Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

7 - 71



Some names are worth singing about, even if the song is a harsh memory.

I was already bent over at the edge of camp when I decided my stomach needed help. A finger at the back of my throat brought up what remained of the pie. I had eaten nearly all of it by then, and I remember wishing I had shown a little more suspicion when Celduil first wondered what kind of meat we had been given. Thessalia Ravenheart found fingernails in hers. Celduil dug through his own and came up with an earring. Mine had come from the same basket. I had neither the need nor desire to confirm my own.

The young woman selling them had called the filling fresh local game. She was working from a large wagon with a rear door near the Friendly Arm Inn on a pleasant early Eleasis day of 1352 DR. Ten coins bought one of her pies, and for a while that was enough to draw a small crowd around her basket. Aidan Thatcher had even bought pies for everyone. He was a loud, easy fellow around strangers, the sort who could turn guessing at the meat into part of the entertainment. Horse and cat had been among his guesses, though the woman took offense at the first. Aidan apologized and gave her more coin for the business. By the time Thessalia began emptying her stomach onto the ground, the joke had gone rather badly for those of us who had eaten.

A woman from another group of customers, Morgalia, seized the woman while others searched her for a key. The peddler only grinned through much of the commotion. I had recovered enough by then to follow what the others were doing around the wagon. Aidan wanted her held until we knew what was inside, and that soon became the more useful question. The inn guards nearby wanted little part in a roadside problem, so people began circling the wagon themselves. Celduil tried the lock without success. When I asked whether he could open it, he shook his head and said somebody else could try or find the key. I stayed nearby while the others kept at the problem. Some listened along the sides or tested what magic they had.

I remember the scream that came from inside. A whistle followed not long after, which did little to improve anybody's opinion of the wagon. Thessalia had heard the scream, as well as the whistle. By then Aidan had gone to the wagon.

He first unharnessed the horse, then moved to the rear door. His attention settled on the way the door had been hung. Once he began asking for tools and talking through the hinge bolts, I handed over my locksmith's tools and left him to the work. I worked the other side when he needed another pair of hands. Screams and humming came through the wagon while we worked, which made every stubborn fitting more irritating.

The lock had stopped mattering to him. He wanted the hinges off and, if necessary, the frame with them. Everyone else had been fighting the lock while Aidan worked around it. It still took work. Aidan kept working the bolts while the rest of us waited near the wagon, listening to the sounds coming from within. When the last of them gave him trouble, I told him he was doing great.

The last bolt finally came free and the rear door fell away from the wagon. I had an arrow nocked as Aidan jumped back from the opening. Whatever was inside had begun making itself known in other ways by then, and I gave Aidan a pat on the head and told him he should steer clear for the moment. This was no longer a door that needed taking apart.

The wagon tore open soon afterward. A great demon came out with cleavers in its hands, and smaller creatures spilled out around it.

For a while I remember the fight mostly by where my arrows went. Gyvari and Celduil were shooting nearby, and anything that climbed above the fighting drew our attention quickly. Thessalia and the other spellcasters worked through the same confusion while Morgalia, already in her gargoyle form, stayed closer to the large demon. Aidan ended up there as well. He had arrived for meat pies without armor and found himself fighting beside a gargoyle against the demon chef.

The lesser creatures kept breaking away from the wagon, and a flyer crossing above us could pull several bows away from whatever was happening below. I lost sight of Aidan more than once among the bodies around the demon chef. Others found whatever place they could around the edges of the fighting.

It grew easier to see as the smaller fiends died. More arrows began landing on the demon chef, and the magic followed. Those fighting it up close kept the thing occupied long enough for the rest of us to concentrate there. Eventually it took enough steel and spellwork to fall. People were tired, soot-covered, and scattered around what remained of the wagon. I was still searching for another target when the sounds from inside became clear again. People were still screaming.

Thessalia called toward me about those trapped inside as I reached the rear opening. Fire had taken hold in the wreck and smoke was rolling through it. I looked in, saw enough movement beyond the flames to know somebody was alive, and started climbing. Protection against the heat settled over me on the way up. Thessalia had cast it, though I only learned that after matters had slowed down.

The inside brought the pies back to mind in a way I could have done without. I took a quick look through the wagon and found more room than the outside had any right to contain. People were held in cages along one side, with the cooking space opposite them and the fire spreading from there. I called for those outside to deal with the flames and searched through what was nearby for anything that might help with the cages. Someone climbed in behind me while I was looking, and I shifted aside before looking back. Aidan had followed me.

He had already seen what came out of the wagon and fought it without the benefit of proper armor. The smoke was thick enough to sting, and we could see what had been done to the people in those cages. Aidan went to work near the cages while I kept searching the cooking area. I found a long roasting spit that looked useful against the locks and threw it across to Celduil when he joined us.

Celduil joining us felt different to me. We had spent enough years together for me to understand what he would do when people were trapped somewhere dangerous. His coming inside carried the same respect it always did, though surprise had long since left that part of our friendship. With Aidan, I was still learning.

There was still the fire. I stayed near the cooking end while Aidan and Celduil worked on getting people loose. I pulled what I could away from the flames and cleared anything nearby that looked ready to catch. When that bought little more than space, I stripped off my cloak and used it to beat at the fire. The flames kept finding something else to feed on, and smoke gathered faster than I could make any difference.

At some point there was no sense spending more time on it. I left the fire to those outside and turned back to the cages. Celduil had managed to free a child and get the little one out. Aidan was still trying whatever he could find against another lock, including a large metal spoon that proved considerably less useful than the roasting spit. I tried what locks I could manage myself while coughing prisoners waited behind them.

Aidan finally got a dwarf free and brought him toward the opening. I caught sight of him reaching the others outside while I was still working near the cages. By the time I looked back, he was beside us again.

That ship was built sturdier than I first thought. Earlier I had known him as the noisy sailor who bought a crowd meat pies and somehow escaped eating one himself. I watched him work at the wagon door until we got through. He fought what came out of it, then returned to the burning wreck after he had already reached clean air. He still could not make that spoon open a cage, but he kept finding something else to try.

Another customer, Caraa, tried her chimes again. Unlike the wagon door before, this time the remaining cage doors opened together. Everyone inside moved for the rear at once. I shouted for them to hurry and found myself directly in their way when they did. I barely managed to dive aside before the crowd rushed past me. I stayed inside until the last survivor ahead of me was through the opening, then jumped out after them. The wagon was still burning, and not long afterward it began collapsing into whatever strange space had existed inside until it vanished altogether.

The survivors had been gathered away from where the wagon had stood, and those among us who could tend injuries were seeing to them. Aidan looked worn through when the worst of it was finished. Someone from the crowd teased him about finding a better way to approach burning wagons next time, and there were enough tired people around the camp that nobody had much appetite left for what had started the whole affair. Only then did Aidan and I properly meet. I helped him up and introduced myself.

As it turns out, he had known my name from Desrah, along with whatever impression she had given him of me. By then, I was no longer just a name to him. I thanked him for getting us through the door. That was when he finally told me his trade. Shipwright and carpenter. Metal was outside his usual work, though hinges and doors were familiar enough. I understood then his chosen approach to tackling our problem with the wagon.

Years of ranging have given me plenty of time to learn who will stay when a road turns bad. With Aidan, I need not look back. I know he will be there.

7 - 72



I carry her with me.

That is how Leonia Leviranlaev referred to herself, a bardess you just could not help but keep around. A Pocketbard, as she called it. She had returned to the Coast near the end of Flamerule after being away long enough that I had begun thinking of her as someone from my early Circle years. We had known one another when Toshiro still led the Circle, and one of my clearer memories of her was standing watch together while he dealt with angry villagers. When I introduced her to Vendor again, I called her a former member. Leonia corrected the introduction in her own way. If I knew her properly, then she was Leonia the Tiny Fury Pocketbard. It suited her better anyway.

She had not been back long before I was seeing her often. We wandered without much purpose, compared notes about people who had disappeared from the Coast, and spent more time talking than reaching whatever place we had started toward. There was usually somebody else nearby. Sirion was around often, as was Shandril once the two met, and Leonia could turn a bench or a bottle of mead into reason enough to remain somewhere longer than planned. She also had someone of her own she was trying to find. Sirion helped arrange a scrying, and by early Eleasis she had begun accepting that the man might be dead. I found her at the lighthouse afterward with the signs of crying still around her eyes. We drank there for a while. She worried about being alone, and I encouraged her to stay near people she trusted. Doron Amar was where she thought she would go.

The next day, we ended up travelling together. The road took us through places neither of us seemed entirely sure of, though Leonia had less confidence in her direction than I expected. At one point she admitted that poor direction was partly because she could hardly see. I thought she was joking until she called her vision shite and explained that most of the world came to her as blobs. That left me staring at an archer who had apparently been shooting at blurred shapes for years. She found my surprise funny. I had noticed that she sometimes greeted voices rather than faces, and that her eyes did not always settle where mine were, though I had never put those things together.

She did not want to explain what had happened to her eyes there, so I left it alone. We kept moving, stopping when something drew our attention and finding our way through the sort of trouble that follows people who wander without much of a destination. Leonia could still manage a bow well enough to make my concern look misplaced. She also enchanted mine while we travelled and warned me against switching weapons after she had gone to the trouble. Whatever she saw when she looked downrange, it was apparently sufficient.

Later we found ourselves on a bridge overlooking the water. I remember the spot well. Somewhere to the south. Leonia looked over the edge and decided jumping from it would be entertaining. Her plan involved teleporting us back before we struck anything below. When I asked whether she could manage that, her answer did little to inspire confidence. She climbed onto the ledge anyway. I followed, took the hand she offered, and discovered only then that she had hurt herself trying much the same stunt before.

We jumped.

I remember the drop more clearly than whatever sensible thought should have stopped me. Leonia screamed and flailed beside me while I held on, and somehow we were back above rather than broken on the rocks below. It was the kind of decision that made sense only while standing beside her. I had become more careful by then than I had been in my younger years, or at least I liked to think so. Years of bad roads and worse decisions had taught me to look before stepping into trouble. That did not mean the old impulse had gone anywhere. Leonia knew a bit of the younger me after all.

By then I had also learned that waterfalls held some special place in her understanding of courtship, so perhaps throwing me from a bridge was simply the next stage of friendship. She had already spent enough time calling me Mister Ravage, with Shandril having helped that name along, that I had stopped asking what rules she was following.

There were quieter days after that. She drew, drank, travelled when her feet became restless, and occasionally asked me things I had no better answer for than she did. Her eyesight was eventually restored, which seemed almost stranger after I had become accustomed to her squinting toward people and waiting for them to speak. When Shandril and I spent time with her later in Eleasis, Leonia was able to sketch faces without relying on the blurred world she had known before. She still remained Leonia. Better eyes did little for her tendency to make an ordinary gathering strange within a few minutes.

A tenday after our bridge jump, I found her near another waterfall while I was taking some rare quiet time to pray. She worried that the setting might make the meeting count as a date. I refused to give her a useful answer, which seemed to satisfy her. She was carrying two bows then. One made enough noise and produced its own ammunition that there was little chance of forgetting it. The other was a fine longbow, without the noise and spectacle of the first. She pushed the second one into my hands.

I thought she wanted me to inspect it, but she had another idea. She believed I would make better use of it. I had to remind her that it was hers and asked what she intended to carry instead, all the while treating the matter as already settled. The noisy bow would serve her.

I had trouble accepting it as mine. The bow was too good to receive with a simple nod and tuck away with the rest of my gear. I told Leonia I would hold onto it for her. She let me call the arrangement whatever I liked. What mattered to her was that I use it, and I promised that much. I remember testing the string beneath my fingers while she stood nearby flicking stones from the cliff. She had placed something valuable in my hands and then seemed content to move on with the evening.

I did use it. Leonia checked later when she thought I might be giving a bow away to somebody else, and I reassured her that hers was still with me. I continued to call it hers for some time.

We travelled together again after that, sometimes with Shandril or Sirion nearby. There were roads to follow, ruins to poke through, and the usual trouble waiting somewhere ahead. I had forgotten how much I missed adventuring like that, with no greater purpose than seeing where the day carried us and dealing with whatever we found along the way. Leonia made those days easy to remember.

Leonia left the Coast again before the year was finished. I knew she had been restless and had other places calling to her, so her absence did not immediately feel unusual. News eventually returned without her. She had been killed by orcs. I knew little of the circumstances and had no wish to fill the missing parts with guesses. What remained for me was the knowledge that I had been elsewhere when it happened.

It took time before I went to Doron Amar. When I finally stood where Leonia had been laid to rest, there was little worth saying that she could hear. I had come too late to stand beside her. I stayed for a while instead. There was no errand waiting at the end of it and nothing I could do for her there. I could only give her the time I had failed to give when she was still somewhere beyond my reach.

Her bow was still with me when I left.

Leonia had never named it. Sometime afterward I did. I called it Eye of the Needle. She would probably have appreciated the joke in giving an eye to a bow once carried by a woman who had spent part of her life shooting at blobs. There was affection in the name as well, though I never needed to carve that into the wood. The bow remained what she had intended it to be when she shoved it into my hands. Something useful.

I have carried Eye of the Needle on patrols and along roads where trouble found me. It has rested near my hand during long watches and gone with me on ordinary days when nothing happened at all. Strings have needed replacing. The wood has needed care. Arrows have come and gone by the hundreds. Leonia trusted that I would put the bow to use, so I have.

A Pocketbard was supposed to be convenient to keep around. Leonia managed that better than she knew. The bow still goes where I go, and so does something of the woman who placed it in my hands.