In the end, Abdel knew, it was always the same. Without outside aid, Saradush would fall.

  “You lied to me, Sarevok,” Abdel said angrily. “Or you’re leading us into a trap.”

  In the week they had spent traveling to Saradush, Abdel had not said above a dozen words to his half-brother. Wisely, Sarevok had not tried to make conversation with either the big sellsword or his half-elf companion. Occasionally he would speak to Imoen, but the cold stares of Jaheira and Abdel kept the young woman’s answers brief, and eventually Sarevok had ceased his efforts and continued on in silence.

  At night Abdel, Jaheira and Imoen alternated shifts watching over the other two as they slept. None of them trusted Sarevok enough to go to sleep in his presence without having a vigilant guard on duty. For his own part, Sarevok would pass the entire night standing motionless in one place, his face invisible behind his dark visor. Abdel often wondered if the big man’s armor supported him in that position, allowing him to sleep standing up—or if the physical form Sarevok had been resurrected in didn’t need to sleep at all. He didn’t eat, at least not that the others ever noticed, and he never removed his armor.

  “I did not lie to you, brother,” Sarevok replied. “And I have no desire to betray the one who has given me another chance at life.”

  “Then why did you bring us to this doomed town?” Jaheira demanded.

  “I did not know Saradush was under siege. If you are afraid of a trap, you need not enter the city.” After a brief pause, the armored warrior added, “But then you will never learn the secrets Melissan holds, Abdel. The secrets of our father. Melissan has the answers, Abdel.”

  “Even if you speak the truth, there is no way into the town!” Jaheira said.

  “That is not true, half-elf. My brother could walk through the front gates uninjured, if he chose. He could slaughter the entire army and save the town, if that was his wish.”

  “No,” Jaheira spat. “More lies! We do not know the limits of Abdel’s healing powers, and he will not risk his life against an entire army to test them.”

  “Besides, he isn’t invulnerable. That lady with the arrows hurt him,” Imoen said.

  Abdel didn’t say anything at first. He knew both Jaheira and Imoen had valid points, he knew what they said was true. But he also knew, deep down, that Sarevok was right. If he unleashed his full fury on the army gathered on the plains below, no one could stop him from entering the city gates. Any who tried would surely end up dead.

  If the defenders inside the walls tried to keep him from entering, they would end up dead too, and if this Melissan refused to help him he would probably slay her, as well. He was the son of a god, a Child of Bhaal. If he wanted to, he could get inside the town. All he had to do was set the essence of his father loose and immerse himself in an orgy of bloody slaughter. But if he did that, Abdel knew, he would be lost. The part of him that was Abdel Adrian would be gone forever, swallowed by the ravaging beast that was the Lord of Murder reborn.

  “If massacring an entire army is the only way in,” the big sellsword said, “then I will have to learn to live without my answers.”

  The familiar shriek of Sarevok’s armor as he shrugged set Abdel’s teeth on edge, as it always did.

  “I did not say that was the only way in,” Sarevok answered. “I merely told you the solution that came most readily to my mind.” There was a tinge of regret in his otherwise monotonal voice when he continued, “Perhaps such thoughts are why I was lost to the spirit of our unholy father while you have so far been able to resist his call, Abdel.”

  Imoen broke into the conversation, her high voice sounding surprisingly determined. “I think I can get us inside.”

  “How?” Abdel asked.

  “I managed to come and go as I pleased when we were growing up at Candlekeep,” she answered, laughing at the horrified disbelief registering on her half-brother’s face. “Every house, every castle, every keep, every walled town has a back way in, Abdel. A way in that nobody uses, a way most people don’t even know about. It’s just a matter of finding that back door.”

  “Forget it. It’s too dangerous.”

  “If this Melissan has answers for you, Abdel, maybe she has some answers for me, too.”

  Abdel was momentarily taken aback by the anger in the young woman’s words.

  “You aren’t the only one whose life has been ruined because of this damn Bhaal blood, you know. You aren’t the only one struggling with this, looking for a way to deal with being the child of a god. I want to meet this woman, Abdel. And I’m willing to take more than a few risks along the way.”

  Abdel started to respond, but Jaheira held up her hand to silence him. “The girl is right, my love.” The half-elf rested a slender hand on Abdel’s muscular forearm and looked directly into his eyes. “The legacy of Bhaal is not my curse to bear, Abdel. Yet it is not yours alone, either. I have no right to challenge Imoen’s decision, but neither do you. And she may succeed. Stealth is often a solution when force is not an option.”

  Before replying, Abdel let his eyes linger on the faces of his female companions. Jaheira’s showed a familiar helpless frustration. The druid’s desire to cleanse away the taint of her lover’s tortured soul and her inability to do so were both evident in her beautiful features. In Imoen, Abdel saw something much different. Her face was young, but it was creased and worn by the burden of being the offspring of the Lord of Murder. Imoen’s eyes reflected his own desire to be free of this cursed legacy, or at least to come to grips with it. Beneath it all Abdel recognized the same desperate hope he had felt when he agreed to bring Sarevok back to life in exchange for the promise of some answers.

  “Fine,” Abdel consented at last. “You can try and get us in. But at least wait until it gets dark.”

  “So the halfling says, ‘That’s not my sword!’ Get it? ‘That’s not my sword!’ Ha ha hah!”

  Imoen could tell the soldier with the gruff voice was drunk—he spoke far too loudly for a man who was supposed to be on guard duty. Judging by the obnoxious braying laugh his companions gave in response to the vulgar joke, Imoen guessed the whole patrol was drunk. Typical.

  It seemed as if the entire army was inebriated. Not that Imoen was complaining—it made her job that much easier. Under cover of darkness the young woman had slipped through the enemy lines without any difficulty at all, often passing close enough to the supposed lookouts to smell the reek of alcohol and hear their earthy banter.

  The off-color jokes and the crude comments she heard as she picked her way cautiously between the fires of the night camp of the army besieging Saradush only confirmed her already low opinion of males. The stench from their unwashed bodies, the discolored stains on their garments, and the piles of filth they let accumulate with casual disregard only reinforced what Imoen already knew. Men were pigs. All of them.

  They repulsed her, with their hairy, sweaty bodies and their loutish behavior. Abdel seemed different, of course, but she had grown up with him. He was her brother, and not just in blood. He didn’t look at her with leering eyes or “accidentally” paw at her body when they passed in a crowd. Abdel was different. In his half-sister’s eyes he transcended the brutishness of his own manhood—despite his muscles and the lustful dalliances Imoen knew he had spent with many women over his life.

  Imoen froze as a pair of lumbering oafs stumbled across her path less than a dozen feet away, leaning on each other for support. They paused, and Imoen felt a wave of fear swept over her. Could they see her?

  Slowly, she dropped her hand to her belt. Tucked inside was a scroll she had been given as a gift from the monks at Candlekeep. At least, that was the story she would tell if anyone ever asked. In truth, she had borrowed the enchanted parchment from the massive Candlekeep library, certain no would miss this one insignificant scroll.

  Imoen had displayed a certain aptitude for the arcane arts while at Candlekeep. Her quick and agile mind easily mastered the few minor cantrips she had been taught, but she lacked the disciplined and studious nature to truly develop her magical talents. Still, she had learned enough to be able to use this particular scroll if the situation should arise.

  The incantation was a simple one, but useful. It would render her—and anyone standing within a few yards of her—invisible. Imoen could have read the parchment before venturing into the soldier’s camp and walked right through the light of the brightest fire without fear, but she was loathe to waste the precious scroll. Once used, it was gone forever, and with the cover of darkness she had felt confident her natural abilities could keep her from being discovered.

  Now, she realized, it was too late. Even if she did try to use the scroll, the men were close enough to grab her before she finished the incantation. Her hand silently slid from the scroll stashed in her belt to the dagger tucked in beside it.

  But the shadowy figures made no move toward her. She heard one of them mumble something incoherent before doubling over and disgorging the contents of his stomach on the ground at his feet. The other laughed and slapped his friend on the back then they continued on, walking heedlessly through the steaming vomit in their path.

  The young woman let her breath out in a long, silent sigh of relief. She hadn’t even been aware she was holding it, but she knew the terrible consequences of being discovered. She was young, but not so naive that she wasn’t aware of what would happen to an attractive female spy captured by an army of drunken soldiers at night.

  Abdel would never do such a thing, Imoen was certain—not to her, not to any woman. Maybe it had something to do with the blood running through his veins. The more she thought about it, the more plausible that explanation seemed. Maybe it was Bhaal’s blood that set him apart from other men.

  Sarevok was also a Child of Bhaal, and Imoen sensed he was also different from most men. When the armored warrior spoke to her or turned his visor in her direction Imoen knew he was not ogling her with lust in his eyes. The offensive animal heat most men gave off in her presence was absent. Sarevok was cold as death itself.

  In fact, Sarevok had displayed none of the worldly appetites since joining their little group. Imoen suspected he wasn’t even truly alive—not in any real sense of the word. Maybe that was why he stayed with them. As Imoen understood it, Abdel had brought Sarevok back to the mortal world by sharing a minute part of his Bhaal essence with his half-brother. Maybe the dark warrior was hoping he could eventually convince Abdel to share enough to restore him fully to life.

  Imoen shook her head, trying to clear her mind. She needed to focus on the task at hand. A few minutes later she was silently approaching the walls of Saradush, the pathetic drunken lookouts of the army now far behind her, lost in the shadows of the night. She knew the Saradush guards atop the battlements would be more alert, watching for a clandestine invasion by the enemy beyond the gates. But Imoen was confident the night’s gloom would conceal a single slim figure clad in black garments as she glided along the base of the stone wall.

  She let her eyes wander. Now that she was clear of the fires her eyesight was beginning to adjust to the darkness. The walls were well built and showed little evidence of crumbling decay. The walls of Candlekeep had been just as solid, and Imoen knew of at least half a dozen ways to get past them.

  Perhaps, she mused, that was her gift from her immortal father. Abdel and Sarevok were violent warriors, harbingers of death and destruction as Bhaal himself had been. But wasn’t Bhaal also a god of secrets, cunning, deception, and stealth? Maybe what she lacked in brawn she made up for with her ability to become one with the darkness, to move without a sound, to slip unseen into private chambers and locked rooms.

  Glancing up at the stars to get her bearings, Imoen realized she was on the south face of the walled town. She slowly made her way clockwise around the perimeter, her hand running along the stone surface feeling for changes in temperature or texture that might indicate a hidden entrance built into the rock.

  Once she made her way around to the west wall it was her eyes, not her hands, that located the entrance she had been seeking. A few feet ahead of where she stood the uneven ground had been dug into a winding trench running parallel to the wall. The ditch was several feet deep and maybe a yard across.

  Cautiously Imoen stepped down into the culvert and felt the damp earth sink beneath her slight weight. She crouched down, and the thick stench of human waste flooded her nostrils.

  She stood up, barely able to suppress a choking cough that might have given her position away. Stepping out of the muck she did her best to clean her boots off, then followed the path of the ditch back to its source. A large stone pipe extended several feet out from the stone wall, dripping its foul muck into the drainage ditch. The mouth of the pipe was several feet across, and from the stench emanating from the access point Imoen had no doubt it would lead into the main sewer system below the city streets.

  She had used the sewage drain at Candlekeep on only one occasion. The monks there held themselves in great esteem, but after slogging through the filthy muck that night Imoen could have told them with confidence that their feces did, in fact, stink. She had vowed that night that she would never crawl on her hands and knees through excrement again.

  But the first hours of night had already passed. If Imoen and her companions hoped to get inside Saradush before daybreak, she couldn’t afford to waste time seeking out a less distasteful route. Knowing she had no other choice, she turned and made her way back toward the distant fires of the army camped outside the walls of Saradush.

  “I am not crawling through that filth.” Jaheira kept her voice to that of a whisper, but Abdel still recoiled from the adamant tone of her words.

  “We don’t have time to find another way in,” Imoen whispered back. “I’ll go first.”

  As the young woman’s body disappeared into the foul-smelling stone pipe at the base of the wall, Jaheira turned away in revulsion. Abdel said nothing. Jaheira had already sacrificed so much for him, he couldn’t bring himself to ask her this favor. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

  The half-elf gave a weary sigh. “I suppose excrement is as much a part of nature as lilacs or roses.” She dropped to her knees and crawled into the sewage drain.

  The stone pipe had been large enough for Imoen to fit through without any difficulty, and Jaheira was also able to slip her muscular but slender body through the small opening.

  “The main tunnels of the sewer system are just up ahead.” Imoen’s voice sounded deep and hollow, emanating from the mouth of the stone tube. “I’m only a few yards beyond the wall and I already have enough room to stand up.”

  Abdel tilted his head at Sarevok, and his half-brother lowered himself to his hands and knees and crawled into the pipe without protest. There were two reasons Abdel wanted his half-brother to go before him. Clad in his heavy plate armor, Sarevok’s body was larger and bulkier than even Abdel’s enormous frame. If Sarevok could fit, Abdel had no need to worry about becoming stuck himself.

  And he still didn’t trust Sarevok enough to expose his back to him.

  The fit was tight for the armored man. He had to drop flat onto his stomach and pull himself forward with his mighty gauntlets. Even so, the razor edges protruding from Sarevok’s shoulders and back grated harshly against the stone of the pipe as he inched his way along. Abdel cast a quick glance to see if there was any reaction to the sound, but he heard no cries of alarm, and no one materialized from the darkness.

  “I am through, brother.” The acoustics of the pipe made Sarevok’s voice even more unnerving than usual.

  Abdel removed his blade from the scabbard on his back and clenched it in his right fist as he clambered down into the pipe. The cold, oozing muck squeezed between his fingers and the knuckles of his fist as he crawled along. Like Sarevok, he had to lie almost flat, supporting his weight with his hands and knees so that his chest and face were mere inches above the foul sludge seeping slowly down the length of the drain.

  The stench was all but unbearable, but Abdel steeled his stomach and forced himself to go forward. Within the pipe all was black, but ahead he could see a faint, familiar glow. Jaheira must have cast another spell of illumination.

  Mercifully, the length of the pipe was less than a dozen feet, and soon Abdel found himself standing with the others in the main tunnels of the sewers beneath Saradush. The tip of Jaheira’s staff shone with a magical light, and in the soft brightness Abdel could clearly see the disgusting damp stains that had soaked into both Imoen’s and Jaheira’s clothes. The entire front of Sarevok’s body was covered in the brownish green slime from the pipe. It dripped from his armor with a steady plop, plop, plop. Abdel’s own arms and legs were similarly foul, but there was little he could do about it here.

  Mercifully, the urge to retch was slowly fading as Abdel’s nose became accustomed to the stench of the sewers. There was now room to stand up—at least, room for Imoen and Jaheira to stand. Sarevok and Abdel had to hunch over to keep their heads from banging against the ceilings above them.

  “Well done, young one,” Jaheira said to Imoen. “Though I cannot say I would readily venture on such a journey again in the near future.”

  Imoen took the compliment in stride. “Well, I got us in. Now where?”

  The tunnel ran both north and south from where they had entered. Abdel had no doubt they would find it branching off in countless directions no matter which way they went. Without a map, any choice they made in this labyrinth would be nothing but a guess.

  “North,” he finally said, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt. Fortunately, nobody questioned him on his choice.