Baldur's Gate (20 page)

The act of simply opening his eyes sent such a wave of pain through Abdel’s head that he quickly regretted having awakened and shut his eyes again. That action was followed quickly by another wave of pain, then a third at the sound of Jaheira’s voice, muffled as it was, saying, “—ake up, for Mielikki’s sake. Abdel!”

He tried to answer her but opening his mouth was pure agony, and all he was able to produce was a quavering groan.

“Abdel,” Jaheira called from wherever she was, “you’re alive.” The relief in her voice was apparent.

“Who are you people?” a strange voice, as distant as Jaheira’s, asked.

“Who are you?” Jaheira answered.

“Abdel opened his eyes, and this time the pain was less intense. He’d felt this way before, after long nights of ale and other spirits, but this was worse. Much worse. There was light coming in through a tiny window, a square maybe a foot on a side, so Abdel had enough light to survey his surroundings.

“Damn,” he breathed when he realized he was in a cell. He was locked up like an animal.

“I asked you first,” the strange man replied suspiciously.

Abdel had no idea how long he’d been on the floor of the cell. His sword was gone, and so was his chain mail tunic. He could smell himself, and his throat was burning with thirst. There was a bucket, but the contents of it were unspeakable. There was no water, just a bit of hay and a stout wooden door reinforced with iron bands. Iron bars protected the little window.

“Abdel,” Jaheira called, apparently from another cell, “say something.”

“I’m thirsty,” he said loudly, and the strange man laughed.

“Tell me about it,” he said, “these doppelgangers are lousy hosts.”

“Doppelgangers?” Jaheira asked.

Abdel had heard of these vile, shapeshifting beasts. From what he’d heard, the city of Waterdeep was all but ruled by them. Some were convinced that nearly every city and realm on Faerun had at least one doppelganger in its political structure. Abdel had always laughed those stories off, though. He knew people could be evil enough on their own without having to have been replaced by monsters.

“If you are doppelgangers,” the stranger said, “I’m not telling you anything new. If you aren’t, you might be able to help me get out of this.”

“Who are you?” Abdel asked.

“The name’s Jhasso. I used to run this place.”

Harold Loggerson of Bowshot cut himself playing with his father’s best axe at the age of nine. He couldn’t sit down for the three weeks it took the cut to heal, and it left a long, ragged scar, a scar that few had ever seen, but that gave him a name more fitting for a leader of mercenaries than Harold.

In the years since that cut—and the harsh words that followed from his father, even as his mother stitched the cut with quilting thread—Scar had avoided axes. He wasn’t afraid of them so much as embarrassed by the sight of them. Two years ago, he killed a Zhentarim soldier while protecting a caravan bringing apples (and raw gold mined in the Serpent Hills hidden under the fruit) from Soubar to Baldur’s Gate. The Zhent attacked him with a solid, heavy mithral axe decorated with gold that flew farther, straighter, and faster when thrown than any weapon Scar had ever seen. It took him a long time to kill the Zhent, and he almost died trying, but in the end Scar took the axe.

He’d only shown it to one other man and never worn it into battle or on the streets of Baldur’s Gate. He practiced with it only rarely, and only when he was alone, and only at night. The rest of the time he kept it locked in a dwarven-work iron box slid under his bed.

Scar hefted the axe and felt its weight, then spun it in his hand, his left palm cupped around the end of the steel handle. When he sliced it through the air it seemed to sing, or was that the air itself screaming at being cut? Scar smiled at the sound, but the smile was tinged with sadness. His father had fallen to heartstop long before he could have seen this wonderful axe in his son’s hand. His father had been more confused than disappointed by young Harold’s desire to enter the soldiery, and they’d spoken only once in his father’s last eight years of life. His father was a good man, but a simple one, with simple needs and simple desires. His father lived to be almost fifty years old, and had never been more than half a day’s walk from the two-mule hamlet of Bowshot. Harold—or Scar, as the two were really different people—had been to Waterdeep, had lain with an elf maiden in the High Forest, climbed the Star Mounts, sailed to the Moonshaes, skinned a dozen wolves in the Wood of Sharp Teeth, and been lashed by the burning sands of Anauroch.

“I should go to Bowshot,” he whispered to himself, then chuckled at his sudden, silly sentimentality. “Away with you, now,” he said to the axe and laid it gently into the velvet-lined box.

There was a knock at the door, heavy and urgent, and Scar jumped at the sound. He closed the lid quickly and clicked the dwarven padlock into place.

“Who is it?” he called gruffly, though not unaccustomed to being roused at all hours by urgent news and duties.

“Abdel,” a familiar voice said from the other side of the door. “I have Jaheira with me. We need to talk.”

“Coming,” Scar said, then slid the iron box under his bed, replaced the hanging edge of the quilt his mother had given him years before, and stood. He crossed the room quickly and pulled back the heavy steel bolt. He opened the door to see Abdel, clean and no worse for wear. The young sellsword’s face was expectant, almost nervous.

“Come in, lad,” Scar said. “I didn’t expect to see you until morning.”

Abdel nodded once and stepped in. Jaheira followed him, taking careful stock of Scar’s chamber. It was a simple room, for a man with needs that had become nearly as simple as his father’s. A crackling fire provided warmth and light. There was a wide bed, a stout table with three chairs where—before that game of dice he was still trying to live down—there had been four. A shield bearing the distinctive heraldry of the Flaming Fist hung over the mantel. The shield was dented and scratched from years of use.

Scar motioned them to the chairs, but neither sat.

“We’ve been to the Seven Suns,” Abdel said.

“Indeed,” Scar replied, “let’s have it. Did you see Jhasso?”

“Yes,” Jaheira’s voice came from behind him. He hadn’t noticed her circling him. “Yes, we did.”

Scar’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to follow Jaheira as she continued to wander slowly around the room on stiff, halting legs. “And?”

“And he means no evil,” Abdel said from behind him. Scar turned to look at Abdel, and Jaheira stopped, just at the edge of his vision. Scar took a step back, instinctively.

“What did you find?” he asked.

Jaheira stepped back too, staying just out of his range of vision. Abdel smiled.

“Iron-poisoning potions?” Abdel joked. “Is that what you expected to find?”

Scar stepped back again and to the side, and Jaheira obliged him, moving into his vision even as Abdel took three long, slow steps to Scar’s side.

“What did you expect to find, old man?” Jaheira asked him, her voice full of ominous import.

A sweat broke out on Scar’s forehead. He was unarmed, dressed only in thin wool trousers and a cotton blouse. He felt naked.

“What is this, Abdel?” he asked, and before he got the name out he realized: “You’re not Abdel.”

The sellsword stopped walking, and Scar turned to face him. Jaheira stepped lightly behind him.

“Of course I’m Abdel,” the big man said, reaching slowly, teasingly, for the broadsword hanging from his back, “for now, at least.”

There was the screech of steel on steel and Scar knew it was Jaheira drawing her long sword.

“Damn you,” Scar cursed and stepped to the side faster than anyone would expect a man of his years and girth to move, “to all Nine Hells and back again!”

Abdel’s sword met Jaheira’s in the space that was, less than a second ago, occupied by Scar’s head. Abdel grunted, and the woman swore when her blade broke neatly in two. Abdel pulled up short of killing her, and they both spun on Scar. Jaheira’s sword was now no longer than a decent dagger, and flat on top, but the blade and jagged edge were still sharp, still deadly.

“What have you done with them?” Scar asked, backing up, his feet wide apart. “Do you inhabit their bodies?”

“Do we?” Jaheira asked, a devilish gleam in her eyes.

“If we do,” Abdel added, “and you kill us, your friends’ spirits will drift—”

Scar hopped forward, startling both the impostors, but the two recovered quickly, and Abdel made a fast, tentative stab that drove Scar back again. The mercenary leader circled, going toward the door. Abdel stepped up to block it, and Jaheira went the other direction. Scar backed up against the wall, his eyes darting to random spots around the room. Both impostors tried to track his gaze but soon gave up.

Abdel smiled craftily and said, “Panicking, old man?”

Scar swallowed loudly and said, “Kill me, then, if that’s what you came for.”

“Oh, that is indeed what we came for, fool,” Jaheira hissed, “but we were asked to find something out first.”

“And you thought I’d tell you anything?” Scar asked, his voice dripping with incredulity, his eyes still darting around the room, not focussing on any one thing, especially the broken tip of Jaheira’s still-sharp sword.

“We can kill you with a thousand cuts, old man,” Abdel said, “or a single one.”

“So if I tell you what you want to know, you’ll kill me quick?”

“Aye,” Jaheira said, keeping her distance, but still trying to keep to the edge of Scar’s vision.

“If I had a gold piece for every time that offer was made to me, assassin,” Scar said lightly, “I’d have enough to hire Elminster to protect me.”

Neither Abdel nor Jaheira thought that was the least bit funny.

“As you wish,” Abdel said, then blinked in Jaheira’s direction.

The woman came in fast, and Scar tried to flinch back but was already against the wall. The back of his head knocked against the stone blocks and bounced back into Jaheira’s swing. The jagged edge of the broken blade gouged a deep cut over Scar’s left eye and he hissed at the pain. Jaheira skipped back three steps, flicking the blood from the edge of the blade. Scar put his hand to his head. Blood flowed freely, and he tried to blink it out of his eye. The warm fluid stung.

“Bitch,” Scar scowled, “I’ll kill you for that.”

Jaheira ignored him and asked, “Why did you send us to the Seven Suns?”

“Did you kill Abdel and his woman?” Scar asked in return.

Jaheira came at him again, slicing high and across. This time Scar stepped into the attack. Jaheira had her arm up too high, exposing too much of her body, and Scar slammed into her. He grabbed her arm from underneath and used the woman’s momentum to flip her tail over teacup and smash her roughly to the wood floor. He could see Abdel coming in fast and dived head first for the broken tip of Jaheira’s sword that lay a few feet away.

Jaheira spat out a feral, inhuman growl and spun to stand up. Abdel fouled in her twisting legs and came crashing down next to Scar, the heavy broadsword bounced out of the impostor’s grasp and slid away, coming to a stop at the edge of the brick hearth. Scar grabbed the broken blade and ignored the pain of the sharp edges cutting into his hand. The mercenary leader hopped up to a crouching position and grabbed for the box under his bed.

Abdel stood up and took the time to retrieve his sword.

“Just kill him,” Jaheira spat. “To the hells with the Iron Throne!”

Scar heard heavy footfalls and grabbed the rough leather handle of the iron box at the same time. Abdel came in and down fast, and Scar spun on his rump to avoid the first downward stab. The sword tip bit deeply into the wood planks but didn’t break. Scar pulled his knee to his chin and kicked out. Abdel saw the kick coming and jumped back out of the way, though the kick wasn’t intended for him. Scar’s bare foot smashed into the side of the iron box and the box scraped deep furrows into the wood floor as it slid out from under the bed. Scar didn’t see it stop. Jaheira stomped on his forehead with a booted foot, and the old mercenary’s head exploded with pain and light. The sound of his head hitting the floor echoed in his skull, and he had to fight to stay conscious. He felt the woman’s knee on his chest and put a hand up to guard his face. Jaheira dragged a bloody scrape across the old mercenary’s palm and Scar hissed again. He slashed with the broken blade, and it cut deeply through the woman’s heavy trousers and into her leg. It was Jaheira’s turn to hiss, and Scar took advantage of her momentary weakness, and he threw her off him.

“I’ll bleed you dry!” she shrieked at him, but Scar ignored the threat and rolled forward and up, diving ahead with all his weight and strength. He saw Abdel’s foot, and the impostor backed off again, but as before, Abdel wasn’t Scar’s target. There was a flash of white-hot pain and a loud shriek of metal on metal when Scar brought the broken sword tip down on the iron padlock, and the blade and lock shattered all at once.

Scar rolled, knowing he’d been heading in one direction too long, and his instincts proved correct. Abdel’s blade came down hard again, and again only took splinters from the now ruined floor. Scar pushed the box open and grunted when a jagged piece of the shattered blade, that was still stuck in his bleeding palm, was driven deeper.

Abdel’s sword came down again, and this time it pierced Scar’s heavily muscled thigh. The old mercenary grunted at the pain and wanted to cry out but couldn’t. Abdel’s heavy boot landed square on Scar’s chest. The old mercenary was driven hard to the floor, but the push only helped him lift the weighty axe out of the box. He slashed down in a wide arc and caught the impostor Abdel in the groin. There was a gout of blood, and the young sellsword fell. The axe was stuck in the already dead body, and it slipped easily out of Scar’s weakening grip. He sighed heavily, content to at least have taken one down.

Abdel hit the ground quivering, and when the impostor’s head lolled over on its lifeless neck, the face changed. Scar was face to face with some inhuman thing. It had a wide oval head with impossibly large, soulless eyes and smooth gray skin the color of old ash. He saw the axe come free of the dead thing’s body, and he rolled to sit up.