Baldur's Gate II Throne of Bhaal (24 page)

Balthazar and Sendai were working together, plotting against her. She whispered a silent curse at not having foreseen this outcome. She had grown careless, allowing herself to believe of all her allies, Balthazar would be the last to turn on her. She had foolishly thought the monks could protect Imoen until Abdel returned from destroying Abazigal. Imoen had suffered the ultimate consequence for Melissan’s naive faith in Balthazar’s loyalty.

With Imoen dead, Sendai would go after Abdel next. Once Gorion’s ward was slain, the work of the Five would be all but complete. Their last task before attempting to raise Bhaal once again, Melissan realized, would be to kill her.

She heard a commotion from down below. Some of the other monks had discovered the paralyzed corpses of their brethren. Melissan suddenly realized how much immediate danger she was in. It was unlikely Balthazar would be able to corrupt the entire order. They would not willingly aid him if they knew he was allied with a drow assassin.

But the monks would never think to question their enlightened brother’s leadership without blatant proof of his foul betrayal. If Balthazar lied to them, they would simply accept his words as truth. If he told them Melissan was working with the Five, they would accept it as fact without considering Balthazar’s own role in Imoen’s death. If the monks found her here now, standing over the mutilated corpse of the one they had sworn to protect…

Melissan could hear the sound of many feet cautiously ascending the steps. She was no longer the only one who had noticed the rigid corpses of Brothers Regund and Lysus.

The monks moved warily, expecting to find the enemy who had slain the guards by the door still within the building. She could hear their plodding progress. They moved without urgency, knowing there were no windows in the upper floor, no way out of the tower but the stairs that were now lined with a dozen of the religious warriors.

Cursing herself for not foreseeing Balthazar’s treachery, Melissan muttered a quick incantation. Her form shimmered and disappeared, her body and all her clothes and items becoming ethereal. No longer anchored to the material world, Melissan’s incorporeal spirit simply passed through the floor, sinking slowly to the ground below. Invisible and unsubstantial, she drifted across the courtyard and through the marble walls, then wandered unseen through the all-but-deserted streets of Amkethran. She did not allow the spell to end until she found a strong mount capable of carrying her swiftly across the desert.

Sendai and Balthazar were working together now, and Melissan did not have the power to stand against them, but Abdel might, if he yet lived.

Melissan was intent on preserving his life if at all possible. She had to try and warn the big sellsword that Sendai would try to kill him. Even now the drow was probably preparing an ambush somewhere between here and the Alimir Mountains where Abazigal made his lair. If Abdel was still alive he would be heading toward Amkethran and right into Sendai’s trap.

Knowing the drow already had half the previous night as a head start, Melissan spurred her steed into a quick gallop, leaving the shoddy tents of Amkethran and the imposing marble walls of the monastery far behind.

He felt empty and numb. Abdel’s grief slipped into the ground and loam beneath his fists. It poured out of him in tears and wails of anguish, and now there was nothing left inside. His spirit was hollow, his naked body an empty shell.

Abdel filled the void with the only thing he had left— thoughts of vengeance. He no longer cared about the fate of his Bhaalspawn kin. It no longer mattered to him if Bhaal returned and ravaged the land, or if the Lord of Murder stayed dead forever. Jaheira’s death had liberated him, freed him from the confusion and moral turmoil that came with being at the center of such epic events. Abdel’s life had become very, very simple. He would kill the Five for what they had done to Jaheira. Beyond that nothing mattered.

He couldn’t avenge her death here, wallowing in the dirt of Bhaal’s realm. Abdel Adrian rose to his feet and stepped through the nearest of the three remaining doors.

He found himself alone on the plateau just outside the entrance to Abazigal’s lair. By the position of the sun, Abdel guessed he had been gone for several hours, though an entire night had passed in the Abyssal plane. All around him were the signs of a great battle. Abdel stood in the aftermath of Sarevok’s confrontation with Abazigal’s hoard.

Along with Abazigal’s decapitated form, half a dozen great dragon carcasses were strewn about the blood-soaked battlefield. Their corpses were scarred and disfigured by deep, ragged gashes from the blades forged onto Sarevok’s arms and legs, or horribly gouged and gored by the terrible spikes jutting from the dark warrior’s knees and elbows.

Sarevok himself was gone. Scattered around the dragons’ remains were bits and pieces of his armor, rent asunder by mighty talons, or charred and blackened by

the fire and acid spewed forth from the jaws of Sarevok’s enemies. At Abdel’s feet lay the armored warrior’s visored helm, cloven nearly in two. There was no sign of Sarevok’s body.

Abdel wasn’t surprised. The victorious dragons would have devoured the flesh of their defeated foe—if there was even anything to devour. After his encounter with Jaheira’s departing soul, Abdel couldn’t help but wonder if Sarevok had been anything more than a suit of armor animated by a disembodied spirit. Whatever Sarevok might have been, man or ghost, the evidence of his grisly end was indisputable.

The many fallen corpses of the serpent horde attested to ‘the legendary battle Sarevok must have fought before he succumbed to their overwhelming numbers. Had Abdel’s emotions not been purged from his heart by Jaheira’s death, he might have shed a tear for Sarevok’s noble sacrifice. His half brother had saved his life, slaying Abazigal and then standing alone against the dragons while Abdel had retreated into the safety of Bhaal’s nether world.

But Abdel had no more use for legendary heroics. In the bloody aftermath smeared across the plateau, Sarevok was still dead, and the dragons, bereft of their master, were gone.

Yet Abdel lived. He shivered as a cold blast of wind swept across the plateau, and he realized he was naked, his clothes reduced to ashes by Abazigal’s fiery magic. He scoured the battlefield, searching for anything to cover his exposed body. In the end, he was forced to strip the bloodstained robe from Abazigal’s headless corpse.

The loose-fitting garment barely came down to his knees, and his arms extended well past the cuffs of the sleeves. The hooded cowl was better than wandering around fully exposed. Armed only with the heavy broadsword he had salvaged from the carnage of Sarevok’s final stand, Abdel began the long descent back to the mountain’s base.

He rested only briefly at the bottom before setting out toward Amkethran. He had only one goal: Find Melissan and demand she lead him to the rest of the Five so that he could extract gruesome vengeance for Jaheira’s death.

Based on the directions Melissan had given him, Abdel calculated that Amkethran was a tenday or more due west of the plateau where Abazigal had fallen. There, in the monastery of a man named Balthazar, Melissan and Imoen awaited his arrival. To get to them, Abdel had to pass through the southern arm of the Forest of Mir. Either that or journey several hundred miles to the north or south to circumvent the far reaching woods. Before they had parted ways at Saradush, Melissan had suggested Abdel take one of the longer, safer, routes and avoid the dangerous forest.

It took Abdel less than a day to reach the eastern edge of the Forest of Mir. Beyond its western border lay Amkethran. Driven by the urgency of his need to spill the blood of the Five, Abdel never even considered taking the long way around. He plunged into the dense growth without a second thought.

By the third day he was already regretting his decision. He had reached the Forest of Mir with no difficulty, but once inside the dark wood his progress had slowed to a crawl. Most of his time was spent ripping and tearing branches or smashing his way through thick, thorny underbrush. Abdel was lucky if he covered ten miles in a day. He was beginning to wonder if it would have been quicker to try and go around the almost impassable forest.

At least the legendary lethal denizens of the Forest of Mir never bothered him. Abdel suspected the reports of their existence were highly exaggerated. Or perhaps Abdel’s power had become so great that even the foul creatures hiding within the shadows instinctively knew to avoid a confrontation with the strange intruder to their world.

Cursing his slow progress and his own stupid refusal to follow Melissan’s advice, Abdel pressed onward through the dense trees.

Abazigal would fail. Sendai knew this, just as she knew the half-dragon’s arrogance was nothing but a front to hide his true self, a simpering mongrel so disgusted with his own existence he sought salvation by trying to become something else entirely. The drow knew of the mage’s ludicrous plan to unite the dragons of Faerun. She knew of his ridiculous dream of becoming a pure-blood wyrm, arid she knew such a pathetic creature would be incapable of slaying Bhaal’s avatar.

Abdel Adrian would kill Abazigal, then would set off to reunite with his sniveling half sister at Amkethran, unaware that Sendai had already devoured the young woman’s still-beating heart. Just as she would devour Abdel’s own.

She had ridden fast and far since murdering Imoen, traveling under cover of night and seeking shelter from the accursed sun during the day. She was anxious to reach the cover of the Forest of Mir before Abdel found his way through the dense woods. It was there beneath the comforting darkness of the thick branches that she wanted to set her ambush for the last remaining Bhaalspawn. Even so, it had taken her nearly four nights to reach the eastern edge and find the narrow, overgrown path she sought out.

The road between Abazigal’s enclave and Amkethran was little used, but Sendai suspected Abdel would find it. The trail, ill kept and treacherous as it was, provided the only viable path through the Forest of Mir’s southern arm. If Abdel was heading directly from Abazigal’s enclave in the Alimir Mountains toward Amkethran he was sure to stumble across this path at some point.

Unaware of the events that had transpired at the monastery, Abdel would suspect nothing as he journeyed toward Amkethran. If all went as Sendai planned, he would charge headlong into her ambush. With Gorion’s ward disposed of, she and Balthazar could then turn their attention to getting rid of Melissan.

The drow worked quickly, littering the narrow forest path with snares and trip wires and making liberal use of her arsenal of poisons. She had chosen a spot several miles along the path, well within the dark confines of the Forest of Mir. Here the thick shadows cast by the tightly packed trees blocking out the sun made her work easier. Hiding her traps was often as simple as tossing a handful of dirt over the trigger or burying her work beneath a pile of deadfall.

She spent nearly a full day setting her ambush, then retreated into the upper recesses of the branches that overhung the trail to wait for her prey.

Abdel couldn’t even see the midday sun through the thick, overlapping growth of the trees that pressed in on him from all sides. The Forest of Mir was every bit as dense, dark, and foreboding as the legends had led Abdel to believe. Yesterday he had been fortunate enough to stumble across a path heading in the general direction of Amkethran.

After three days of slow, plodding progress through the undergrowth, Abdel was determined to make up for lost time, but the pervasive gloom, even here on the path someone had blazed through the wood, still hampered his progress. As he raced along the narrow trail he was constantly tripping over roots hidden in the oppressive gloom.

His eyes straining to pierce the darkness, Abdel never saw the trip wire stretched across his path. He felt the faint tug as his leg tore through the string, he heard the sharp

snap of a spring uncoiling, and he felt the stinging bite as a dozen tiny darts pierced the thick cloth of his robe and embedded themselves in his right thigh.

His leg went instantly numb, causing him to fall forward onto the small spikes hidden beneath a pile of leaves. A dozen tiny points jabbed through his cowl and into the flesh of his torso, and he felt the corrosive toxin coating the spikes as it began to dissolve his skin.

He rolled to the side and ended up on his back, his hands frantically swatting at the circles of burning pain slowly spreading out from the puncture wounds in his chest and abdomen. He heard the crack of dry wood, and the ground disappeared beneath him.

Abdel lashed out with a single hand and managed to grab the edge of the pit as he fell. For a second he simply dangled above the unseen bottom, imagining what atrocities lay in wait beneath him. He could faintly hear the clatter of the sticks and dry branches that had camouflaged the yawning trap as they struck the pit floor far below.

He heaved himself up and out of the trap. He tried to stand, but his paralyzed leg gave way, and he staggered forward. The noose tightened around his left ankle, and snatched his good leg out from beneath him. Abdel found himself hanging upside down, the robe draping down to cover his head and face and exposing the rest of his body.

As he struggled to tear the cowl off so he could see, his body was peppered with tiny jolts of pain. Dozens of darts from an unseen assailant buried themselves beneath his skin. Abdel felt his struggles growing weaker, his arms and shoulders growing as numb as his leg. Within seconds, he was unable to move at all. The robe slipped from his head and fell to the forest floor below.

A slim figure in black dropped down from the branches above, landing lightly on the ground a few feet away. Even though he was looking at her upside down, Abdel could clearly see she had the sharp, pointed features of an elf. Her skin was the color of ash. He tried to mouth the word “drow,” but the paralyzing poison from the darts still protruding from his body had rendered him completely immobile.

The drow moved toward him and pulled a runed dagger from her belt. Abdel recognized the symbols—he had seen them on the axe of Yaga Shura and the arrows of Illasera. This dark elf was one of the Five.