27
The first seconds of free fall were unbelievably horrible. Astarion screamed, which brought the cavern walls into sharp relief. “I’m trusting the bat! I’m trusting! Why is nothing happening?”
The floor was rushing toward him. In blind terror, he tried to turn and grab the wall, which meant throwing out his arms, which meant that his wings flared, and his descent slowed considerably.
…Oh.
His arms were his wings now. He was hugging the air, which felt almost like water.
He gave an experimental flap, and the floor stopped coming toward him. That was good. That was wonderful. It would be terribly ignominious to survive as long as he had and then die from a fall while he had wings.
A few more flaps, and Astarion started to get the hang of things.
The air really was like water, buoyant but full of drifts and currents and stray eddies.
An updraft sent him perilously close to the cavern ceiling.
He banked without even thinking about it, dropping one wing and curving down out of the way.
It was amazing. Gravity’s grip on him was suddenly loosened. It wasn’t like climbing, where you could fall at any moment; it was more like swimming, but without any need to hold your breath.
It was…fun.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had purely innocent fun.
It might have been before he’d moved to Baldur’s Gate.
Astarion enjoyed many things—he loved the feel of silk and the smooth roll of a good wine over his tongue; he was often pleased, amused, smug, and sometimes even triumphant—but fun was something he’d genuinely forgotten.
I’ve changed my mind. When I become a true vampire, I’m turning into a bat all the time.
His chirp of delight picked up a nearby dot in the air. Moth, he thought absently, swooping toward it.
Astarion was already spitting out the papery wings before he realized what was happening. It tasted like something between pudding and peanuts. No real blood in it, but he’d learned that years ago, eating cockroaches under Godey’s bizarrely benevolent eye.
Trust the bat, and you ended up eating bugs, apparently.
The druid’s warning about becoming too comfortable rang in his head, and Astarion reminded himself that he had business to attend to.
The last thing he wanted was to overstay the time limit and suddenly become a wingless but exceedingly handsome creature fifty feet in the air.
That led to one becoming an exceedingly handsome splat in short order.
The magical sphere of darkness was not designed to interfere with sound, which was one of the reasons the druid had pronounced bat shape as the best solution.
Astarion spiraled downward toward the central plaza, suddenly able to make out details.
Three slabs of stone were arranged in a C shape, with hulking skeleton guards stationed at either end.
The middle stone had a shallow basin carved into it, half full of liquid.
Landing was somewhat fraught. If he left his wings outstretched, he went into a glide, but if he pulled them tight against his body, he dropped like a stone.
His legs weren’t made to absorb the shock, either.
Trusting the bat wasn’t much help because the bat didn’t want to land on the ground; it wanted to roost.
He made three abortive passes before finally just flinging himself out of the air directly at the altar. He hit at a bad angle, flipped over, and went tumbling over the back of the altar onto the pavement, stunning himself.
Ow, he thought. His head felt fuzzy.
The white bat gingerly extended first one wing, then the other.
Nothing seemed to be broken. His fur was badly mussed, though.
He licked it carefully back into place, twisting to work on his back, which was covered in dust.
How annoying. Fortunately, his hind claws worked like little rakes, so all he had to do was lift one over his back and comb the dust out.
Was there something he was supposed to be doing? He had a vague nagging sensation that he was forgetting something. Maybe it was his wings? It was important to groom the membranes thoroughly and often. Even a small irritant could lead to holes that would affect his flight.
The nagging sensation wasn’t going away. Was he hungry? No, he’d just eaten a big moth.
Maybe the moth wasn’t agreeing with him?
The white bat had just decided that its problem was a case of bad moth stomach when the polymorph spell wore off, and Astarion found himself lying on his stomach next to the altar with one foot bent behind his head and his tongue jammed between his fingers.
His first coherent thought, as he eased his foot down before his pelvis snapped in half, was that it was a damn good thing Violet couldn’t see him now.
His second thought was that when he saw that druid again, he was going to throttle the man with his bare hands. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be a bat, or even a cat. I don’t want to be anything but myself. How did Mother stand it?
Astarion sat up. His skull felt enormous, his thoughts echoing inside it as if they came from a long way off.
At the same time, sounds had flattened out so much that hearing felt like a different sense entirely, as if he’d been standing in a waterfall that suddenly dried up and turned into an intermittent trickle.
Like an old man trying to piss around a prostate the size of a grapefruit.
It’s good to see that my capacity for metaphor hasn’t suffered. I will certainly never say blind as a bat again, though.
Now that he couldn’t see with his ears, he truly was blinded by the sphere of darkness.
After centuries of darkvision, it was unsettling to be subjected to such dense magical blackness, the sort where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
Astarion tested this theory and almost poked himself in the eye.
His back was up against the altar, though, which gave him a good idea of where he was. There are two very large skeletons there and there, so I just have to be careful not to run into them. He rose soundlessly to a crouch, straining his merely elven ears for the faintest rattle of bone.
Nothing. His crash landing must have been quiet enough not to alert the guards.
He slid his hands along the polished basalt surface of the altar.
Shallow carvings caught at the fingertips of his kidskin gloves.
Now, what could those be? Prayers to Mask?
Images of great heists of yore? Warnings that anyone attempting to steal the sacred blood will be hung by their ankles over a pit of sacred crocodiles?
When he finally reached a corner, he stopped and compared the angle to his memory of the altar. Let me see, that means that I fell here, and flipped over here, so this must be…oh.
He lifted his head very slowly. He couldn’t see anything, but unless he was mistaken, he was currently less than ten inches away from an eight-foot-tall skeleton with a very large axe.
His heart gave an unpleasant jump, and he was suddenly very glad that he didn’t actually need to breathe.
Moving back the other way seemed to take several years.
In theory, he had at least thirty minutes before den Suriel and the adventurers caused a very loud distraction, but he could feel time flowing away like the running water that burned his soul.
When he reached the next corner of the altar, he wasted no time. The top was smooth and unmarked until he reached the lip of a bowl carved into the basalt. Astarion dipped a finger into it, felt cool liquid soak into the leather of his glove, and pulled back. The blood of a god is on my hands.
He sniffed the tip of the glove. It had a sharp metallic quality that was different from the usual coppery scent of blood. He was reminded of the cold tin smell of snow, of the hard darkness of the sky over a frozen lake, lit by impossibly distant stars.
He could not drink the blood of a thinking being, but even if he could have, Astarion would not have tasted the god’s blood unless he watched someone else do it first.
Preferably someone like Yousen. He had no trouble believing that blood like this would do something terrible, like turn you into an avatar or make you explode.
That will be Cazador’s problem. If he explodes, hopefully I can lick up some of his blood before it goes bad, and if he turns into an avatar of Mask…well, that will certainly liven things up at the palace.
Careful not to let the rustle of fabric betray him, Astarion removed the vials from his pocket and dipped them, one after the other, into the carved basin.
The vials were small, but even so, the level of liquid went down by half.
However the priest of the Cult of the Undying Blood had acquired the blood, he hadn’t been able to acquire very much.
He sealed the vials by touch, hoping that the magic worked as well as Dalyria thought it would, then stepped back from the altar. And now I wait until I hear the explosion, then get out while everyone is distracted.
It was a good plan. It was simple, and simple plans were always the best.
Where the plan fell down was the fact that the next thing Astarion heard was the sound of approaching footsteps, then a dry, raspy voice saying, “In Your name, Lord of Shadows, I have come to worship at the font of Your undying blood.”
* * *
—
Astarion immediately forgot his earlier complaints and wished desperately that he could turn into a bat right now.
Since he couldn’t, he began creeping soundlessly away from the altar in what he hoped was the right direction.
In the absolute darkness of the sphere, he had to test each step before putting weight on it.
Even a pebble crunching could give him away.
He had a general idea of how large the sphere was, so he slowed even further as he approached what might be the edge. Now he had to lead with his head, since it would be extremely awkward if his hands and feet emerged in front of one of the mummies without him knowing it.
Between one instant and the next, the world filled with light. Astarion jerked his head back into the darkness, then, very carefully, inched forward again until one eye, his cheekbone, and the side of his nose broke out of the sphere.
He was standing a little above the level of the street. Ten feet away, rows of skeletons streamed by like ants. Some carried stones and tools, others weapons. None of them were currently looking in his direction, but there were far too many to even think about fighting.
He looked to either side. A pillar held a brazier of greenish fire a dozen steps away. If he could get to that, it would offer some cover from which he could peer out.
He slunk toward it through the magical darkness. Almost there…
“Where in the name of the wretched living gods has the blood gone?”
The voice was horribly close. Astarion froze.
“Someone has stolen the sacred blood of Mask! Find it! Stop what you are doing and search for intruders!”
Astarion spent a brief moment wondering if he had at some point accidentally run down the avatar of Tymora with a carriage. Surely my luck is too apocalyptically dreadful to be natural?
He was pretty sure that the priest was standing less than ten feet away. Could it find him in the dark? Did it have access to extra senses?
He began working his way away from the voice, though he was moving at a speed that even a snail might find tame.
When he dared to steal a glimpse outside, he saw that the skeletons had indeed stopped what they were doing and, in most cases, dropped what they were carrying as well.
The street was littered with stones and pickaxes, and the nearest doorways were jammed with skeletons trying to go inside to search and others who had searched and were trying to come back out.
There was actually a clear spot not far away, the back wall of a building with no doorways breaking it up. The skeletons would see him, but if he moved fast, they wouldn’t be able to grab him.
Astarion made a run for it.
Momentum carried him partway up the wall, and he slapped his hands against it and thought very hard about being a spider.
His feet scrabbled at empty air, but a missing brick gave him a foothold, and he was up and over the wall in a couple of heartbeats.
The second floor was mostly gone, and he could see skulls turning to look up at him through the hole in the floor.
The remains of a balcony led to the remains of a staircase. Astarion skidded down the last few steps, landed in a pile of rubble, felt something in his ankle twang, and didn’t dare stop. He snatched up a brick and flung it off to his left, where it hit something with a satisfying thud.
The skeletons on the road ahead all turned to look at the sound, which gave Astarion time to bolt past them, go up another pile of rubble, and leap to a nearby roof.
He sank down, his heart hammering. It wasn’t safe here, of course, but since the skeletons couldn’t talk, it might be a few minutes before the mummies figured out exactly where he was. He just needed to breathe and take stock.
“So you’re the one who’s been intruding in my domain,” said a voice from behind him.
* * *