Road of the Patriarch ts-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  "She's with the rest of them," the old woman said, surprising him, as his expression revealed. "On the hill, behind the rock, where they bury them that got no names worth remembering."

  Like everyone who had spent his childhood in that part of Memnon, Entreri knew well the pauper's graveyard, a patch of dirt behind a large rocky outcropping that overlooked the southwestern most point of Memnon Harbor. Despite himself, he looked that way, and without another word to the old woman, and with only a final glance at the shack that had been his home, a place to which he knew he would never return, he walked away.

  CHAPTER 24

  TO THE SOUL OF THE MATTER

  Jarlaxle had his back to Entreri, pretending to look out the shack's front door at the early morning street. Athrogate snored contentedly in the corner of the room, his breathing interrupted at irregular intervals—Jarlaxle amused himself by imagining spiders climbing into the dwarf's open mouth.

  Entreri sat at the table, his face tight and angry—the expression he had worn for most of the years he and Jarlaxle had spent together, one that Jarlaxle had hoped to replace forever with the use of Idalia's flute.

  So much progress they had made, the drow silently lamented, but then that foolish woman had betrayed Entreri and torn a hole in his opened heart. And worst of all, what the drow knew but Entreri did not was that Calihye hadn't even wanted to attack him. Emotionally torn, confused by her loyalties and frightened of leaving the Bloodstone Lands, the woman had acted purely on impulse. Her strike was not wrought of malice toward Artemis Entreri, as it would have been in the early days of their relationship, but rather, was propelled by terror and grief and an anguish she could not overcome.

  Jarlaxle hoped that someday Artemis Entreri might know that, but he doubted it strongly. Still, with Calihye safely under the control of Bregan D'aerthe, the drow knew better than to say "never."

  The more pressing problem, of course, surrounded them in the hellish city of Memnon. Entreri had come home, though what that meant, Jarlaxle could not be sure. He glanced back at the grim man, who seemed not to notice him at all, not to notice anything. Entreri sat upright and his eyes were open, but he was no more aware, Jarlaxle reasoned, than was the sputtering dwarf in the corner.

  His hands moving slowly and surely, Jarlaxle retrieved one of the small potion vials from his belt pouch. He stared at it for a long while, hating himself for having to so manipulate his friend yet again.

  That thought surprised the drow; when in his entire life had he ever felt such a twang? In his betrayal of Zaknafein those centuries before, perhaps?

  He looked at Entreri again, and he felt as if he was staring at his old drow companion.

  I needed to do this, he reminded himself, and for Entreri most of all.

  He quaffed the potion.

  Jarlaxle closed his eyes as the magic settled in his body and in his mind, as he began to «hear» the thoughts of the other people in the room. He considered the life of Kimmuriel, who was always in such a state of heightened perception, and for an instant, he truly pitied the psionicist.

  He shook his head and gave a great sigh, reminding himself that he had no time for such distractions. The potion wouldn't last long.

  "So are you going to tell me where you went yesterday?" he said, turning to face the human.

  Entreri looked up at him. "No."

  But he was already telling Jarlaxle much more, for the question had elicited memories of the previous day's events: images of the street they had visited, of an old man lying on the floor holding in his spilling guts, of another man.

  His father! No, the man he had thought his father, had known as his father for all his life.

  "You have come here to find your mother. That much I know," Jarlaxle dared to say, though Entreri's expression grew more threatening from the moment he mentioned the lost woman.

  An image flashed in Jarlaxle's mind, not of a woman, but of a view.

  "You know, too, that I have told you that none of this is your affair," Entreri said.

  "Why would you push an ally away?" Jarlaxle asked.

  "You cannot help me in this."

  "Of course I can."

  "No!"

  Jarlaxle straightened, assailed suddenly by a wall of red. He felt Entreri's anger more keenly than ever before, a razor edge that bordered on murderous rage. Images flashed too quickly for him to sort them and grasp them. He noted many of priests, of the great Protector's House, of the lines for indulgences playing out in the square.

  Then just hatred.

  Jarlaxle held up his hand defensively without even realizing it, though Entreri had made no move from the table.

  The drow shook his head, to see the man staring at him curiously.

  "What are you about?" the obviously suspicious Entreri asked.

  "About tall enough to put me face between a woman's bosoms!" came a roar from the side, and Jarlaxle was truly relieved for the interruption at that particular moment.

  Entreri cast a glance at Athrogate, then stood up quickly, his chair sliding out behind him. He stalked around the table, and never taking his stare off Jarlaxle, left the house.

  "What's tyin' that one's armpit hair in knots?" Athrogate asked.

  Jarlaxle merely smiled, glad that the potion's effects were already fading. The last thing he wanted was to be bombarded by the images that flitted through the mind of Athrogate!

  * * * * *

  Little life showed on the facings of the wind-swept brown rocks footing the mountains south of Memnon. There were a few lizards, though, sunning themselves or scampering from ledge to ledge, and so Jarlaxle knew that beneath the surface, deep in cracks or in caves formed by the incongruity of stone on stone, life found a way.

  It always did—under the desert sun, or in the pits of the Underdark, where no stars shone.

  A crude stone stair wound up the hundred feet or so around a large jut of rock, but Jarlaxle didn't use it. He moved off to the side, where the jag would keep him covered from view, and tipped his great hat to enact its levitation properties. He half-walked and half-floated up the sheer face. As he neared the top, he paused and glanced back behind him to view the distant harbor, and nodded with recognition in confirming that it was the same view he had seen in Entreri's thoughts when he had used the mind-reading potion.

  Certain that Entreri was on the other side of the stone, Jarlaxle crept low as he went to the top.

  Behind it was a flat patch of sandy ground, wider than the drow had expected. Many small and weathered stones littered the place—ancient gravestones, Jarlaxle realized. Across the sandy field directly south of his position, the drow noted a tarp-covered mound.

  Bodies awaiting burial.

  Entreri was indeed up there, walking among the stones, looking down at the sand and apparently lost in contemplation. Only one other man was about, a priest of Selûne, who stood at the westernmost edge, looking down at the harbor through a break in the brown stones.

  It was a paupers' graveyard, where Entreri's mother was likely buried, Jarlaxle surmised. He retreated a bit over the far side of the rock and rested his back against it, considering it all. His friend was in turmoil, clearly. In breaking through Entreri's emotional wall, Jarlaxle had opened him to those painful memories.

  He crawled back up and took one last look at Entreri, wondering what might result.

  He floated back down carrying more than a little guilt on his slender shoulders.

  * * * * *

  "You'll not find any names on those stones," the priest said to Entreri as the assassin puttered about, coincidentally moving nearer to the man.

  Entreri looked up and noticed the priest—the same one who had been collecting indulgences in the square that day—for the first time, really, so absorbed had he been in pondering the dirt and the many souls buried beneath it. He noted the man's defensive posture, and understood that the priest felt threatened.

  He offered a helpless shrug and walked off a bit.

  "It's not
often that a man of your obvious means would come here," the priest persisted.

  Entreri turned and regarded him again.

  "I mean, these wretches don't get much in the manner of visitors," the priest went on. "Mostly unknown, unloved, and unwanted…" He ended with a condescending chuckle, which disappeared abruptly in light of Entreri's ensuing scowl.

  "Yet you write their names on your scrolls when they give you their coins in the square," the assassin remarked. "Are you up here to pray for them, then? To fulfill the indulgences they purchased at your table?"

  The priest cleared his throat and said, "I am Devout Gositek."

  "You've confused me with someone who cares."

  "I am a priest of Selûne," the man protested.

  "You are a charlatan who sells false hope."

  Gositek steadied himself and straightened his robes. "Beware your words…" he said, inquiring of Entreri's name with his expression and inflection.

  Entreri didn't blink, and at first didn't respond at all. It was all he could do to keep from leaping across the ten feet that separated him from Gositek and throwing the fool from the cliff.

  Entreri reminded himself to do nothing so rash. The young man was barely half his age and could not have been involved with his mother in any way.

  "As I said, I am Devout Gositek," the man said again, apparently drawing strength from Entreri's snub. "A favored scribe of Principal Cleric Yozumian Dudui Yinochek, the Blessed Voice Proper, himself. Speak ill to me at your peril. We rule the Protector's House. We are the hope and prayers of Memnon."

  He babbled on for a bit, but Entreri hardly heard him, for that name, Yinochek, sparked memory in him.

  "How old is he?" Entreri asked, interrupting the fool.

  "What? Who?"

  "This man, this Blessed Voice Proper?"

  "Yinochek?"

  "How old is he?"

  "Why, I don't know his exact—"

  "How old is he?"

  "Sixty years, perhaps?" Gositek asked as much as answered.

  Entreri nodded as memories came back to him of a young and fiery priest, an oratory prodigy, a blessed voice proper, who had often delivered powerful homilies from the balcony of the Protector's House. He remembered viewing some of those beside his young mother, her eyes upturned, her heart uplifted.

  "And this man has been at the Protector's House for many years?" Entreri asked. "And he has been known as Blessed Voice Proper…"

  "From the beginning," Gositek confirmed. "And yes, he was a young man when first he came to join the priests of Selûne. Why? Do you know of him?"

  Entreri turned and walked away.

  "You used to live here," Gositek called after him, but Entreri didn't stop.

  "What was her name?" the perceptive priest asked.

  Entreri stopped, and turned to regard the man.

  "The woman you seek here," Gositek explained. "It was a woman, yes? What was her name?"

  "She had no name," Entreri replied. "None that you would remember. Look around you for your answers. Look at all their names, for they are etched on every stone."

  Gositek straightened.

  Entreri walked out of the graveyard.

  * * * * *

  Entreri hardly glanced at Jarlaxle as he took the bag of gold.

  "You are welcome," the drow said, with more amusement than sarcasm.

  "I know," was all he got in return.

  The man's mood hardly surprised Jarlaxle. "I see that you are wearing your hat this day," he said, trying to lighten the mood, and referring to a thin-brimmed black top hat he had provided to Entreri, one with many magical properties—though not as many as Jarlaxle's great hat, of course! "I have not seen it on your head in many days."

  Entreri stared at him. The hat was tightly form-fitted, owing to a thin wire beneath its band. Entreri reached up and found the magical-mechanical clip, set just above his left temple. With a flick of his fingers, he disengaged it, and with a turn of his wrist, he removed the hat, tossing it to Jarlaxle, as if the reminder of where he had gotten the hat somehow sullied his desire to wear it.

  That wasn't it at all, of course, as Jarlaxle clearly understood. Entreri had gotten exactly what he wanted from the hat, for it held much less rigidity, absent the wire. The idea of snubbing Jarlaxle had simply been an added bonus.

  Entreri held stares with him for a moment longer, then hoisted the small sack of gold and walked out of the house.

  "Must've had a bug crawl up his bum last night," said Athrogate, pulling himself up from the floor and stretching the aches from his knotty old muscles.

  Still watching the departing man, and rolling the discarded hat in his hands, Jarlaxle answered, "No, my hirsute friend, it goes far deeper than that. Artemis has been forced to remember his past, and so now he has to confront the truth of who he is. Witness your own mood when speaking of Citadel Felbarr."

  "I telled ye I don't want to be talkin' about that."

  "Exactly. Only Artemis isn't talking about anything. He's living it, in his heart. We did that to him, I fear, when he was given the flute." Finally, the drow turned to regard the dwarf. "And now we have to help him through this."

  "We? Ye're pretty good with throwing around that word, elf. Course, if I knew what ye was talking about, I might be inclined to agree. Then again, I'm thinking that agreeing with ye is just going to get meself in trouble."

  "Probably."

  "Bwahaha!"

  Jarlaxle knew that he could depend upon that one.

  * * * * *

  The scene at the square that morning was much as it had been when Entreri and Jarlaxle had first looked upon it, as it was almost every morning. The cobblestones could hardly be seen beneath the hordes of squatting peasants, and the long lines leading to the two tables flanking the Protector's House's great doors.

  When they arrived, Jarlaxle and Athrogate had little trouble picking Artemis Entreri out from that ragamuffin crowd. He stood in the line at the farthest table, which struck Jarlaxle as odd until he noted the priest seated there, the same one he had seen in the pauper's graveyard the previous day. Entreri wondered if he had made a connection with the man.

  Athrogate in tow, the drow cut through the first line of peasants and weaved across the way to move beside his companion. Those immediately behind Entreri protested the cut—or started to, until Athrogate barked at them. With his morningstars so prevalent, and a face scarred by a hundred years of battle, Athrogate had little trouble suppressing the protests of the paupers.

  "Go away," Entreri said to Jarlaxle.

  "I would be remiss—"

  "Go away," the assassin said again, turning his head to look the elf in the eye. Jarlaxle held that stare for a few moments, long enough so that the line had time to thin ahead of them and when he disengaged the stare, Entreri was practically at the table. Entreri snorted at him dismissively, but Jarlaxle did not back off more than a couple of steps.

  "First at a graveyard and now here," the priest, Gositek, said when Entreri's turn arrived. "You are truly a man of surprises."

  "More than you can imagine," Entreri replied and he hoisted the sack of gold onto the table, which shook under its weight. As the bag settled, the top slipped open a bit, revealing the shiny yellow metal, and a collective gasp erupted from the peasants behind Entreri, and before, from the priest whose eyes widened so much that they seemed as if they might roll out onto the pile.

  The guards behind Gositek came forward to hold back the pressing crowd, and Gositek finally sputtered, "Are you trying to incite a riot?" And it seemed as if he could hardly find breath for his voice.

  "I am buying an indulgence," Entreri replied.

  "The graveyard—"

  "For a name long-forgotten by the priests of Selûne, their promises be damned."

  "Wh-what do you mean?" Gositek stammered, and he worked to tighten the drawstring and hide away the gold before it could cause a stampede. As he moved to pull the sack toward him, though, Entreri's hand clamped har
d and fast around his wrist, an iron grip that halted the man.

  "Yes, the n-n-name…" Gositek stuttered, turning to his scribe, who sat with his mouth agape, staring stupidly. "Record the name—and a great indulgence it will—"

  "Not from you," Entreri instructed.

  Gositek stared at him blankly.

  "I will purchase this indulgence from the blessed voice proper alone," Entreri explained. "He will receive the gold personally, will record the name personally, and recite the prayers personally."

  "But that is not—"

  "It is that, or it is nothing," said Entreri. "Would you go to your blessed voice proper after I have left with my gold, and explain to him why you could not allow me to see him?"

  Gositek shifted nervously, rubbed a hand across his face, and licked his thin lips.

  "I haven't the authority," the priest managed to say.

  "Then go and find it."

  The priest looked to his scribe and to the guards, all of them shaking their heads helplessly. Finally, Gositek managed to tell one of the guards to go, and the man ran off.

  The line grew restless behind Entreri, but he wasn't moving for the short while it took before the guard returned. He pulled Gositek aside and whispered to him, and the devout came back to the table and sat down.

  "You are fortunate," he said, "for the blessed voice proper is in his audience hall at this very time, and with a calendar that is not full. For the sake of an extreme indulgence—"

  "For a sack of gold coins," Entreri corrected, and Gositek cleared his throat and did not argue the point.

  "He will see you."

  Entreri lifted the bag and stepped beyond the table, moving for the door, but the guards blocked his way.

  "You cannot bring weapons inside the Protector's House," Gositek explained, rising again and moving to the side of Entreri. "Nor any magical items. I am sorry, but the safety of…"

  Entreri unhitched his weapon belt and handed it back to Jarlaxle, who moved over, Athrogate still in tow—and with the dwarf still facing the crowd, holding them back with his snarling visage.