Baldur's Gate (6 page)

The merchant noticed Abdel looking at him and spread a huge, gap-toothed grin across his face in a practiced greeting.

“Potions,” the man called, his accent proving Abdel right about his northern heritage, “elixirs, drafts, and ointments for every ill and every eventuality.”

Abdel approached, the little purse still in his hand jingling with the weight of coin.

“Ah, my good sir,” the merchant said, “I see you have a need.”

Abdel was legitimately confused by this and said, “Indeed? And what need have I?”

The merchant laughed, “You fight,” he said, then looked Abdel up and down appreciatively, “and fight well, to be sure. You will guard yourself well but still fall victim to the lucky stab or slash here and there, I’m sure. One sip of this” —he lifted a plain silver vial from the collection spread across his cart— “and you’ll be feeling no pain.”

“Four coppers an ale will do the same.”

“Ah,” the merchant said, his smile not faltering for a moment, “ah yes indeed, sir, but in the morning the cut is still there—treated only with ale that is—but this beauty will make it all go away. The secret is lost to the ages, but it can be yours, for a price.”

“The secret or the draft?”

“Ah, the draft, of course, sir,” the merchant said, then glanced at the little pouch in Abdel’s big hand, “unless you’ve a bigger purse elsewhere.”

Abdel laughed and came closer still. He asked about some of the other vials and heard tales no sane man would believe. There was something about this act of haggling with some over-cheerful merchant that settled Abdel. He’d been as taut of nerve the last tenday and a half as he’d ever been in his life. Everything had changed abruptly but still seemed to be moving so slowly.

“Acid?” Abdel asked, not understanding the word.

“Aye, good sellsword, aye,” the merchant said. “This is a dangerous concoction indeed—like liquid fire it burns—a creation of the mad geniuses of Netheril, for sale today for what an honest man such as yourself can afford.”

Exactly what an honest man could afford ended up being a matter of some debate, and it was nearly an hour before Abdel walked back into the crowd with the small leather pouch now containing a small silver vial, a slightly larger glass one, and four coppers.

“Oh, please, girl,” Montaron whined, “I ain’t gonna poison ye, fer Urogalan’s sake.”

Jaheira only grunted in response, but Khalid reached for the wineskin the halfling was offering. He held it gingerly to his nose as if it might explode.

The Amnian sniffed, then shrugged and said, “Smells like ale.”

“An’ ale it is, my friend,” Montaron said. “Go ahead … fer luck’s sake.”

Khalid smiled and looked at both Xzar and Abdel. The mage and the sellsword had each downed sizeable quaffs of Montaron’s special ale, and both were still standing, none the worse for wear.

“Khalid—” Jaheira started to say but stopped when Khalid lifted the skin to his lips and drank. He held the liquid in his mouth for a second or two before swallowing, then closed his eyes as it slid down.

When he opened them again, he said, “Go ahead, Jaheira, make the halfling happy. Maybe there is something to rituals like these.”

“We’re goin’ into Oghma only knows what ‘ere, girl,” Montaron added, “an’ a little luck won’t ‘urt ye.”

“Lucky ale,” Jaheira scoffed but took the skin and drank from it quickly, just wanting to get it over with.

“Can we go now?” Abdel asked, itching around the collar of his chain mail tunic.

They’d been walking all morning from Nashkel and hadn’t made it to the mines yet. Montaron stopped them where a thin strip of brown mud led off from the main path. He claimed it was a shortcut, and that it would get them to the mines in no time. Drinking “lucky ale” was a silly ritual he claimed to have observed whenever his path led toward danger. Abdel drank right after Xzar, giving it no second thought. He’d seen stranger good luck charms in his day. Now he was just anxious to get on to the mines.

Jaheira gave the halfling his wineskin back, and the five of them headed down the path. The coarse grass that bordered the main path gave way to a deep field of black wildflowers. The field was solid with them, and though Abdel never noticed things like flowers, there was something about these that struck him as strange. They were all so alike, and there were so many of them, and there was something about them that just seemed out of place.

“Follow me very carefully, all,” Montaron said, his voice low and serious.

“For luck?” Jaheira teased. “Or are you afraid of damaging the pretty flowers.”

Abdel leaned down to pick one. He meant to give it to Jaheira, even imagined gently sliding it behind one of her slim, pointed ears, brushing back her jet black hair and—

“This is your garden,” Khalid said, breaking into Abdel’s thoughts and making him stop, “isn’t it Montaron?”

Abdel flushed and straightened, embarrassed, but no one saw.

“There’re dangers all about, my Amnian friend,” Montaron replied. “Even in a field o’ pretty black flowers, though they might be a bit less temptin’ in the dark.”

The halfling was silent for a moment, walking carefully with his eyes glued to the ground in front of him. He was leading them through the field of flowers in a twisting, nonsensical path. The uniformity of the patch of flowers, the color, and the sighing of the breeze through them had a calming effect on all five of them. Abdel forgot his embarrassment, Xzar didn’t swat at unseen bugs or talk to himself, and Khalid and Jaheira even followed the halfling, saying nothing.

“Damn sun,” Montaron said, breaking the silence.

Abdel looked up and saw for the first time that an old, dilapidated farmhouse stood in the center of the field of black flowers. It was a simple structure, paneled in wood that still showed the splintering gray of what was once a bright coat of whitewash. The roof sagged, and moss grew on it. The shutters had come off the windows, maybe years ago, leaving only shadows in the whitewash to mark that they’d been there at all. The windows were just squares of black.

Abdel sighed at the sight of the house. A family’s house, he thought, a family once lived there.

“Gods!” Montaron exclaimed and drew up short. The others stopped. Jaheira actually bumped into Abdel’s back, and he flinched away from the contact. When he looked back to say something to the woman, he met her husband’s eyes instead. Khalid smirked, then looked away, and Abdel flushed again.

“What is it?” the sellsword asked Montaron, hoping to cover his embarrassment.

“A body,” Xzar said simply, “a body that is dead.”

Abdel squinted and stepped forward, crushing a couple of the flowers. Montaron flinched when he saw that, and Abdel ignored the halfling, who stared at him for the next several minutes as if expecting some change to come over him. Abdel looked down at the body at Montaron’s feet. The man had been dead for days, but there was still very little decay. There were no flies, which was what Abdel thought most peculiar. A body laying dead in the open for days tended to attract flies. The dead man was human, dressed in the simple ring mail of an inexperienced mercenary or a common foot soldier. The man’s eyes were white, going to gray-green. His tongue was sticking out, swollen and black. There was no blood or obvious wounds.

“What killed this man?” Abdel asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Poison, yes?” Xzar offered, avoiding eye contact with Abdel, as always.

Abdel nodded, seeing the truth in it. Montaron knelt over the man and started running his hands along the dead soldier’s belt.

“Montaron!” Jaheira gasped. “Leave him in peace, can’t you?”

“She’s right, Montaron,” Abdel said. “Leave him.”

Montaron ignored them, standing and turning around only when he’d found something.

“Keys?” Abdel asked when he saw what the halfling was holding in his hands. There was a whole set of them, half a dozen big brass keys on a simple iron ring.

“If you can find out where this man lived,” Khalid said, sneering, “you’ll be a rich man for sure, thief.”

Montaron smiled and looked over his shoulder at the collapsing farmhouse.

“Close enough?” he said.

A chill ran down Abdel’s spine at the thought of the thief gobbling up what memories might be left in that perfect house, that house he should have grown up in. The sellsword shook his head, trying to shake these odd, weak, melancholy thoughts loose. He caught Xzar’s eye and returned the mage’s knowing smirk with a curl of his lip.

Abdel snatched the keys violently from Montaron’s grip and squeezed them in his big, callused hand until he thought they might puncture his skin.

“Leave it,” Abdel said, “and him. We started this trip by heading for the mines, and now we’re going to get to those mines.”

Abdel turned and walked on, and Montaron let the sellsword lead the way only as long as it took for him to exchange a long, knowing glance with Xzar. The mage nodded and followed.

Abdel had never been in a mine before, but this one was much as he’d expected. The tunnel was simple, square, with a low ceiling held up at intervals of fifteen or twenty feet by large wooden supports. The walls were rough cut into solid rock from the entrance in the side of a deep mine pit. The mining complex was only a couple hours’ walk from the field of black flowers.

When they’d emerged from Montaron’s shortcut path, they’d stumbled into a group of tired looking miners heading back toward Nashkel with picks and shovels but no cart of ore. The miners gave them only a passing glance, and Abdel’s odd little party made their way against a flow of dirty, obviously unhappy men to the edge of the pit. A group of Amnian soldiers didn’t so much guard as hang around the steps leading into the mine. A big, sooty, dark-skinned man looked to be in charge of the place. He scowled at the soldiers with obvious irritation, and the youthful Amnian sergeant tried not to notice.

“There is definitely something wrong here,” Abdel said later, his voice echoing in the mine tunnel.

“Aye, kid,” Montaron’s equally resonant voice answered from the gloom behind him, “an’ that big fat Emerson fella’s willin’ to pay to have a stop put to it.”

When they had first arrived at the pit, Emerson, the mine boss, had reached into an ore cart and produced a fist-size lump of gray-brown rock. He squeezed it, and it crumbled to dust. The boss cursed loudly and threw the handful of worthless iron dust to the dry ground where it mixed with more of the same. He turned his back on the cart and walked away. The miners who had been standing around the cart looked no happier than their foreman, but their faces were also tainted by the unmistakable look of panic. That dust was once their sole livelihood.

“He doesn’t have to pay us for our help, Montaron,” Jaheira said. “This mine means life to these people.”

“Aye, lass,” Montaron chuckled, “an’ there’re few things as ‘spensive as life.”

Emerson had eyed them carefully, making note of their features and dress, before he let them into the mine tunnel. The workers had been clearing out over the last several hours, and Emerson held little hope that this hole in the ground, which was once the lifeblood of Nashkel, would ever be mined again.

“You’re a true humanitarian Montaron,” Khalid said sarcastically. Only Montaron laughed at the comment.

“They’ll live,” the halfling said, his voice as confident as it was disappointed.

“This way,” Xzar said, louder than Abdel had ever heard him say anything. “This way, yes? This way.”

Montaron nodded and made to follow Xzar. Abdel took one step to follow them both, but a light touch from Jaheira stopped him. Abdel was secretly happy not to have flinched.

“Why this way?” she asked, glancing meaningfully down the other passage that formed the Y-intersection at which they stood.

“No reason,” Montaron said, and shrugged. “One way’s as good as any, no?”

“This way,” Xzar said, “for sure.”

Montaron sighed and looked at his friend.

The mage nodded furiously and said, “This way, Montaron, yes?”

“As good as any?” Jaheira asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“How do you know these tunnels?” Khalid asked, taking a threatening step forward. Abdel looked at Montaron, curious to hear the answer.

“My friend ‘ere is a mage,” the halfling offered, “an’ as such is… sensitive to this kind o’ thing, eh?”

“What kind of thing?” asked Jaheira. “Poisoning iron mines?”

“Poisoning iron?” Abdel had to ask. “How could such a silly thing be done?”

“Ask your little friend here,” Khalid accused.

“If ye’d like to go down the other passage so badly, Amnian,” Montaron said, trying with obvious difficulty to remain civil, “then let us go, but not before we ask ye why ye’re so set to go that way.”

“Accuse us,” Jaheira said sternly. “Go ahead, accuse Amn. This mine supplies—supplied—Amn as well as Baldur’s Gate, but I think we all know who’s who here, halfling.”

Montaron smiled and nodded, “I’m gettin’ that idea, young missus.”

“This is none of my concern,” Abdel said, “and surely of no interest to Gorion, who was no miner or ironmonger or blacksmith. Why are we here at all?”

“To stop a war,” Jaheira told Abdel, though her eyes never left the halfling.

Montaron turned and walked several steps down the darkening tunnel with Xzar in tow.

“Bring back the proof,” he said, his voice echoing loudly in the confined space, “an’ there’ll be reward enough in both Baldur’s Gate an’Amn.”

Xzar muttered something, and a small spot of yellow light appeared above his head, following him as he strode swiftly down the passage. Abdel sighed, watching them walk away, their light making them stand out brightly against the darkness. He waited until Montaron turned to see if they were following before he followed. Jaheira and Khalid made no secret that they came along only under duress.

It didn’t take more than a minute for Abdel to catch up, and he was almost in reach of them both when Xzar abruptly stopped. The mage bent at the waist, and the ball of light followed him down, staying only inches over the top of his head the whole way. The flash of reflected light drew Abdel’s attention to a small silver vial on the tunnel floor. Xzar took it between thumb and index finger and picked it up slowly, gingerly, as if he were lifting a dead mouse from a trap.