heart of shadow in the shadow. I know.
There is a different interpretation. The shadow is all one fears in oneself. All one hates. All one loathes, all one wants to forget, all one wants to cast away. But a shadow cannot be lost. If one does not accept its existence, one ends up chasing it, or it ends up chasing one, one’s entire life.
There is a story in the Planes about a man who tried to escape his shadow for so long that he built a whole fortress of his regrets…
Curious.
No thought?
I fear nothing, Altair. I can be made to feel fear, but I fear nothing. I know who I am. All the depths… What remains there to be feared, little bard?
Halfling.
What—?! Oh. “Lady Fentan.”
The halfling standing behind him says, stiffly, “Anchev.”
There is a perfectly uneasy silence. He lets it last; in the end, Mazzy Fentan sighs. “I have been informed that Imoen and you recently fought a dragon.”
“My wife and we did. A living one,” he replies, with little surprise.
A twitch crosses Mazzy Fentan’s face. “Keep Kriemhild away from Minsc, can you?”
He intends to, but— “Why?”
“Minsc, is simple, not stupid. He is bound to discover at some point how much her outlook on life differs from his. I would prefer to avoid having his feelings hurt.” Mazzy is irritated. “But this is not why I came here. I spoke with Valygar, and…” She pauses, then, curtly, “I want you to take over the command during the dragon fight.”
Still digesting the issue of the Rashemi, he answers mechanically, “We have to find the dragon first, Fentan. More to the point, I refuse.”
Mazzy’s face twitches angrily. “Of all the— This is an order.”
Valygar Corthala sits gloomily brooding in a corner, watching them askew. He is clearly unhappy with Mazzy’s presence here— “A foolish one, halfling. The man is right. You are too ripe for stage fright—”
Mazzy blinks, and, with full awareness of her folly, declares primly, “It is impolite to listen in on other people’s conversations, Anchev.”
He smirks, and finishes, “—Nevertheless, I do appreciate the compliment.”
“Compliment?! Do you really think that this is some kind of a—a whim?!” She looks around; but, save Valygar Corthala, no one is paying attention to her raised voice. “I don’t like you—”
—because, relentlessly self-declared good—valiant—person, you are afraid that one day, you will turn into me. “I don’t like you, either, halfling.”
“—but I admit: in four, you managed to kill a dragon— What if someone dies? You care for Imoen—”
“—I am flattered that you should think so, Fentan. I wonder if this will teach you anything—”
“—Is it so difficult to start caring for other people? What if someone dies again because I don’t give the right order?”
Her husband died to the undead, yes; yet the question still strikes a false chord; it would be more fitting coming from Nalia, or even, perhaps, Imoen. From Mazzy’s lips, it sounds rhetorical at best; as though it had been asked for the express purpose of receiving the answer— He gives it nonetheless. “Then it will be your failure, not mine.”
But the small face is still watching him unhappily; “Fentan,” he feels compelled to add, “I do not insult your intelligence. Do be so kind as to return the small favour. Few people make a business of taking out their sympathy on strangers, and I have yet to see a reason—”
“What if this is Imoen?”
Assaulted from the flank, he smiles again. “If Imoen dies, so do you. All of you.”
The halfling watches him closely. She snorts. “And yet, you refuse.”
“I merely agree that it takes supreme folly to replace the commander before a critical confrontation, halfling,” lazily, he replies. “However surprised out of your control you may have been by your associates, you are still bound to know their assets better than I do. I— You are too experienced for stage fright, Fentan,” he repeats, suddenly irritated. “And you, apparently, care.”
Mazzy nods slowly; then, with abrupt honesty, she announces, “I cannot let you stay in the party, Anchev. I thought I was strong enough to rein you in. But I am not. You are too used to being in charge. Even if,” grudgingly, “you are not doing it on purpose, you end up upstaging me. And this slackens the discipline. And I must have discipline in my company!”
He smiles, briefly, for a multitude of reasons. “I was not planning to stay.”
I am her shadow, he thinks tiredly, and cannot decide what to do with it. Hers, and Imoen’s, and Anomen’s crucible— He resents it, for a short moment; then, he remembers himself, and curses his bird, his surroundings and his loneliness. Too little to kill, too much time to think: that is the problem.
-----
As Mazzy Fentan and Sarevok Anchev deal with their shadows, a gnome is sitting alone in the most notorious tavern of Amn’s capital, dealing with his own, drinking to forget.
What happened earlier, with Lissa and Jaella… This reminds him… This reminds him of the previous time with Lissa and Jaella, as a matter of fact; and of all the times before, because this particular tale never changed much. His niece Kylie came to his turnip-and-arms stall to tell him that Lissa showed up, black-eyed and plum-skinned, and with the girl in tow and pleading for shelter. The difference this time was that Jaella was unconscious, and Jan had to search for a competent healer.
Several hours of his running around the city later, Vaelag showed up with an expensive gift, a bouquet of expensive flowers, and a cheap apology; all of which were, predictably enough, accepted. Ma Jansen’s ritual scolding followed; and then, Jan could at last escape to the safety of the Copper Coronet.
There is a paladin here, Garoll said; he is undercover, but it is easy to spot him. One of ‘em young ones, on the run, prob’ly, like they sometimes run, but he looks the decent sort— Jan, half-drunk already, though the turnip beer here is far from Aunt Petunia’s, which reminds him, in fact, of the turnip drought during the Third Great Griffin War, cured only by Uncle Spanky’s turnip draught— Tales die before they are properly spun, tonight; half-drunk, therefore and nevertheless, Jan looks around the dim cavern of the Coronet, suffused with the eye-stinging smoke of the pigs roasting on the giant grills. The usual crowd is here: some drunken peasants, some drunken nobles who have come here for the fights, several armed adventurers with the shrilly laughing Coronet slave girls in their laps; fat Bernard, the tapster, and Lehtinan, the owner, by the filthy bar, with the money and the guards— All in all, not the kind of place which often sees a knight. But there is one armed human, out there, in the corner, politely refusing the offer of a slovenly, unbuttoned hostess as he sips his beer—
“Hello,” the gnome hears suddenly a sleek female voice. He turns around to follow the boy’s example; and is purely stunned.
“I am Valen,” the hooded woman says, smiling. She is silver-haired, silver-eyed, pale, cold, and captivating. “And you are—?”
He stands up and bows: this is the kind of dame who must be bowed to. “Jan Jansen. At your service!”
The silver-haired human tastes her words carefully. “The… inventor?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Jan replies, “but have I told you—”
“It does not matter. I have been told that you have unfinished business with a… Vaelag. Do you want to finish it? Yes? Then come.” The woman’s charming voice snaps like a whip; and Jan, eagerly, stands up and leaves with her the Coronet.
Behind, unseen, a young man starts to trail them.
