The Rose of Sarifal (forgotten realms:moonshae isles)

by Paulina Claiborne

  Or he could wait till they were drunk but no. These women needed him now. An orc shambled down the slope on their side of the ridge, a Northlander bucket in his hand, looking for water. He was out of the circle of firelight, climbing down through the bushes when he smelled the rabbit, still caught in the branches where Lukas had thrown it. He staggered down the remaining steps and found it, cold now, only half cooked. He was holding it up to his pale and cratered face, sniffing it, confused, when Lukas shot him through his open eye. The genasi, moving silently, caught the orc and cut open his throat before he could make more than a grunting, wheezing gurgle.

  They will not miss him for a while, whispered Gaspar-shen. Do we have a plan?

  No plan. Lukas examined the wooden bucket where it fell: a pretty object, banded with complicated Northlander ironwork, now staved in along one side. He found the sight of it unbearable. Come, he said.

  And then he crossed the stream and climbed up the other side of the dell, up onto the knoll on that side, where he could see the fire burning at a distance of a hundred yards. The banner had blown down but no one cared; they were busy with the women. Gaspar-shen followed him, his scimitar drawn.

  It was a cloudy, moonless night, threatening rain. Lukas figured he could get off half a dozen shots before the orcs even knew where he was. Then they d have to run down through the gorse bushes, and he and Gaspar-shen would have the high ground. He wished Marikke were here to pray to Chauntea for a pause in the wind, which blew from behind him. Even so it was fitful enough to throw him off, because he wanted accuracy. Not a wasted shaft. And he wanted to hit them in their faces, always in their faces, where Corellon Larethian hurt their one-eyed god in the old days Lukas was hoping some of them would notice, would feel the weight of their superstitions. He unstrapped the sword from his back, slipped off his boots so that he could dig his toes into the dry soil, and stuck twelve arrows into the ground in front of him.

  Wait for them in the bushes down below, he said to the genasi. I ll join you. When his arrows were done, he d prefer close quarters for the rest of the fighting.

  First, the brutes on this side of the fire, whom he could see in silhouette. And even if he missed his aim, maybe he would hit someone behind. One, two, three a miss. Four. Three orcs were down, one shot through the throat in the act of raising his skull-cup to his lips.

  But now they were shouting and screaming on the ridgetop, pointing toward him in the darkness, grabbing for their axes and their spears. One, two, three more orcs were down, and now a fourth, a massive creature whom he shot through the shoulder as he stumbled down into the dell. One more on the ridgetop, and he had three arrows left.

  Against anyone but orcs, he and the genasi would have retreated into darkness at this point, moving to evade a second group of warriors who would have circled back behind the hill to close them in. But one-eyed Gruumsh had taught his worshipers the doctrine of the furious assault. Everything else was cowardice. Tactics were cowardice; bows were elven, coward s weapons. And so now the bulk of the orcs crashed down the slope into the dell, an undifferentiated mass. Lukas could see the genasi down below, his short sword in one hand, his scimitar burning with a watery, cold fire, lines of energy snaking in patterns down his back as he crept through the bushes; he shot his last three arrows almost without aiming, drew his sword, and ran down the hill to meet his friend.

  It was only after he had disabled two of the enormous, enraged, brain-damaged creatures one with a cut across the hamstrings, one with a thrust into the belly that he realized how difficult their situation was. It had been hard to estimate the numbers. But now he could see that fourteen warriors at least were left, and despite their losses were pushing Lukas and Gaspar-shen steadily back, steadily uphill out of the bushes that were their only cover. Once in the open ground, it would be hard to guess how they d survive.

  Lukas wondered as he hacked and parried, cut and thrust, whether it was normal for him to think so clearly and dispassionately in these moments of bitter combat. His body moved without thinking, and his thoughts, untethered, floated upward as if into the moonless sky. Looking down, he could see the land laid out around the fire on the ridge, beside which the orc leader, Gruumsh s eye, peered down into the dell, a hideous smile on his mutilated face. At the same time he was thinking of the catalogue of mistakes he had made, not just here, tonight, but in the recent past, ever since the first mistake of choosing to accept the commission, for no evident money, to accompany Lord Aldon Kendrick on his idiotic journey to Caer Corwell. And even in the not-so-recent past, when he had left Baldur s Gate where he had built the Sphinx, whose spars now, doubtless, littered the beach below Kork Head; he could see the wreck in his mind s eye as he continued his ascent, and the entire coast of Moray from the Orcskulls to Trollclaw, more than a hundred miles. He saw lightning storms in the mountains, and moving toward him. He imagined he was rising up and up, and he could see the coast of Gwynneth now and Alaron behind it. Only his body was struggling in the dirt down below, ducking under the massive blade, stumbling up and backward, always backward, with the genasi at his side. He was wounded. He could feel that, too, a heavy pain in his side.

  Ware, said Gaspar-shen. And then they d run out of room, and so they staggered up through the last trees. The open knoll was above them. Lukas found himself looking up into an orc s murderous face. He really did have one eye. The left one had been cut away, and so Lukas stepped to the blind side and cut the brute across the neck; he didn t go down. Off balance, Lukas saw the axe start its descent, just before the fletching of an arrow sprouted in the orc s breast, and he fell backward down the slope.

  Another archer was up there on the knoll, a good one. The wind had come up and the storm had risen. An explosion of lightning, and in the interval before the thunder crack the archer managed to bring down three orcs in succession while Lukas clambered toward her, holding his side and dragging Gaspar-shen, who had lost his sword. The genasi was wounded behind his ear, a deep cut that flowed with the shining green ichor that was his blood.

  And the archer wasn t alone. Others were up there, pale figures in gray robes, who ran down softly through the throng of astonished orcs, armed with light weapons, knives and slings, pulling down their heavier prey and chasing them into the gorse.

  Soon it was done. Bewildered, Lukas waited for the rain. He sat beside Gaspar-shen, watching the quick gray figures climb the ridge to the bonfire and the eye of Gruumsh and his captives. The archer squatted above Lukas, and with quick, impatient hands she examined his side under his shirt.

  I ll live, he said in the Common tongue, accepting a bloody towel to press into the wound. Look to my friend.

  But now he saw that someone had taken Gaspar-shen away. He felt lightheaded, weak from lost blood. He looked up at the archer, dressed in light leather armor and a leather cap, which she stripped off to reveal a coil of red hair.

  Where is he? Lukas asked.

  The archer shook her head. It s going to rain. Let us bring you to some shelter. I am

  I know who you are, Lukas said.

  Chapter Six — A Resurrection

  Eighty miles away there was rain in the Orcskull Mountains and in the deserted city below Scourtop. There was even rain that trickled down through ancient ventilation shafts into the cavern at the mountain s root and seeped across the floor. It puddled in the slime below Malar s table where the lycanthropes had circled round, as if to protect their slumbering god from the onslaught of three warriors the Savage with his red sword, and the two druids, Einar and Eleuthra in their animal shapes.

  Marikke hung suspended in a net of chains, her wrists chafed and bleeding. She lifted her head to watch the wolf and the leopard rip into the pack of beast-men, who at the first moment of the assault were almost human, vulnerable in their terror. But as they grasped the crushing superiority of their own numbers, their most bestial instincts returned to them. Marikke watched the leopard go down under a seething pile. On the other side of the tunnel s mouth, the
wolf had been brought to bay by the albino pig-lord. The Savage, in the center of the floor, had opened the bellies of a pair of werewolves, and as Marikke watched he brought his sword down across the back of one of the great cats. Red lightning flickered from his blade, and the lycanthropes cringed away from him until Argon Bael climbed down from the table, his own sword glittering with light. Marikke saw him swell and grow, his face shining so bright he was hard to see. In a moment all the darkness and the shadows in the cavern were banished to its edges, while at the same time the angel s wings, visible for the first time, stirred the air and extinguished the torches, which were useless now in any case. The light streamed from the angel s head and hands, and the runes along the blade of his two-handed broadsword gleamed with holy power. The elf seemed diminished, frail by contrast, until with game courage he lifted up his blade, lifted his face also, and Marikke could see his eyes.

  The light that flowed from the angel, transfiguring and pure, was now the greatest source of light in the noisome cavern. Whatever object it touched, it seemed to light it from within. The surface of the stone table glowed, and the sleeping bulk of the Beastlord also appeared to glow, each black hair alight. Kip had fallen to the side, and he seemed asleep, though with an egg of light inside his chest that illuminated the bands of his ribs. Argon Bael swung his sword, which seemed to cut away the lies from everyone it touched, leaving them defenseless. One of the druids was already dead, his naked body gnawed to the bone. The other cowered in a corner, a simple human woman wrapped in a wolf s skin.

  The Savage stood over her, protecting her, his own sword branching with electric current a winged, batlike creature sprang at him, and he slashed it from the air. Marikke hung above him. The wolf-men had fled, leaving her alone. Now, undistracted by their malice, she could work on the manacles that held her, which had been made for someone with larger wrists. Her own were slippery with sweat. She was able to slip the heel of her left hand through the ring, little by little, while at the same time she watched the duel that moved below her, tentative at first, as the opponents took each other s measure. The angel s sword separated truth from darkness, and when the light of it cut across the Savage s face, Marikke gasped in astonishment as she worked her left hand free, for suddenly she understood why she had mistrusted him all this time. She had been right to hate him, wrong to feel guilty or unfair. What the golden elf did, whether he behaved nobly or honorably, manipulatively or arrogantly, all that was unimportant now that she saw him for what he was, revealed in the light of the angel s stroke, which cleaved the air. The Savage s beautiful features, his golden hair and green eyes, all that was a lie.

  In her mind she prayed to Chauntea without ceasing, begging her to reduce the pain in her wrists and strip away the living tissue also, reduce her proud flesh. This was a piece of ritual abasement with a metaphorical meaning. Tonight, Marikke meant it in cold seriousness smaller, made little, she could slide herself free from the intolerable manacles, the intolerable pain in her shoulders as she swung and dangled back and forth. Free me from the bonds of care, she prayed, meaning the words literally for the first time in her life a tiny slip, her wrists greased with sweat.

  Below her she could see the Savage s demonic form rise to the surface of his skin, as his eyes took on an unholy reddish flush, as his pupils narrowed into vertical slits.

  Marikke prayed:

  Earthmother, let my outward form reflect my inner misery. Squeeze me of excess. Make me little, as I have no desire to be great.

  The sweat dripped from her fingers. In a moment, in her despair, she found herself sufficiently diminished to feel the grip of her iron bonds soften for an instant Chauntea had heard her. Below, the Savage struggled with the angel. The red sword rang against the white one, and the air trembled with the force of the electric charge. Momentarily revealed, the golden elf s fiendish nature was now obscured in the storm of battle, which had taken on an elemental quality. Under her, a devil raised his sword against an angel of vengeance, and which side was she on? The devil, the daemonfey, surely he fought for her, to free her and Kip from their imprisonment on the altar of the Beastlord. Surely he had climbed down this winding tunnel to release her from the pit of death, swung his blade against the army of her enemies, whose smoking and disemboweled corpses lay around him the rest of the lycanthropes had pulled back against the walls to watch the red sword press against the white one. Marikke could see their eyes shining in the circles of conflicting light, and some of the awestruck lycanthropes had laid their heads down on their paws.

  How could the Savage have hid himself from her for so long and so successfully? With what intolerable and astonishing effort of will had he kept that cast of red out of his green eyes, kept that pretty elf delicacy in his hands and movement? Even when he was asleep his fingers had not relaxed into claws, and spines of bone had not protruded from his skin she had seen him aboard the Sphinx, wrapped in slumber and his black robe. Even now, when the angel s wings shone above him, an effect more of light and shadow than of flesh, there was no trace of competing bat wings, no sign of a scaly or barbed tail protruding from his trousers. Was it possible she was mistaken? No, but she had seen his demon s eyes when the light of the angel s sword crossed his face, and she had recognized in his terrible beauty the wide forehead and high cheekbones of House Dlardrageth itself. And surely it was no ordinary elf that could press Malar s avenging angel down against the stone table, hammering and pounding the red sword against the white.

  Her hands aching, her arms insensible, Marikke prayed:

  Great Mother, help me to choose wisely

  Better yet, you make the choice.

  Finally it was as if the goddess had acquiesced, had bowed her head, and Marikke s tightly folded palms slipped through the manacles, and she was falling, just at the moment when Argon Bael parried the red sword and flung it upward in a last desperate attempt. The Savage staggered back, his sword point flailing wide. But before the angel could leap on his advantage, Marikke had tumbled onto his back. She felt the burning, shining skin. She had fallen perhaps twenty feet onto his back, which was enough to knock him to his knees, while at the same time she heard the goddess s voice the same impertinent little girl whom she had seen in her distorted recollection of the guildhall in Callidyrr, as if through a shard of broken glass, a little girl in a green dress who spoke into her ear as she rolled, stunned, from the angel s back and slid down to the floor: Malar doesn t need him.

  The Savage stood above them. The red blade hammered home. The white one flickered and went out. Extinguished suddenly, it left the cavern rinsed in darkness, except for the guttering red flame along the blade of the demon elf. The torches were all out. Some of the lycanthropes were whimpering, other screaming softly in the sweating air. Marikke rolled onto her side.

  She had fallen away from the table and lay on the greasy floor. Her arms were hot and numb. Raising her head, she saw a glow on the stone tabletop, a sphere of radiance. She imagined the black bulk of the unconscious god, and Kip s discarded body, while at the same time she listened to the voice in her ear, the muddy little urchin from the slums of Alaron.

  Good and bad, evil and kind, the girl lectured primly. They re just words in the Common tongue. Maybe they mean something to you. But I can t be described that way. I am bigger than you can imagine. We all are we that you call gods. If we create, then we destroy. If we destroy, then we create. Look Great Malar lives.

  Marikke didn t turn her head. Instead she saw clearly in her mind s eye the little girl with her tangled hair, freckled face, chapped lips, snot-caked nose, stained teeth. At the same time she was looking at the daemonfey who leaned wearily upon his sword above the body of his defeated enemy. His face was lit with a reflected radiance. He bowed his head, then lifted one hand as if in supplication.

  All around the table, the lycanthropes had pressed their cheeks against the agate tiles of the cavern floor. Tense and immobile at the same time, they showed in their various postures the submissiv
e urgency of beasts. From time to time Marikke could hear a little whimper of excitement, quickly suppressed. Something was rising from the surface of the stone tabletop. She had seen images of Malar in the pantheon of gods, an enormous panther with red eyes, and claws as long as swords. But Marikke, as she turned her head, already knew she wouldn t see anything like that. Instead she saw Kip, the little cat-shifter, standing with his legs apart, his flesh transfigured as if lit from within, a tiny smile on his lips, and a black kitten struggling in his hands.

  Chapter Seven — The Climbing Rose

  In the old human capital of Caer Moray, Lukas moved among the beasts. During the battle on the ridgetop an orc had cut him in the side and broken three ribs. His life had never been in danger, and he was healing. The previous night he had slept on an actual straw mattress on an actual bed, and in the afternoon he toured the battlements.

  He leaned forward on his elbows on the old stones, looking out over the sea of Moonshae with its white-capped waves. A fresh wind blew from the north. Lady Amaranth stood beside him, dressed in a gray wool cape the day was pretty, though the air was cold. In places, arrows of sunlight split the clouds and struck the dark water underneath, making it tremble and glisten.

  Thank you, said Lukas, finally. You saved our lives, my friend and me.

  Captain, we have you to thank. Without you, we would have come too late. Those women would have died.

  She meant the Northlanders. The orcs had raided and burned a settlement along the coast, poor fishermen and crofters growing potatoes in the stony soil. They had killed the men and children, and stolen the women. Idly, briefly, Lukas wondered if it was merciful to salvage the lives of people who had lost so much. But life is always precious and the mind can heal. He knew this from experience. Besides, it didn t matter. Stupid evil like those orcs must always be confronted and attacked if the world was to continue turning.