"Dragonbait threw himself on Kasilith, preventing her from casting any more magic, but the penanggalan, taking advantage of Alias's diverted attention, had turned on its attacker with a vengeance. It swooped down upon the swordswoman and lashed its tail about her neck. Alias flailed her sword awkwardly over her head while she tugged at the creature's tail to keep it from choking her. The tail felt slimy, like a decaying piece of meat, and it stunk of curdling blood. Realizing she hadn't long before the monster crushed her windpipe, Alias tried a desperate measure. She dropped her sword and snatched her dagger from her boot sheath.
"A second later she'd slashed the penanggalan along the length of its tail. Hot blood gushed down on her, momentarily obscuring her vision. The penanggalan sank its teeth into her cheek. Dropping her dagger, Alias grabbed the hair at the monster's temples and ripped it from her, smashing it into the wall over and over, until she had crushed its skull. The tail about her throat went limp and slid from her. Alias dropped the monster on the floor and, retrieving her sword, cleaved its head in two.
"An inky cloud rose from the monstrous head, shrank to a pinpoint of blackness, then vanished. From the bed, Kasilith sobbed out, 'Stelly,' and Alias realized what must have happened."
Kith paused in her story and hung her head for a moment. She breathed in deeply and let her breath out slowly.
"Jilly was Stelly," Todd cried out. "No one had cremated Stelly's body," the boy speculated, "so she became a penanggalan. But what about the other penanggalan? The one whose body Kasilith destroyed?" the boy asked. "Was that the one that killed Stelly?"
Kith shook her head. "No, the Swanmays did finally find and destroy that one. There was no other penanggalan. Kasilith created an illusion of the body and destroyed it so Alias would think the monster was dead and would go away."
"But Alias was too thorough a hunter, and didn't leave," Marl noted.
"And when Kasilith and Stelly were trapped in Ser-pentsford by the snow, Stelly had to feed on Kasilith so she wouldn't get caught," Todd added.
"And Kasilith helped Stelly even though she was a penanggalan because she was her friend," Lisaka said.
"A penanggalan isn't the person she was in life. It's just an evil life-force animating her body that knows what she knew," Marl argued. "Right?"
"That's true," Kith said softly.
"But Kasilith didn't know that, did she?" Jewel asked.
"She knew," Kith replied.
"The penanggalan probably hypnotized her into being its slave," Marl said.
Kith shook her head. "No. Kasilith served it willingly. You see, she felt so guilty that Stelly had died because she hadn't taught her to read. So she thought she deserved nothing better for the rest of her life than to serve as the slave to evil because she'd done an evil thing."
"Then what happened to her?" Jewel asked anxiously.
Kith sighed. "Well, she shrieked and cried and ranted and raved for a while. She swore she would never forgive Alias and Dragonbait for freeing her from the penang-galan's enslavement. Still, they attended to her while she was recovering from the penanggalan's wounds."
"More than she deserved," Marl muttered.
"True," Kith agreed. "Alias told the mage that Finder Wyvernspur had told her so much about Kasilith that she felt she was her friend and would not leave her until she was healed. Kasilith swore she had never met Finder Wyvernspur, but Alias stayed anyway. Finally, one day, something Dragonbait the paladin said made her change her mind about how she felt and about what she should do with her life."
"What did he say?" Jewel asked.
"He told Kasilith that the god of justice abhors punishment for punishment's sake. That we have to find a way to atone for the evil we do, and that we cannot atone for evil with evil, but only with good. He suggested she go out and teach other children who needed to learn to read and write. That way she would honor Stelly's true spirit and maybe bring peace to her own spirit. And that's just what she did."
"So she became a teacher like you?" Jewel asked.
"She became a teacher like me," Kith answered. "She teaches the common spell."
Marl the cooper's son stayed in school another two years before he finally bought his own sword and joined a caravan as a swordling. By then Kith Lias had taught him to read and write the names of every fell creature he might encounter in the Realms and had moved to another dale to teach another village's children. It was during Marl's off-duty hours that the other caravan guards taught him the game anagrams. After that, the cooper's son spent even more time wondering about the mage Kasilith and the teacher Kith Lias.
THE FIRST MOONWELL
The goddess existed deep within the cocoon of bedrock, an eternal being, formed of stone and silt and fire, her body blanketed by the depths of a vast and trackless sea. In the way of immortals, she had little awareness of the steady progression of ages, the measured pulse of time. Only gradually, over the course of countless eons, did she become aware that around and above her the ocean came to host an abundance of life. She knew the presence of this vitality in all the forms that thrived and grew; from the beginning she understood that life, even in its simplest and most transient forms, was good.
Deep waters washed her body, and the volcanic fires of her blood swelled, seeking release. She was a living thing, and thus she grew. Her being expanded, rising slowly from the depths of the ocean, over millennia spilling along trench and seabed, pressing deliberately, forcefully upward. Over the course of ages, her skin, the floor of the sea, pushed through the realm of black and indigo and blue, toward shimmering reaches of aquamarine and a warmth that was very different from the hot pulse of lava that measured her own steady heartbeat.
Life in many forms quickened around her, first in the manner of simple things, later in larger and more elaborate shapes. Animation teemed in the waters that cloaked and cooled her body. Gashes opened continually in the rocky flesh of her body, and her blood of molten rock touched the chill waters in spuming explosions of steam.
Amid these hissing eruptions, she sensed great forms circling, swimming near, breathing the chill, dark sea. These beings of fin and tentacle, of scale and gill, gathered to the warmth of the earthmother's wounds-wounds that caused no pain, but instead gave her the means to expand, to strive ever higher through the brightening waters of the sea.
And, finally, in the life that gathered to her bosom, she sensed great creatures of heartbeat and warm blood. These mighty denizens swam like fish, but were cloaked in slick skin rather than scales, and rose through the sea to drink of the air that filled the void above. Mothers nursed their young, much like the goddess nourished her children and her thriving sea. Most importantly, in these latter arrivals the goddess sensed the awakenings of mind, of thought and intelligence.
Unaware of millennia passing, feeling the coolness of the sea against the rising pressure of her rock-bound body, the physical form of the goddess continued to expand. At last, a portion of her being rose above the storm-tossed ocean to feel a new kind of warmth, a radiance that descended from the sky. Periodically this heat was masked beneath a blanket of chilly powder, but the frosty layer yielded itself in a regular pattern to more warmth, to soothing waters that bathed the flesh of the goddess, and more of the golden rays shedding steadily downward from the sky.