Shadows of Amn

Chapter Twenty-Four

Quiet.

Not silence, there were sounds: the sound of running feet, burning wood, crying children, voices calling out, asking in Elvish if everyone is all right, if anyone has seen my husband, if anyone knows what happened to my family…

Abdel heard all of it, but as one muffled, wavelike hum. He could feel blood trickling out of his ears. His eyes hurt, and so did his head. He felt wet and uncomfortable. The nondescript chain mail tunic and trousers he'd accepted from Bodhi were drenched in gore that smelled sharply of iron and power.

He could see, but his vision was blurred, almost as numb in its own way as his shoulder and side. Jaheira leaned over him, and though he could see her lips form his name, the sound of her voice was buried under the omnipresent dull roar. Elhan was there too, then both of them were dragging him across the uneven, mossy, gore-soaked ground. They got him to the side of one of the trees, and Abdel groaned at the pain that burned through his upper body when they propped him as gently as they could against the rough, but somehow comforting, bark of the ancient tree.

"I killed her," he said, his voice echoing in his own head in dissonant contrast to the muffled sounds of the aftermath around him. "I killed her…. I killed her…. I killed …"

The ground trembled, and a hiss burst out from the morass of muffled sounds. Abdel tried to look at the source of the sound, though he knew it couldn't be the Ravager. His eyes closed and wouldn't open.

"I killed her…." he said again.

"It's the Ravager," Elhan said.

Abdel was surprised at the sound of the elf's voice. The dull hum was fading into a piercing ring, but he was beginning to hear voices over that ring.

"It's still twitching," Elhan added.

Abdel wanted to smile, but his face wouldn't respond.

"Abdel's wounds are already healing," Jaheira said, ignoring the Ravager's death spasms. "It's impossible. He's stopped bleeding, but I can see straight through the hole in his shoulder."

Abdel wanted to say "I killed her," again, but all he could do was let his jaw drop open limply.

"I've never seen anything like that," Elhan admitted. "He was like a madman. Now this regeneration … it's not… human."

Jaheira shook her head, her face slack with what looked to Abdel like awe. "He's like an avatar now. He's like the Ravager—but stronger. He isn't human. I guess he never was. . not completely. I should have known he wouldn't be able to deny what he was forever."

Jaheira was touching him. Her hands felt warm, soft, and reassuring against his skin. The numbness was giving way to that sensation, and a burning, nettling itch. Jaheira whispered through a spell, and Abdel could feel the grace of the Forest Queen rush through him, mingling with the blood of a god Mielikki would never have shown mercy to.

Abdel managed to open his eyes, and he smiled at her. The smile Jaheira returned was relieved but tinged with sadness.

"You had to, Abdel," she told him softly. "She was gone before—"

The druid was interrupted by an ear-splitting crack that was answered by the startled shouts of a dozen elves.

"It's cracking!" Elhan called. He fell backward on his rump, sitting next to Abdel, who could only let his head limply hang in the direction of the fallen monster.

A clawed hand—not as big as the Ravager's monstrous claws—burst out of a widening crack in the creature's otherwise still chest.

"Mielikki help us," Jaheira breathed. "It's another one."

The thing that pulled itself out of the Ravager's corpse, like a chick emerging from its egg, was no taller than Abdel. It was shaped, vaguely, like a man, but its body was covered in row after row of bladelike spikes. Its head was a twisted mockery of a bug's—a backhanded slap at the honor of the insect world. It had only two long, sinewy arms that ended in slightly more humanlike hands. Below the thing's arms were two smaller, almost vestigial limbs with a single elbowlike joint. Those smaller limbs ended in bony blades like swords.

Abdel drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and the thing made eye contact with him. Abdel could feel the waves of paralyzing panic practically inundating him from both Elhan on his left and Jaheira on his right.

The creature's eyes flashed violet light at Abdel, and something about that look made the injured sellsword say, "Imoen."

The thing nodded. It made a sound that all who heard it wished to whatever gods they worshiped wasn't a laugh, and crawled completely out of the ooze-filled chest cavity of the dead Ravager. The thing stood on backward-bending legs and crouched.

Abdel felt for the Kozakuran's sword, but found only a blast of pain from his shredded shoulder. The creature seemed to nod at Abdel again, then it leaped into the air, flinging itself straight up into the heavens like a crossbow bolt. In less than a second it had faded to a point, then nothing against the blazing blue sky.

"Oh, no," Jaheira sighed.

"I'll live," the sellsword managed to croak. The effort sent pain raging up and down his dry throat.

Jaheira put a warm, gentle finger to his lips and said, "Don't. You're healing, thanks to that blood of yours, but you need time."

Abdel forced a smile, knowing full well that time was something they didn't have in abundance.

Elhan couldn't keep his eyes off the tattered remains of the Ravager, even to look at the smoking ruin the proud tree-city of Suldanessellar had been reduced to.

"Where's Ellesime?" Jaheira asked finally.

Elhan spun on her, his eyes wild. He calmed himself quickly, taking a deep breath, then said, "The queen is safe. Ellesime is in Myth Rhynn."

Abdel and Jaheira exchanged a long, pained, exhausted look, and the sellsword began the painful process of trying to stand up.

Ellesime screamed again, and the guards near her cringed at the sound of pure, desperate fear in their queen's shriek.

The link she'd shared with Irenicus for centuries uncounted had never been one of words or even tangible thoughts. The two were simply aware of each other. Now, for Ellesime to have said that something had changed would be an incredible understatement. The man at the other end of this joining of spirits was at once in mortal agony and riding a cresting wave of self-satisfied triumph. The horror of what Irenicus had become and the feel of his soul unraveling alongside hers was what was making Ellesime scream.

For their parts, the elves who had accompanied her to Myth Rhynn couldn't possibly have imagined what she was going through. The guards were busily fortifying the crumbling structure of what one of the mages had described as a wing of Myth Rhynn's ancient library. The soldiers knew only that the walls were full of holes and there was no ceiling.

They'd heard only pieces, gleaned from magical mind-to-mind communication with loved ones left behind in Suldanessellar, that the creature was dead, but that a new creature was coming. This one had taken to the air, and the guards now looked at the sky above their ring of ancient walls with dread and the simple knowledge that they couldn't keep the thing out, so they'd have to die fighting it.

All of the elves were uncomfortable within the normally forbidden confines of the ruined mythal city, but doubly so the handful of mages they'd brought with them. The elf wizards were busily studying long, time-weathered scrolls and gathering little piles of odds and ends where they'd be in easy reach.

Abdel, Jaheira, and Elhan's sudden appearance in the middle of the crumbling structure made more than one of the elves go suddenly to his guard. One wizard very nearly got a spell off before dismissing it with an impatient grumble, "One less against the beast."

Elhan, dizzy from the teleport, stumbled to Ellesime's side and spoke to her briefly in Elvish.

"I can feel him falling apart," the queen said weakly. "He can't control it."

Abdel, his shoulder now a mass of red, tender skin and his side almost completely healed, squeezed the grip of the enchanted sword. He'd have to choose between this woman, this elf queen who was a vision of such beauty Abdel had never thought possible, and the life of the little girl he remembered playing with in Winthrop's wine cellar.

"How do we k—stop it?" Abdel asked the queen. "That thing was once.. was once a young, impetuous girl, who deserved none of this."

Ellesime nodded, then winced in unseen pain. "I met him here," she said, her voice weak. "It was in this library. I wanted him to come for me here, with this avatar of his. If he saw me here, again, all this time later, maybe … maybe … At least it's far enough away from the Tree of Life."

"There is another life at stake, your majesty," Jaheira prompted, running as much as all the others on adrenaline, impatience, and sheer terror.

"Your sister," Ellesime said, addressing Abdel directly for the first time, "is not like you."

Abdel drew in a breath and took a step forward that made the elf warriors move to intercept him. He backed away just enough to let them know that if he wanted to get past them, they wouldn't be able to stop him.

"She's enough like me," Abdel hissed, "so that your old lover could turn her into that… that…"

"It would have been an avatar," Ellesime said, "if Bhaal were alive. Instead, it's just. . close enough. It can kill me, this new one, the Slayer. Your sister's blood was lying dormant, where yours was given a chance to show itself. What occupation did your foster father allow you to pursue? Sellsword? Mercenary?"

Abdel nodded.

"And Imoen's?" the queen asked.

"Her foster father was Winthrop," Abdel said, "an innkeeper. Not quite as serious a man as Gorion. Imoen was a happy, precocious girl."

"And there was nothing to draw the Bhaal out of her," Jaheira, understanding, added.

"What could all this matter now?" Abdel asked, his brow furrowing in anger. "I have to kill her. You've brought us all here, and now there's only one way to stop all this. To keep this Slayer of Irenicus's from killing you—from killing us all—I have to kill Imoen."

"No," Ellesime said, "there is a chance…."