Baldur's Gate II Shadows of Amn (22 page)

“Your sister,” Irenicus laughed, “has achieved her true purpose. She walks Faerun in the guise of your father’s avatar. Bhaal is dead, but his blood lives on, his power lives on, and I have twisted it, turned it to my will to kill Ellesime of Suldanessellar and rip from that damn tree what I need to live forever.”

Abdel, sword in hand, continued his charge at Irenicus.

The necromancer held up a hand and said, “Don’t you want to see? Don’t you want to see it?” His voice descended into incoherent babbling.

Abdel pulled his sword back, determined to see if the necromancer could live without a head, when something hit him in the chest. It was as if he’d run into a stone wall, and the wall kicked back. Abdel flew backward through the air some immeasurable distance. Wind whistled through the sellsword’s ears, then Irenicus’s voice: “Don’t you want to see your father’s face?”

Abdel hit the ground hard, but he held on to his sword. He felt something in his lower back give, heard a crack, and his legs went instantly numb. The word no! raged through his mind. The necromancer had broken his back. Abdel lay sprawled on the gravel ground, looking up into the downward-tilted face of a disapproving marble elf.

He managed to prop himself up on both elbows, and there, a good fifty yards away, was Jon Irenicus, waving his fists at the sky and running toward Abdel.

“You’ll die before you see it, then!” the necromancer wailed. “I’ll see you in Hell where I’ll take your soul and meld it with the essence of the tree, and I’ll be a god!”

Abdel screamed at the blazing morning sky in incoherent rage, and Irenicus answered with another string of harsh, guttural, chanting words. Abdel looked at the necromancer again, who had stopped a bit closer than half the distance he’d started from and pointed one long, bony, shaking finger at Abdel. Spittle flew from the corner of his babbling mouth.

Abdel felt a wave of overwhelming nausea. A haze of gray fell over his vision, and his head spun. He turned to one side and retched, but nothing came up. He felt a chill run up his spine, and his ears began to ring.

“Die!” Irenicus shrieked, his voice ragged and shrill. “Die, gods damn you, die!”

Abdel didn’t die, but it took a long time for the sickness to pass.

“The s-son of B-Bhaal,” Irenicus stuttered. “You are the son of Bhaal. I’ve killed a thousand men with that spell … a thousand mortals.” The necromancer cackled, falling to one knee. His eyes were red, still bulging and looking painful, as if they might burst. “It should have killed you. It has never failed to kill anyone—except Ellesime. Oh, you will serve me and serve me well.”

Something popped in Abdel’s spine, and sensation returned to his legs in a wave of prickling fire. He stood, tightened his grip on his sword, and fixed his furious gaze on Jon Irenicus.

“You’ve had all the fun with me you’re going to have, necromancer,” Abdel growled.

“Abdel!” Jaheira screamed from some distance away.

Yoshimo’s voice followed suit, then Jaheira’s again.

“Where is she?” Abdel asked Irenicus.

“You can’t do anything for her now, Abdel,” Irenicus said, his voice strangely subdued. “It’s all over. I’ve won.”

Abdel, snarling like a dumb, enraged animal, shot forward. Irenicus said three foreign words and was gone before Abdel could take off his head.

Suldanessellar was already in ruins.

There was smoke everywhere, and Abdel almost choked on the thick stench of burning wood, singed hair, and crisping flesh. Screams of fear, shock, sorrow, and pain punctuated the morning air. All around there was fire, elves running, trees burning, and the visceral death of the elven tree city.

Abdel ran off the effects of the teleport that brought them back from Myth Rhynn fast on the heels of the Ravager. The beast must have flown, run faster than anything on Faerun, or teleported itself to beat them there. Jaheira and Yoshimo fanned out behind him.

A haze of yellow rage descended over Abdel, and he ran against a tide of fleeing elf civilians into the chaotic hell of the Swanmay’s Glade. His eyes blazed bright yellow, and any traces of injury he might have had faded into hard, ready muscle and kill-crazed adrenaline. He came through a wall of thick smoke, and when he saw the Ravager, the yellow haze fell away.

He had to stand in awe of the thing as it hit him all at once. Imoen. This beast was Imoen. This thing was made from the blood that ran through his own veins. This thing could be him. He could be this thing—he had been this thing. It was something just like that that had ripped Bodhi to shreds. His father’s name crossed soundlessly across his lips. For the first time, the reality of who and what he was descended full onto him, and he was simply overcome.

Behind him, Jaheira raised her voice into a keening chant.

The Ravager hung from the side of one of the enormous trees. Its long, taloned feet dug deeply into the ancient bark, and it had all four hands free. With one mighty limb the creature smashed a hole into the hollow tree and revealed the modest home of an elf family who couldn’t possibly have done anything to deserve this. An elf woman screamed and all but threw a squalling infant into a bassinet in one corner of the room. The Ravager picked the woman up as if she weighed nothing and squeezed. The claws were as long as the woman’s arms, and they impaled her four times from four different directions. She didn’t scream again, but she managed a sob before she died. An elf warrior answered from below with a battle cry that set Abdel’s heart racing again.

The Ravager heard the cry and bent backward, still holding the tree with its feet, still holding the elf woman in one hand. The elf warrior stepped forward with a wide-bladed bastard sword that only glanced off the Ravager’s nigh impenetrable chitin. The beast let the elf think he’d dodged a swipe of one clawed hand, then came down over the warrior with its open mouth. Abdel, in his paralyzed haze, made note of the fact that it was the first time he’d seen anyone, man or elf, bitten cleanly in half.

“Imoen,” Abdel whispered, “no….”

The heat and sound of the fireball brought Abdel just one more notch closer to the situation at hand, but he didn’t turn to find the source of it. An elf mage stepped a few paces behind what looked like a boulder of yellow-hot lava. A family of elves ran across the fireball’s path. The mage showed the fine control she had over her burning conjuration by making it swerve around them so fast and by far enough that the elves didn’t seem to see it. The ball was rolling toward the tree, toward the Ravager, and Abdel realized it must have been dozens of spells like it that accounted for all the fires.

Another elf warrior died horribly after trying to even dent the Ravager’s armorlike skin. Abdel took a step forward, and he looked at the sword in his hand. He didn’t even remember now where he’d gotten it. It wasn’t even his sword. It was too light for Abdel’s tastes even when fighting only other men. Against the Ravager, it would be no better than a needle. It was poorly made and cheap and certainly not enchanted in any way.

And did he even want to kill this thing? Of course, he had to. The lives of hundreds had already fallen to it, and a beautiful place that deserved none of this was being torn to ribbons, but this was Imoen. Somewhere in there this monster was still Imoen. And Jaheira was here. If he killed Imoen, what would she think? She had tried so hard to turn him away from his father’s blood. Any death at his hands was a betrayal of that. Wasn’t it?

The flaming sphere rolled to the base of the tree, then up. The Ravager slipped off the tree and almost seemed to willingly fall through the fire spell on its way down. The magical flames merely dissipated around the creature, who paid them no mind.

Jaheira cursed from behind Abdel, and he heard her call on Mielikki and ask her favors before slipping into that arcane tongue once more.

“Imoen,” Abdel said again, his feet planted firmly in place.

“Abdel, my friend,” Yoshimo said, sliding behind him and coughing once from the smoke. “What is it we’re to do here? What can you do from this … what, forty yards or so away? Do we attack it? How does a man stop such a … such a …”

There was a roar, a flash of purple and black, and a tiger the likes of which Abdel had never imagined, much less seen, appeared in the glade in front of him.

“You know what to do, my girls,” Jaheira said, her voice as certain and steady as she could make it.

Abdel turned to look at her, and before he saw Jaheira he’d counted six of the huge cats. Standing in front of her were two more. From the mouths of these tigers grew fangs like scimitar blades. A few of the tigers spared Abdel a passing glance, then they loped determinedly toward the Ravager, two of them circling off to the right, two to the left, and four straight down the middle, straight at it.

“I came here for …” Yoshimo said to Abdel. “I did not come here for this. It is time for me to … go.”

The first tiger hit the Ravager hard and heavy, daggerlike claws tried to dig in, to hold, then tear. The monster reacted to the animal’s weight with a sense of irritation rather than pain or fear. It took hold of the beast as if it was a mewling kitten and crushed its spine with a single twitch of its massive hand. The second cat was caught in midleap by another of the Ravager’s clawed hands. The single backhanded swipe took the tiger’s head off. The other cats pulled up short, quickly regrouping in the face of an enemy they couldn’t ever have been ready for.

The Ravager waded through the confused tigers and ripped a long, jagged gash in the side of one. The mighty animal’s entrails spilled onto the ground, and it died at the Ravager’s feet. The other cats each glanced at Jaheira in turn. A tear stained the druid’s cheek, but she nodded the animals in. One of them latched onto the monster’s leg, sinking its huge fangs through the hard exoskeleton with a loud crack. The Ravager trembled, injured for the first time. It grabbed the tiger and snatched it up hard and fast enough that the animal’s head came off, its teeth still wedged firmly into the creature’s leg. The Ravager tossed the headless tiger away and grabbed for another, which dodged lithely out of reach.

“I can’t…” Jaheira said. “I free you. Go!”

The four tigers who still lived didn’t hesitate to follow Jaheira’s advice and withdraw. They scattered in all directions, then simply faded into thin air before reaching the edge of the glade. The severed head was gone from the Ravager’s leg, and a thick green fluid oozed from the wound.

“It can be hurt,” Abdel said, and Yoshimo nodded.

There was a brilliant flash of blue-white light—a single bolt of powerful lighting—that ran parallel to the ground and was obviously the doing of a young elf, standing defiantly at the base of one of the mighty trees.

The Ravager shook off what little effect the lightning might have had on it and whirled to face the elf mage.

“That elf is going to die very soon,” Yoshimo said grimly.

The Ravager took two huge, ground-trembling steps toward the mage, who was wise enough to turn and run. The elf managed to disappear through a doorway that Abdel never would have seen in the base of the tree. The Ravager screamed out its rage and set Abdel’s ears ringing.

The sellsword in him noticed a hesitation in the monster’s step. The tiger had hurt it more than Abdel had at first realized.

“Yoshimo,” Abdel said, “we have to immobilize it.”

“Immobilize?” the Kozakuran asked.

“Make it …” Abdel fumbled. “Make it so the thing can’t move. Make it fall down and not be able to get back—”

“I understand, now,” Yoshimo interrupted, “thank you. So, we go for the legs?”

“I think so,” Abdel answered, “avoiding the arms. If we can get it to just stop, maybe I can talk to it.”

“Abdel—” Jaheira, who had moved up behind them started.

“It’s Imoen,” Abdel told her. “Imoen’s in there somewhere.”

“Abdel—” she started to say.

“Don’t, Jaheira,” he said. “It was you who started this. Before I met you I wouldn’t have hesitated—not just now but lots of times before. Yoshimo would be dead now, so would Gaelan Bayle—but they live because of you, because you taught me to fight with my heart— my human heart—not my tainted blood. That thing is Imoen. I can’t kill her. I killed Sarevok, but I can’t kill her.”

Jaheira smiled sadly, then her attention was ripped away by another elf’s dying scream.

“Yoshimo?” Abdel asked.

Yoshimo nodded but looked to Abdel to make the first move. “I will try, my friend,” the Kozakuran said, “but I will have to go, if I feel I have to go.”

It was Abdel’s turn to nod. He took the first step, then the two of them were charging.

A wave of fleeing elves covered the bulk of their charge, and the Ravager was still trying to find the elf who’d sent the lightning bolt its way. Abdel got to the thing’s leg and made to swipe at the already open wound. The broadsword bounced off the thing’s armored skin less than half an inch from the wound. The Ravager took no notice of him.

Yoshimo circled around. The Kozakuran moved with barely a sound, and though it looked as if he wanted to let loose a battle cry of some kind, he held his tongue. The sword bit deeply into the Ravager’s leg, benefiting from the Kozakuran’s running momentum.

The monster flung its head backward on its hunched neck and hissed into the air. Yoshimo, teeth clamped hard together, began to work his sword back and forth in the creature’s leg. Abdel couldn’t tell if he was trying to get the blade out or deeper in. Green gore was spraying everywhere, and Yoshimo was quickly covered in it.

“Enchanted,” Yoshimo called. “The blade, I mean.”

The Ravager reached down for Yoshimo, and Abdel, not sure what else to do, screamed. This distracted the Ravager for only half a second, but that was enough time for Yoshimo to sidestep the thing’s multifingered hand.

The Ravager reversed the direction of its arm and swatted Yoshimo away. The enchanted sword came out of the thing’s leg, releasing a second torrent of green blood, and Yoshimo was thrown several paces away and to the ground.

“Imoen!” Abdel screamed. “No!”

The Ravager roared and tipped its head down to Yoshimo. The Kozakuran, stunned, shook his head and tried to stand.