Baldur's Gate (8 page)

Abdel took one cautious step back, and the half-orc took five steps back. The look in his porcine eyes was one of mute terror.

The sight of it made Abdel pause and ask, “Who are you?”

“I’m who Tazok sent you to kill!” the half-orc blurted. “You found Mulahey all right!”

The sound of the man’s voice made Abdel really want to kill him. It was shrill and dense at the same time and full of panic. The half-orc glanced up at the hole in the ceiling and let loose a series of yelps and growls that sounded just like the kobolds’ barking speech. The sounds held the unmistakable weight of an order.

There was another sound that came from the half-orc then, a sound that almost made Abdel laugh, but the smell that followed it was not at all funny.

Mulahey glanced around, and Abdel realized the half-orc was waiting for his kobold reinforcements. The sellsword decided not to oblige him by waiting too. He came at the half-orc fast and hard and Mulahey put up a defense. The half-orc was strong, but Abdel was smart. He had the fat man backed up into a rough stone wall soon enough and then just started wearing him down. Mulahey was speaking, but Abdel didn’t hear him. He was killing the half-orc and whatever the smelly, evil thug had to say just didn’t figure into it. Abdel did notice the sound and the smell of Mulahey wetting his roughspun trousers. The wave of nauseous disgust that swelled through Abdel was enough to fuel his sword arm, and the half-orc died bleeding from two dozen wounds.

“Open it!” Jaheira almost shrieked. Her voice was quavering with panic and so many other conflicting emotions that Abdel was almost overwhelmed by the sound.

“I’m not sure…” he started to say, looking around everywhere for something he could use to pry the stout oaken door open with. The thick wood was banded with heavy iron, and Abdel could see Jaheira’s forehead through a tiny barred window, no more than a foot long on a side, cut high into the door. There was an iron lock set into the door, and though Abdel was no locksmith, it looked sturdy enough. Abdel, strong as he was, couldn’t pull the door open. “You’ll never get it open, sir,” a smooth male voice said. Abdel stopped and peered through the window. It was dark in the cell, and he couldn’t see anything but the shadowy outline of Jaheira’s head held close to the door. “Who is that in there with you?” Abdel asked. “An elf,” she said, obviously irritated with the digression, “but don’t worry about that, Abdel, just open the godsforsaken door!”

“I hope he’ll stay to feed us and bring us water,” the elf said dryly. “If he’s killed our jailers and can’t get the door open we’ll die of thirst before we die of hunger.”

“He’ll open it,” Jaheira said, though there was little hint of confidence in her voice. “Abdel, find the key. There’s got to be a key out there somewhere.”

Abdel searched the area but found only a few more doors to some empty cells and a big wooden trunk also bound in iron and shut with a heavy steel lock. The damp floor of the mine was covered in sharp gravel, little mushrooms, and standing water.

“There’s no key,” he said.

“What about Mulahey?” the elf asked.

“Who?”

“The jailer,” Jaheira said, “the half-orc, where is he?”

“I killed that reeking bastard,” Abdel reported. “You won’t believe what he did right in front of—”

“Where’s his body?” Jaheira interrupted. “There must be a key on his body somewhere.”

Abdel thought about it for a painfully long second and said, “I’m not sure I remember which way… I don’t think I could find him.”

“Out of the frying pan,” the elf said, “and into the fire. This is quite a savior you’ve set for us, half-breed.”

“Shut up, you,” Jaheira snapped, her voice growing more and more panicked. “The thief! Where’s Montaron?”

“I don’t know,” Abdel told her as he tried to pull out the bars in the little window. “He didn’t keep up with me.”

“Not a surprise,” she sneered. “What did you find out from Mulahey?”

“What do you mean?” Abdel asked, giving up on trying to pull the bars out. He started to search through his meager possessions for something that might help him open the door.

“When you questioned the half-orc,” Jaheira said impatiently, “what did he tell you?”

“I didn’t question that evil gasbag,” Abdel told her. He was going to say something else but stopped at the sound of metal on metal in his belt pouch.

“You killed Khalid didn’t you,” she said, her voice very much different, huskier, heavier. “Is he dead?”

Abdel didn’t have any idea how to answer. He’d been trying not to think about that. He hadn’t wanted to kill Khalid, it was an accident, but he knew he couldn’t expect Jaheira to understand that. Abdel sighed at the realization that this was the first time he’d had to contend with the wife of someone he’d killed. It was a curious feeling to suddenly realize that some of those faceless opponents might have someone at home who—

“Sounds like you’ve mastered the situation here,” the elf said dryly, interrupting Abdel’s thoughts.

He ignored the other prisoner and held up the ring of keys they’d found on the dead man in the field of flowers. What made him think to even try, he didn’t know. It was just blind desperation meeting blind luck. The third key he tried turned, and there was a loud click, and the door hit him in the face hard enough to cause him to drop the keys and fumble dangerously with his torch.

Jaheira pushed the door open and came out of the cell quickly, her legs stiff and tight. Abdel had seen children run away from spiders like that.

“Montaron and Xzar are gone?” she asked, covering her fear.

“Whoever they are,” the elf said, “they are wise. My name is Xan.”

The elf was just an inch or so shorter than Jaheira and not very solidly built. He had the look of a starving man. His cheeks had gone gaunt, and that only exaggerated the alienness of his big, sharply pointed ears, pronounced even for a full-blooded elf. He didn’t smell very good, was unarmed, and his thin frame was swimming in a filthy brown cotehardie and homespun breeches.

Jaheira had been disarmed and was disheveled. There was a bruise on the side of her neck and on her left forearm, but she seemed in good enough shape.

“Take me back to Khalid,” she said, her voice softer now, less panicked, but still audibly shaking. “Take me to my husband.”

Abdel nodded, wanted to say something, but he thought better of it. He knelt over the trunk and tried four keys before one opened it. Jaheira recognized her possessions, and Abdel stepped aside to let her claim them. “Where were the keys?” Xan asked.

“On a poisoned corpse near a collapsing farmhouse in the middle of a field of wildflowers,” Abdel answered.

The elf huffed and turned away, but there was something in his look…

“What?” Jaheira asked, straightening her sword belt.

“The keys Montaron found on the dead man seem to work here,” Abdel told her.

“Damn it,” she whispered, “Montaron.” Then louder, “Which way?”

Abdel picked one tunnel at random and said, “This one, I think.”

“Where did this comrade of yours fall?” Xan asked.

Abdel and Jaheira tried their best to describe the mine entrance, and Xan nodded as he listened, then gestured to a passage on the other side of the chamber from the one Abdel had guessed.

Jaheira was suspicious but obviously keen on getting out of the mine, so she followed the elf. Abdel, embarrassed and ashamed, followed the woman.

They didn’t encounter a single kobold on their way back out of the mine, but they could occasionally detect a lingering trace of that wet dog smell. It took nearly an hour in torchlit darkness to find Khalid, and when Jaheira first saw the form of her husband, slumped motionless on the cold stone floor of the mine, she sobbed once, hard enough to jingle the sheathed sword and rings that hung from her belt. Abdel turned away, Xan sighed, and there was a fourth sound—a ragged intake of breath—and at first Abdel thought something was wrong with Jaheira.

“Khalid,” the woman said, her voice a contradiction of hope, fear, and surprise, “Khalid?”

She ran to him and fell over him, and Khalid moved. Abdel actually gasped—not something the big sellsword did often—and joined Jaheira at her husband’s side. He felt a twinge of disappointment that the man, however innocent, still lived. Abdel never fought to wound.

The fallen half-elf couldn’t speak, could barely move, though he did manage to flinch away at the sight of Abdel. The sellsword jumped when Jaheira touched his chest to push him away and said, “My darling…”

Abdel thought she was saying that to him at first, then blushed when he realized she was talking to Khalid.

“Live,” she said, “whatever’s come between us, I want you to live.”

“At least,” Khalid managed to say.

“He’s dying,” Xan said, and Abdel wanted to slice off the elf’s tongue.

“No,” the sellsword said. “Give him this.” He held out the silver vial he’d bought from the merchant in Nashkel. When his hand brushed the smaller scabbard at his belt Abdel realized his dagger was missing. His heart skipped a beat and sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Poison?” Jaheira asked, though she regretted saying it right away. “I’m sorry. You cannot help your nature.”

Abdel had no idea what she meant by that, he just pressed the vial into her hand. It was warm and trembled at his touch, and he let go only very reluctantly. He started searching the ground nearby for his dagger.

“I’m trusting the man who sold it to me,” Abdel told her, looking all around, “but there aren’t many choices… damn that Xzar.”

Jaheira nodded and looked down at Khalid who had slipped into unconsciousness. He was breathing but very slowly and very shallowly. She opened his mouth with one gentle finger and gradually poured the contents of the vial—a thick, sweet-smelling liquid—into his mouth. Only seconds later, the Amnian’s eyes opened, and he managed a smile.

“Honey,” he said, “and orange blossom.”

Abdel cursed under his breath, and Xan made a vague, impatient sound. Jaheira turned away, and Abdel noticed a tear on her cheek. Khalid’s eyes closed and he whispered, “I’m sorry… I told you…” before falling into a deep sleep.

His breathing was regular again, and the wound from Abdel’s broadsword wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“Can we move him?” Xan asked Abdel.

The sellsword shrugged and said, “I guess he’ll need to sleep it off, but I can carry him. He’s not bleeding anymore.” Still looking around for his missing weapon he said, “Looks like that crazy wizard stole my dagger… as if I needed another reason to kill him.”

“Let’s go,” Jaheira said. “Let’s go back to Nashkel and get Khalid into a real bed.”

“You’re not planning on going through there, are you?” Xan asked, though he knew full well they were.

Abdel stopped, Khalid slung limply over one shoulder, and asked, “Why not?”

“We came this way,” Jaheira said, only reluctantly stopping herself.

In the early evening gloom the edge of the field of black flowers seemed to glow with a soft gray light. Xan was being very obvious about trying to keep his distance and was already walking slowly along the wider, more often-used path back to Nashkel.

“I’m not sure how you survived that, exactly,” Xan said, “but it’s death to walk through that patch of flowers. Those are black lotus flowers—powerful poison planted here by the Zhentarim.”

Abdel turned on the elf and took a menacing step forward. Xan’s eyes widened, and he continued to back away.

“Zhentarim?” the sellsword asked.

“Montaron,” Jaheira breathed. “How could I have been so blind? Only the Zhentarim could be responsible for such an abomination.”

Abdel looked at her and sighed.

“If your missing friend was a Zhent,” Xan said, “he might have had some kind of—”

“Lucky ale,” Jaheira finished.

Abdel wanted to spit. He wanted to kill the halfling. He wanted to punch somebody in the face, but there was no one to hit.

“I don’t work with Zhents,” he said through clenched teeth, realizing he had done just that for the last tenday and a half.

“They planted those flowers there to block the path to the mine,” Xan explained. “They tried to charge a toll for passing through or around them, but it didn’t take long for the mining bosses to hire some… I believe they called themselves ‘adventurers’… to drive the Zhentarim off. That took care of the tolls, but no one’s been able to get rid of those damnable black flowers.”

“Montaron…” Jaheira whispered.

“I’m going to kill him,” Abdel said, not turning to look at her. “That halfling is going to die, and it will not be a pretty sight.”

Abdel looked at Jaheira when she started to babble what was apparently a string of meaningless syllables. She was holding her hands in front of her face, fingertips touching, palm-to-palm, and her eyes were tightly closed. Abdel thought he recognized one word, a name he’d heard before maybe? Jaheira spread her hands to her sides and opened her eyes.

“We have to get Khalid back to Nashkel,” Jaheira said, motioning Abdel and Xan closer to her, “stay within two paces of me, and the flowers will not harm you.”

“Khalid is breathing well enough,” Abdel said. “It’ll be a long carry, but I’d rather not walk through poison—”

“You serve… ?” Xan asked Jaheira, ignoring Abdel.

“Mielikki,” she answered simply. It was the name Abdel thought he’d recognized in her strange chant. Mielikki was some kind of nature goddess Abdel had had little interest in… until now.

Xan nodded and shrugged, walking quickly to stand beside the half-elf. Jaheira locked eyes with Abdel and looked like she was going to say something.

The look made Abdel cringe, but he turned and followed

Xan saying, “Half a month later and I find out you’re a druid. Anything else you need to tell me?”

He didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one as they passed through the poison flowers, protected by Jaheira’s magic.

Montaron flinched at the first drop of blood that hit his face, and the second, but realized after the third that there’d be more so he managed to steady himself. The girl was surprisingly strong, and though Montaron had resisted her hold on him he’d been unable to break it.