He growled again—it made him feel better—and stepped in closer to the coordinator. He slashed at the barrier at the coordinator's waist level, and the blade came a good three inches closer to actually cutting the man. The coordinator shrugged and stepped back once, twice, then turned and took four quick steps and passed through a door. Abdel followed so closely behind that he barely had room to swing his sword at the rapidly crumbling magical barrier.
They crossed a thin, dimly lit corridor, and Abdel hung back half a step as the coordinator passed into another room. Abdel needed more room to get a good slash in and finally take the barrier down the rest of the way. He needed enough room to cut this smug bastard's head off.
What Abdel saw in the room made him pull up short.
"You are not a very smart young man are you?" the coordinator said.
Abdel knew he'd eventually kill this man, so he gave himself a second or two to make sure he wasn't imagining things. They were in a room with a ceiling easily three times Abdel's own considerable height. Hanging from the ceiling was a series of heavy black iron chains. Suspended from some of those chains were cages no bigger than coffins. Iron maidens, Abdel had heard them called. They were simple steel cages, about half a dozen of them. Two of them were occupied.
"Abdel!" Imoen called from one of them. "Abdel—what are you doing here?"
"What am—?" Abdel started to ask, then looked over at the second cage, where Jaheira was standing. Her face was covered in another one of those terrible steel masks that kept her from speaking—or casting spells. Her eyes told Abdel enough: she was happy to see him but still afraid.
"You came right to me, Son of Bhaal," the coordinator said. "And they told me you wouldn't be so easily manipulated."
Abdel sighed and hefted his sword. He glanced back at Jaheira one more time, then shot a quick smile at Imoen.
"Take his head off, Abdel," she cheered.
She always had so much confidence in him.
The coordinator laughed again and said, "Oh, yes, by all means, Abdel. Take my head off."
Abdel brought his sword up, took stock of the unarmed man, and feinted once to make it seem as if he was going to oblige both the coordinator and Imoen. The coordinator barely flinched. Anyone—even a trained fighter—would have reacted to the feint in some way. It was the whole reason Abdel even tried it in the first place. The coordinator's reaction to the fake attack would tell Abdel how he'd react to a real one, and tactics could be devised accordingly. The only thing Abdel wasn't expecting was for the man to have no reaction at all.
"I'm over here," the coordinator said sarcastically.
So be it. Abdel returned the odd man's smile and set his heavy broadsword swinging in front of him. He stepped toward the man, bringing the blade in and around in fast figure eights. The coordinator's eyes twisted in his head, following the blade, but he made no move to cast a spell. Abdel knew enough from the freezing touch and the invisible barrier that this man was some kind of mage. He was unarmed—not armed with physical weapons—but that didn't mean he wasn't deadly. Still, in Abdel's considerable experience, he knew that spells were always preceded by some amount of muttering, waving about of hands, and the handling of odd bits of this and that. The coordinator made no such attempts.
It struck Abdel that though they were confined to the iron maidens above, here he had both Imoen and Jaheira. This man meant nothing to him now—alive. All he could do, at best, would be to explain why the women were here, why he'd manipulated Abdel into coming here to aid them. Abdel felt a certain measure of confidence that Jaheira would know at least the answers to some of those questions, and even if she didn't, Abdel didn't really care. It was good enough to assume that this coordinator—whoever he really was—was next in a line of various evil geniuses bent on world domination who, for whatever reason, thought Abdel's peculiar parentage might help him become Emperor of all Faerun.
All things considered, Abdel decided to just kill the man and get it over with.
Abdel stepped in fast and held closed his eyes in anticipation of a sudden splatter of blood. The blood never came, and Abdel felt his brow furrow. The coordinator, still smiling, was simply leaning back away from the whirling tip of Abdel's heavy blade. In response, Abdel spun the blade faster, extending the arc lower.
Still smiling, the coordinator backed up, replanted his feet, almost danced backward across the smooth stone floor of the huge room, managing to keep his body always half an inch from the blade. Abdel had never seen anyone move that fast. A flash of yellow passed in front of Abdel's vision, and by sheer force of will alone, he made the sword move faster, until there was nothing but a vaguely gray fog in front of him.
A look of concern was made plain on the coordinator's face, and Abdel took heart. The man's lips parted, and he must have only said one short, simple word, and he was just gone.
"Behind—" Imoen shouted.
Abdel spun so fast he almost took off his own head. He let the blade decelerate just enough so he could see better, and there was the coordinator standing at the opposite end of the big room, little more than an outline in the wavering torchlight.
"— you!"
In the space of time it took to blink, Abdel looked up at Jaheira, back at the coordinator—who was just standing there—and made a decision. He started running at the coordinator, his sword spinning at his side and making a gentle, keening hiss in the air. He glanced up at Jaheira again, and her eyes betrayed confusion but also a level of trust he suddenly hoped he'd be able to earn.
"That's right," the coordinator said, his voice echoing in the big room, "come and get me, thug."
Abdel hopped once, then again, and the coordinator's brow furrowed. The sellsword leaped high into the air about midway to where the coordinator was standing. The strange man let out a single barking laugh and came running at Abdel, obviously intending to meet him somewhere in the middle.
Abdel hit the bottom of Jaheira's iron maiden hard enough to make it swing. Jaheira bumped into the cold iron bars with bruising force, and Abdel hung on with his left hand, letting the sword come to rest in his right. The coordinator was almost underneath him when he started mumbling through some incantation.
Ready for anything, Abdel dropped his arm back and changed his grip on the sword. He looked up, fixed the iron maiden's swinging padlock in his mind, and everything went black. He pulled up short so fast that a muscle in his shoulder twisted painfully. He couldn't see the lock and couldn't risk a blind swing at it. He could injure, even kill Jaheira.
"That was easy," the coordinator's mocking voice drifted up from below.
Knowing he was only about eight feet off the ground, Abdel simply let go of the cage and dropped. He hit the floor on his feet and kept his sword in front of his forehead, blade parallel to the ground to block any attempts to split his skull. The darkness was absolute. He couldn't see the blade that must have been a hand's span in front of his face. He couldn't see his feet— couldn't even see the bridge of his nose.
"Abdel.. " Imoen shouted. The sound of her voice—perturbed, impatient, immature—made him feel very nostalgic for the simpler days in the safety of Candlekeep. What was she doing here? "Abdel, I can't see you!"
A muffled sound came from above, and Abdel got the idea that it was Jaheira trying to say the same thing. She might have been telling him to risk hurting her if there was a chance of getting her out.
"You came here exactly when I wanted you to," the coordinator said, his voice echoing too much for Abdel to get a decent fix on his position in the absolute darkness. "You can swing your sword around all you want—even break the ladies free of their maidens—but you can't kill me, and you can't get out of here. You will serve my needs, even if we have to play for a while before it happens. I have a little time, at least."