by Филип Этанс
"No," Ellesime said, "there is a chance…."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Irenicus appeared in the center of Suldanessellar in the guise of an elf. Any number of the mages running all around him in a panic to aid in the recovery of survivors could have identified the disguise with a word and the wave of a finger or two. The pandemonium around him was as good a disguise as the illusion. He stood at the base of the Tree of Life unmolested.
He smiled up at it and closed his eyes. He could feel its power pulse through him like a second heartbeat. The tree was life, and for Irenicus, it would be eternal life.
He sank to his knees and touched his forehead to the holy ground. Looking like one of hundreds of elf believers who came to commune with the tree every day, Irenicus started to repeat the words of the ritual.
Her reached out with his left hand, and the tips of his fingers brushed the warm bark of the Tree of Life.
His arm quivered with the power pulsing through it and into Irenicus's heart.
"Forever," Irenicus said, "Forever. Forever. Forever…"
* * *
The sound Queen Ellesime made was worse than any scream Abdel had ever heard. It was the kind of tortured wail that could only be made by someone who'd lived long enough to understand the true significance of what was happening to her.
"The Tree," she coughed. "Irenicus … is at the Tree of Life!"
"Ellesime," Elhan said, following her name with a soothing string of Elvish words Abdel didn't understand.
The queen's body twisted, writhed in pain. "Imoen!" she screamed.
Abdel's flesh crawled.
"It's the Slayer," Ellesime gasped. "I can … feel it…" Her face twisted into a mask of revulsion so intense Abdel had to look away.
"Mielikki save us all," Jaheira said, dropping to one knee.
Abdel saw the look of resignation pass over Jaheira's face and understood. Jaheira was watching this woman she had known all her life, like all elves, as the immortal symbol of her people. This elf was less a woman than a monument. Nothing could touch her, not time, not even death. Now, here she was, twisting in agony, reeling at the mistake she made before she became that solid core of Suldanessellar, when she was still a girl, seduced by an elf who dreamed of immortality.
Abdel stepped to her and took Ellesime's face in his huge, rough hands. Her eyes rolled into her head, and Abdel felt a stern hand grip his arm.
"What are you doing?" Elhan demanded. "She is in pain. Release her!"
Abdel brushed him off and said harshly, "Ellesime! Ellesime, look at me."
The queen sobbed and closed her eyes, trying to shake her head out of Abdel's hands. "He will live forever now. He will be like you are."
"Ellesime!" Abdel roared.
Elhan stepped back and drew his moonblade. "Unhand—"
"No!" Ellesime said, her eyes popping open to fix on Abdel's. "The link has been made. Irenicus is feeding from the Tree of Life!"
"I understand," Abdel said, though in fact he was still struggling with the sheer impossibility of it all. "Imoen—the Slayer—do you see it? Do you know where she is?"
"It's coming," the queen whispered, not struggling now. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
"How do we kill it?" he asked her.
Her eyes softened, and a look of relief came over them. "You might have a chance."
"Tell me."
"The Rynn Lanthorn. ." she said, her voice barely audible, squeaking pain and sorrow now mingling with hope.
"The lanthorn will kill the Slayer?" Jaheira asked, standing.
"Breaking the link with Irenicus and the tree will make it mortal. It will not kill it, but it will make it possible to kill it," Ellesime answered.
Abdel let his hands fall from her face, and she looked down and away.
"Mages," Elhan barked, "we will prepare the lanthorn—gather yourselves." He started to repeat the order in Elvish, but Abdel held up a hand, stopping him.
"I cannot kill it," Abdel said, his eyes burning into Ellesime. "That is … that was Imoen. She doesn't deserve to die for your mistakes, Queen Ellesime."
The elf queen turned her face up to him, a look of haughty displeasure crossing her brow for the briefest moment before she realized he was right.
"What would you risk to save her?" she asked him.
"Nothing," Elhan answered for him. "We will risk no more lives for this girl."
"No," Jaheira interrupted before Abdel turned on the elves. "Abdel is right. She's only one, but one is enough."
Abdel smiled and turned to Ellesime. "How?" he asked.
"The link I shared with Irenicus was transferred from him to the Slayer the moment he made contact with the Tree of Life. He's bonded with it now and has set the Slayer out along that link to find me," the queen said. "This link.. it could be transferred from me to … to you."
"Ellesime, no …" Jaheira said.
"What would that accomplish?" Abdel asked, ignoring the druid.
"You share something with Imoen that goes way beyond … well, that…"
"Go on," Abdel prompted.
"If the link between her soul and yours is strong enough," Ellesime said, "it's possible that you could destroy the Slayer but anchor Imoen's soul to this plane. The avatar would return to the hell that spawned it, and Imoen would be free."
"Or?" Abdel asked.
"Or," the queen sighed, "it will kill you both."
"Abdel—" Jaheira started to say.
"There's a chance," Abdel said simply.
The queen nodded in response, and Abdel turned to Elhan. "We need this artifact."
The prince nodded and said, "Either way, the Slayer is destroyed?"
"It looks that way," Abdel answered.
"Then let us be off."
"Abdel," Jaheira said, her voice tight. "I can't let you risk this. With all respect, Your Majesty," she said to Ellesime, "you're not sure."
The queen writhed in obvious agony, then shook her head no.
"If I let Imoen die," Abdel asked Jaheira, "let her soul follow this monster's into Gehenna, what have you taught me? Where have I come?"
Jaheira couldn't answer. She knew there was no way to stop him, that she shouldn't even try.
He reached out and touched her cheek. "Maybe I was hypnotized," he told her softly. "I would have to have been."
She smiled and let herself cry.
"Jaheira," Elhan said, "they'll need you in Suldanessellar. Go to the tree, but don't engage Irenicus."
"I'm coming with you," Jaheira said to Abdel.
Abdel looked her in the eye and shook his head. She looked away, knowing he was right again. Only Abdel could do what needed to be done.
Elhan helped Ellesime to her feet. Abdel, his eyes still locked on Jaheira's, stepped next to them, and in a flash of purple light, they were gone.
* * *
Ellesime had placed it on the rough ground in the center of a ring of standing stones, which might have been the columns of a once-mighty temple, now worn by years of lashing wind in to featureless stubs of their former glory. The elf mages sat themselves in a wide circle around the lanthorn, contorting their legs in a way that confounded Abdel. Ellesime was weakening still, able to move now only when her brother carried her. She motioned Elhan to set her down on the ground near one end of the artifact.
The mages began a grinding chant. They all closed their eyes, and Abdel could see their shoulders sag in unison. It was as if they were pouring every pinch of energy from their bodies into their minds and out through those arcane words.
"Sit across from me," Ellesime told Abdel, her voice thick, quiet, and labored. With great effort she reached out and laid her right hand on one end of the lanthorn. With a nod she told him to do the same.
Abdel set the enchanted sword down reverently next to him and placed one big, callused hand on the lanthorn.
"What now?" he asked.
Ellesime didn't answer. She closed her eyes, and her neck quivered when she tried
to shake her head.
"She's dying," Elhan said. He was standing outside the circle, his face gray with exhaustion and fear.
Abdel looked up at him, then had to look away. Elhan was stalking around the circle of mages, trying to look everywhere at once but never managing to keep his eyes from straying to his dying sister.
The Slayer dropped out of the sky five paces in front of Elhan, and the movement startled him. Elhan's hand went instinctively to the moonblade at his belt, and the ancient sword came out of its scabbard and bathed the circle in a blue glow. The Slayer brought its hands up. Two daggers carved from bone seemed to appear in its hands from thin air.
Elhan didn't wait for the thing to attack. He charged at it with brazen courage born of knowing there was no one else there to keep it away from the chanting mages.
Abdel flinched back, and Ellesime hissed, "No!"
The sellsword looked up at her. Her eyes were half open, and her dull gaze lolled over him.
"You must not break the link," she told him. "Just a little longer. I can … feel.. it."
Elhan was a practiced and experienced swordsman, and though the Slayer was faster, the elf managed to swing under its two daggers and sliced hard across the thing's spine-covered chest. The moonblade, as powerful a weapon as had ever been known to man or elf on Faerun, pinged off the thing without leaving so much as a scratch.
Elhan gasped, never having seen his ancestral weapon fail to cut. The Slayer laughed at him. The sound made every hair on Abdel's body stand rigidly, uncomfortably, on end. The sound was eerily familiar, as if it had a place in his blood. It was his father's laugh. Abdel's eyes began to glow yellow. This was no momentary flash now, but a steady, burning light.
"Everyone's here," the evil thing said. "Your souls will suckle the legions of Gehenna."
The avatar came at Elhan fast, but the elf was just able to dodge back and out of the way of the bone daggers. He brought his moonblade up and knocked one dagger aside, clipping a chip of bone out of it.
Abdel almost took his hand away from the artifact again. Elhan was good, but Abdel could see he wasn't good enough.
"Please," Ellesime said, her voice suddenly stronger. "Don't help him."
Abdel gnashed his teeth but kept his hand on the lanthorn. She was right. The ritual had to be completed. He had to take on this spirit link from her, or Imoen would die. But what of Prince Elhan of Suldanessellar?
The elf prince parried another of the Slayer's attacks, knocking one of the thing's blade-arms away. The parry opened Elhan's left side, though, and the Slayer made full use of it. Moving with such unnatural silence it seemed the thing wasn't even there at all, the avatar sliced in with its other blade-arm and opened a gash across Elhan's stomach wide and deep enough to spill the prince's entrails onto the dead soil of Myth Rhynn.
Ellesime closed her eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath.
When the Slayer laughed as Elhan's body fell lifeless to the ground, Abdel heard it in his ears, but also felt it in his chest. The muscles that he would have used to laugh himself twitched and jerked, and air caught in his throat. He could feel it!
"Not yet," Ellesime warned him, tears streaming down her cheeks now as she cried in unselfconscious abandon.
Abdel felt unfamiliar muscles twitch and looked up at the Slayer. In the air in front of it spun six more of the evil-looking bone daggers. Suspended by some fell magic, the daggers twisted and cavorted in the air, the Slayer eyeing each blade in turn with some satisfaction.
The flying daggers descended on one of the mages still sitting in the circle. The Slayer backed off a bit, as if curious itself to see what was going to happen next. The elf mage was slumped in his position, eyes closed, mind locked into the incessant loop of the empowering chant. The elf had no idea what was coming fast behind him, and Abdel knew he couldn't take his hand off the lanthorn, but he could at least warn—what was this elf's name?
"Elf!" Abdel shouted, then, "Mage!"
The elf mage didn't show any sign of having heard him. The first dagger plunged into the elf's spine to its carved hilt, then tore sideways through flesh and bone. The other five daggers plunged in and sliced out in turn. The elf mage collapsed in a pile of loose skin and pouring blood. Abdel cursed under his breath, struggling to make himself stay where he was.
The elf mage's body twitched violently once, then exploded in a shower of blood and strips of flesh. All of the elf's bones burst up into the air and exploded again in a cloud of sharp, splintered bone. The fragments coalesced, joined the dance of the six daggers, and settled in front of the Slayer. The avatar stood now behind a shield of whirring, razor-sharp bone fragments. Anyone who stepped too close to the creature would be shredded.
And Abdel could feel it. He could feel the cold power of it and could track each fragment in its mad orbit. He could feel it.
"Go!" Ellesime screamed, and Abdel jumped into the air, Yoshimo's sword in his right hand, before that single word had faded into the suddenly silent air.
Their chant at an end, the elf mages all came out of it at the same time and moved quickly away from the Slayer and its barrier of jagged bone. Abdel went the other way, straight at the whirling cloud of blades. Able to feel each fragment, Abdel started tapping them away with the tip of Yoshimo's sword. One at a time the bone chips dropped out of the cloud to bounce harmlessly on the ground. Abdel didn't speak, hardly moved his feet, and his breathing became shallow and steady. The Slayer, if it was capable of facial expressions at all, regarded the scene with a mix of irritated confusion and surprised amusement.
Behind him, Ellesime's exhausted form slumped onto the ground over the lanthorn. She took in one deep, ragged breath and almost managed to open her eyes. One of the mages caught her up in his arms and, nodding to one of the other mages to retrieve the lanthorn, he carried Ellesime out of the circle, putting one of the stones between her and the Slayer.
Abdel wasn't counting the number of bones he knocked out of the barrier. It must have been nigh on a hundred that hit the ground before the barrier collapsed and showered the ground between the son and the avatar of Bhaal with chips of bone.
Abdel stepped in quickly, but the Slayer, waiting behind the dwindling shield of bone blades, was faster. The thing ripped a deep gash across Abdel's chest with one of its blade-arms. Abdel hissed at the pain but ignored it, dropping his sword arm down to parry the second blade-arm's attack.
"I'll eat your soul raw, son of Bhaal!" the thing shrieked at him. Abdel pretended not to recognize Imoen's voice in the echoing sound of it.
Abdel stepped back, letting the Slayer come in at him, then sliced hard both in and down. The sword took one of the Slayer's blade-arms off at the elbow joint, and the creature recoiled in shock.
It could be hurt, then. It was mortal.
Invigorated by the knowledge that at least that part of the ritual had worked, Abdel came in hard, his sword chopping down in an effort to rid the avatar of another arm. The creature was ready this time, though, and still faster than Abdel. With a hand like an iron vise, the Slayer took hold of Abdel's sword arm and stopped its downward motion so abruptly even Abdel couldn't keep a hold on the sword. The blade flashed in the late afternoon sunlight as it spun far out of the sellsword's reach.
The avatar wrenched Abdel's arm with the strength of a thousand draft horses. His right arm came off at the shoulder with the sound of tearing skin, popping joints, and the hot rush of blood. One of the elf mages screamed, and another turned around and threw up.
Red hot agony flowed through Abdel, but rather than weaken him, it flooded his body with a power he'd never imagined.
Abdel, no longer thinking of this thing as some manifestation of a murder god's power but just an opponent, growled in anger and grabbed the Slayer's other elbow with his left hand. The thing was strong, stronger than any man on Faerun, but so was Abdel.
The Slayer let go of Abdel's right arm, letting it fall to the ground with a wet slap. The avatar swiped at Abdel,
raking cold, sharp claws across the sellsword's already cut chest. Abdel didn't feel any pain now.
He pulled hard on the Slayer's arm, and it jerked toward him. Abdel dropped, took note of the Slayer's surprised, offended expression, and flipped the avatar over him. The creature sprawled across the uneven ground, scuttling to its feet like a crab.
Abdel grabbed his still twitching arm that bled into the ground of Myth Rhynn and was happy to feel its warmth. He jammed the torn end of it onto the ragged stump of his shoulder. A wave of tingling pleasure swept through him, and the arm reattached itself. By the time the Slayer was on its feet and coming back at him, Abdel could use his right arm again as if it had never been ripped from his body.
He scanned the ground for the sword, but the Slayer was coming in too fast. Without ever having thought to do something like this before, he plunged his hand into the beast's wide, spike-covered chest. Abdel's hand sank into the Slayer's body up to the elbow, and the thing screamed in rage.
Abdel knew on some level that was either beyond or not yet at the point of words that if he turned his wrist just so—there! He closed his hand around something warm, soft, and fleshy, and pulled.
The Slayer screamed again when Abdel's hand burst out of its chest. Abdel was holding a length of pink flesh. At the end of it was a hand. A hand with five fingers, no claws, no spikes, no chitin. Green blood followed Abdel's hand out. He was holding a human arm.
"She's mine!" the Slayer shrieked.
Abdel let go of the arm and ignored its groping fingers. He grabbed the Slayer by the sides of its head with both hands and twisted.
"She's no one's," he growled into the Slayer's bulging, incredulous eyes. "She's coming out!"
"No!" it screamed, then tried to scream again, but the sound was cut short in a throat now closed.
Abdel strained with all his considerable strength to turn the thing's head down and to the side. The Slayer answered by grabbing Abdel's head in one huge, misshapen hand. The grip was crushing, and Abdel's jaw clenched tight enough that his teeth started to shatter—each one cracking in turn with a spike of pain worse than the amputation. Blood dribbled down from his scalp. His skull cracked sharply at his temple and flashes of blue-violet light colored his vision.
