"Mielikki," she said, not caring that her voice was ragged from the heat, from crying. "Mielikki, sweet Lady of the Forest, please …"
She put both hands down on the dry grass and pushed herself up, rolling over onto her left side. Pain made her gasp, then gag, and she sat up. She held her left side and felt wetness that might have been blood or sweat. She didn't want to take her hand away from her side long enough to check.
She looked up in the sky and saw nothing but rolling black smoke. She saw the Tree of Life giving itself up one soot mote at a time. Jaheira felt as if the whole world was draining up into the sky.
"Mielikki," she whispered, and a tear rolled into her mouth. "Dear goddess, just tell me where he is. Where is he?"
Jaheira's hands shot up to guard her face, and she fell backward, the pain in her side not even registering. She was instinctively guarding her face from the vision that flashed across her eyes.
Orange flames.
Boiling seas.
Writhing bodies.
Souls damned.
He was in Hell.
Abdel was in Hell.
Jaheira screamed again, loud enough to make her own ears ring.
Abdel kept his eyes closed knowing that the sights around him would only distract him. For the first time maybe in his whole life he was going to stop, just let the world go on, and finally demand some answers from the universe. He was going to wait for his father to say something. In his mind's eye he drew a circle around himself, and in his mind's voice he said:
Speak to me.
Tell me.
Where are you?
What do you want from me?
What do I do?
Do I become you? Do I replace you? Do I serve you?
I'll let that tree burn, and the elf city burn, and Candlekeep itself burn. I don't care. I want to know.
I will know.
You'll come back from wherever you've been, and you'll talk to me.
You'll talk to me, you bastard.
You'll talk to me.
Bhaal.
God of Murder.
Father.
Talk to me.
And Abdel let himself drift in the lava flow of Hell and waited for his father's voice to tell him everything, to tell him what to do. He waited in the pits of damnation for a long time, but his father never spoke to him.
"You're dead." Abdel said, and opened his eyes.
"You come back," Jaheira said, her voice coming in a feral growl that sounded wrong in her ears. "You come back to me."
She rolled back onto her stomach and paused to let pain wash over her again. She waited as patiently as she could, and when the worst of it was over, she forced herself to her feet.
Irenicus had nearly killed her when she confronted him at the Tree of Life. All around them Suldanessellar was burning, and he just started to pummel her with spells. She fought back with spells of her own, and elves came to her defense, but Irenicus's supply of painful, body-twisting magic seemed endless. He smashed her with lightning, burned her with fire, cut her with blades and glass and thorns, and the bastard laughed the whole time. When she finally fell, he hung her in a web to watch. And watch she did.
She'd watched him suck the life energy out of the greatest source of life energy in the world, if not the entire multiverse.
He drained the Tree of Life and left it so dry the heat of burning Suldanessellar had touched it to flame, and it became an enormous inferno that burned away more than leaves, bark, and branches. Those flames burned away life. They burned away history. They burned away tradition and hope and the brittle dignity of a dying race.
Then Irenicus went willingly down into some hell where Abdel waited—for what? Abdel surely hadn't gone there willingly. They wouldn't embrace there in brotherhood. They'd fight, and even as much as she loved and trusted and was in awe of the Son of Bhaal, Jaheira didn't think he could win. How could he?
How could anyone stand against a man already powerful in his own right but now filled with the essence of the Tree of Life?
"Abdel," she said to the ground around her. "Just run. Get out of there, Abdel. Come back to me. Let him live. Let him live forever in Hell. Come back to me."
She realized she was looking at the point on the ground where Irenicus had sank. She took a step toward that spot, and when her foot touched the forest floor her knee gave out. She fell to the ground and ignored the pain. She tried to get back to her feet but couldn't, so she crawled.
"I'm coming, Abdel," she said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"He's dead, you idiot," Irenicus sneered from somewhere in the roaring flames of Hell. "Your father is dead, and you'll get no answers from him."
Abdel gave himself over to the rage and reached out for the source of Irenicus's voice. He found something that felt like flesh and clawed through it. There was the sound of a grunt and the feel of blood, then the sound of laughter.
A hand grabbed Abdel's throat and squeezed. Abdel reached up with a viciously taloned foot and ripped Irenicus's stomach open. Irenicus squeezed, and Abdel's head came off at the neck. His vision tumbled and blurred, and Abdel realized that couldn't actually have happened—not even in Hell.
He came back into his body, and it was his body, human and whole, not a monster, not a demon.
"Idiot human child," Irenicus said. "Waiting for orders, waiting for answers. You don't get any answers, child, in the flea speck of a lifetime you enjoy. You don't get to know. You don't get anything but a bit of wandering around before a painful, empty, ruthless death. You serve me now as you've served me all along. I brought out the Ravager in you and the little bitch, but it was you who brought out the Slayer. Only you—spawn of Bhaal—could have destroyed the Ravager, and only when the Ravager was destroyed could the Slayer take its place."
"Why?" Abdel asked as he ripped a piece of Irenicus's soul from him.
The necromancer laughed, and Abdel felt the piece of soul slip through his fingers.
"Why?" Irenicus asked. "Idiot man-child. Human speck. Only the Slayer could kill Ellesime. By succumbing to the blood of the god of murder and killing this girl you thought was so important to you, you gave me the weapon I needed. Now, Ellesime is dead. Now, you give me your soul, and I use it and the power of that detestable tree to make myself immortal. I get. I take. I have. You disappear."
Abdel reached out again and felt something he couldn't possibly have any words to describe. He took hold of Irenicus's soul.
"Ah," the necromancer breathed, "there you are."
"Ellesime lives," Abdel said, the words traveling not through air or fire or lava, but through the medium of immortal souls.
There was a silence filled by the roaring of the lava flow.
"You're staying here, Irenicus," Abdel said.
"Neither of us are staying here, Abdel Adrian," Irenicus replied. "There isn't really even such a place as here. I'm going back to Faerun an immortal, whether Ellesime lives or not. You're going nowhere. You go to oblivion."
The nail of Jaheira's middle finger snapped off backward, but she didn't notice the pain. She dug, clawing into the unforgiving soil under the burning tree where Irenicus had fallen into Hell. Jaheira threw out handfuls of dirt and had gone maybe a foot down, but of course there was no sign of Hell.