Azure Bonds

2 Winefiddle and the Assassins

The first two temples she tried, the Shrine of Lliira and the Silent Room, the Temple of Deneir, were locked. Both were posted with identical signs stating they were closed until dawn services.

She passed by the Towers of Good Fortune—the huge temple to Tymora—because it looked too expensive, and the Shrine to Tyr, because it looked too prim and stuffy.

Upon reaching the Shrine of Oghma, Alias glared at the note tacked to the door. She ripped the paper from the tiny nails and let it flutter down the stairs. Pounding on the door with the side of her fist, her assault was answered by a sleepy caretaker who cracked the temple door open all of two inches and peered out at her suspiciously.

“I need a curse removed! Immediately!” she gasped with her best maiden-in-distress voice. The caretaker’s look softened, but he shook his head, explaining that the holy mother was out of town arranging a wedding and that they had only acolytes within, new officiates who lacked the power to deal with such things.

“Try Tyr Grimjaws, Miss,” he suggested.

Alias backtracked to the Shrine of Tyr the Just only to find her entry barred by two heavily armed guards. “Unless it’s life or death,” one informed her, “you’ll have to wait.” Apparently the church of Tyr had hired an adventuring party to deal with a dragon terrorizing the Storm Horn Mountains. The party’s dealings with the monster had been anything but successful. The priests of Tyr were all occupied with healing the survivors and resurrecting the bodies of their comrades who had not been incinerated.

Alias was feeling desperate by the time she screwed up her courage to enter the Towers of Good Fortune, the Temple of Tymora. At least there was no sign on its front gates. She jerked on the bellpull incessantly until a priest appeared, yawning but not cross. A corpulent, pasty-faced man, he waddled forward to unbar the gates.

“I must speak with your superior immediately,” Alias demanded. “This is an emergency.”

The priest bowed as much as his bulk would allow and stood up again, grinning. “Curate Winefiddle at your service. An improbable name for a priest, I know, but we must play the cards we’re dealt, right? I’m afraid, lady, that I’m all there is. His worship and the others are helping the minions of Tyr with healing and resurrecting the would-be dragon slayers. Unless, by my superiors, you meant to have a word with Lady Luck herself. It’s possible, but very costly, in more ways than one. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Alias shook her head. Before the curate could babble anymore, she burst out, “I need a curse removed.”

“Now, that does sound serious. Come in.” Winefiddle ushered her past the silver-plated altar to Tymora, Lady Luck, and into a private study for an audience. An oil lamp lit the musty chamber. Dark oak cabinets lined the walls. A single, high window framed the night sky. The curate offered her a seat and plopped down into a chair beside her.

“Now, tell me about this curse,” he prompted her.

Alias explained how she’d awakened after her unusually long sleep and discovered the tattoo on her arm. At a loss for any other theory, she told him the barkeep’s story that she was a drunk left on the doorstep of The Hidden Lady. Then, she related what had happened when the Turmish merchant-mage had cast a spell to detect magic on the tattoo. “I don’t remember getting it—the tattoo,” she concluded. “I would never have agreed to it, not even drunk. This has to be some sort of stupid prank pulled on me while I was unconscious, but I have no idea who would have done it.”

Alias did not bother to mention her hazy memory of the past few weeks—it was too embarrassing—and she omitted the incident with the lizard as inconsequential.

Curate Winefiddle nodded reassuringly, as if Alias had brought him nothing more troublesome than a kitten with earmites. “No problem,” he declared. “There remains only the question of how you would like to arrange payment?”

Alias knew from experience that her coins were an insufficient “offering.” She pulled out the only real valuable in her money sack—the small, greenish gem.

Winefiddle accepted the terms with a smile and a nod. “No. Don’t put it there,” he admonished her before she set it down on the desk. “Very unlucky. Drop it in the poor box as you leave.”

Alias nodded. Winefiddle began removing a number of tattered scrolls from a cabinet. “The one advantage to serving an adventurer’s goddess,” he yawned as he spoke, “is a steady stream of worshippers in need of your special services, worshippers willing to pay in magical items.”

The cleric stifled another yawn, and Alias gave him a blank look she bestowed on fools she needed to tolerate. As far as she was concerned, clerics were merely puttering quasi-mages who couldn’t cast spells without worrying about converts, theology, relics, and other nonsense. If they weren’t so useful when sickness, famine, and war struck, they would probably have died out altogether, Alias decided, taking their gods with them. Perhaps the gods knew that, and that’s why they put up with the fools.

Winefiddle pulled bundles of scrolls from the cabinet with all the grace of a fishmonger hoisting salmon. He hummed as he checked their tags. Alias sat there as quietly and patiently as possible, wishing she had stopped at another inn for a pouch of decent rum. Finally, the priest pulled two from the lot that seemed to please him.

Despite Alias’s warning of what had happened in The Hidden Lady, Winefiddle wanted to begin with a standard magical detection. He waved aside her objections, insisting, “I need to see this extreme reaction myself. Nothing to be afraid of since we know what to expect this time, right?”

Alias submitted with a grudging sigh. The cleric passed his silver disk of Tymora over her outstretched arm. The words he muttered were different from the Turmish mage’s, but the effect was the same. Alias shuddered as the symbols writhed beneath her skin, and she squinted in anticipation of the bright, sapphire radiance which soon lit every corner of the musty study.

Winefiddle’s eyebrows disappeared into his low hairline, amazed at the brilliance of the glow. Alias clenched her muscles involuntarily, and the rays swayed about the room like signal beacons, bouncing off the darkened window and the priest’s silver holy symbol.

The glow peaked and began to ebb slowly. Winefiddle cleared his throat nervously a few times before he reached for the larger of the two scrolls on the desk. In the blue light he looked less pasty and more powerful, but Alias was beginning to wonder if he knew what he was doing.

“You really think that piece of paper’s going to be strong enough?” she asked doubtfully. Maybe I should put this off until morning, she thought. The Shrine of Oghma or the Temple of Deneir might have more competent help.

“This scroll was written by the hand of the Arch-cleric Mzentul himself. It should remove these horrors without delay.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully and added, “It being such an old and irreplaceable scroll, perhaps you wouldn’t mind, should you come into further funds …”

Alias gave an impatient nod, and Winefiddle undid the scroll’s leather binding. With one hand on her arm and the other holding the scroll, he began to read.

“Dominus, Deliverus,” he intoned. A cold shudder ran down Alias’s spine, a feeling quickly overwhelmed by a burning sensation on her forearm. The pain was familiar, but she could not remember why. Is this how the magics felt that put the damned thing here?

The fire on her arm intensified, and she clamped her jaw shut to avoid crying out. She couldn’t have been in more pain if molten metal had been poured over her sword arm.

“Ketris, Ogos, Diam—” Winefiddle continued, breathing heavily, his teeth clenched. Alias wondered if he could feel the heat of her arm beneath his hand.

Light beams arced from Alias’s arm like water from a fountain, but instead of spilling to the floor, they wrapped around her until she was surrounded by blue light.

Suddenly, she wrenched her arm away from the cleric’s grasp and reached down to her boot for her throwing dagger. As if she was in some horrible nightmare her arm moved of its own accord, like a viper she could not control.

The priest had ignored the swordswoman’s arm jerking from his grasp. It wasn’t really necessary that he hold onto it, and he could not afford to lose his concentration and break off his incantation. “Mistra, Hodah, Mzentil, Coy!” he finished triumphantly.

Winefiddle looked up at his client. She was still bathed in a blue light from the symbols, and her face was a mask of rage. A low, feral snarl issued from her lips. He caught the flash of silver as Alias thrust the knife toward him. With an unexpected dexterity, he shifted sideways.

The weapon sliced through his robes and bit into his flesh, but it was stopped by his lowest rib.

Alias looked down in horror at her hand—it moved with its own volition. Blood from the dagger bubbled and burned as it dripped over the glowing tattoo.

Suddenly, the scroll Winefiddle had been reading burst into flame, its magic used. The curate threw the burning page in Alias’s face.

The swordswoman swatted the fiery parchment away, and the priest circled around her. Just as he reached the door, Alias felt an electric pulse run down her right arm. She tried to grab the wrist with her left hand, but she was too late. The arm hurled the dagger at the priest. The weapon whirred past his ear and buried itself in the doorjamb. Yanking the door open so hard that it banged against the wall behind it, the priest fled from the study.

Alias raced after him, no longer in control of any part of her body. She tried to pull the silvered steel weapon from the wood as she passed by, but the blade had buried itself too deep; she abandoned it so as not to lose sight of her prey.

Alias found Winefiddle climbing the steps to the silver altar. She leaped after him and grabbed at the back of the chain around his neck, the chain that held his holy symbol—the silver disk of Tymora. She yanked on it hard, trying to throttle him with it.

Winefiddle lost his balance and tumbled backward down the steps into his assailant, knocking her over as well. The priest’s fall was broken by Alias’s body, but the swordswoman was not so lucky. The crack her head made on the marble stone echoed through the temple, and the priest’s great bulk on top of her forced all the air from her lungs.

When Alias opened her eyes again, she was still lying on the floor. The light on her arm had faded to a very dim glow. Her head was throbbing with unbearable agony. Gods! she thought, as panic gripped her heart. I killed a priest! These hell-spawned markings made me kill a priest! No one will ever believe it wasn’t my fault.

She tried to sit up, knowing she had to flee, but the pain in her head made it impossible. Then she heard chanting.

Winefiddle knelt beside her—not dead after all. In the dimness of the temple lamps Alias could see his hands were glowing very slightly. He held them over the wound in his side and then over her forehead. The throbbing subsided.

“How are you feeling?” the curate asked.

“All right, I guess,” she muttered, sitting up slowly. She was unable to meet the priest’s eyes. “I might have killed you,” she whispered.

“Not very likely,” Winefiddle replied lightly. “We are in Tymora’s temple, and Her luck was with me, not you.”

His nonchalance startled Alias. She had to make him understand, even if it didn’t matter to him. “It wasn’t me, though,” she explained. “My arm … it took me over somehow.”

“Yes. The symbols must have instructions to destroy anyone who would try to remove them, discouraging you from seeking out help. I thought you looked possessed—but it couldn’t have been a real possession.”

“Why not?”

“An alarm would have gone off if any possessed person approached the altar. You didn’t set it off. I don’t think you’re cursed exactly either, or the scroll I used would have worked. The symbols on your arm are magical, but they aren’t just magical. There’s some mechanistic component to them that protects them from being exorcised.”

“But I have to get them off,” Alias insisted. “I can’t run around with markings that make me try to kill priests. Who knows what else they might make me do?”

“Indeed” Winefiddle agreed, “but removing them might prove to be complicated and costly. If it can be done, it would require the power of many clerics and mages, as well as a surgeon. And you would have no guarantee that the markings would let you live through the procedure. It might be easier and safer for you to cut off the arm and retire.”

“No!”

“But these markings are very dangerous. You could learn to fight left-handed,” Winefiddle suggested.

“I can already do that,” Alias declared. “That’s not the point. I’m not going to let these things, or whoever put them on me, ruin my life. Besides, suppose they had roots or something that went into my body.”

“Well, then, I would advise you to learn all you can about the markings. None of them are familiar to me. Perhaps if you can discover their origins, you can discover who put them on you and get them to remove them for you.”

Alias looked down at the blue glyphs. None of them were familiar to her either. Even the Turmishman, Akabar Bel Akash, had found them unusual. “That’ll take a sage’s service, and sages aren’t cheap.”

“True,” Winefiddle agreed. “However, I happen to know of a very good one who might be willing to exchange his services for yours. His name is Dimswart. He lives about half a day’s ride outside of Suzail.”

“What kind of services might he be looking for?” Alias asked suspiciously.

“Better to let him explain that,” Winefiddle said evasively.

Five minutes later Alias left the temple, a letter of introduction in her pocket, along with the small greenish gem originally intended for Tymora’s poor box. She had made a motion toward the box with her hand as she passed it, but the gem remained firmly in her grip. As she had pointed out, sages weren’t cheap. Her services might not be sufficient to barter with this Dimswart, she told herself.

As she walked away from the temple, an uneasy suspicion occurred to her that perhaps it wasn’t her own frugalness that prompted her to hold onto the gem, but some desire of the sigils not to reward the priest who had tried to help her remove them.

The cobblestone Promenade of Suzail appeared deserted, but as soon as Alias left the temple court a tall figure in rustling crimson-and-white robes stepped from the shadows. He hesitated, uncertain whether he should follow the adventuress or try to discover her business with Tymora. He made for the temple doors.

Then three more figures, dressed in dark leathers, emerged from a dark alley. Ignoring the first figure they trailed after Alias. One last figure followed these three—a figure holding a massive tail over his shoulder.

Alias was in no hurry to return to The Hidden Lady. Three days of sleep had left her quite awake. She wandered down to Suzail’s docks. The last of the schooners had shut down for the evening, and only a few firepots from the warehouses lit the water. The sea air rolled into the city, smelling considerably fresher than three-days worth of unlaundered linens.

She ran through a mental list of individuals who might be responsible for having her marked with the symbols and drew a blank. Any enemies she’d made were either ignorant of her name or dead. No friends who were still drawing breath would do something like this. That left someone new—a stranger who had picked her off the street as a suitable vessel for trying out a new piece of magic.

Alias came to the end of the wooden plank sidewalk. The beach spread out in a thin white line to her right. The night sky had grown overcast. Like my life, she thought. She began walking along the shoreline on the sand.

Even if a complete stranger had done this to her, she was still left wondering where and when it had happened. Now that she thought about it, her memory was missing more than just a few weeks. More time than an alcoholic binge could really account for, she decided.

She could recall long-ago adventures quite clearly—like stealing one of the Eyes of Bane from an evil temple in Baldur’s Gate with the Adventurers of the Black Hawk, or her earliest sojourns with the Company of the Swanmays.

Her mind went all fuzzy, trying to remember recent events like the sea trip. And there was a sea trip, she insisted to herself, worried that she would forget that as well by the next morning. Was the lizard-creature on the same ship? I think so. Maybe it’s the pet of the magician behind this mess.

Alias walked a quarter-mile along the beach before she drew her traitorous arm from beneath her cloak. The pain had dimmed, but the symbols still glowed faintly, like lichen. Cursing did no good, but she cursed anyway. If they can make me attack a priest, what else can they make me do?

If she attacked someone else, she could end up with a bad reputation. No one would hire her as a guard, and there weren’t many adventuring companies who’d have anything to do with her. It was one thing to kill people in self-defense or in combat under command of king or church, but if she were to slay some innocent, unarmed person …

Alias was lost in her thoughts, absentmindedly digging a half-covered shell from the sand with the side of her boot, so she failed to notice the trio stalking her. The rushing sound of the surf covered the noise of their approach. One hung back and began chanting a spell, while the other two rushed the swordswoman.

The spell-caster’s incantation, a high-pitched female voice, inadvertently warned Alias of danger. The swordswoman whirled around and discovered the pair of armed men advancing on her. They carried clubs, but light from the cloud-wrapped moon did not reflect off their black leather armor—armor that was the trademark of a particularly dangerous underworld class.

Assassins! Alias grabbed at the hilt of her sword and nearly jerked herself off her feet before remembering the blade was still tied to its scabbard. The awkward movement pulled her forward so, by dumb luck, she rolled within the swing of the first assailant and away from the second. With one hand she tried to foil the knot at her sword.

Then the spell-caster’s magic let loose—a pair of missiles of hissing energy, leaving a wake of glittering dust in their path. The bolts dove at Alias like hunting falcons and caught her in the left shoulder. The arm below that shoulder went dead from the shock, and the force knocked the swordswoman backward on the sand. Ignore the pain, just get the knot, she ordered herself.

Fortunately, the first assailant was an amateur. He rushed forward while his wiser companion circled. Alias brought her leg up hard and connected. The fool dropped his club, clutching himself in pain.

Get the knot, get the knot, her mind chanted as the fingers of her right hand tore frantically at the binding on her sword. Don’t think about the spell-caster! Work the knot!

Alias attempted to rise, and the second assailant swung at her from behind, catching her left shoulder again. She rolled with the blow and came up at last with sword in hand. The first assassin had recovered, so that Alias stood on the beach facing both armed assailants, shifting her eyes from one to the other. Worse than that, she could hear the rising chant in the distance of another spell.

The chant died with a sudden muffled scream, and the two assassins half-turned in surprise. Alias lunged, catching the first in the belly. She lost her grip on her sword’s hilt as the assassin crumbled to the sand.

The remaining black figure thrust his club like a sword, seeking to catch Alias between the ribs. Alias dodged backward, so the force of his lunge knocked the assassin off balance. She reached to the top of her boot with her good hand and flung a dagger underhand. Her aim was true, and the second assailant fell, hands clawing at the protruding hilt, staining the sand with his blood.

Alias breathed deeply and recovered her weapons. Both men were dead. She rubbed her sore shoulder, feeling the tingling of life returning to it. Then she remembered the spell-caster. Has she fled, or is she waiting in the shadows? Alias moved cautiously in the direction the magic missiles had come from.

The spell-caster lay face down in the sand about twenty yards away, a nasty gash across her back. Bending over her body was the lizard-creature. It’s just as ugly in the moonlight as it had been in the dusk, Alias thought. In one paw the creature held an odd-looking blade that had too much steel and not enough grip. The tip of the blade was an oversized diamond shape edged with curved teeth that curled backward. The teeth were bathed in the mage’s blood.

Alias raised her own sword into a guard position. The lizard looked up and hissed. Is that a hostile sign? she wondered. She tightened her grip on her own blade. The beast rose from the mage’s body. Swordswoman and lizard stood motionless, each waiting for the other to move first.

Finally, the lizard-creature gave a muted snarl as it twisted its odd-shaped blade in its hands, spinning the weapon like a baton once, twice, thrice …

And drove it, point first, into the ground at Alias’s feet. The creature dropped to one knee beside the grounded blade, head down, offering its bare neck to Alias’s weapon.

Alias raised her sword over the creature. I failed to kill the thing this afternoon, she realized, and I’ll never have a better chance to deal with it. Putting it out of my misery would be the simplest, most logical thing to do. Four dead bodies on a beach attract no more attention than three.

The lizard remained in its kneeling position, not reaching for its blade. The creature seemed to be holding its breath.

Alias hesitated. You’d think I was a follower of Bhaal, God of Murder. First I try to kill a priest, and now I’m ready to slay a foe who’s surrendered. For that matter I don’t know that it’s a foe. The creature took out the magic-user for me. It’s offering me its services like a knight.

Alias tapped the lizard-creature on the shoulder with the flat of the blade. “Okay, you can live.” Her voice sounded overloud and pompous. “But one false move and you’re dragon bait. Read me? Dra-gon bait.”

The creature nodded and pointed to its chest with a long, clawed finger.

Alias rubbed her temples with annoyance. “No, you’re not named Dragonbait. If you give me any trouble, you’ll become dragon bait.”

The creature repeated the gesture toward itself.

Alias sighed. “Dragonbait it is, then.” She pointed toward herself. “Alias,” she said. “Now let’s search these bodies and get out of here before the watch arrives.”

Dragonbait nodded and, using an overlong thumb-claw, started cutting the strings of the magician’s purse.