“We’ll not leave him!” Dahlia shouted down at her, but Regis quickly begged her to be silent.
“Hold trust, Dahlia,” he said. “Yvonnel is powerful, more than you can imagine. I have seen her banish great demons with but a few words.”
Even as she thought to protest, Athrogate did as instructed, laying the shrouded body down at the side of the coach, yelping as a wasp flew out and bit at him.
He slapped it flat, then pulled the stubborn thing from his face and looked at it curiously. “I seen a lot and seen a bee, but now I’m not knowin’ what I see,” he remarked.
Yvonnel glanced over at him.
“Body’s a bug, but face is a people,” the dwarf said, holding up the strange creature. He ended with a “Whoa, now,” and stepped fast up toward the front of the carriage when the strange demon-like little girl floated up to hover before Yvonnel, close enough for Athrogate to see that her eyes were perfectly white.
“Hello,” the child said sweetly. She seemed to study Yvonnel more closely, then smiled even wider and said, “Hello!” with much more enthusiasm.
“I know you,” Yvonnel said.
“Oh, you will. Everybody will. One day.”
Yvonnel cast a spell, then another, and the little girl hardly seemed to mind, clearly even more tickled by the beautiful drow woman’s apparent confusion.
“You cannot see the truth only because you cannot believe the truth,” the floating child said.
“How can it be?”
The little girl giggled and shrugged.
“I know you,” Yvonnel insisted. “But it cannot be.”
“But it is.”
“How? Has all the world gone mad?” asked the befuddled drow woman, a powerful priestess and powerful wizard who knew as well as any living mortal the workings of magic and of the planes of existence.
And of things like this little girl—things that should not be given form.
“She did this to him,” Dahlia said. She struggled past Regis and jumped down awkwardly, cradling her arm. She reached back for her powerful staff, but Regis grabbed the other end and tugged with all his strength.
“I will destroy you,” Dahlia promised the child. “I will send you back to hell!”
“Hell,” Yvonnel echoed. “That is her name.”
“That is one name,” said the little girl. “Heaven.”
“Torment!” said Yvonnel.
“Mentor,” the girl answered.
“What is this?” Regis demanded, but he went silent when he realized that no one was listening to him.
“Ah, aye,” said Athrogate, and he stepped up beside his drow companion. To the girl, he said, “Punishment.”
“Reward.” The little girl giggled. “There is always another name. A balancing name.”
“And you are the judge,” said Yvonnel.
“I am the scale,” the girl corrected.
“Judgment!” Yvonnel said.
“Justice!” the girl retorted, perfectly mimicking her intensity.
Yvonnel started to say something more, but paused and conceded the point with a nod, and held up her hand to make sure her companions stayed back.
“What is this?” Regis yelled once more.
“I am called Sharon at this time,” the girl said.
“Charon, you mean,” said Yvonnel.
“That is one name sometimes given, by the people who need to invent names to try to make sense out of that which they cannot understand. But then, of course, so is Sharon.”
“The boat-keeper,” Athrogate muttered.
“You should not be here,” said Yvonnel.
“Dear Yvonnel, I am ever-present, particularly to those who deny my ever-present voice,” Sharon replied. “Is that not reason enough?”
“But like this?” Yvonnel’s hand swept out before her, taking in the breadth of the floating child. “What is this form you have been given? An unusual circumstance, yes? Perhaps unique?”
Sharon shrugged. “I did not ask for it, I did not will it. It was there, and so . . .” She giggled again.
“You took form when Demogorgon fell,” the drow reasoned.
“It is an interesting time. That fiend is a great corrupter, after all. Perhaps I wondered what his absence might mean for those who hear my whispers.”
“And what the fall of the barrier of the Faezress might mean.”
“That, too.”
“An interesting time,” Yvonnel agreed, “but it shouldn’t interest you. That is not your place, quite definitely not.”
“Definitely so! It keenly interests me, of course, and why would it not? This is the time of chaos, and so these are the times that try the soul most especially. What a grand circumstance of revelation.”
“Not revelation to you,” Yvonnel argued. “How can it be, for the crimes of the heart are ever known to you.”
“Ah, but now the criminals can see it themselves.” She motioned to the cocoon. “And now I can show them the consequences. Think back, you who have been given the gift of memories older than your form. This time now? It is not so different from how Lolth was given form, millennia ago.”
Regis noted Yvonnel rocking back on her heels at that strange remark, and he found himself surprised when the drow began nodding her head, seeming almost as if she didn’t want to but could not help herself.
“When Lolth was given form,” the drow priestess repeated, and it was clear to all that she was speaking to herself. Then to Sharon, she said, “In an unusual time, can you hear an unusual request?”
“I witness, I do not try.”
“You are not judgment?”
Sharon didn’t respond, and for once, her smile left her face—although Regis wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a portent of doom.
“Then what is he?” Yvonnel demanded, pointing to the cocooned Entreri.
“He is of his own making, of course.”
“Liar!” Dahlia accused, and she jumped forward and brandished her staff threateningly, though the movement had her grimacing in pain. “You did this to him!”
Sharon just looked at her sweetly, and Dahlia fell silent. Dahlia’s face began to twist, and she began to chew her lip, and tears came to her eyes. Her strong pose melted into shivers, and in but a few moments, the powerful woman staggered backward, gasping for breath and trying to cry out, her head shaking in horrified denial.
“Did you have to do that?” Yvonnel asked.
“Would you rather that?” Sharon asked, nodding her chin toward the cocoon.
“Did you have to do that, as well?”
The little girl shrugged.
“Give him back,” Yvonnel said. “I ask this of you. Give him back, in fairness. His journey is not yet complete. His path had changed—absent . . . you, who should not be here in this manifestation. Can Artemis Entreri not walk the road to the end of his days, perhaps to a destination less harsh?”
“He has walked longer than any human should.”
“A most interesting journey, though.”
Sharon smiled once more, even giggled, and conceded the point with a nod.
“Do you not see the problem?” Yvonnel asked her. “You are interfering. You should not be here, and simply because you are, you are passing final judgment on that which is not final.”
Sharon sighed, and shrugged, and sighed again.
“You know I speak the truth,” said Yvonnel. “You have known this truth for a while now—from the beginning, or are you such that you can force all to be true to themselves except for you?”
That brought a laugh from Sharon, one that seemed heartfelt. “Bravo, clever drow. How clever will you be in the end, I wonder?” She smiled and sighed. “Perhaps it is time for me to leave,” she agreed, and she glanced to the side, to the cocoon, and issued a sharp puff of breath. Immediately, the cocoon began to dissolve . . . into more stinging wasps.
“No!” Dahlia cried, and took a step that way. She fell back as a second swarm arose, similar to the first but
of a different shade. Then she fell back some more, and Athrogate howled and joined her, and Regis jumped off the far side of the bench seat as the two swarms engaged, wasp to wasp, biting and stinging, fighting each other, mutual death in mutual embrace, a wild war of tiny creatures, so evenly matched that the swarms diminished equally.
“See?” Sharon asked, as the last of them dropped to the ground and died. “There is always another name.”
On the ground, Artemis Entreri coughed and vomited, jerking over to the side before half sitting, huddling and shaking. Dahlia rushed to him, as did Athrogate.
“It was . . . interesting,” Sharon told Yvonnel. The little girl began to float back down the south road, growing less substantial.
Coming around the back of the carriage, Regis was shocked to watch Yvonnel run after her. “Sharon!” she called. “Conscience!”
“Conscience?” the halfling asked, his eyes widening as he began to figure it out.
The girl, growing translucent, stopped and turned.
“Tell me,” Yvonnel implored her.
“Tell you?”
“Heaven or hell?” the drow priestess asked. “Can you tell me?”
“For you?” Sharon asked incredulously, starkly shocked—as if the question itself was so out of bounds that it should never be asked of her, Regis thought.
“No,” Yvonnel clarified. “For that, I know you cannot. But . . . for all. For all of us. For the world and those who inhabit this world, this place. I ask you, who see most clearly of all, where does it go? Which side of the scale will prove the heavier?”
The girl laughed at her.
“Tell me,” Yvonnel begged.
“Tell yourself.” And Sharon floated away to nothingness.
Regis ran to Yvonnel, who started suddenly, her head jerking, her gasp great indeed.
“What?” the halfling asked.
Yvonnel didn’t answer, for Sharon had told only her, in her head, where that little girl voice had whispered, The arc of reason bends to heaven. The darkness of a few can force hell.
“What?” Regis pressed.
A smile grew on Yvonnel’s face and she began to nod.
“What? You must!”
“It is a long game, my friend,” Yvonnel told him. “A long road. But hold faith, for now I believe that it is one worth traveling.”
“What?” Regis asked again, his voice trailing away. “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“You already know.”
“What was her name?”
“She has many.”
“Conscience?”
Yvonnel looked down at Regis and smiled, then turned and went back to tend to Entreri.
Regis didn’t watch her go. He kept his gaze down the south road, where the little girl, Sharon, had faded to nothingness. He stared as if he was still seeing her, and in his mind’s eye, he was, replaying the earlier encounters.
He glanced to the side, just for a moment, to see Dahlia, as he considered the very different reactions he and the elf woman had experienced when confronted with the specter of Sharon.
He had been strangely comfortable, but Dahlia, quite the opposite.
He knew enough of Dahlia’s past to put things together, and he found himself nodding as he considered Yvonnel’s remarks and the exchange.
Yes, he thought, in the weakening of the planar barrier, the hordes of demons had been set free of the Abyss, and so, too, had come this . . . thing. Sharon wasn’t a creature, and yet she was an inescapable part of every reasoning creature.
Sharon was conscience given form and substance.
A gasp turned the halfling about to find Artemis Entreri sitting up, his face pallid, his eyes haunted and red, his jaw hanging open, with drool all over his chin and cheek. As Dahlia pulled off Entreri’s shirt, Regis lost his breath yet again, for the man’s shoulders, chest, belly, everywhere on his torso and his arms, was pocked with small red wounds.
The wasps, Regis realized.
The wasps that had bothered Dahlia but had barely noticed the halfling.
The stinging wasps of conscience.
Truly, Regis didn’t know what to think, or how to feel. He had witnessed something beyond his comprehension, and at the same time, something that seemed miraculous. As Yvonnel cast spells of healing over Entreri, the man already seeming much better, it occurred to the halfling that perhaps the cocoon of Sharon might prove to be a great blessing to the man, a warning, grim and painful.
Artemis Entreri was a much better man than he used to be, Regis believed, and maybe, just maybe, this brutal episode would encourage him to even better things ahead.
He could hope so, at least.
Of course, this was all contingent on Yvonnel’s suspicion being correct. It was quite possible that this little creature, Sharon, was nothing more than a malevolent, deceitful demon.
In his heart, though, Regis found he didn’t believe that.
Despite everything—the chaos, the destruction, the giant spider, the pains of Entreri—Regis had a lightness to his step when he joined the others by the side of the road.
“Come,” Yvonnel bid them all. “Thornhold is just ahead, down at the water.”
“Oh, don’t go there!” Regis warned. “There’s a monster.”
“A monster spider,” Dahlia agreed. “It scaled the wall. We were far down the road, yet saw it, so great was its size.”
“Not a spider,” Athrogate said. “And, aye, we seen it go over the wall.”
“A retriever,” Yvonnel explained. “A great demonic construct. There is likely nothing left alive in Thornhold.”
“And you still want to go in there?” Regis asked with an eyebrow arched.
“It is almost surely gone,” Yvonnel answered.
“Chased Drizzt in there!” Athrogate said, and Regis gasped. “He gived me his stuff for safekeeping, then took the durned thing halfway ‘cross the world and over the wall.”
“Come,” Yvonnel said. “Let us see.”
She started off and the others followed, Dahlia helping Entreri to his feet. Once there, though, the man took only a moment to steady himself, then bent and retrieved his weapons and cloak, and moved to follow.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Regis said to him as he shambled past.
Entreri looked over at him skeptically, but nodded and continued on his way.
Regis recognized that skepticism and didn’t take it as an affront. No, Regis understood the real source, for in truth, Artemis Entreri looked anything but okay.
He was free of the wasp cocoon, but he was not.
He still heard their buzz. Felt their tiny feet crawling over him. And though the vicious demon insects were not biting him any longer, he could still feel their stings profoundly.
He looked to Yvonnel, many steps ahead of him and moving determinedly through the rocky ground before the old keep. She might have some answers, he thought.
But did he really need them?
For in the mind of Artemis Entreri, his ghastly experience seemed clear enough. Only one question nagged at him: Was it some form of purgatory, some forced, painful penance, or was it hell?
Eternal hell?
He hoped for the former and feared the latter, but he knew that the choice was correctly delineated. While in there, the insects biting or stinging, or whatever it was that they did to inflict such fire, he could see nothing with his physical eyes, but couldn’t unsee the many crimes he had committed. Not every fight and killing had come at him in that seemingly endless loop of atrocity.
No, only the ones he knew to be unjustified.
Unjustified.
That was something that Artemis Entreri had never openly admitted, not to Drizzt, not to Jarlaxle, not to his first love, Calihye, not even to Dahlia.
In the unrelenting anger that had consumed him for most of his life, had he ever really admitted it to himself?
Now he felt as if he could not hide from those instances. Now they weighed heavy in his he
art and flickered like a thunderstorm in his mind, flashing between the too-raw memories of unspeakable, unrelenting, undiminishing pain.
Pain he deserved, he knew.
Pain he could only hope would cleanse him of those old, dead events, like fires consuming the rotting husks of used-up trees.
He heard Dahlia talking to him rather insistently at his side and looked over at her.
“You’re free now,” she was saying. “We found you. We got you. We got you from that place.”
Entreri didn’t know how to answer, so instead he asked a question: “Limbo, or hell?”
Dahlia looked at him curiously and did not respond.
But she swallowed hard, and Artemis Entreri knew by that, and by her blanching face as the blood drained, that she certainly understood.
Chapter 9
The City Lost
She raced through the streets of Luskan. She tried to stay to the shadows, because she knew that danger was all about her. It had all been going so well! The city had settled under its new conquerors, and the streets, though not yet quiet, were beginning to show signs of normalcy. In the tavern, the talk had been light and flowing freely.
But then she had been recognized. She was sure of it. She had noted the look on the face of the man hurriedly leaving.
Despite her fears, Bonnie Charlee didn’t run straight to the secret entrance to Illusk, the ruins beneath Luskan. She had to make sure that she was clear of pursuit, that no eyes were on her, before she got to the cemetery near the bridge to Closeguard Isle and the false grave that brought her to the secret descending stairway.
Just as she was beginning to hope she had outrun any pursuers, the woman turned a corner into an alleyway and nearly ran into a pair of gnolls, each fully two feet taller than she.
They weren’t part of the pursuit, she hoped, for she had clearly surprised them more than they had surprised her.
She hadn’t the time to figure it out.
The woman threw herself into the nearest burly gnoll, her dagger coming out, pommel tight against her ribs as she used her weight to insert the blade deep into the gnoll’s belly.
She pulled the dagger out and shoved the wounded creature away, then slashed across as the second tried in vain to draw its sword, scoring a lucky cut across the beast’s throat, her arm just getting past the snarling creature’s hyena-like face and snapping maw. Down it went, gurgling, but the other was howling, loudly—and was being answered by others not far away!
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