Meralda sighed and shook her head. "I'm begging you not to ask it of me," she started to say, but Jaka would not relent.
"Think of the life we might find together," he said. "Running through the streets of Waterdeep, magical Waterdeep! Running and laughing and making love. Raising a family together-how beautiful our children shall be."
"Stop it!" Meralda snapped so forcefully that she stole the words from Jaka's mouth. "You know I want to, and you also know I can't." Meralda sighed again profoundly. It was the toughest thing she had ever done in her entire life, but she bent to kiss Jaka's angry mouth one last time, then started toward home.
Jaka lay on the field for a long while, his mind racing. He had achieved his conquest, and it had been as sweet as he had expected. Still, it would not hold. Lord Feringal would marry Meralda, would beat him in the end. The thought of it made him sick. He stared up at the moon, now shaded behind lines of swift-moving clouds. "Fie this life," he grumbled.
There had to be something he could do to beat Lord Feringal, something to pull Meralda back to him.
A confident smile spread over Jaka's undeniably handsome face. He remembered the sounds Meralda had made, the way her body had moved in harmony with his own.
He wouldn't lose.
Chapter 11 ALL HANDS JOINED
"You will tell me of the poison," said Prelate Vohltin, an associate of Camerbunne. He was sitting in a comfortable chair in the middle of the brutally hot room, his frame outlined by the glow of the huge, blazing hearth behind him.
"Never good," Morik replied, drawing another twist of the thumbscrew from the bulky, sadistic, one-eyed (and he didn't even bother to wear an eyepatch) gaoler. This one had more orcish blood than human. "Poison, I mean," the rogue clarified, his voice going tight as waves of agony shot up his arm.
"It was not the same as the poison in the vial," Vohltin explained, and he nodded to the gaoler, who walked around the back of Morik. The rogue tried to follow the half-orc's movements, but both his arms were pulled outright, shackled tight at the wrists. One hand was in a press, the other in a framework box of strange design, its panels holding the hand open, fingers extended so that the gaoler could «play» with them one at a time.
The prelate shrugged, held his hands up, and when Morik didn't immediately reply a cat-o'-nine-tails switched across the rogue's naked back, leaving deep lines that hurt all the more for the sweat.
"You had the poison," Vohltin logically asserted, "and the insidious weapons, but it was not the same poison in the vial we recovered. A clever ruse, I suspect, to throw us off the correct path in trying to heal Captain Deudermont's wounds."
"A ruse indeed," Morik said dryly. The gaoler hit him again with the whip and raised his arm for a third strike. However, Vohltin raised his arm to hold the brutal thug at bay.
"You admit it?" Vohltin asked.
"All of it," Morik replied. "A ruse perpetrated by someone else, delivering to me and Wulfgar what you consider the evidence against us, then striking out at Deudermont when he came over to speak-"
"Enough!" said an obviously frustrated Vohltin, for he and all of the other interrogators had heard the same nonsense over and over from both Morik and Wulfgar. The prelate rose and turned to leave, shaking his head. Morik knew what that meant.
"I can tell you other things," the rogue pleaded, but Vohltin just lifted his arm and waved his hand dismissively.
Morik started to speak out again, but he lost his words and his breath as the gaoler slugged him hard in the kidney. Morik yelped and jumped, which only made the pain in his hand and thumb all the more exquisite. Still, despite all self-control, he jumped again when the gaoler struck him another blow, for the thug was wearing a metal strip across his knuckles, inlaid with several small pins.
Morik thought of his drow visitors that night long ago in the small apartment he kept near the Cutlass. Did they know what was happening? Would they come and rescue Wulfgar, and if they did, would they rescue Morik as well? He had almost told Wulfgar about them in those first hours when they had been chained in the same room, hesitating only because he feared that Wulfgar, so obviously lost in agonizing memories, wouldn't even hear him and that somebody else might.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if the magistrates could pin on him, as well a charge that he was an associate of dark elves? Not that it mattered. Another punch slammed in, then the gaoler wont for the whip again to cut a few new lines on his back.
If those drow didn't come, his fate, Morik knew, was sealed in a most painful way.
*****
Robillard had only been gone for a few minutes, but when he returned to Deudermont's room he found half a dozen priests working furiously on the captain. Camerbunne stood back, directing the group.
"He is on fire inside," the priest explained, and even from this distance Robillard could see the truth of that statement from the color of the feverish Deudermont and the great streaks of sweat that trailed down his face. Robillard noticed, too, that the room was growing colder, and he realized that a pair of the six working on Deudermont were casting spells, not to heal, but to create cold.
"I have spells that will do the same," Robillard offered. "Powerful spells on scrolls back at Sea Sprite. Perhaps my captain would be better served if your priests were able to focus on healing."
"Run," Camerbunne said, and Robillard did him one better, using a series of dimensional doors to get back to Sea Sprite in a matter of moments. The wizard fished through his many components and scroll tubes, magical items and finely crafted pieces he meant to enchant when he found the time, at last coming upon a scroll with a trio of spells for creating ice, along with the necessary components. Cursing himself for not being better prepared and vowing that he would devote all his magical energies the next day to memorizing such spells, Robillard gated back to the chamber in the chapel. The priests were still working frenetically, and the old herb woman was there as well, rubbing a creamy, white salve all over Deudermont's wet chest.
Robillard prepared the components-a vial of ice troll blood, a bit of fur from the great white bear-and unrolled the scroll, flattening it on a small table. He tore his gaze from the dying Deudermont, focusing on the task at hand, and with the discipline only a wizard might know he methodically went to work, chanting softly and waggling his fingers and hands. He poured the cold ice troll blood on his thumb and index finger, then clasped the fur between them and blew onto it, once, twice, thrice, then cast the fur to the floor along a bare wall at the side of the room. A tap-tapping began there, hail bouncing off the floor, louder as the chunks came larger and larger, until, within a matter of seconds, Captain Deudermont was laid upon a new bed, a block of ice.
"This is the critical hour," Camerbunne explained. "His fever is too great, and I fear he may die of it. Blood as thin as water pours from his orifices. I have more priests waiting to step in when this group has exhausted their healing spells, and I have sent several to other chapels, even of rival gods, begging aid." Camerbunne smiled at the wizard's surprised expression. "They will come," he assured Robillard. "All of them."
Robillard was not a religious man, mainly because in his days of trying to find a god that fit his heart, he found himself distressed at the constant bickering and rivalries of the many varied churches. So he understood the compliment Camerbunne had just paid to the captain. What a great reputation Deudermont had built among the honest folk of the northern Sword Coast that all would put aside rivalries and animosity to join in for his sake.