They stood in the main chapel, and Natan dismissed the guard so they could speak in private.
“I’m glad you’ve given me this opportunity to thank you for your role in my sister’s rescue,” Natan said. “Your leadership brought your party back safely. Uwan and I both recognize your potential to serve this city. We won’t forget what you have done.”
Vedoran clasped his hands behind his back and said formally, “Thank you for your words, and my thanks in turn to Lord Uwan. But I’m well aware that the gratitude of Ikemmu extends only so far. You need not pretend otherwise.”
Natan’s face clouded. “No pretense, I assure you,” he said. I’m aware that you place your faith in yourself, Vedoran, and not in the gods, but you may not always feel this way. Surely, you can keep yourself open to the destiny Tempus may have planned for you. You can’t deny that He is at work here in our lives.”
“I recognize that He is at work in some lives,” Vedoran said. He walked up a set of steps leading to the altar and Tempus’s sword carved into the wall. The candles on the altar were warm on his face.
“You mean Ashok?” Natan said as he joined him and sat on the steps. His informality made Vedoran uncomfortable, though he could not say why. Perhaps it was because he’d expected Natan to condemn him with the righteous love of Tempus. But the cleric looked, if anything, extraordinarily weary, aged beyond his years. He was too weak to lecture anyone overmuch on faith, Vedoran thought. Uwan is the strength of the pair.
“You and Uwan have chosen Ashok as Tempus’s emissary,” Vedoran said. “A stranger, with no connection to this city and no love for its people. How can you trust such a person to carry your god’s message?”
“Because Tempus spoke to me,” Natan said. “My vision was proved true. Ashok is no longer a stranger.”
“But you remember the way he was when he first arrived in Ikemmu, don’t you? Dangerous, half-crazed? We were among shadar-kai like that in the caves where we rescued your sister,” Vedoran said. He reached up and caught a tongue of hot wax dripping down one of the long candlesticks. He wiped it across the altar. “They made your sister rut in the dirt with them like an animal.”
Vedoran heard Natan’s sharp intake of breath. He turned to look at the cleric and shamefully enjoyed seeing his serenity shattered. Tears filled Natan’s eyes, and he put a hand against the stone floor to steady himself.
“I didn’t see her there in that cage,” Vedoran went on. He stepped back from the altar, offered a mocking bow to the sword on the wall, and came to sit beside Natan, who was trying to compose himself. “Ashok did, and I’ve never seen a hardened warrior look the way he did when he came out of that place. If your sister were to take her own life because of it, I would not condemn her.”
“Why?” Natan said breathlessly. He put a hand over his face, as if he were in physical pain.
“I don’t know why,” Vedoran said. “Maybe they required a stronger hand to lead them. Maybe shadar-kai can’t live in dark holes without some madness seeping in with the shadows. If you really want to explore the motives, why don’t you ask Ashok?”
“What do you mean?” Natan said. Confusion and wary fear swam in his eyes. “Why ask him?”
“You sense it, don’t you?” Vedoran said. He felt a mixture of pity and disgust for the small cleric cowering before him. Why had he ever feared the servants of Tempus? Even in the chapel they had no power over Vedoran. “That small doubt buried in your mind.”
“No, not anymore,” Natan said. He shook his head vehemently. “Uwan believes in him, and so do I.”
“But it was terribly convenient how Ashok led us straight to where Ilvani was being held,” Vedoran said. Natan tried to turn away from him, but Vedoran moved closer; his presence shrank the cleric further. “As much as I would love to take credit for my leadership,” his voice dripped spite, “it was Ashok who got us in and out of that place alive, and he accomplished it because he’d been in that enclave before. I’ll wager he was born there.”
“It makes no sense,” Natan said. He looked up at the altar and to the sword. “If they were his people, why did he not betray you to them? Why did he help Ilvani?”
“For the same reason he’s still here among us,” Vedoran said. “He’s fallen under Ikemmu’s spell. He thinks this is a better life.”
“It is,” Natan said. He touched his chest and his voice came stronger. “It is better. Ashok must have seen the path of destruction his people were set upon. He chose a different path. For that he should be commended.”
“In any other city, perhaps he would be,” Vedoran said. He savored the next breath as he prepared to deliver the final blow. “But Ikemmu-Uwan-cannot forgive traitors.”
“Ashok is not a traitor,” Natan said. “You said it yourself. He brought you all out of that place alive.”
“He did, but previous to that act, he planned to betray the city to his own enclave. I have proof of this,” he said before Natan could refute it. “I intend to present my accusation to Uwan.”
He waited for Natan’s reaction, but the cleric said nothing. He stared blankly at the sword on the wall as if waiting for it to offer an answer. Finally, he said, “Why are you doing this? I thought Ashok was your friend.”
“That doesn’t negate the law of this city,” Vedoran said. “The law created by your beloved leader will condemn Ashok to death.”
Natan shook his head. “He is Tempus’s emissary. The god will forgive. He has a purpose in mind for Ashok.”
Vedoran felt the rage boiling up inside him, but at the same time he felt a strange detachment, as if he were merely a spectator at the scene instead of a participant. He leaned forward and felt the skin of Natan’s throat beneath his fingers.
The cleric’s eyes widened, but Vedoran tightened his grip so Natan couldn’t speak. He didn’t want to hear any more of the hypocrite’s words.
“Uwan does not forgive,” he said in a quiet, spitting voice against Natan’s ear. “Chanoch was executed at my word. Ashok will not be elevated for his actions while Chanoch died for them. I will see this city destroyed before that happens.”
Natan’s body had begun to twitch. His legs slapped against the stairs like a fish trying to get off the land. Vedoran, watching the scene from a distance, thought that Natan probably wasn’t able to hear himself raving, not with blood and fear roaring in his ears.
It was over soon after that, and Vedoran slowly drifted back to himself. When he could recognize his surroundings again, he saw that Natan’s body lay on the stairs. His neck was mangled, his hand outstretched toward the altar. The sword of Tempus cast a band of shadow across his face.
For a long breath the horror didn’t sink into Vedoran’s mind. He felt only the breathless satisfaction that comes from muscles held too long without release. He’d been holding back for years, and finally all the rage, pain, and injustice had come roaring out of him. With the violence in him spent, he felt light-headed, free.
And with the freedom to think rationally came the recognition of all that he had just lost.
As the group strode up the long tunnel toward the surface world of Faerun, Vedoran found himself in the most unlikely position imaginable. He was walking up a tunnel, with nothing ahead of him but darkness, and he had only faith left to him that they would reach their destination at the end of it. On the other side of the Veil, he’d been forced to place his faith in a cleric of Beshaba, goddess of all the misfortunes in the world.
“Go,” Traedis had told him, after Vedoran had hidden Natan’s body and contacted the cleric to tell him what had happened. “Leave the city and carry out the plan. I will make certain Natan’s body is discovered at the appropriate time. Your crimes will become Ashok’s. You’ve sworn the oath to Beshaba. I will protect you.”
He’d sworn the oath, and whether it was a trick of the cleric’s magic or his own mind trapping him, Vedoran felt the presence of the gods around him, directing him to a fate that was no longer of his own choosing.