“Are you all right?” I asked.
She didn’t answer or even look at me at first. Instead she drew the deep black stone from her belt pouch and was about to throw it against the wall, but something made her stop herself. She looked down at it and I thought she was going to cry, but she sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and put the stone back into the pouch. She looked up at me finally and said, “It’ll kill me eventually.”
I nodded.
“Dummy’s all yours if you wanna spar, eh?” she said. “Maybe get familiar with your new—your old blade, you know?”
“It’s all right,” I said. “And I do want to spar. But not with the dummy.”
She looked at me curiously, then turned her gaze to a rack set against a wall in the back of the room. The rack held fake weapons carved of wood that were magically enchanted to hold the same balance as their real counterparts. A saber and several daggers rested among the collection, along with many others.
“You’ll have an advantage,” she said. “I’m tired, you know?”
“So will that be your excuse when I beat you, or the whole bad luck thing?”
She grinned slightly, gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes, and scrambled to her feet and headed for the weapon rack. I followed her. She walked with confidence, even anticipation, but my knees shook.
Joen pulled a pair of daggers from the rack, twirling them to test their weight and balance. Apparently satisfied with her choices, she walked to the middle of the room. “So what are the rules, then?” she asked as I approached the collection of weapons. “First blood?”
Hopefully, I thought. “Until one or the other yields,” I said. I took the only saber from the weapon rack. It was balanced to match my previous blade, so it was a bit heavier than the magical sword I once again carried. But it was familiar, at least.
Our first passes resembled her dance with the pillar. She stepped to her left and I matched her, keeping her in front of me. She moved back to the right and I moved with her. We rotated around each other in a slow dance, sizing each other up.
She darted forward, right arm extended, left tucked in close to her body. I stepped back, bringing my blade up to defend myself. Her straightforward thrust wasn’t difficult to parry. My blade connected from below with hers, and the sharp crack of wood on wood echoed in the large chamber. I forced her blade up and out, her blade swishing harmlessly through the air near my head. I stepped to my left with the motion of the parry, keeping her body between me and her other dagger. But she didn’t press the attack, instead withdrawing her extended arm.
I followed suit, bringing my saber back into a defensive position. I could have attacked, but her footing was good and her daggers still in place to deflect anything I could throw at her.
She stepped back and I stepped back, and we began our circling dance again.
“Thought I could end it quick, you know?” she said. “I want to get to bed soon.”
“Don’t worry,” I answered. “It’ll be over before you know what hit you.”
“Oi, ’cause nothing’s gonna hit me, eh?”
I lunged forward before she finished her taunt. The tip of my sword leaped at her face pulling my whole body out into a single line in perfect balance. My weapon covered the four feet to her in an instant. If she’d been distracted at all, as I’d hoped, she may not have been able to react to such a sudden attack.
But she was not distracted. She bent backward at the waist, taking advantage of my high angle of attack. Both her daggers came up in front of her, crossed, and braced against her forearms. Her blades, like mine before, defeated the attack from below, forcing my blade up and away from her body.
She continued to bend backward, sliding one foot out behind her to maintain her balance. She rolled one dagger under my blade, the other over. She then shifted her weight onto her back leg, sliding her forward leg out to the left, turning her body with it, so her side was to me.
If I’d had control of my blade, I could have taken advantage of her position. But I discovered that I couldn’t move it at all against her surprisingly effective lock. Instead, I found my sword moving with her, across my body. She would disarm me soon, I knew.
I couldn’t attack her, nor could I retreat to my defensive posture, and she knew it. I could see the confident smile creeping onto her face.
I couldn’t move backward, so I moved forward instead. I pushed, lowering my right shoulder and slamming hard into her.
Joen, surprised by my move and stunned by the impact, tumbled away. She managed to turn her rough landing into a barrel roll, absorbing much of the impact. But she lost a dagger in the process. She came to her feet, looking a bit shocked and possibly even angry.
“Oi, so that’s how it’s gonna be, eh?” she said sharply. “I thought we were gonna be civil.”
I grimaced. I didn’t want to upset Joen, but neither could I accomplish my plan without causing her some injury.
“I’ll be civil,” I said quietly. “I’ll even let you get your other dagger.”
“How gracious,” she said.
She retrieved her lost blade and set herself again in a defensive stance. Again our dance resumed.
This time, though, was a bit different. Our pace was faster. Step right, step right, step forward. We each launched a few short attacks, though nothing as ambitious as our first exchanges. Wood struck wood, and feet scuffed on the stone floor.
As we settled into a give-and-take routine, two things became obvious to me: First, Joen wasn’t really very tired from her sparring with the dummy. And second, she was the superior fighter. It was only a matter of time before I made a mistake and she took advantage. This would all be for nothing, and I’d need a whole new plan.
I moved forward, chopping my blade down diagonally from the right. Joen had previously deflected that simple attack, but this time, she simply sidestepped it, moving out to her left.
She darted forward, a mirror image of her first attack. Her left-hand dagger led the way. Her right, she kept close to her body.
I halted the momentum of my sword easily, around my left hip, and reversed it. I put my right hand flat against the blade to balance it, turning my right elbow in low, pointed at Joen. I rolled my left hip forward as well, sliding my right foot back behind me. The hilt of my sword stayed against my hip, but the blade came around, turning with me, striking her dagger just before it would have stabbed my shoulder.
I extended my left arm, but left the sword’s tip in place. The pommel of the weapon was farther from my body than the tip, and the whole length of the blade pointed at Joen.
I snapped the tip toward her, the blade cutting the air. But her right-hand dagger, still close to her body, was perfectly aligned, and she picked the attack off cleanly.
She brought her left hand back in toward me, her deflected dagger once again diving for my side. I had no choice but to slide to my left, away from the attack.
Though my body was out of her reach, she continued the motion, bringing her left dagger up beside the right, against my blade. With both hands and good leverage, she shoved my blade up and out. I tried to retreat but she mirrored my every move, pulling her body in close to mine. I tried in vain to maneuver my sword, to bring the blade in between us, to somehow break the clinch.
She pressed in tighter, one dagger holding tight to my blade, the other sliding down toward my chest. I could see the fire in her emerald eyes as her face came in close. I could feel her breath against my skin, her long hair brushing gently against my face.
She brought her dagger in against my chest, and her mouth a mere inch from my ear. “Yield,” she whispered.
Every part of me wished to do so. She had beaten me, and I knew it. Were we real foes with real weapons, I would have been dead. I would have yielded, but I had other plans. I grasped the hilt of my sword in both hands, and tugged mightily on the pommel. I couldn’t overpower her parry, but I didn’t have to. I didn’t need the blade of my saber. Either end of
a sword hurts.
Joen’s eyes widened in disbelief as the pommel of my wooden weapon rushed in, crashing against her face, knocking her off her feet.
She landed hard. Her two wooden daggers, suddenly free of her grip, clattered against the floor. Both hands covered her face, and she rolled around for a few moments in apparent agony.
Then she stopped, opened a space between her hands, and looked at me.
I expected anger, even rage. I thought she might get up and attack me. But behind those hands, her eyes were moist with tears. Behind the tears, her look was one of disappointment, of betrayal, not of rage.
I could hardly bear to look at her. I averted my eyes, backing slowly, expecting but not getting some harsh words from her, about how I’d cheated, how I should have yielded, how I was a terrible person.
But when she managed to sit up, all she said was, “Got that blood you came looking for?”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Jaide?”
She forced a smile and nodded.
Feeling like a fool, I turned and left, walking out of the room still holding the wooden sword—with the blood from Joen’s broken nose on the pommel.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Midnight could not come soon enough. I arrived at Malchor’s study early—I couldn’t return to my room, so close to Joen’s, so soon—but found the door locked. So I sat and waited, with a lock of Jaide’s hair in one hand and the bloody practice saber in the other.
I couldn’t stand to look at the weapon, to think about the awful thing I’d done to Joen, the crunching sound her nose made when it broke.
I tried to divert my mind, to focus on the third object, the one I had not yet found: the name of the other Sentinel.
It was someone I knew, Jaide had said. I knew a good many people—the crew of Sea Sprite, the various folk I’d met on my previous travels with Perrault, even a few interesting folk from Memnon and Calimport who’d helped or hindered my journeys. But I seriously doubted the Sentinel could be Sali Dalib, the merchant I’d stolen my magical boots from; or Dondon, the halfling disguised as a street orphan; or the nameless seer in the market in Memnon.
I also knew the Sentinel still lived, so that ruled out Perrault and Alviss, and a few others.
So who, then?
My first thought ran to Captain Deudermont and the crew of Sea Sprite. I’d met them soon after the stone had come into my possession—actually, almost immediately after I’d lost Perrault. They had taken me in, protected me, though I was a stowaway on their vessel.
But my meeting them had been due to my actions, not theirs. I’d taken shelter from the demon Asbeel and hidden in the hold for days, only to be discovered after a battle with pirate raiders in which I was wounded. The Sentinels know where the stones are at all times, Jaide had revealed to me. If any on board had sensed the stone, they surely did not show it.
But maybe the Sentinel wouldn’t have wanted to reach out to me then. As Jaide said, the Sentinels were meant to be observers in all this. But still, someone could have come to my aid during the fight instead of letting me battle a nasty troll all alone—and nearly die.
And, of course, I was still angry with Deudermont for what he’d done to Joen as we approached Waterdeep.
No, I decided, it was no one on board Sea Sprite when I’d arrived. Not Lucky or Tonnid or McCanty or Tasso. Not Deudermont. And that also meant it was neither Drizzt nor Wulfgar, who had also been on board at the time.
I was a bit disheartened at the realization that it couldn’t be Drizzt Do’Urden. Our fates seemed somehow connected. For the past few years, we’d run into each other on several occasions. Always we were heading in the same direction, be it south to Calimshan or north to Silverymoon.
And besides, I thought the world of the dark elf. He always had words of encouragement or advice for me, sometimes even some real aid to my cause.
But I had confronted him about a connection to the Stone of Tymora, which had been suggested by the seer in Memnon. And he’d told me, honestly I believe, that he didn’t know of what I spoke.
The midnight hour had arrived, but still Malchor did not appear. I thought about knocking at his door, but decided to wait a little longer.
I was missing something. Jaide thought I knew enough to figure out who the Sentinel was. She wanted me to continue my journey, for whatever reason.
Drizzt wasn’t the Sentinel, but what of his friends? Bruenor Battlehammer, the dwarf warrior and now King of Mithral Hall, had arrived during the fight with the pirates. He’d ridden in on a flying chariot of fire, along with his adopted human daughter, Catti-brie. How had they found us, exactly? Of course, considering their means of transport it wasn’t unreasonable to assume magical aid, but what if Bruenor knew exactly where I was? Or, more precisely, exactly where the stone I carried was.
I considered their arrival in a whole new light. I’d always assumed they’d been searching for Drizzt. But what if they had been actually searching for me?
Bruenor had never interacted with me much. He’d been cordial, though not especially polite—but of course, dwarven politeness is a contradiction. Catti-brie, though … When I lay wounded among the injured from the fight, when the ship’s surgeon—or the sailor taking on that role—had used burning tar to seal my wound so that I wouldn’t bleed out, it had been her angelic face that had watched over me, her hand that held mine.
And she was indeed beautiful. Malchor had said the goddesses had chosen two persons of exceeding grace as the Sentinels. Jaide surely fit the description. And Catti-brie would as well.
No, I realized. I was remembering what Malchor said incorrectly. Not “persons” of exceeding grace, but “elves” of exceeding grace. And Catti-brie was human. She was less than a decade older than I. She couldn’t be the Sentinel.
Frustrated, I pounded the door, hard. My toe stung from the blow, but the sharp pain gave me something to focus my mind on. I didn’t know many elves—only one, really—and I already knew she was a Sentinel. It couldn’t be Elbeth, my next possibility, or any member of her Circle, or any of the people I’d met in my travels in Calimshan, or Chrysaor the genasi—
I stopped. I didn’t actually know for sure that Chrysaor was a genasi. Robillard, the wizard, had told me so. In fact, not everything I knew about genasi necessarily fit with what I knew of Chrysaor.
A genasi is of elemental heritage, and I’d always assumed Chrysaor was descended from a creature of elemental water. As Robillard had said, somewhere in his lineage there was a water nymph, or something of that nature. The physical characteristics of the genasi were determined by that heritage. Chrysaor’s skin and hair color seemed to fit, as did his seafaring tendencies.
But he also could breathe underwater and swim extraordinarily fast. He was more at home beneath the sea than on land. And this would not be true of a genasi.
On the other hand, there was a race of elves who lived beneath the seas, with pale blue skin and hair that ranged in color from green to white, including the sea-foam coloring of Chrysaor. Malchor had not specifically labeled the Sentinels as moon elves like Jaide, or even surface elves. An aquatic elf would not be out of the question, surely.
And I considered Chrysaor’s actions too. We’d first met in the brig of the old Sea Sprite, in Memnon harbor. He’d been among the pirates who had attacked us. He had tried to kidnap me—had even succeeded in taking me off the ship, underwater into the harbor, and may have escaped cleanly had not Robillard come to my rescue.
Each time I’d met him after that, he’d not tried to kill me, but had actually aided my journey. He led me to the stone, guiding me to the isle where the Circle held it. He had helped Joen and me get to Malchor’s tower. He’d then led us to the Stone of Beshaba, buried beneath the sands of Anauroch. His every action seemed to be about bringing the bearers, current and future, to the stones.
Yes, it all made sense. Chrysaor was the other Sentinel.
Malchor’s door swung open. The wizard stood in fine ceremoni
al robes, a censer in hand, a grave look on his face.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
I nodded. But something nagged at me, something Jaide had said. But I couldn’t quite place it.
I winced as the knife sliced my finger, but I made no noise, as Malchor had instructed. The study was dark except for a single candle set on the table in the center of the room. Scented smoke from the censer filled the small, round chamber. Two bowls also sat on the table, one in front of each of us. In mine, there was only crystal clear water. In Malchor’s was the lock of Jaide’s hair and a few scrapings of the stains of Joen’s blood. As I held my hand across the table, a few drops of my blood joined the mix.
Malchor chanted, his voice low. I could barely make out individual words in the chant, and couldn’t understand those I could distinguish—he spoke in some arcane language. He would chant for some time, he’d told me, and when he finished, the light would go out. And at that moment and that moment only, I would say the name of the other Sentinel. If I was correct, his image would appear in the water of my bowl, hopefully with some way of describing his location.
Why we had to go through all this elaborate ritual, I was not sure. I’d seen scrying magic used nearly two years ago, when Alviss had helped me spy on Perrault and Jaide. But that spying was directed at Perrault, not Jaide. Maybe it was more difficult to use such magic to find a Sentinel. I had no idea.
I trained my thoughts on Chrysaor, tried to convince myself that I was certain. He always seemed able to find me, he knew where Twinspire was, he actively wanted us to find the Stone of Beshaba. He was the perfect candidate.
But still a doubt tugged on my mind.
Why had he led me to the Circle, the druids who were determined to keep me and the Stone of Tymora hidden forever, in order to restore balance to the world? And when that plan had failed, why would he have helped us seek the Stone of Beshaba?
And when that was achieved, when we entered the cavern at Twinspire, he left.