38
“You’ve something to add, my child?” Cazador’s eyes were hooded, but there was enough amusement in his voice to keep Astarion talking.
“Why, yes. Yes, I do.” And I wish to the gods I knew what that was. Astarion smiled languidly, trying to assemble a story and failing utterly. His mind was blank of anything but the truth.
“As it happens, I know this paladin. He was a useful tool in acquiring the god’s blood. Ironically, his order specializes in hunting the undead.”
Cazador chuckled at that, which gave Astarion a glimmer of hope.
“I’m not sure why he’s here. Certainly I did not tell him where I lived. Nevertheless, if we kill him, the rest of his order will eventually come looking for him. It’s entirely possible that they will tell other paladins as well. It could lead to…questions.”
The vampire lord frowned, as Astarion had expected. If there was one thing the old man hated, it was questions. “Do you have a different suggestion, then?”
“Blood is only briefly on the lips. To destroy an enemy’s soul, though…that lasts forever.” Astarion let his smile grow, showing his fangs. “If you will allow me, Father, I believe that I can rid us of this guest in such a way that none of his order will ever look for him again.”
“Hmm…” Cazador tapped a long finger against his lips. Astarion tried to look as if the outcome did not concern him at all. Was that enough? Too much? Should I have tried to go a different way entirely?
All the best lies are true. Cazador nodded benignly. “You intrigue me, child. I will allow you to try.”
“Excellent.” Astarion bowed deeply. “I require only one or two simple orders, sir. And then I suspect you will find it quite amusing.”
* * *
—
Den Suriel was pacing the room like a caged tiger when Astarion opened the door and slipped through. The aasimar spun on the balls of his feet, lifting his sword, then recognized him and lowered the blade. “It’s you.”
“I’m surprised you found this place.” It wasn’t the palace proper, just one of the many entrances scattered throughout the city, but even so, it was hardly the sort of thing you’d stumble on by accident.
The paladin shrugged. “It’s amazing what you can do with a location spell. Wherever this door leads is heavily warded, as I’m sure you know, so I walked the city until I found one of your brethren and followed him back here.”
“Ah. That would be the actual Petras, I expect.” Astarion allowed himself a small smile. “He was never terribly bright.”
Den Suriel looked exhausted. There were gray hollows under his eyes, and his patrician features were drawn and frayed. Less a statue, Astarion thought, and more a death mask.
Den Suriel’s pale gaze roamed over Astarion in turn. The vampire wore a loose white shirt, open at the throat, and stood barefoot on the stones. He bore no obvious weapons, and his hair was tousled as if from sleep. If the aasimar was looking for a threat, he would see nothing but vulnerability.
The silence stretched out between them, agonizing and intolerable. Den Suriel ran one hand through his hair, fingers clenching as if he wanted to rip it out.
“I’ve come to kill your master,” he announced in that ringing paladin’s voice.
“I know.” Astarion’s own fingers itched to reach up and push the paladin’s disarrayed locks back into place, the way that he might straighten a painting that had tilted to one side.
“Are you going to try and stop me?”
“Not exactly.” Astarion’s sigh came from the depths of his toes. “He bade me to give you a message.”
“He did?”
“He did. He will open the door behind me when I am dead.”
Den Suriel blinked, his voice becoming more gravel and less gold. “What? What does that mean?”
“It means, my dear paladin, that you will have to kill me to get to him. As long as I live…” Astarion lifted his hands, palms up. “…the door remains barred to you.”
“Is this some kind of trap?”
“It’s too simple to be a trap, I think.”
Frowning, den Suriel reached beneath his tabard and pulled out his holy symbol. Astarion braced himself. He was certain that he’d read the man correctly—well, almost certain—but if the paladin tried to turn him, all bets were off.
But den Suriel did not try. He bowed his head instead and murmured a few words, and then the air became dense in a familiar way, and truth came and squatted on Astarion’s tongue.
“Is everything you’ve told me true?”
“Everything I have said in this room is true.” Astarion’s half smile was a masterpiece of rue. “Obviously I lied when I said I was just going to the privies.”
Den Suriel exhaled, long and slow, and clawed at his hair again. “Why would your master do this?”
Because I told him to. Astarion pushed the words aside and offered, “He has a reason for everything he does. I don’t always know what it is.” He laughed, soundless and bitter. “No, it would be truer to say that I usually don’t know what it is.”
“What if I break the door down instead?”
Astarion looked at the door. It was made of iron, and he knew for a fact that there was an iron bar on the other side. “To begin with, I’d be very impressed.”
“What if I find another entrance?”
“I would be even more impressed.”
Den Suriel’s growl would not have been out of place on an actual badger. “If I knock you unconscious—”
“The door stays barred.”
“Are you going to fight me?” The aasimar’s hand tensed on the hilt of his sword.
Astarion shrugged. “I probably will, if you try to kill me. Since I don’t have my daggers, I’m not sure how successful I’ll be. I suppose if you gave me long enough, I could take the wire in the seam here and twist it into something that could give you a savage poking.”
And please don’t ask about other weaponry, or any contact poisons I may be concealing on my person.
“I am under no orders to attack you, if that’s what you’re asking. If you go inside, my master will most certainly kill you and drink your blood, but that won’t be much consolation for me.”
Den Suriel groaned and sheathed his sword. Astarion reflected that truth spells were practically useless in the hands of honest men.
“I’ll go to the authorities,” the paladin said. “I’ll tell them there’s a vampire lord in the city.”
“It won’t work. My master has been here for many centuries, and his family is old and respected. You’re a stranger, a knight of an order no one has ever heard of, and you don’t even know his name.”
It was a painful thing to watch a paladin try to be shrewd. “What’s his name?”
Astarion touched his throat. “You won’t get that from me. I am not allowed to reveal my master’s name to his enemies.”
“Fine. If they won’t help me here, I’ll find a temple of Tyr and—”
Astarion was already shaking his head. “Do you think it hasn’t been tried?”
He leaned against the wall, trying to look smaller.
“If you don’t bring enough, you lead them all to a slaughter. And if you do somehow find half a hundred paladins and figure out where you’re going, he’ll know about it long in advance and be a thousand miles away. Although, yes, you might well manage to kill everyone he leaves behind. Including me.”
Den Suriel put his forearm against the wall and leaned his head on it, covering his eyes. His voice emerged slightly muffled. “What would you have me do, then?”
“Leave,” Astarion said, keeping the triumph out of his voice with difficulty. “Leave and forget this place ever existed. Forget that I ever…no. No, that isn’t true, I see.” He didn’t have to feign the rueful chuckle that followed. “I don’t want to be forgotten.”
The aasimar tilted his head, and one white eye gleamed at Astarion. “You truly don’t want me to come back here with an army and kill your master?”
“If I thought it was possible you would succeed…” Then I still wouldn’t, because then I’ll be a spawn forever. He kept his mouth closed and though the spell tugged at his tongue, it couldn’t compel him to speak.
“I knew I couldn’t, but I thought I’d try anyway,” den Suriel said.
“Why? Do you genuinely have a death wish after all?”
The aasimar closed his eyes. “I’ve outlived everyone in my family,” he said. “I saw my youngest sister’s children die of old age. They were all human, and I was the cuckoo in the nest. I haven’t actually seen another member of my order in decades. For all I know, I’m the last one.”
He might have stopped there, but the truth on his tongue was pushing him, and he had less experience with falsehood than Astarion. “I don’t crave death, but gods, some days I am so very tired of living.”
There was so much weariness etched into every line of the paladin’s body that Astarion had to look away. If he could see his own reflection, he thought, it might look a little like that.
So that is why we were drawn to each other. Underneath the wit and the lust, they had recognized some terrible kinship of exhaustion and despair.
Den Suriel could not help him, but perhaps he could help den Suriel in some small way.
“I want you to live,” Astarion said with perfect truth, “and not forget my name.”
Den Suriel pushed himself away from the wall. He was a hundred years old, but his face looked, briefly, very young. “Astarion…”
“You are, I suspect, sorry that you ever met me. But I’m not sorry that I met you.” Astarion looked away. “I have always been a very selfish person.”
The aasimar drew himself to his full, towering height and stepped forward. Astarion had to tilt his head back to meet those pale, anguished eyes.
Den Suriel kissed him.
It was a last desperate kiss, the kiss of a soldier going to battle or a prisoner to the gallows. The aasimar’s lips were hard, and Astarion could almost taste the anguish on them. It mingled with the triumph growing in his chest, sweet as poison, bitter as truth.
When the kiss ended, den Suriel pressed his lips against Astarion’s forehead. “May all the gods help me,” he whispered. “I can’t do it.”
Astarion had put his hands flat on the other man’s chest at some point, so he felt the exact moment that the paladin broke. A shudder and a silent snap went through him, like a bone breaking, unheard but excruciating. Den Suriel caught his breath in a sob and stepped away.
Astarion noticed absently that the aasimar was no longer glowing.
“That’s that, then,” den Suriel said. He tried to straighten up, but even then he seemed smaller, the metallic gleam of his hair dulled. He searched Astarion’s face for a long moment, then turned away.
“It’s not the end of everything,” Astarion said. “There are ways back, aren’t there? You can go to a cleric of your god and do penance, and then you’ll be fine again, won’t you?”
Den Suriel paused with one hand on the door leading away from Szarr Palace. “No,” he said, “that only works if you’re sorry for what you’ve done.”
He let himself out into Baldur’s Gate, and Astarion waited for a few minutes, staring at nothing in particular, then tapped on the door to let Dufay know that he had dealt with the paladin.