Baldur's Gate (23 page)

He couldn’t see Jaheira, but as long as he could hear her, he knew she was safe. He pulled out the book and sighed when he finally held it in both hands. The leather that made the book’s binding was human skin. Abdel didn’t know exactly when he came to realize that, but now it seemed so obvious he couldn’t imagine ever having been confused by it.

He opened the cover, and the first page was blank. Abdel’s heart raced, and he looked up again. He was still alone, and that was the only way he’d allow himself to even hold, let alone open, that book. His palms sweating in some arcane mix of fear and excitement, he turned the first page. There was a skull painted there, surrounded by what might have been either flames or drops of water. The writing was ornate and still meaningless to Abdel, but at the same time it was somehow familiar. He thought it might be the same way a young, illiterate child might feel, seeing the same written language all around him every day, but not being able to suss it out.

His mouth was dry, and he turned the next page. The line drawing there made his heart race, and he closed his eyes against the horror of it even as his skin tingled with the irrational excitement, even as—

“What’s that?” Jaheira asked, and Abdel jumped and a soft, startled sound escaped his open mouth. The book bob-bled in his hands, but he grabbed at it, closing the cover with a loud crack.

“Are you all right?” she asked him. He looked up and saw her standing next to the fire. She was wrapped in Abdel’s well-worn traveling blanket, and her hair was wet. It curled coyly. In the orange light of the fire, the skin of her face looked soft. She smiled at him, but her brow was furrowed.

Abdel looked down, and a tear dropped onto the ghastly cover of the book. Jaheira pulled in a sharp breath and crossed to him, knelt in his lap and put a cool, soft hand to the side if his face. He set the book aside and took her in his arms.

“What’s happening to me?” he asked her, not really understanding the question himself.

“You are becoming Abdel,” she answered cryptically.

Their lips met for just the briefest moment, but Abdel pushed her gently away. She met his steady gaze with a knowing look and sighed, stepping back off of him. She sat near the fire and looked into the flames, waiting.

“Why did you call me Abdel Adrian?” he asked. “I’d never heard that name before Khalid spoke it. Did Gorion tell you that was my name?”

“It is your name,” she told him flatly. “It was the name you were born with.”

Abdel let out a long breath and grabbed the book. He wanted to throw it into the fire as much as he wanted to study it and keep it with him forever. He grimaced and put it back in his pack.

“It’s time for you to tell me, Jaheira,” he said, looking at her looking into the fire.

“You are not who you were born to be, Abdel,” she said sadly, but the smile she flashed at him was full of hope. “You can make your own way in this world, and your father, your brothers and sisters, don’t have to turn you off that path.”

“What do you know of my father?”

“What the Harpers have always known,” she said. “What the priests of Oghma and the paladins of Torm have always known. When I told Eltan that Reiltar is a son of Bhaal, I wasn’t sure… I wasn’t as sure of that as I am that… that you are a son of Bhaal.”

Abdel scratched his head, and Jaheira seemed surprised at the gesture.

“Xzar told me that, too,” he said. “I didn’t believe him then.”

“But now?”

“I am a sellsword, Jaheira, a hired thug. I guard caravans and warehouses and fat merchants. I have a good sword arm, and I’m taller than most, but I’m no god.”

“No,” she agreed, “but your father was. Your mother, I don’t know, but your father was the god of murder.”

“And my brother—half brother at least—is Reiltar, leader of the Iron Throne?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “We suspected that another son of Bhaal was behind this attempt to bring war between Baldur’s Gate and Amn, but we don’t know his name. It could be a sister, even. You have half sisters, you know.”

He smiled and laughed, but it was an empty expression.

“And Abdel Adrian?” he asked.

“Netherese, I think,” she answered. “Abdel means ‘son of and Adrian ‘the dark.’”

“Son of the dark,” he said. “Appropriate, I suppose, if not flattering.”

“Do you take pleasure in killing anymore, Abdel?” she asked him pointedly.

“No,” he answered without thinking, then paused.

She looked at him, but he couldn’t look at her. His face flushed, and he shifted his weight uncomfortably on the chill ground.

“I used to,” he said finally. “I used to get this feeling, like… well, a feeling anyway. Since Gorion was killed, since I met you, I’ve lost that feeling.”

“You’re changing,” she said. “You’ve changed.”

“Maybe, but I’m no god.”

“You’re so sure,” she said.

“I enjoyed killing for killing’s sake, and I was good at it,” he told her. “In my line of work, that describes a lot of people. Even a god couldn’t have that many children. I have no… traits, no powers. If a god’s blood ran through my veins wouldn’t I be able to fly, or turn invisible or something?”

Jaheira chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound. “Maybe you have his eyes,” she said, “or his nose.”

“I can imagine he had a big nose,” Abdel joked.

“You had a human mother, Abdel,” she said softly, almost in a whisper.

“And she was a good woman,” he decided, based less on the facts at hand than on what he wanted to believe.

Jaheira looked at him in the dark for a long time, then said, “She must have been.”

“Beuros, you squirmy little piece of—” Abdel started to say but stopped when Jaheira put a hand on his arm.

“Good sir,” she said, glancing at Abdel who sighed explosively and turned away from the gate, “you obviously know my companion here, you know him to be a resident of this fair city and the son of one of your own. Please understand that we have urgent business here and—”

“Go away,” Beuros the gate guard said sternly. “Go away or I’ll be forced to—”

“You’ll be forced to what,” Abdel roared, “you thrice bedamned—”

“Go away!” the guard squealed and shut the little window in the big, sturdy oaken gate.

“This is ludicrous,” Jaheira said to no one in particular. “What kind of city is this?”

Abdel kicked a stone on the gravel path that ended at the gates of Candlekeep, the place that had been his home for most of his life, and watched it skip away. He sighed again and looked up at the sky, noting the increasingly graying clouds obviously heavy with rain.

“I’ve never been refused entrance to Candlekeep,” he said. “Never in my life.”

“Gorion was alive then,” Jaheira said without really thinking. “He was in there to let you in.”

Abdel looked at her and forced a smile. She didn’t notice, being too busy examining the gates with a tactician’s eye.

“It’s not a city,” he said.

She looked at him with a furrowed brow.

“It’s not a city,” he said again, “it’s a monastery. A library.”

She nodded and shrugged as if that fine distinction didn’t matter. “The Iron Throne is gathering in there,” she said, “whatever it is. We need to get in there.”

“Give me a book,” Beuros’s voice sounded suddenly, making Jaheira jump. They looked up at the little window, a good ten feet off the ground in the tall gates. All they could see of Beuros was his pimply face and crooked yellow teeth, a graying stubble and a dense, intractable expression. Abdel had known Beuros most of his life.

“Beuros—” Abdel started to say.

“Ah,” Beuros interrupted, “a book, or a scroll, or a tablet, or a… something with writing on it. Give me something of use to Candlekeep and you can come in.”

Now it was Abdel’s turn to furrow his brow in confusion and frustration. He regarded the little man coolly.

“Why this all of a sudden, Beuros? What’s going on in there?”

“The business of Candlekeep,” the guard answered haughtily. “The business of learnedness.”

Jaheira smiled and said, “That’s not even a word, you little—”

“A book!” Beuros interrupted again, fixing an angry gaze on the half-elf woman.

“I don’t have—” Abdel started to say, then stopped when he realized he did indeed have a book, a book that terrified him but that he doubted he’d be able to part with.

“Give us a few minutes, Captain Steadfast,” Jaheira said sarcastically, making a dismissive brushing away hand gesture in Beuros’s general direction. The guard harrumphed and withdrew behind his little shutter.

“Abdel,” Jaheira said, crossing the few feet to him just as it started to rain lightly, “you still have that book, don’t you?”

Abdel looked away, tense and fearful, though he couldn’t put his finger on why.

“Abdel?” she asked. “You still have it, don’t you? The book that Xan found in the bandit camp, I mean.”

Abdel nodded, avoiding her eyes.

“Well then just give it to Lord Peephole here, and let’s get on with it. We’ve been on the road—again—for almost a tenday, and it’s possible that the people we’ve gone through all Nine Hells and more to try to stop are in there right now, laughing at us.”

Abdel let a long breath whistle out through his nose, then finally he looked up at Jaheira. He didn’t say anything, just slipped his pack off his back and fished inside it. He didn’t even glance at the book when he slid it out.

“Beuros!” Jaheira called, looking at the little door. It took a while for Beuros to finally make his presence known, and when he did Jaheira was surprised to see him genuinely curious. Jaheira figured she and Abdel had been more persistent than most.

“A book?” the guard asked, then grinned widely when his eyes lighted on the old tome in Abdel’s now outstretched hand. “Well, well…”

“Let us in first,” Jaheira said, easily able to read the greed in Beuros’s eyes.

Beuros laughed, and it wasn’t a terribly pleasant sound. “Not on your life, missy. Tell him to slide it through the slot.”

Abdel could hear Beuros perfectly well without Jaheira having to relate the guard’s words. The sellsword studied the space that was the peephole eight feet or more above the gravel-covered ground.

Jaheira said, “If there was a window a bit—” but stopped talking when a slot, easily able to accommodate the book, opened up on the door at Abdel’s waist height. Abdel and Jaheira blinked, obviously both seeing the slot for the first time.

“Slide it in there, Abdel,” Beuros said softly, finally using Abdel’s name.

“I knew you knew me you bastard,” Abdel grumbled, crossing the short distance to the gate with the book held out in front of him.

Jaheira’s eyes narrowed, and she was about to ask Abdel if he was all right. The sellsword had stopped abruptly just as the edge of the old book touched the slot. He was obviously reluctant to let it drop.

“You can’t even read the language it’s written in, for Mielikki’s sake,” Jaheira said. “Give him the heavy old thing, and let’s get in there.”

“Indeed, Abdel,” Beuros said, “listen to this young woman, and give me the book. I need a gesture of good faith.”

Abdel couldn’t let go. It was like his fingers had locked, like his fist had gone into some death grip, and the book was his last hope for life—or was it his last hope for just the opposite?

“Abdel?” Jaheira asked, her voice now carrying an edge of fear at the sellsword’s sudden reluctance.

Abdel sighed once more and let go of the book, letting it drop through the slot. Beuros’s face disappeared from the peephole again, and he was gone for a long time.

“Beuros, you squirmy little piece of—” Abdel started to say, but stopped when the strange woman put a hand on his arm.

“Good sir,” the woman said, glancing at Abdel who sighed explosively and turned away from the gate, “you obviously know my companion here, you know him to be a resident of this fair city and the son of one of your own. Please understand that we have urgent business here and—”

“Go away,” Beuros said sternly. “Go away or I’ll be forced to—”

“You’ll be forced to what,” Abdel roared, “you thrice bedamned—”

“Go away!” Beuros said again and shut the little window in the big, sturdy oaken gate.

Beuros was one of many charged with defending the gates of Candlekeep, the place that had been his home for his entire life. He’d known Abdel for almost as long and never liked him. Abdel was the adopted son—foster son really—of Gorion, a priest and a scholar, one of Beuros’s favorite teachers. Beuros had been pushed around by the young Abdel, as had many of Beuros’s friends. When Abdel left Candlekeep, years before, to seek out his own life as a mercenary or hired thug, or whatever his slow wits and strong arms had bought him, Beuros, like many others in the monastery, was nothing but happy to see him go. He’d returns a few times, once quite recently, to visit Gorion, and that time had actually left with the old monk. That had been at least a dozen tendays ago, though it seemed shorter to Beuros. As far as he was concerned, anytime Abdel came back to Candlekeep was too soon. Now he’d returned with some woman—a half-elf, and she was dressed for battle. Beuros could believe almost anything about Abdel, up to and including the distasteful notion that the bully had somehow managed to trade the learned Gorion, a man worthy of respect and beyond reproach, for this mercenary trollop half-breed.

Beuros was a bitter man, small in the body and small in the spirit, but he was a part of something in Candlekeep. He studied, he read—and occasionally understood—and copied the texts of the greatest library on all Toril. Beuros belonged here, where everyone—including Gorion—knew Abdel was never really at home.

Now, having to take on one of his least favorite responsibilities, he sighed and looked up at the sky, noting the increasingly graying clouds obviously heavy with rain. Guarding the gate consisted almost entirely of turning away travelers. Virtually no one was welcomed at Candlekeep, and like many of the monks, scribes, priests, and scholars there, Beuros liked it that way.

“I’ve never been refused entrance to Candlekeep,” Beuros heard Abdel say through one of the many magical means at his disposal—magic that helped guard Candlekeep from an often hostile outside world. “Never in my life.”