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"It makes me so happy that I have found friends such as you to make my acclimation to the surface a little easier." The woman's eyes were unnaturally wide and shining, a flush gathered on her dusky cheek. Elspeth felt a pang of guilt that she sought to brush away like a stray spiderweb from the Candlekeep stables.
"We can be friends. Why can't we be friends?" Imoen asked, with a younger sister's plaintive longing for a better world that had never truly existed.
"We should string her up as the man wanted," said the harsh voice of a man who was unaccustomed to speaking. Or perhaps his rasp had more to do with the ropy scars upon his throat and other parts of his body, inflicted in these very woods. Kivan didn't talk much about his past, but his quest to find and kill all the bandits in Peldvale was for personal revenge. "You see what she is."
"Quiet, male," Shar-Teel said. She, with a grudge against men in general and Flaming Fists in particular, had caused a bloodbath against the officer of the law. Elspeth needed her sword arm too much to reprimand her for her actions.
Elspeth of Candlekeep hummed a high note, focusing on the spun thread of the link between herself and this dark elf. She should not be able to do this at all, since her studies in Candlekeep had led her nowhere near this point, but following the death of Mulahey a dream led her on a strange path. Since waking, her enchantment skills attained a power she'd never had before. And since it was a power she must use if she wished to survive, she'd left any scruples about using it far behind.
She'd trusted one too many companions on this journey, after all.
"What is your name?" Elspeth asked.
"I am - I was - Viconia DeVir of Menzoberranzan." The drow drew herself up proudly. Through the enchanter's link, Elspeth felt her loss and painful yearning.
"'Tis a noble name amongst her people, or so I have read," the wizard Dynaheir stated.
"None of the dark ones are noble," Kivan rasped.
"Why did you leave to the surface?" Elspeth asked.
The woman's face spasmed. She was reluctant to confide something so personal. But Elspeth's charm yet held sway, though the girl from Candlekeep knew that her strange power would not bind forever.
"I was foolish. There was a baby. Ka'lith zhah natha ulna. For once in my lengthy life I faltered to commit an act of slaughter. Lloth cast me out for my crime. In the darkness the loss I faced brought me to Shar's holy presence. She guided me to your surface world, after suitable wanderings through subterranean passages while I came to understand more of her faith. Then Shar allowed me to fall into this endless mirror of sun and sky."
"Ask her why the Flaming Fist pursued her," Kivan said. It was a good suggestion. Elspeth followed it.
"I was a beggar, living at the edge of a settlement and wearing this cloak to shield myself. Sometimes I was given or stole food. A family were murdered within the village. I did not do it, I scented violence and blood and came upon their bodies and fled. It was said Umberlee the sea goddess became restless so perhaps it was a sacrifice to her. I know not, my friend." Viconia smiled at Elspeth as if she had won her full heart. For the moment, from the enchanter's false arts, she had done exactly that.
"Innocent of the accused crime, despite the darkness of her visage," Dynaheir of Rashemen proclaimed. While she herself had dark skin, the drow jet black was as unlike the warm flush of a human complexion as an ice floe from a lump of sugar. "Yet by her own account she slaughtered countless many in her past."
"She will seek to murder us in the night as the Red Wizard," Kivan said. Elspeth felt Dynaheir's terrible grief for Minsc and the memory of her own failure. She trusted the wrong companion, and he decided to attack the wychlaran and her bodyguard in the night. They drove him into a desperate teleport away to his fellows, but by then Minsc was dead.
"Friend, I am a healer," Viconia offered. "Allow me to assist you." Elspeth felt the eyes on her, the emotional whirl back and forth. This fugitive they'd found, worshipping a dark goddess, offered fealty. Despite everything, the group looked to her to decide - the formidable Shar-Teel, the calm wychlaran Dynaheir, vengeance-seeking Kivan, and Imoen, the girl she thought of as a younger sister to protect. Elspeth of Candlekeep was a spindly human, barely twenty, orphaned for two-and-twenty days. She had no right to decide on their behalf.
People are trying to murder me for reasons I know not. I must use the tools that come to my hand.
"She joins us," Elspeth said. "Her skills will help us hunt bandits, or else she'll lose our protection."
Lying on a slaughterer's table, looking into the blue eyes of a strange wizard, Elspeth screamed as her memories were ripped out from her. Headless servants pulled her loose, later, and returned her to a cage. There was a dark-skinned elf there whom she did not know, and a corpse lying cruelly still in another cage nearby. She thought he had pointed ears.
The elf placed cool hands on Elspeth's forehead. The touch did nothing to change the white blankness of her broken mind. She murmured words Elspeth didn't understand.
"It is sad that Kivan and I never understood each other," Viconia said. "Jallil. After everything, you fail me now. But we remain in the hands of the Lady of Loss."
Shar forbade the restoration of the lost. One could not retrieve what had been, only bear the emptiness before you. This wizard Irenicus had chosen the most efficient manner possible to torture an enchanter, destroying more of the Bhaalspawn's memories with each session. So Viconia kneaded her companion's temples with what slight skill she was able to use in such a place, and whispered to Elspeth of the loss and vengeance that must attend her from now on.
But if I were able to restore what was lost to you, Elspeth of Candlekeep, a part of Viconia whispered, then I would tell a story as long as one of the foolish bard Garrick's songs to his lady Skie.
She would tell of how the enchanter forced her friendship from the beginning, made her believe that Elspeth wished to help her become used to the surface world, forbidden thoughts for both a Sharran and a Lloth-sworn. She would tell of an infiltration of a filthy bandit camp at night, Kivan lighting a ring of fire around it to ensure that none were left alive. She would speak of how she called on Shar's power to break the shackles of the slaves, and let them fight for their freedom and slaughter their captors. She would tell of the hunt for Tazok within an underground mine, of Shar-Teel slaying the wizard Davaeorn by holding his head in a midden overflowing with sewage. She would tell of the great city of Baldur's Gate and an envoy with eyes that glittered like silver, detecting Viconia's true nature and seeking her to betray the group in return for wealth and power. The offer led their enemies to an ambush, so that Viconia's actions at last caused Kivan to tolerate her. She would tell of a library and a tall gaunt girl, all highboned forehead and knobby spine, reading the letter from her foster father that told of a strange fate that lay with the gods themselves. She would tell of the great battle within the Undercity, of slaughter and hard-won victory. Of Shar-Teel Dosan and her father Angelo, and the duel that had ended with twin swords through their bodies.
Or Viconia would speak of other moments, those that would never be worthy to be penned in a tome in some great history.
A sudden pressure poked at her shoulder and Viconia awakened, calling on Shar already to strike dead the foe. But then she saw a girl with a pink nightcap and a finger to her lips, holding a pair of steaming mugs on a tray.
"Ssh, don't wake Els!" Imoen hissed, and indeed Elspeth snored gently behind Viconia. The girl's knobby backbone rose up and down, as it had done rather painfully for Viconia during most of the night. Regrettably the smallness of the tavern had required the adventurers to share beds. "She needs the rest for her spells. But I thought you might like some sneaky hot cocoa ... I sort of stole our hosts' kitchen and supplies!"
"Only because you have already disturbed me," Viconia said. "Do you not realise I have killed men for less than waking me up so?"
She paced quietly behind Imoen to the fire in this pitifully tiny halfling lodging-house. The pink-haired human prattled on the origins of the drink from distant Maztica and halfling culinary experiments and her Uncle Dan's shameless plagiarism of their work at the Candlekeep Inn, though Viconia minded little. She took a sip.
This drink was a mudlike combination of bitterness, grease, and coarse sugar. Utterly repellent to the drow palate in every way. But Imoen asked her for detailed criticisms, offering to attempt to make something more acceptable next time, and somehow by the time morning came Viconia's mug was empty. They never spoke of the matter again.
Viconia's mind drifted to a world of ice, a far-distant island that a wizard's treachery had teleported them into. She had slain a mage with a lucky blow from her sling. In the aftermath of the battle Shar-Teel bent down to search the bodies.
"Here." Viconia found herself with an armful of stinking, blood-soaked furs of some pale surface mammal, bestowed by the warrior woman. "Do you want to freeze your tits off or not?" Shar-Teel asked her.
"There is, of course, a spell that assists to provide a certain standard of cleanliness," pronounced Dynaheir, correctly reading Viconia's reluctant scowl. "Imoen, thou shalt join me; thy interest in the Arcane is praiseworthy and noted - "
"Oh, yes, I'm ready for this," Imoen beamed, while Elspeth muttered that her sister was never this bothered to learn magecraft in Candlekeep. Viconia held the disgusting garment at arm's length and the spell splashed upon it like a breaking wave, forcing splattering soap bubbles to pass through the coat at a high velocity. The bubbles left soap residue on Viconia's face and in her eyes as they crashed over her, sweet-scented and cleansing but exceptionally irritating.
Then came the familiar "Oh no" from Imoen. By the joint efforts of the mages, the furs were not just cleansed but also coloured a horrifying bright pink. They even flashed between different cycling shades, each more dreadful than the next. Viconia was a martyr, she proclaimed, being forced to wear this terrible garment on a terrible quest, even though Elspeth helped her to dye it a dark purple when they reached civilisation once more.
"The difficult way to get purple is through a dye made from crushed up snails from Chessenta which is very expensive, but we can make a substitute with red madder first, then blue woad. Leave it for as long as we can to get a darker colour. Trust me, I was posted to the Candlekeep laundry a lot," Elspeth explained, enthusiastically stirring the pot with the supplies she'd purchased.
It was servants' work. Viconia made sure she had ogre-leather gloves up to her elbows before touching the water with Elspeth. But she supposed it was not so different from Dynaheir's respectable work to brew magical potions, which was a lowly male role in the Underdark but permitted for elite females on the surface. Afterwards the Candlekeep girl's arms were a vivid purple up to the shoulders.
Viconia doffed her fine furs to attend the Baldur's Gate masquerade ball, the night that was supposed to crown Elspeth's half brother Sarevok as Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate. Kivan took on a black domino to wholly conceal himself, Imoen indulging in a shimmering pink-and-gold creation, Dynaheir majestic with an owl's head and velvet cloak, even Shar-Teel following the spirit of the thing while guised as a playing-card sword. Viconia wore a stylised peacock mask. Elspeth alone was bare-faced. Unmasked and dressed only in her shift, she was pale as death, dark circles under her eyes as if she had not slept since the day she read Gorion's letter. Her ash-coloured hair was lank and greasy.
So Viconia took initiative to push Elspeth down into a chair. She held her hands to Elspeth's forehead and let Shar's will grant her calm and vitality. Then she painted cosmetics on her like warpaint, dark eyes and warm lips, powder and needle-fine lines to bring back colour and shape to her. Then a mask Viconia herself chose: a surface leaf of the clover, symbolic of fortune, and a green domino to match. For Elspeth of Candlekeep was one whose coin was always on its edge. From that moment of courage between them came victory.
And I could say, Elspeth of Candlekeep, that Kivan of Shilmista died invoking me to avenge us. He bid me to find Imoen if she yet lives and slay the wizard who did this.
Viconia kneaded the Bhaalspawn's forehead in this place now. Her own memories had leapt from freedom to her present cage in an instant. She bent her head close to Elspeth. Golem guards paced the floor, while Viconia prayed to Shar's comforting darkness.
She whispered in Elspeth's ear. By Shar, there is no such thing as friendship. But I know this. You will break free. You will seek your sister. And you will destroy Irenicus.