by Troy Denning
There had been no choice, really, except to enter the conjunction. The only place for the wine woman to go had been through the black square, and so the Amnesian Hero had tucked the wayward sandal into his belt and followed. Unlike the first time he had entered one of the strange portals, he had experienced no sensation of falling, heard no great roaring, felt no wind tearing at his hair or ash scouring his face. He had merely stepped into the darkness and stood there waiting – forever it seemed-to emerge on the other side.
That was when the Amnesian Hero recalled the gout of flame that had nearly incinerated him earlier, as Silverwind stepped from the iron maze into the ashen one. The fireball had erupted the instant the bariaur passed through the conjunction: large, bright, and too hot to miss. And later, on the other side, he had cautioned the Thrasson about standing too close to the black square, for fear that it would "torch up" and draw the monster's attention.
There had been no fireball when the wine woman disappeared.
The Amnesian Hero stood pondering in the darkness, his mind spinning with fever and his sweaty body trembling with weakness. The wine woman could have gone no other place; the conjunction had been the only route out of the blind – at least that he had noticed. He considered going back to see if he had missed something, then found himself wondering if he could return. Presumably, the black square hung directly behind him, but what if he was moving? There was no fluttering in his stomach, no air stirring against his skin, no sensations at all suggesting motion – yet he had been standing there in the gloom quite some time. He had to be moving. He could imagine no other reason for the delay.
Better, then, to continue waiting. He could only guess what might happen if he tried to step one way or another while passing through a conjunction-would he come out someplace different than he should? Stay lost in the darkness forever? Vanish into oblivion? All these possibilities seemed disastrous. Moreover, even if the wine woman had disappeared down a. side passage, she would be long gone by now. He could only hope that, just as this conjunction differed from the first in duration of crossing, it also differed in not expelling gouts of flame when someone stepped through.
Still, the Amnesian Hero saw no need to stand about in tomb-like darkness. He pulled that star-forged sword from its scabbard and held the blade aloft.
"Starlight cleave the night," he commanded.
A brilliant blue radiance burst from the tip, creating a small globe that bathed the area in an eerie sapphire light. After the long darkness, the sudden illumination hurt the Thrasson's eyes, and he was still trying to blink away his blindness when he perceived a woman-sized shape slipping from the brightened circle.
"Wait, I beg you!"
Eyes half shut, the Amnesian Hero started after the fleeing figure and found himself clumping down a narrow dirt lane. A row of windowless mud brick tenements bordered the street on each side, their open doorways as still and black as a conjunction square. The Thrasson cursed himself for a berk, wondering how long he had been standing about in the dark thinking himself caught between mazes. It was a wonder the wine woman had still been near when he lit his sword.
"Please… wait!" he gasped. "I'm too… sick to keep this… up."
The Amnesian Hero clumped past an intersection and saw, out of the corner of his eye, the woman's figure turning to flee. In the blue light, her gown looked more gray than white, and her shoulders seemed somewhat more hunched than he remembered, but there was no time to ponder the differences. The Thrasson lurched into the alley and lunged out to catch hold of her.
Her shoulder seemed soft and spongy, and the cloth covering it had the dusty, brittle feel of ancient linen. The gown was no longer belted at the waist, but hung like a sack, dingy and stained, down past her knees. In the sword's blue light, her hair looked colorless and drab; it was also stiff as straw, and so thin it barely concealed her red-blotched scalp.
"Lady? Is that… you?"
The woman's only reply was to lean forward and try to pull away. The Amnesian Hero squeezed her shoulder – then groaned in disgust as her flesh erupted beneath his grasp. A foul, too-sweet stench filled the air, and a warm, slimy fluid coated his fingertips. He pulled his arm away, still holding a handful of moldering cloth and some brownish stuff that had probably once been flesh.
The Amnesian Hero gawked at his hand. "I…" He could not think of the words to apologize. "Lady, please forgive my clumsiness! I meant no harm."
"What did you mean?" The woman's voice was haggard. She spun on the Thrasson, raising a lumpy, gnarled mass at the end of a scaly arm. She extended her index finger, all that remained on the hand, and pointed at her head. "To look on this? Is that what you meant?"
The Amnesian Hero stmggled not to retch. The woman's face was a sagging mass of folded flesh and festering boils, so grotesquely misshapen that it scarcely looked human. A pair of black marbles peered out from beneath a puffy brow, while her nose had vanished – nostrils and all – into an enormous dark nodule that had taken over the middle of her face. Only her mouth, an enormous gash rimmed by red, cracked lips, remotely resembled its original form.
"I… I beg your… pardon.* The Amnesian Hero suddenly felt very weak and braced his ichor-covered hand against a wall. Twice had he braved the Leper Cities of Acheron to rescue the Virgins of Maimara, and never had he set eyes on such a gruesome, pitiable visage. "I thought you were… I was looking for a young woman in white… Perhaps you saw her… come this way?"
"How do you know you haven't found her?" So deep and rumbling was this new voice that the Thrasson seemed to hear it in the pit of his stomach. "In this place, we all wish we were someone else."
Behind the woman appeared an enormous darkness, not creeping into the sapphire light so much as forcing back the radiance. The gloomy figure stood easily half again as tall as a man, with a torso so broad it filled most of the narrow lane. As the Amnesian Hero's eyes grew more accustomed to looking at what was essentially a darker shadow standing in the murk, he saw – or imagined he saw – two maroon eyes flashing somewhere beneath a set of wickedly curved horns. Behind the creature's broad shoulders, there seemed to be a pair of folded wings that rose a good six feet above its head and ended there in two bony hooks.
The newcomer leaned over the woman, bringing his head toward the glowing sword and highlighting the curved horns and maroon eyes the Amnesian Hero had noticed earlier. Even so, it was not until the dark visage actually entered the globe of light that the sapphire glow brightened its features. Hidden beneath sagging folds and black nodules similar to those covering the woman's face were the venom-dripping fangs and vaguely apelike muzzle of a great tanar'ri.
The Amnesian Hero grew suddenly as hot as steam. A distant ringing filled his ears, his vision blackened around the edges, and he felt too frail to stand. The fiend pushed his face closer, and the Thrasson had to pull back to keep from touching the brute's inflamed black lips.
"This girl you have lost, by what name is she called?" The fiend's breath reeked of cinders and rancid flesh. "Karfhud is a favorite of all the girls! Is that not so. Do-?"
The Amnesian Hero did not hear the woman's name, for the ringing in his ears had grown too loud. The darkness rushed in, sweltering and thick, then his legs went limp, and he felt himself fall.
Down he falls, down to the boundless, eternal dark, down to the black cold void where monsters hatch and slither, down to the stale hissing murk that churns like slow-boiling pitch inside us all. Were Jayk there to catch him, the fall would not feel so endless. But she is somewhere beneath a low, copper sky, lost upon a sandy path, beset by thorn brambles left and right, keeping watch on the hedge crest – with fear for me, with hope for the Thrasson – her cape hem hanging ragged where the old bariaur has torn away strips to swaddle Tessali's wrists.
And the elf: he stares, glassy-eyed and confused, at the emptiness at the ends of his wrists; his arms throb up to his shoulders, his bones ache to the core and out again – but not his hands. Those hurt not at all.
He still feels them hanging from his wrists, still feels his fingers moving when he tries to make a fist, still feels his knuckles brushing the bariaur's chest as the old fellow works-but does not see them. For some reason he does not understand, they have turned invisible. He is like the ghosts who, by hiding in the shadows of things past, slip the Unbearable Moment.
He should know better.
The Bleak Cabal calls it the Grim Retreat, this taking of refuge in dark places. With every breath, Tessali draws that murk down into himself; with every breath, the gray light grows a little dimmer to his eyes. If he stays too long in the shadows, the darkness will fill him completely; he will lose himself to his blindness as surely as Jayk has – or as I might have, had I not seen the treachery of Poseidon's gift.
Before Silverwind has finished swaddling Tessali's stumps, the black bandages are soaked with blood. The weary bariaur can do nothing about it. He has already cast spells to ease the elf's pain and slow the bleeding, but he has no more healing magic until he has rested.
Tessali spreads his stumps, looks between them. "I can't see my hands." He frowns at the red drops falling from the ragged bandages; his eyes grow vacant, he looks back to Silverwind and asks, "Why can't I see my hands?"
"The Lady took them." Silverwind's reply is weary, impatient, even gruff. "It'll do you no good to confuse the issue now; I saw what I saw, and you can't change it. They're gone."
The elf shakes his head, frantic. "I feel them!"
"You imagine you feel them. But I imagine they're gone, and since I am the One, they are gone." Silverwind palms both stumps, rubs them hard enough to draw a gasp of pain. "You see?"
Tessali squints, leans forward and stares at Silverwind's palms covering his wrists where still he feels his own hands. Slowly, the elf struggles up through the darkness, back to the gray light; the glassy sheen vanishes from his eyes. His mouth gapes open.
"The Lady took my hands!" He jerks the stumps from Silverwind's grasp, crosses them over his breast. "What am I to do? Without hands, I cannot heal!"
Jayk kneels next to the elf, wraps a consolatory arm around his shoulder. Her head is pounding, but she knows when she has been called. "Do not fear, my friend. I can help you, yes?"
"You can?" Tessali looks more hopeful – even relieved – than wary. "How?"
Jayk smiles. Her pupils elongate into diamonds. She presses close to the elf. "We make kiss, yes?"
Tessali leaps to his feet, tears free of her embrace. "No!"
Jayk pouts, fangs dripping venom on her lower lip. "There is no need to be afraid; you are already dead. If you admit this, nothing will trouble you."
"I'm not ready to admit anything – especially that!"
Tessali eases from the tiefling, fixes his gaze on Silver-wind, who is looking down the thorn-walled corridor. The passage continues about thirty paces before rounding a sharp comer. Behind them, it joins a cross passage.
"Silverwind?"
The bariaur turns, but says nothing.
Tessali holds his stumps before Silverwind's face. "You're the One Creator. You can make me a new pair of hands."
Silverwind shakes his head. "No, I cannot."
"Of course you can." Tessali's expression has grown sly. "If you're truly the One Creator, you can make whatever you want"
The old bariaur gives him a reproachful sneer. "By that logic, I would create only what I want – which, since I had never intended to create you or your friends, would hardly be good for you." He pushes away Tessali's stumps. "Count yourself lucky I have limitations. It is better to lack hands than not to exist at all."
Again, the elf thrusts his stumps toward Silverwind. "You don't understand. Without my hands, I can't cast spells. I can't restrain the bannies, or protect myself from the Menaces. I'm nothing!"
"Then you are nothing." Silverwind shrugs. "If I had something to work with, perhaps I could restore what you have lost-but even I cannot create something from nothing."
Tessali's eyes 'grow wide. He glances up the hedge, sees the two divots where Silverwind's hooves scraped the top. "Jayk," he says, turning to the tiefling, "if you go back and fetch my hands, no one will ever try to lock you in the Gatehouse again. I'll see to that."
The tiefling narrows her eyes, suspicious. "How?"
"It doesn't matter," interrupts Silverwind. "You can't go back – not by climbing. There's no telling where you'll end up, but it won't be in the ash maze."
With that, the bariaur snorts and turns down the passage.
"Wait!" Tessali calls. "Where are you going?"
"If you are so determined to have your hands back, we'll have to go and look for them, won't we?"
"You know the way?"
"I'm as lost as you are." Silverwind continues toward the corner. "But now that the Thrasson is gone, what else is there to do?"
"We must wait here!" Jayk stamps her foot, brings the bariaur to a stop. "If we are gone when Zoombee jumps over the wall, what will he think? That we have left him, yes?"
"Jayk, come along." Tessali arches his brow. "The Amnesian Hero won't be jumping over the wall. He's dead."
"So are you." She glares at the elf's wrists. "And did I leave you behind? No!"
"You know that's different" Tessali has assumed his patient mind-healer's voice. "The Lady only maimed me. She kill – er, annihilated – the Amnesian Hero."
"How do you know? Did you see this?"
"What else could have happened?" The elf stretches a stump toward her, as if he still had a hand to extend. "The Amnesian Hero wouldn't want this; he sacrificed himself so we could escape."
Jayk folds her arms. "That is why we will wait. He deserves that from us, yes?"
"He would, if he were coming. But-"
"Tessali, the mazes do have their scavengers," Silverwind interrupts. "Do you want to find your hands or not?"
"Jayk, let's go." The elf cannot keep his head from pivoting down the passage. "There's no use waiting here."
"You only worry about your hands." Jayk looks away. "I wait for Zoombee."
"You may do as you wish, but you do understand that once we're gone, you'll be alone? We may never see each other again."
"I did not ask to see you the first time."
"As you wish, Jayk." After restoring a thousand madmen to their senses, Tessali knows a bluff when he sees one – or so he thinks. He turns and, with Silver-wind's help, climbs on the bariaur's back. "I will miss you."
Confident Jayk will follow once she sees he is serious, Tessali nods, and Silverwind turns and trots down the passage. When they round the corner, Jayk is still standing where they left her, arms folded across her chest and gaze locked atop the hedge.
It will be some time before she sees the Thrasson come leaping over the crest. At the moment, he is still falling through the sweltering darkness, his heart rising into his throat, his stomach light as air. There is a woman's voice, keen and high, ringing in his ears; she is trilling a single name over and over, the syllables tumbling and gurgling over each other like the lilting aria of a waterfall. The Amnesian Hero keeps trying to understand what she is singing, as though catching hold of her voice might spare him the crash at the end of his plunge, but it will take more than that to save him.
The Thrasson is still falling when he opens his eyes and finds himself lying in the dirt street. He does not remember hitting the ground, and his insides remain squeamish and unsettled, but either he has stopped moving or everyone is moving with him – he cannot decide. He is staring up at a ring of sagging, rumpled faces illuminated in the sapphire light of his star-forged sword, which the tanar'ri Karfhud has picked up and raised high aloft, like a fog-haloed moon in the darkness.
The Amnesian Hero could not pick out the woman he had seen first. The faces above him were all round festering masses of folded flesh and dark nodules. Some, those in the earliest stages of the disease, retained something of their original shapes; brows and cheeks and jawlines still manifested themselves beneath flakes of dead white ski
n. Other visages, unbearable to look upon, were mere ooze-glistening blobs that made the Thrasson feel guilty for his own good fortune.
A peal of deep laughter boomed from Karfhud's round muzzle. "Stranger, you are not so fortunate! The star that guided you here was a foul one indeed." The fiend turned to the others. "My friends, we have here a noble one. He truly feels for us!"
"Then leave him be, Karfhud." The rasping words slipped from the lips of a blob-face. "He means us no harm."
"Truly, I do not!" The Amnesian Hero propped himself on his elbow, at once surprised by the plumes of darkness that this small exertion sent shooting through his head and how well the fiend had read his thoughts. "And I will do… whatever I can… to aid you."
The blob shook his head. "You can do nothing, stranger."
"Do not be… hasty. I am a man of renown… the slayer of the Hydra of Thrassos… the tamer of the Hebron Crocodile… the bane of Abudrian Dragons…" The Amnesian Hero felt more feverish and parched with each declaration. For once he wished his listeners would interrupt, but the villagers had all the time in the multiverse to listen. "The champion of Ilyrian Kings… the killer of the Chalcedon Lion… the scourge of foes too numerous to name… and always have I done as I promised."
"Then you have never promised what cannot be done." The blob-face raised his chin and swiveled his head toward his fellows. "It'll be best to leave him where he lies."
The speaker stepped back and vanished into the darkness. The other villagers followed, squeezing past Karfhud and disappearing down the gloomy lane.
"Wait!" The Thrasson knew better than to think he could cure their disease, but Tessali or Silverwind might well be able to help. "I'm not alone…"
"You should save your strength," Karfhud rumbled. "Yelling will not change their minds."
"But there are…"
"Maze Blight cannot be cured," the fiend interrupted. "The magic of your healers is of no use."
The Amnesian Hero scowled. "Do you hear everything I think?"
