The Meaning of Darkness

Daughter of Darkness and Light, Yoshimo mused as he led Renai down the darkened hallway. What could this mean? The color of her hair and eyes is all the darkness that I see. And the light? She is young and still has trust for strangers, even in this place of horrors. So what could she possibly be beyond this to incur such a name?

She looked, for all he could fathom, to be just a woman. Except on her palm and fingers he felt the hard calluses formed by the use of her bow and staff, and on her lean arms and calves he saw the ropy muscles of a fighter rather than the soft flesh of a woman of leisure. Her clothes, though torn and ragged, were of good quality, but not at all what he would consider fine. She wasn't wealthy; so much for her great value so broadly hinted at by the mad mage.

Stymied, Yoshimo turned his attention from Renai to the others, who were a small distance from him. "If you seek to end my life, by all means, do you duty poorly." Jaheira's hard voice carried back to Yoshimo's ears. The druid was shaking her finger at Imoen, who was on her knees trying to deactivate a trap in the floor. "I was about to step directly there! A warning would be the least you could do!"

"I was trying to warn you, Jaheira," the pink-haired sprite whined as she worked. "It's not my fault you weren't listening."

"Ridiculous! Perhaps if you spoke louder than a whisper, I would hear you!"

Yoshimo shook his head. I will gain nothing from the druid. Even if not for the loss of her mate, she would still be beyond my reach. She is not one to be wooed. He tried not to wonder how the mutilated man left behind them had won Jaheira's stone heart. Never mind. The waif or the musume no meian will tell their tales by and by. Therein will be clues to whatever power she has that is so desired by the mage. I suspect she is the type who would use that power to help a man in need, especially if he were a friend. And for that, I would ensure that I would become her closest companion.

A twinge of pain in his guts from the mage's geas reminded him of how rebellious his thoughts were becoming. Hastily, Yoshimo realigned his thinking and again looked at Renai. At least she is beautiful and pleasant company. It need not be a terrible task, at least.

"Get off my back!" Imoen screeched, loudly enough to rouse him from his thoughts. Imoen and Jaheira were now standing toe-to-toe, their faces contorted with anger. Renai pulled away from Yoshimo and hurried forward. "I'm doing the best I can!" Imoen said. "I know you're upset about Kha-"

"Do not speak his name!" Jaheira shoved Imoen hard. "You are not worthy! You who watched the Shattered One as he ... as he did ... and you did nothing!"

Imoen's bottom lip trembled, and tears were pooling in her eyes. "I couldn't! You don't know what it was like! I would have stopped it if I could! Don't you know that?"

"I know that you are a child who only thinks of herself!"

"Don't call me a child! Don't! You're always doing that!" Imoen knuckled away the tears from her eyes and stood up straighter. "I'm as old as Renai! I'm not a child!"

"Cut it out, you two," Renai said, stepping between the two women and holding them apart at arm's length. "Imie, you're almost a year younger than me, so you are the youngest. But stop picking on her, Jae. It's not helping. You already said that yourself."

Jaheira's mouth opened and closed several times before she swallowed hard and looked away. "She should be more careful in her duties," she muttered.

"She will be. C'mon, don't worry about it, all right?"

"Hey!" The belligerence on Imoen's face became downright anger. "It wasn't me! It was her!"

Renai shook her head, quieting Imoen, although she still glared at Jaheira. The anger on the druid's face faded, and silently the women fell into what seemed to be a habitual marching order: Imoen ahead followed closely by Renai, with Jaheira at the rear. Forgotten, Yoshimo trailed behind them as they continued down the hallway.

They defer to her leadership. Even the druid, who is her elder by many years, allows her the lead. Interesting. Yoshimo took his place beside Jaheira, trying to placate the unfamiliar curiosity burning in his heart. Could that be what brought her to the mage's attention? Does she command legions? Or kings? It is madness to not know.

Imoen pulled open the large metal door at the end of the hall, and Yoshimo got no further in his thoughts. Inside was an ornate room, carpeted by an intricately woven colorful rug and ringed by decorative marble columns. At its far end sat a dusty throne, upon which sat a statue of some long-forgotten monarch. He also saw four doors. But what took Yoshimo's attention was a duergar and a human man at battle in the room's center.

The women immediately armed themselves, but before they could move forward onto the rug, the duergar let fly a bolt from his crossbow to skewer the man, slaying him instantly and sending is body forward onto the carpet directly before the fourth of the six columns. From the column erupted a yellow light, its flash momentarily obscuring Yoshimo's sight.

A blood-curdling howl sent shivers up Yoshimo's backbone as he rubbed his eyes. He got his sight back in time to see two wolves seemingly appear from air, then leap upon the duregar and tear his throat out before he could run away. Finished with the dark dwarf, the wolves turned their attention to Yoshimo and the women. Howling again, the wolves charged toward them, but an orange light spilled from the third column then, coalescing into a fireball that fried the wolves and killed them instantly.

After a long silence, Imoen whistled. "Wooooah," she said. "That's the most amazing trap I have ever seen!"

Yoshimo nodded, amused by her small enthusiasm. If it did not mean their lives, he might have been as impressed himself. "Indeed, young one." He studied columns, then the rug. "Quite cunning. Wands locked into the pedestals that can be removed with a key. I would not wish to attempt to remove the wands without the keys. I believe it to be beyond my small abilities."

"Keys? You mean like this?" Imoen dug into her pocket and pulled out a silvery blue key.

Yoshimo took the key from Imoen's hand, and a tiny fiery jolt buzzed through him. "Perhaps. But if my assumption is correct, its corresponding wand is there." He pointed to the last column. In the rug directly before it was woven the pattern of a lightning bolt. Similar patterns were woven in the rug before the other columns: a star, a snowflake, a flame, a beast's head, a cloud. "We still need the keys for the other wands before we may try this one."

"Maybe not," Renai said absently, chewing on her thumbnail like a child studying an arithmetic problem. She looked at Imoen. "What does this remind you of?" Imoen shrugged and shook her head. "The practice room at the thieves' guild? Remember Taran's master trap?"

"Oh yeah!" A smile flitted across Imoen's face as she looked at from the rug to Renai and back again. "I remember that! He was so mad when you figured that out!"

"So desu ne? " Yoshimo looked at Renai. "What guild?" Not the Shadow Thieves in Athkatla. I would have met her by now, no matter how in disgrace I am with Bloodscalp. The frightening thought occurred to Yoshimo then that this entire dreadful situation was a effort by the Shadow Thieves' guild leader to trap him. Quickly, dismissed it. There is such a thing as being too paranoid, Yoshimo, he berated himself.

A small blush appeared on Renai's cheeks. "It was at the Shadow Thieves' guild in Baldur's Gate. I had a ... um ... friend who was a burglar. He knew traps. He taught me ... well, some stuff. That's all." Her blush deepened.

More than a friend, I think. A woman does not react so at the memory of just a friend. But perhaps that is a clue. After all, the mad mage has many thieves imprisoned. "Tell us, then, of this trap," he said, nodding at the columns.

Renai chewed on her thumbnail again as she studied the rug. "Well, the trap I know - Taran's trap - it was set up a lot like this one, with traps that couldn't be deactivated. But the traps were only in the rug, not the floor around it. So if we stuck close to the wall, we could get around it."

"Do you believe that is the possibility here?"

"I dunno. Let's see." Before Yoshimo could answer, she edged across the stone-tile floor to the first column and flattened herself against the wall. "Magical missile wand is the first one, right?" she said, then winced and shimmied sideways.

Do not! Yoshimo bit his tongue to keep from crying out the warning. If she dies, you die, the voice of the mad mage thundered in his head as Renai passed before the first column.

But nothing happened. Renai cracked an eye open and continued down the narrow path between the wall and the rug. Her confidence bolstered by her small success, she smiled and quickened her pace until she was at the end of the room beside the statue in the throne. She nimbly climbed over the throne and followed the rug's edge around its other side until she had made her way back to the group, unharmed and grinning. "Who's the legend?" she asked with a wink at the pink-haired girl.

"You are in your own mind," Imoen retorted, but she was smiling, too. Even Jaheira smiled a little, though the shadow of grief still had not left her eyes.

Yoshimo realized he had stopped breathing and made himself take a deep breath. If I am to keep her alive, I must train her to stop doing such things! "So," he said, clapping his hands together to capture the women's attention. He nodded at the door set in the east wall, between the columns, and the three doorways to the west. "Which door shall we pick? I assume we still are making our escape."

"Let me pick," Imoen said. "I have a perfect method! It never fails me." She looked beseechingly at Renai, who exchanged doubtful looks with Jaheira and then shrugged. Imoen rubbed her hands together, concentrating on them as if preparing to cast a spell. She pointed at the door in the east wall. "Eenny meeny miney moe," she said in singsong voice; in cadence with her words, she pointed at each door in turn. "Catch a mephit by the toe. If he hollers let him pay fifty gold every day. My moth-er told me to pick the best one and you are not it." Her finger ended up on the center door in the west wall.

She paused, then continued with the next door in sequence, "Eenny, meeny, miney moe ..."

Jaheira slapped the girl lightly on the back of her pink head. "You are a child," she snapped. She pointed at the nearest door in the west wall. "We shall try this one first."

Imoen pouted. "Don't I get to find out which one's it?"

"You're it, Imie," Renai said, laughing so authentically that Yoshimo found himself laughing with her as they followed Jaheira down yet another dark hallway. "I think it would have been this one, anyway, mathematically speaking."

"Yeah, but it's better if you use the charm. It's foolproof when you use the charm." Imoen stuck her tongue out at Jaheira as she took her place at the head of the party. The door at the end of the hall opened into a room hidden in shadows. All Yoshimo could see was that the stone tile floor had become a metal mesh platform.

Imoen wrinkled her nose. "I smell something," she gagged. "It smells like a sewer."

"There, you see?" Jaheira said. "You are learning."

Renai grinned. "Yeah. Bad smells lead out." She kicked lightly at Jaheira's heels, then turned her lovely smile on Yoshimo.

But the moment her eyes lighted upon him, her cheer faded into something akin to fear. "What-" was all he managed to say before the girl threw herself at him, striking him hard in the side with her shoulder to send him to the floor with the wind knocked out of his lungs. The sounds of ripping cloth, bone on flesh and the scrape of metal against leather as Jaheira drew her scimitar assailed his ears.

Above him he saw Renai, her hands in loose fists before her in a defensive pose. Out of the shadows melted a man in black leathers holding a short sword. Another voice, gruff and deadly, shouted, "I knew he had to have reinforcements down here! He couldn't have been this powerful alone!" Gasping for breath, Yoshimo rolled over and saw Garit, one of Bloodscalp's underlings, and two other assassins he did not know. "I'll put an end to this right now! We'll see the end of Irenicus and your little guild war once and for all!"

"Wait!" Yoshimo wheezed out just as Jaheira cried, "We are not allied with Irenicus! Hold your attack so that we may talk! We would fight him with you!"

"I'll not believe you," Garit sneered. "You'll die here as your master dies above!"

"No!" Imoen wailed, her voice echoing off the room's metal walls. "I don't want to fight anyone. I just want out! Please, just let us by!"

"You made your choices, now die with them!" Garit held his short sword before him and stepped forward to clash blades with Jaheira. And the battle began before Yoshimo could roll to his feet and quell it with words of assurance for both sides. He may not have held the full trust of the women, and he was not a member of Athkatla's Shadow Thieves, but he was known by both and could have explained the situation if he had enough time.

But that was something he did not have. Yoshimo managed to free his katana in time to trade cuts with a thief hardly old enough to begin shaving daily. By the time he had regretfully sent the boy into the next world, the women had dispatched their foes as well. For a moment they said nothing, only stared at the bodies of the slain thieves at their feet. Renai nudged the one she had fought with the toe of her boot. "Friends of yours?" she asked.

Yoshimo looked at Garit and shook his head. "Not friends."

"What did he mean by guild war?" Jaheira asked icily. Her scimitar, Yoshimo noticed, was still in her hand. "And what does that have to do with our captor?"

"I do not know," Yoshimo answered, then took a step away from Jaheira as she brought her scimitar up. But at the last second, the path of the blade swerved from his throat, and she sheathed it with a loud rattle. He noticed Renai was standing beside him glaring at the druid. "In truth," he said, "I am uncertain. I have heard rumors of a rival guild seeking to move into the Shadow Thieves' territory in recent months." Valen's guild, he recalled. The thought of Valen's name made his insides hurt, but not as much as the geas. Strange how it was banishing what little was left of his desire for her. "How that links to our captor is ... still a mystery."

Jaheira sniffed. "We shall see." She jerked her head toward a set of stairs at the end of the platform and started toward them.

As Renai passed him to follow Jaheira, Yoshimo caught her arm. "You saved me from the assassin's blade," he said, nodding at the body of the thief in the shadows.

Renai shrugged, but a pleased look lit her face. "I can see in the dark better than a human. That's all. But you should be more careful." She flicked a spot of dust from his collar. "I won't be around to save your life all the time, you know."

"Indeed. I owe you then a debt, then."

"So save my life sometime and we'll be even." She grinned, then descended the staircase by sitting on the handrail and sliding down it. He heard a splash and her squeal at the bottom, then Jaheira cursing at her and Imoen's giggles. Shaking his head, Yoshimo slowly walked down the stairs. I was right. She does have a good heart. Perhaps that is what the mage seeks for one of his vile experiments? The possibilities were getting bleaker, and Yoshimo suddenly found himself hoping that the mage would not come to claim his bounty for a long time.

The stairs indeed took them into a sewer filled with warm water and muck. Floating in the water were bodies of more thieves. Yoshimo tried not to look too closely at them as they waded past for fear of recognizing any other occasional colleagues.

"Hey!" A note of disbelief rang through Imoen voice as she pointed to something ahead. "I see light! Jaheira, Renai, look! Do you see it?" A door, poorly built from slats of wood, stood at the end of the sewer, and through the large gaps between the boards shone white bars of bright sunlight.

Renai let out a raucous whoop and kicked into a run, splashing toward the door with Imoen close at her heels. Jaheira frowned and shook her head, but Yoshimo saw a glint of relief in her eyes. "They are young," he said.

"They will not become old if they continue to act so," she replied. "When we are safely tucked in an inn far away from this place, then I shall celebrate." Jaheira quickened her step into something that was faster than a walk but not quite a trot to catch up with the girls before they reached the door.

Yoshimo began to hurry his own pace, but noises from beyond the door slowed him. Shouts. Explosions. The noise of magical casting. Something was happening outside the door.

"Wait!" he called to the women, but they did not hear him. "Wait!" Yoshimo roared, but it was too late. Lost in their excitement, the women ploughed through the door and fell into the light.

Outside, all hell was breaking loose.

As Yoshimo emerged from the doorway, a scream of rage pierced the air, its crescendo becoming an explosion that knocked him from his feet and his senses from his head. Everything around him became a blur of gray dust and screams, blood and fear, and the hum of deadly magic. He did not know how long he lay there, trying to find his way back into clear consciousness. Only after flashes of blinding light seared his eyes through the thin skin of his eyelids did he manage to open them to behold the carnage around him.

The passage to the mage's lair was gone, buried under a mass of stone and debris. Around him stood the women, with what looked like chunks of flesh littering the ground at their feet. Jaheira's scimitar hung loosely from her iron grip as she stared ahead, and Imoen, her normally sylphlike voice now a banshee's wail, was screaming arcane words as she threw spell after spell at a target he could not see. Groaning, Yoshimo somehow climbed to his feet despite the shaking of the ground from the magical explosions surrounding them.

Standing on a pile of rock debris below them was the mad mage, mowing down men in gray, hooded robes with almost bored ease, throwing complex spells of death like a child throwing bread to ducks in a pond. Grey robes. Yoshimo shook his head to clear it. Cowled Ones?
He looked around him and realized he was standing in Waukeen's Promenade, the commerce district of Athkatla. We are in Athkatla still. Good. As magical missiles flew from Imoen's hands to strike the mage again and again, a realization slowly dawned within Yoshimo's addled brain. We are in Athkatla. Che! "Imoen!" he shouted, "Stop!" But again she did not hear, and his cries were lost under the cacophony of battle.

As Yoshimo tried to find cover from the magic being heedlessly slung about, he caught sight of Renai. She stood at the lip of the debris as if frozen, her dark eyes wide and the coppery skin of her face now dead white as she stared at the mage.

"Enough!" the mage shouted, ceasing his casting. His head was hunkered between his shoulders like a bulldog trying to protect its neck. "I haven't the time for this!"

One of the Cowled Ones thumped his staff against the ground and said in a shaking but imperious voice, "You will cease your spellcasting and come with us!"

The mage's lip curled in a hideous expression of disgust. "You bore me, mageling," he sneered, then slowly turned his gaze to Imoen. "You may take me, but you will take the girl as well."

Imoen's blue eyes widened in shock. "What?" she cried. "I didn't do anything!"

The Cowled One nearest her snatched her arm before she could move. "You have been involved in illegal use of magic. You will come with us."

"No!" Jaheira cried, shaking her head hard to rouse herself from the spectacle. She brandished her scimitar at the wizard holding Imoen's hand. "Release her! You have no right! You ca-" The wizard muttered something at her and suddenly Jaheira's words stopped, and she stood stock still in midstep, captured by a holding spell.

"No! No!" Imoen wailed. "I didn't do anything wrong!" Imoen struggled against the man's grip, then flung her hand beseechingly at Renai. "Help me! Renai, don't let them take me! Renai!!"

Renai turned her head, but her eyes stayed locked on the mage. The second time Imoen screamed her name, Renai blinked hard and looked at the girl. "Imie?" she whispered. As a sparkling streak of white light circled the mage and Imoen, the paleness left Renai's cheek. "Imoen!" she cried and broke into a run toward them. Imoen and the mage faded into nothing as Renai leaped at them and fell through them as they disappeared. "Imoen!" she screamed, rolling over and lunging again at the space where the girl had disappeared. "No!" she wailed. "No!! Not her too!" She stood and looked frantically about her at the debris left by the mages' battle and saw that Irenicus and the other mages were gone as well.

"What happened!" she screamed, perhaps at Yoshimo or perhaps the gods. "What happened!"

"We are in Athkatla, meian," Yoshimo said. She turned her dark eyes on him, and suddenly Yoshimo was terrified. Around her he sensed a darkness that threatened to overtake him. And something with very sharp teeth and a thirst for blood was waiting in that darkness to slay him where he stood, and geas or not, Yoshimo wanted to flee. But he managed to stammer out, "It is ... ah ... illegal to practice magic here. In Athkatla. That's why they've taken Imoen."

Renai shook her head. "Where did they take Imoen?" she growled.

"I ... I do not know. It is not known." Yoshimo's back struck a wall, and he realized he was backing away from her.

Jaheira grunted and fell forward as the holding spell wore off, catching herself before she tumbled to the ground. She, too, absorbed her surroundings, then came to Renai and took her arm. "Come, we haven't much time. It will not do for us to be found here."

Renai shook off her hand. "Don't touch me! I'm not going anywhere without Imoen!"

"She is not here. Have you completely lost your mind, or will you listen to reason?" Jaheira pursed her lips and fixed Renai with a firm stare. "We are not safe here. Come. We must find sanctuary."

Renai looked back at the ruined entrance to the mage's lair, then at the spot where Imoen had stood. With a shaking hand, she rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand and whispered. "I don't know what to do."

"Our goal has not changed. We must seek allies to deal with the Shattered One. We still have much to avenge. And in that quest, we shall find Imoen again. I swear this." Jaheira's voice and face hardened. "We are not finished yet."

"If I may," Yoshimo said hesitantly. The dark aura around Renai had not quite dissipated, but when she turned her eyes on him, in them again he saw the woman he had met in the dungeons below. "We are not far from the Copper Coronet. I keep rooms there that we may use, and it is a place where adventurers often gather. We would do well to go there."

"I have heard of that place." Jaheira wrinkled her nose. "It is a dive in the middle of the slums. But you are correct. Come, child. Let us go. We shall make plans as we travel."

Renai said nothing as she passed Yoshimo and followed Jaheira off the pile of debris and into the Promenade. Yoshimo shuffled slowly behind them, trying to take in what had just happened. I have never been cowed by a woman's anger, but this - she was more an avatar of death than a woman, he thought, keeping his eyes on her dark head. Daughter of Darkness and Light. I do not understand what is happening, but at least I am starting to understand her name.