Chapter Twenty Withering
Chapter Twenty
Withering
Where Saeldian’s Second Hunch Is Tested
They managed to fit in Kell’s room, but only barely. Lorzok sniffed at the air before remembering himself. “You’re sure?”
Saeldian closed the door behind them and said, “We’ve been had. We stole the Kiss of Enduring Love. The real one.”
“What?” Jubilee swiped her hands down her face. “Shit!”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why make us steal a fake at the party?” Lorzok said.
Jubilee folded her arms. “That’s the scam. Bumping up the buy-in. We went through a real burglary to get a fake so we wouldn’t question what we were doing.”
“So we would think we were doing the right thing instead of the wrong one,” Kell said. “Would you have agreed to steal a gem from an archfey, Lorzok?”
“I would not,” Lorzok said. “Neither would you. Nor would Jubilee—”
He stopped talking, uncomfortable.
“That’s all right, Lorzok,” Saeldian said. “We all know I would have picked it right out of her pockets. But I’m not certain stealing the gem is the point.”
“Why not?” Jubilee asked.
“Briona never told us to return the real stone to her,” Saeldian said. “The job’s done. Watch. I’m going to pack and leave immediately, and I’m never going back to Waterdeep again.”
Jubilee held out her hands to stop Saeldian but cocked her head. “You’re not under the vow-stone binding.”
“You aren’t either. Try it.”
“I’m ditching all of you, and I’m going to Candlekeep,” Jubilee said. “Nothing.”
“What are you doing?” Lorzok asked.
“The agreement bound us into a fey bargain like a geas,” Kell said. “If we thought about breaking the deal, the promise would hurt us until we changed our minds.”
Lorzok looked at them all and said, “That never happened to me.”
He still didn’t deserve a friend like Lorzok. “Of course not. You never had a reason to turn back.”
“But the vow is broken, and the true Kiss of Enduring Love is in our possession,” Lorzok said. “So the point wasn’t stealing the Kiss—it was planting the forgery. That you had to activate with a spell, Saeldian.”
“And it was tricky to do. And when it all kind of went silent, I woke it up with my magic and—Oh shit. The magic. I set the magic on the stone we put in the casket.”
Saeldian stared at their hands in horror.
“The job’s done,” Lorzok said. “We can just go back. We can explain and return the gem—”
“The starless winter was happening that night,” Jubilee said. “What do you want to bet that we’re too late?”
“Not a copper,” Saeldian said, and all the blood drained from their face. “No. Oh, fuck no.”
Kell couldn’t help it. He laid his hand on Saeldian’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“The power,” Saeldian said. “When I ran into that witch who set the dire troll on us, and I was so strong. I’m still strong. Stronger than I’ve ever been.”
“What are you saying?” Kell asked.
“I don’t think we actually needed Shuahn’s hourglass,” Saeldian said. “I didn’t somehow escape breaking my pact. I did break it.”
“But you can still do magic.”
“I can. And I shouldn’t be able to. Unless I’m getting the power from somewhere else.”
This was going too fast for Kell, but Lorzok straightened up with shock and bumped his head on the ceiling.
“Hells and high fey,” Jubilee breathed.
Saeldian looked sick. “What have I done?”
A horn call split the air.
Kell grabbed his crossbow. Saeldian was already out the door; he chased them to a crowd gathered around—
“Helfyra,” Saeldian said.
Kell covered his mouth. “What happened? Lorzok? Filandior? Someone help!”
His voice rose, too loud, split at the sight of the elf who had welcomed them to Hearthaven’s Repose.
She was bent, and stiff on one side where her skin had hardened like bark, with rusty orange lesions that dug under the skin.
She looked up as he cried for help and pointed a finger with black knots at the knuckles.
Reddish-brown fungus tipped with white grew from her rib cage.
“We gave you hospitality,” Helfyra said in a voice like dry twigs. Overripe apples gone to mold wafted on her breath. “We welcomed you.”
“Help her,” Kell said. “Please.”
“Don’t touch me,” she croaked. “You’ve done enough. I curse—”
“Me,” Saeldian said. “You curse me. You welcomed me, and I did this. I owe you.”
Helfyra cocked her head. “What do you owe? Speak.”
“We didn’t know, and it doesn’t matter. But I started this, and I will go back to fix it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Take me back.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I think what’s happened to you is tied to me,” Saeldian said. “If it can be undone, I have to be there to undo it.”
“I’m coming too,” Jubilee said.
“As will I,” Lorzok answered. “The land is my charge. I can help.”
“We’re all coming,” Kell said. “Please bring us.”
Helfyra surveyed them all, staring into Lorzok’s eyes, then Jubilee’s, then Kell’s—and he felt that gaze in his very being, looking into him for truth.
He let her feel his sick surprise and pain, the urgency to heal a wound he’d made happen.
Helfyra stared at Saeldian even longer before she finally shut her eyes. Tears slipped down into the bark on her cheeks, then she nodded.
“Hurry, then, and let us see what you can repay,” Helfyra said. “Follow close.”
She turned to the wide trunk of a cedar and drew the outline of a door in the air.
It shimmered. She limped through it, gnarled around the magic that blighted her, and Kell had only a moment to remember their packs still rested in their rooms before the light outshone everything as they passed into Hearthaven.
Apples and rot. Black-furred mold dangling off the shrubs.
Hearthaven’s Repose staggered under blight, and Saeldian ran for the lakeshore only to dance impatiently on the barge until the rest caught up.
They grabbed Helfyra’s good hand and pulled her aboard as the barge struggled to sail in water choked with strangling weeds.
“How long has it been? It’s so far gone.” Jubilee had a dagger in one hand and a crossbow in the other. She watched the island, where everyone gathered and fought…
Kell squinted, trying to make sense of it. “Are those people?”
He took a step forward just as the barge twisted under his feet. A long vine erupted from the water, sending the barge tilting. Kell landed on his hip and grabbed wildly for anything to keep from sliding into the grasping water.
Lorzok planted his foot, and Kell caught it by one hand as a chorus of splashes cut through the air.
Saeldian had grabbed a railing with one hand and shot spells at the tendrils.
Jubilee fired her crossbow and scrambled backward, countering the barge’s tilt.
By the time Kell had braced himself to fire his own crossbow, Saeldian stood at the bow, blasting every vine that broke the surface ahead of them and keeping the way to the island clear.
They did it like it didn’t take effort or even thought. Wherever Saeldian pointed, the horrid animated vines became dust floating on top of water that looked oily.
“Beware,” Helfyra said, handing him a drawstring pouch. The gem. It must have fallen from his pocket. Helfyra helped him to his feet with her good arm and stared at him with unchanged eyes squinting past the lacy black mold growing from her cheeks. “You’re no good to us dead. Keep your eyes open.”
“Those vines disintegrated in one hit,” Saeldian said. “It’s even stronger here.”
“Strong enough to scour this place?” Helfyra asked. “Can you cleanse this blight?”
“I think I’m drawing power from Hearthaven itself,” Saeldian said.
“I don’t care where it’s from,” Helfyra said. “Save my lady.”
“But it might hurt the domain.”
“Nothing else is as important.”
The barge ran aground, and Saeldian leapt to the beach. Sulfur rose into the air from Kell’s boots landing just behind them.
“Shit.”
Saeldian pointed to the path ahead, narrowed by the writhing mildew-spotted vines.
“That’s…not good.”
“No.”
“What were you going to say back there? About your power, I mean.”
“Oh, not much,” Saeldian said. “Just that if I’m right, I might weaken the realm by siphoning its power while I’m trying to fight this blight.”
“Shit. Any ideas?”
“We have to replace the Kiss.” Saeldian pointed. “So we have to clear that.”
“Right.”
Kell raised his crossbow and shot an arrow that glowed a sick green into the hell of writhing vines. The plants barely paused.
“Well. That was effective.”
“Now we know. Try fire.” Saeldian’s blasts sliced through the vines across the path.
The severed ends thrashed in agony. Instead of tapering to a narrow tendril, they split into five, flexing and clenching and trying to reach.
One of them tried to wrap around Kell’s ankle, but it only left its sap behind. It stung like acid.
Kell reached into his pocket. He nearly stepped on another of those desperate vines while he pulled out a dried leaf shaped like a blade from the envelope in his pocket. One flourish later, he swung a curved blade of fire.
The vines ahead were more than just writhing arms. These vines wove around one another and formed into people, and they turned toward Saeldian, who blasted through the first one so hard, it knocked two more down, but all three clambered back upright.
Kell swept his blade through another, and its halves struggled after them.
Jubilee shot fire spells at the horrific people-shaped plants. “Don’t let them touch you. They secrete poison.”
“Toxin,” Lorzok corrected.
“Whatever.”
The army of plants bunched up in front of them, tight as a hedge.
“They’re trying to keep you from the center,” Helfyra said.
Lorzok raised his staff. It glowed and then crackled with little arcs of lightning. “I can clear the way.”
“No!” Jubilee jumped in Lorzok’s path, her hands up. “We’re too close. If there are people in there…”
Saeldian stumbled to a stop. “We can’t fight it like this. Protect me.”
They stood still, closed their eyes, and breathed in the corrupted air.