Shadows of Amn

Chapter Thirteen

The creatures intended to eat them alive, Abdel knew that much for sure. What he didn't know was what exactly they were or how he was going to kill them.

"What are these things?" Imoen shrieked. "And how are we going to kill them?"

The girl nimbly climbed to the top of a smooth stalagmite, deftly avoiding the snapping jaws of the bizarre beast that was chasing her.

Abdel was only paying marginal attention to Imoen's predicament. He was in one of his own. One of the creatures lunged at him, and Abdel dodged to the left, bringing his hand up fast and catching the monster under its snapping bottom jaw and pushing it away before it could bite his face off.

The monsters had come upon them during one of their short, infrequent rest stops as they continued to follow the winding, seemingly endless tunnel deep underground. The things looked like snakes or thick-bodied worms, but to all appearances they were made of stone. Their odd skin was hard—Abdel's broadsword barely chipped at them the few times he'd managed a successful strike—and had the color and texture of the surrounding rock. Though they moved in a snakelike undulation, they appeared to get most of their mobility from two vaguely humanlike arms that sprouted from their serpentine bodies just past their nublike heads. Cold black eyes—two of them—gleamed in the light of Imoen's makeshift torch. Below the eyes was a proportionately huge mouth lined with triangular teeth. Abdel could tell by the way the light glinted off those fangs that they were razor sharp.

Jaheira's voice echoed loudly through the cavern. Abdel understood only the occasional word. He glanced at her as he spun around to toss the rockworm away from him, and he could see her standing still, eyes closed, chanting what must have been some prayer to her goddess. Abdel turned away from her just in time to see the creature snap at his heels. He jumped up fast enough to avoid it but came down on the thing's rounded form. His foot slipped off, and he splayed his arms out to break his fall. The monster twitched away as Abdel hit the stone floor. His ears rang, and he wasn't sure if Jaheira had stopped praying or he'd gone deaf.

He looked up, and Jaheira had opened her eyes. Another of the monsters snapped at her, and she twitched away. There was something about the movement that looked wrong to Abdel. Jaheira moved just a little faster than he'd known her capable of in the past, and the monster seemed to move more slowly than his companions. Abdel didn't have time to mull over this strange feeling. His own monstrous opponent was coming at him again.

Abdel rolled to the right, and the thing shot past him as if it were suddenly struck blind. Abdel smiled at the thing's show of weakness and hit it hard on the top of its head with the pommel of his sword. The thing let out a shrill whistle that Abdel instinctively knew was a sign of pain. He took advantage of this opportunity and jumped onto its back. The thing was as long as Abdel was tall, and when the sellsword wrapped a strong arm around it, he could feel no warmth. The thing was actually made of living stone.

There was a pained, all-too-human scream from behind him that sent a chill down Abdel's spine. One of his companions had fallen. The scream had an edge of panic in it that Abdel recognized all too well. Whoever it was was sure she was dead.

"Imoen!" Jaheira screamed, then grunted when the worm she was still just trying to avoid lunged at her again and almost found its mark.

Abdel dragged the blade of his broadsword across the rockworm's eyes and was happy to see them burst open and pour out a dark gray, watery putrescence. A sharp, tangy smell pervaded the tunnel, and the thing convulsed hard once in Abdel's grip. He let it buck him off and made use of the momentum to get some distance from the thing. He hit a warm, wet spot on the floor and slid a bit farther than he wanted, but he recovered in time to see the thing blindly lunge at him. Abdel fed the creature the length of his blade and was satisfied when the shower of charcoal blood was followed by the rockworm's final death spasm.

"Abdel!" Jaheira called sharply. "Mine!"

The sellsword burst to his feet, yanking the sword out of the dead creature's gullet and turning in the direction of Jaheira's voice. She was backing away, nimbly dodging the rockworm's leaden strikes. Abdel rushed it and slashed with a backhand motion in an effort to take its head off. The worm twisted, anticipating the attack, but didn't move fast enough to avoid it. The prayer Jaheira had offered up was the obvious source of this welcome advantage.

Abdel's sword lodged into the rocky flesh of the creature's bottom jaw. It too shrieked in pain, and Abdel grunted, smiling, as he sawed into the thick hide. The rockworm's lower jaw came off with a pop and a torrent of gray fluid.

It tossed its head back and to the side, and Abdel, overextended for the cut, couldn't get out of the way in time. The thing's bleeding head smashed into Abdel's broad chest and knocked him back hard.

Abdel, dazed, looked up and saw nothing but a dim yellow haze. Something seemed to pop in his chest and a wave of pain shook his body.

"Imoen," Jaheira said quietly, her voice quavering with concern.

Abdel stood, his vision starting to come back, and stepped over the twitching, jawless rockworm as it finished dying. He ran and stumbled at the same time to Jaheira's side, coming around a stalagmite. He could hear more of the rockworms skittering in the darkness. Next to the base of the stone column, Imoen was lying, gasping for breath like a drowning woman. Jaheira kneeled over her and began praying. She held the tiny rock she always kept close to her in one hand, and her other hand slid deftly across the wound, smearing bubbling crimson blood over Imoen's shredded chest.

"By the black gods," Abdel muttered, "she's been.. half.. eaten."

Imoen's eyes stared up at the darkness above them in mute, twitching agony. Jaheira's voice lifted in a songlike prayer, and Abdel thought he could see a thin, blue-gray glow around the fingers of the hand she now pressed hard into the wound. Another wave of pain made him stagger backward. Jaheira didn't look up at him. He stepped back, then fell back and rolled away from the women. In the darkness no more than a few paces from him, rockworms began to gather.

Jaheira pulled her hand up suddenly with a shouted last word and her prayer was over, Imoen pulled in one rattling, deep breath and made to sit up. Jaheira, her hand covered in the girl's blood, gently pushed her back down.

"You'll need to rest," Jaheira told her.

Imoen rested her head on a smooth stone and smiled. Jaheira returned her smile, then looked at Abdel and said, "Well have to stay here for at least a few hours," she said, "but by Mielikki's never-ending grace, she'll… Abdel?"

She spun, realizing in a wave of nauseous dread that she'd lost sight of him in the darkness.

"Abdel?" she called again.

She was answered by an inhuman roar that echoed deafeningly in the confines of the cavern and made the half-elf throw her hands up to her gently pointed ears to keep them from bursting.

"Abdel!" Jaheira screamed, her voice drowned out not only by the ringing in her ears but by the clatter of rockworms—all around her—moving in fast for the kill.

She saw Imoen mouth, "It's happening again."

Everything that was the essence of Abdel Adrian disappeared into a roiling vortex of rage, bloodlust, and wild, kill-frenzied mania. His body contorted—he could feel that, and it hurt. He was changing again. He didn't know exactly what was happening to him, how it was happening to him, or why it was happening to him. He could feel it and experience it only for the first few moments, then any greater consciousness was replaced by the pure murderous impulses of the Bhaalspawned demon he had become.

He could see the rockworms clearly now when all there had been before was darkness. His perspective had shifted decidedly upward, though he didn't have the capacity to understand why. He grabbed for one of the creatures, all thoughts of something as puny and ineffectual as a broadsword forgotten, and held it easily in one huge, firm grip. When he squeezed he could feel the rocklike skin puncture, and the thing's blood bathed him. He roared in idiot pleasure and turned his attention to another rockworm, then another.

He tore through their stony bodies as if they were made of tissue paper. When some of them turned to flee in the face of prey that had turned predator, the Abdel-thing moved quickly behind them. He grabbed one by the tip of its tail and spun it into the others. The rock-worms started biting at him, but their teeth just tickled around the edges of what used to be his thighs but were now closer to his ankles.

He killed them for the pure joy of it and let not one single rockworm escape alive.

When the last one lay twitching at his transformed feet, pouring its charcoal blood onto the cold floor of the cavern, Abdel screamed again.

This time, his voice sounded more like his own, real, human voice, and his body convulsed through a single body-tightening cramp that made his vision blur and flash yellow again. He fell to the floor of the cavern, and his eyes cleared enough to see his hand, and it was starting to look human again. He tried to call out for Jaheira, but his throat was tightening, changing back to something with human vocal chords. He sputtered a ragged cough.

"Abdel!" he heard Jaheira call, her voice echoing from quite a distance.

He looked up, and with tears streaming down his face, he saw the dull blotch of Imoen's torchlight. It took him several minutes to stand on shaking, cramping legs, but he eventually made his way back to the light.

Worms made of rock, giant beetles, and the things that looked like stalactites that occasionally tried to drop on them from the ceiling of the tunnel aside, Abdel couldn't imagine how any thinking being was able to live in the Underdark. There was no passage of time, save for the rhythmic drips of water or the occasional fall of pebbles. Abdel had no idea how long they'd been down there. They'd made torches from the hard stalks of giant mushrooms and scraps from their own dwindling clothes. They would stop to rest and occasionally sleep. As soon as one of them awakened, he or she would rouse the others, and they'd start moving again. It was a blind existence, and the toll it took on all of them was intense.

The nature-worshiping Jaheira just seemed tired all the time. She prayed to Mielikki, and her prayers were answered, though it was an unlikely place to feel the touch of the Lady of the Forest. Still, Jaheira was as moody and quiet as Abdel, and though they walked side by side for mile after endless mile, they hardly spoke.

Imoen was as uncomfortable underground as any surface dweller. Even before she was nearly killed by the rockworm, she was always looking over her shoulder, sensitive to every random noise or shift in the cool subterranean breeze.

They rested again, and Imoen, who had been able to walk only with the help of either Abdel or Jaheira, had fallen into a deep sleep. Jaheira gathered mushrooms. Only she had some idea which might be edible and which deadly poison. Abdel scoured the area for signs of the rockworms or any other unpleasant denizens of the Underdark. He saw a few pinpoint reflections in the darkness. Abdel took them to be the eyes of the ever-present rats that always kept out of the pool of torchlight. He took some odd comfort from the presence of the furry scavengers. Rats he knew what to do with.

When he came back to the big stalagmite Jaheira had told them not to move Imoen away from, he saw that the half-elf had collected a good sampling of the native fungus. Abdel grimaced at the collection of gray mushrooms and thought for the hundredth time about trying to kill one of the big rats. Jaheira held a mushroom out to him with a weary but understanding smile, and he waved it off.

"I can't live on those damned things much longer," he told her.

She shrugged, took a bite of the mushroom, and chewed it with an uninterested expression.

"That necromancer—or whatever he is—did something to me," Abdel said. "I'd be happy to let him go wherever he's going in peace—at least if it meant I could climb out of this hole once and for all—but he—"

"He has plans for you," Jaheira told him with obvious certainty. "He must have plans for you both. If he's going to attack Suldanessellar for some reason, maybe he intends to use you as a kind of weapon."

"But you said he couldn't control us, me and Imoen," Abdel said, nodding at the sleeping girl. "What does he mean to do … get me to go there, then get me angry? Let me ravage the place in the form of some … whatever it is?"

Jaheira shrugged, her face a dark mask of fear. "That could be enough." She shuddered visibly and added, "You couldn't believe what..»

Abdel forced a smile and said, "My father's legacy again, I guess."

Jaheira nodded.

Abdel sighed and took a reluctant bite from a mushroom. "Why Imoen?" he asked. "And how? If this. . thing, this force or whatever it is, is in me already, I guess I have to understand and believe that, knowing what I know about myself, but Imoen?"

"You may have to accept that Imoen shares that blood with you, Abdel," Jaheira said quietly.

Abdel sighed. It was an easy enough connection. If the monks of Candlekeep had brought one of the offspring of Bhaal into their midst to watch over him, why not another? Why not a daughter? Winthrop was no more Imoen's father than Gorion was Abdel's.

"You never told me how you found us," Jaheira said. "How did you know to come to that madhouse?"

"It was Bodhi. ." Abdel blushed and turned away. He hadn't considered. . but that had just been a dream, hadn't it? He hadn't really touched Bodhi that way, been touched that way by …

Jaheira looked as if she was going to say something, but Abdel looked at her in such a way that made her keep quiet. Jaheira could see that Abdel was thinking deeply about something. He could see her recognize this, and her face changed, softened somehow even, as the corners of her mouth drew down.

"Vampires have certain powers, Abdel," she said. He shook his head in answer, but she continued, "You weren't necessarily—"

"Stop," he said, too loudly. "Please."

"We should take advantage of Imoen's need for rest," she said, not looking at him, "and rest ourselves."

Abdel nodded, but neither he nor Jaheira moved for along time.