“What is happening?” Catti-brie asked.
Her answer came as a host of armed aevendrow rushed at them through the mob of retreating onlookers, a line of spears leveled. Although their presence raised even more questions—and she was certain she wasn’t going to like those answers.
Chapter 17
The Lie of Omission
“They were spying on us as we expected, that much is clear,” Jarlaxle told his two companions, pacing back and forth as Catti-brie and Entreri sat helpless in a darkened room back in the building of the inquisitors. Their robes had been taken from them, their arms bound behind their backs—not tied, but glued with some goo not unlike the one Jarlaxle often produced from his favorite wand. Their arms were stuck, their entire forearms locked in place, and all of them had mittens packed with the same gluey substance over their hands, preventing any coordination of fingers for spellcasting or anything else—never mind the fact that their magic didn’t work right now. “You saw how fast they were on us, and in such force, when the cry went out from the fight.”
“The cry, yes,” Catti-brie answered. “Phage?”
“I don’t know the word,” Jarlaxle admitted.
“Then what?” Catti-brie asked. “What happened? Did Zak say something? Did our hosts become incensed because he was gaining strength in the match and even seemed to be winning?”
“It cannot be that,” Jarlaxle started. “It makes no—” He stopped abruptly when the door banged open, a blue-white glow filling the room.
“Up,” an aevendrow sentry demanded of the two humans. He held a “torch,” a glass globe atop a small post filled with water and a trio of luminescent fish.
“What did we do wrong?” Catti-brie dared ask as she shimmied her back up the wall to stand.
“We should have just killed you in the first chamber,” said a second aevendrow, entering.
Ilina.
“But why?”
“Shut up,” Ilina told her. “From this moment forward, you will speak only when told to speak, and anything else will be answered with punishment.”
“I . . .” Catti-brie fell silent and looked away.
They were marched out to the same anteroom where they had remained while each had earlier had their turn with the inquisitors. They expected the same, but this time, Ilina just kept marching them, bringing all three before the panel, who stared down at them from the shadows at the far end of the room.
On the other side of the room stood Emilian. He came forward to join Ilina, and it was they who started the questioning this time.
“You lied to us,” Emilian said. “We welcomed you into our home, yet you lied to us. You brought phage to us. You put us all in peril.”
The three looked to each other, none of them sure how to respond, or if they even could, given the warning Ilina had offered in the other room.
“Who will speak for you this time?” Ilina asked. “Just one.”
“I will,” Jarlaxle answered without even looking to his friends.
“Then speak.”
“We did not lie.”
“Another lie. You brought phage,” Ilina countered.
“I don’t even know what phage is!”
Emilian scoffed.
“The scar,” Catti-brie realized and blurted before she could stop herself, and she stiffened as she heard the guard moving up quickly behind her, expecting to be punished.
Ilina held up her hand to stop the guard.
“Let them all speak,” said the woman at the right end of the table, the straight-backed one who hadn’t spoken at all when Catti-brie had first come before them.
“Scar?” she asked Catti-brie.
“Zaknafein’s scar, on his shoulder,” Catti-brie replied. “You saw the wound.”
“Scar?” Emilian said, and scoffed again. “It is phage, chaos phage! Scar, you fool? He is plagued! He will become slaad! A red slaad, or perhaps even a green.”
Catti-brie felt her knees go weak beneath her. She held her balance only barely, and noted the same from Jarlaxle.
“Green?” Artemis Entreri whispered. “The frog we killed was green.”
“You lied to us,” Ilina said, aiming the accusation at Jarlaxle.
“No,” he corrected somberly. “We left out one encounter, one battle, one day of our travel.”
The woman’s lip curled in a snarl.
“We did not mean to deceive, we were simply afraid of you,” Jarlaxle explained. “We battled a slaad, yes, and killed it, and it was green, as my friend just told you. But it came to us in the form of a drow, and spoke much like you spoke, that more ancient drow language than the one spoken in my homeland, one still fused with the softness of the language of the surface elves.”
“Surface elves?” Emilian whispered, his expression skeptical.
“The elven peoples who are not drow,” Catti-brie quickly put in, guessing his confusion easily enough. “Like the eladrin.”
Emilian nodded and it was obvious that he had never heard them referred to in that manner.
“You fought a slaad?” Ilina prompted.
“We killed a slaad—a green one,” Jarlaxle repeated. “Who came to us as a drow, masked by illusion.”
“Your actions here reveal your lie,” Emilian said. “Why would you have come with us, then? Why didn’t you four start the fight when first we met, thinking that we, too, were not as we appeared?”
“You have the answer in your possession,” Jarlaxle admitted. “My eyepatch. In the same way that I saw through the slaad’s deception, so I saw that you were drow, as you appeared. The item has a great enchantment upon it, one of truesight.”
“That’s not true,” Catti-brie said immediately, stopping and surprising Jarlaxle.
“Take them,” said the male inquisitor as he and the other two stood. The woman on the right lifted a beveled shield of pressed white ice and a large blue sword.
“Just shut up, I beg,” Catti-brie told Jarlaxle, and Ilina shoved her and told her to be silent. “For once in your life.”
Escorted by the three inquisitors, the two guards, Emilian, and Ilina, the companions were led out of the house and down the streets to the northwestern corner of Scellobel and a large door fashioned of opaque pressed blue ice that appeared starkly different from the surrounding natural ice of the glacial wall.
Through that door, they entered a dark tunnel, the guard with the fishbowl torch rushing up front to lead the way with the armed inquisitor.
Barely inside, the friends felt the coldness of the place, a deep chill that increased with every step away from the city. They were shivering before they got to the first stairway, and that was only one of several they had to climb, so that by the time they had reached the apex of the tunnel, with only a short corridor leading to daylight, their fingers and toes were numb or throbbing with pins and needles, their breath thick before them with every exhale.
It got much worse when they came out of the tunnel, onto a ledge high on the side of the glacial wall, the ice cap spreading wide before them, and far, far below, the incessant hum of the cold wind sounding like a giant hornet, burrowing to the bone.
“I could be merciful and just throw you from this ledge,” the sword-wielding inquisitor told them. “Or you may sit and wait for the wind to take the rest of the heat from your bodies. You will just fall asleep then, never to awaken.”
“Then it was all a lie,” Jarlaxle said through chattering teeth.
“You lied,” the inquisitor replied. She lifted her sword and put its tip under Jarlaxle’s chin, forcing him to look her in the eye. “We welcomed you and you repaid us with lies.”
“No.”
“The magic of the eyepatch, if it is even what you claim, would not have worked at the time when you were found in the outer chamber,” the aevendrow told him.
“That’s why I denied it,” Catti-brie dared to put in.
The inquisitor lowered her blade and walked up to Catti-brie. “A priestess of Mielikki, you sa
id.”
Catti-brie nodded, though she feared that she was shaking so hard that the movement hardly registered.
“Perhaps we should judge you separately.”
“No!” she replied. “We are together, in trust and in love. You cannot do that.”
“Your friend lied to us.”
“We didn’t resist, we didn’t fight, because we couldn’t,” Catti-brie growled through the freezing pain. “We didn’t want to, anyway, but we were caught without hope, and so we could only hope that you were not what we feared.”
“You used the silent hand code of the drow,” Jarlaxle added. “A frog couldn’t do that.”
The inquisitor turned sharply on him. “If that is true, then why wouldn’t you tell us of this fight, as you were instructed?”
“Because how were we to know that you weren’t allied with them?” Catti-brie answered, determined to take the lead here. “The slaad we met, who wounded Zaknafein, was not alone in the lower tunnels of that cave. It was with a giant. A frost giant, Zak believed.”
“A green slaad?” Ilina asked.
“Yes, as we told you.”
“No green slaad did this to your friend. Their birth is one result of the chaos phage, but they are not the traffickers of the disease.”
“We assumed the source of the injury to be the slaad we killed,” Jarlaxle explained when Catti-brie hesitated. “Zaknafein wasn’t with us when he fought in the lower tunnels. He went off to scout. Nor was he in the fight when the slaad came to us bearing the sword he had left behind, for he was sorely wounded then and being tended off to the side of the cave by the priestess Catti-brie. We didn’t go back down to the lower tunnels after that fight, we left with all speed, especially since Zaknafein was so grievously wounded. Our friend only told us about the giant much later, and about the strange room he had stumbled upon.”
The inquisitor looked past Catti-brie to her peers, then back at Jarlaxle.
“Eggs,” he said. “Huge eggs being tended by the frost giant. White dragons, perhaps? Either way, we left, and did not pause or slow a moment to look back.”
The inquisitor stared at him and back at Catti-brie for a long while—a time that seemed longer because the wind was surely taking the life out of the three standing in light clothing and nothing more. But Catti-brie had hope, for she recognized that Jarlaxle’s information had shaken them profoundly, and more importantly, that the story had resonated.
“I sense no ill intent,” the inquisitor announced. “I believe they are speaking truthfully.”
“You believed that before,” said the male inquisitor.
“And they were,” the woman answered. “I cannot judge that which they do not say. Give them their robes,” she told the guards, and as the friends were wrapped in the incredibly warm garments, the inquisitors led the way back into the tunnel, then back to Scellobel, to the hall, where again the three companions were presented before them, sans robes.
“My deepest apologies,” Jarlaxle began when he was told to speak.
“Our apologies,” Catti-brie corrected. “We agreed among us before you ever brought us to Callidae that we would keep the encounter in that faraway cave private until we could learn more of our captors, of you. Had you been aligned with the giants and the strange creature we had battled, a beast unknown to us, then—”
Ilina held up her hands to stop her.
“Where is Zaknafein?” Entreri demanded. “Did you heal his wound?”
Emilian snorted. “Heal? We are simply trying to keep him alive right now, and to fend off the encroachment of the chaos phage. If he is lucky, he will only lose his arm and shoulder. If he is already too far diseased, he will become one of them and will have to be destroyed.”
“You can’t kill him!” Catti-brie said.
“It is not a choice we would make easily, but it is also a choice we will not hesitate to make if the need arises. In another time, we could easily cure and heal him,” Ilina explained. “But not now, not in the Twilight Autunn. Zaknafein will need better luck than he found in being struck by the claw of a blue slaad in this season without magic if he is to survive.”
“Tell us your story again,” the man in the middle of the inquisitor trio demanded. “From the time you came here to this land to the time you left that cave after your battle. And any other details you have kept from us. All of it.” He looked over to the guards by the door. “Go and get us food and drink. We are going to be here for a long time, I expect.”
The woman to his right added, “We had thought to let you enjoy the festival and to learn about you over the days from your actions and interactions, and only then demand of you the full story of where you come from and how you came here. You don’t have that benefit now.”
“I’m older than I look, I fear,” Jarlaxle said with a chuckle—a rather pitiful attempt to lighten the mood, Catti-brie thought. “That will take a long time.”
“We would all rather be outside in the revelry,” the woman agreed. “Your deception has cost us that. Every detail, Jarlaxle, from the time you came to this land, to the fight in the cave, to your departure from the cave. And every other detail of your time here that you omitted. And either of you may correct him as you see appropriate. I warn you all, you will not be forgiven a second time for any lapses.”
“Bring me to Zaknafein,” Catti-brie pleaded. “I may be able to help.”
“We are no strangers to the chaos phage,” the same inquisitor woman answered. “It is a matter of existence for us, for we do battle with the slaad”—she looked at Jarlaxle and sharply added—“and the giants, both day and night.”
“Please, he is my husband’s father, the grandfather of my daughter.”
“There is nothing you can do that we cannot. If you wish to see him again, then speak fully and truthfully here and now. He must be kept alive and the disease must be held back until the fall of night and the return of our healing powers.”
“There’s nothing you can do for him?” Jarlaxle asked.
“We have herbs. We are doing all that we can.”
Catti-brie started to speak again, but the woman silenced her. “Worry about yourselves,” she said. “You are here to tell us a story, a complete story. And if you fail now, know that we will not expend our healing efforts on your friend. The surest way to prevent the transformation of chaos phage is quite the opposite direction than that. The next time we must take you to that ledge is the last time.”
The inquisitor looked to Ilina and nodded toward the door. “Go and check on Zaknafein,” she said, and Ilina left the room.
Jarlaxle told again the story of how they had come to the north, of Gromph’s magical gate, of the avalanche on the mountainside that nearly killed them, and of their desperate rush to find shelter. Now he told them the full tale of the cave, of Zaknafein’s scouting descent while Catti-brie tended Entreri and then rested with him, of the fight with the slaad that had returned disguised as drow and carrying Zak’s lost sword, and of their flight from the cave, to be far, far away.
When he told of the abandoned town, Catti-brie added a detail, fully describing her feelings when Zaknafein had torn the rift in the planes.
“I sensed that this glacier that serves as home to your colony is itself alive,” she admitted, and held her breath.
“Our legends say it is one of the Vaati,” Emilian replied to her after a moment.
That only brought confused looks from the companions.
“The Wind Dukes of Aaqa,” explained one of the inquisitors.
“I do not know this lore,” Catti-brie said.
“Nor I,” Jarlaxle agreed.
“It is a tale for another day, if . . .” said the man on the dais. He held up his hand, as if changing his mind. “Our legends name this icefall as the remains of Qadeej, one of the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, who lay down here in the madness of Ygorl and called upon the cold north winds to protect him in the armor of ice.”
“Ygorl?” Catti-brie asked. “The
Lord of Entropy?”
“A slaad lord,” Jarlaxle said.
“Enough,” said the straight-backed woman on the dais. “Tell us the rest, all of it. Tell us of your homeland, of what you left behind. We had hoped this might wait, but no more. If you wish to have a chance at walking the ways of Callidae once more, then you will tell us this tale of why you came to us in full.”
Jarlaxle bowed. “Again I ask you to accept my apology—our apology—for omitting the fight in the cave. I hope that you can understand.”
“The apology is irrelevant,” the straight-backed woman answered. “Right now, we care only whether or not you present to us a danger.”
“We do not.”
“That’s what we’ll find out,” she said firmly before continuing. “Now, the town you found was Ulutiun, and most were killed by slaad. The few who escaped are among us now, or mostly, their descendants are among us.”
Catti-brie thought back to the remains they had found, to the ones whose rib cages seemed to have broken outward, as if something was trying to escape from within . . .
Her legs nearly failed her as she thought of Zak, and she gave a little wail.
“What is it?” Emilian demanded.
“The skeletons we found there, ribs broken out from within. Is that this chaos phage?”
“No,” Emilian answered. He looked to the inquisitors, who motioned for him to continue.
“Your fight with the green slaad was how long ago?” he asked.
“Tendays, perhaps a month,” Jarlaxle answered.
“Those are two very different measures of time.”
“I’m sorry—we lost track of time in the white.”
More nods. “And you were four when you came to the north? You lost no friends along the way?”
“Just us.”
“You will all be inspected again, more fully, for wounds,” Emilian explained. “It will be quite thorough.”
Before they could protest, the woman inquisitor on the left side of the bench asked, “You are certain that it was only that one green slaad that you slayed, and perhaps the blue slaad who struck your friend in the lower chambers?”
“We thought them the same,” Jarlaxle replied. “The green one we killed was the only one we saw, and Zaknafein mentioned no other.”
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