9

"And that's how… we… it… all makes sense. I mean, how-we make sense with the things we see. So it really does make sense when you look at it that way."

– Chever's last notes

The man awoke on the cliff top and picked his long way back to the sewers in a daze. The sewers had become home to him so easily…

In the days that followed, the woman did not return. Perhaps her evil deeds had finally caught up with her, or perhaps she had found a more suitable mate. The man made some perfunctory inquires about her in the town, but rarely did anyone know of her. Those who had heard of her grimaced as at a bad taste and would not speak to him. She had wanted to leave, in any case, and who was he to come upon her unwanted? He thought of the peddler-turned-cow and shuddered.

Days poured one into the next with nothing to distinguish them from those gone before or those come after, except that, on some days, he imagined he could sense the woman from whatever place she had gone to. What was he to do now?

He could not open the cages of her museum, since only magic could open them. Rather than leave the prisoners to wither, he slipped all but the newest member of their congregation poison purchased from a street vendor with gold coins he had found in one of the woman's robes. He told himself it was mercy-killing.

He attended to the newest creature's needs better than he attended to his own. He took violently ill, leaving trails of coughed-up blood on the cold floors. His disinterest in his own life might be conspiring to bring about his demise, or perhaps something in her final kiss…

As the lackluster days continued to drag, the stench of the dead in their cells grew thick, until the man thought sometimes that he must have fallen into the Nine Hells in error, the sole living being among the Hordes. Only his creature companion kept him from being alone-and one day it, too, died.

10

"When truth comes, knowledge leaves. Truth is big."

– Chever's last notes

The day the last creature died, the man climbed from the sewers into the city. Twice along the way, he encountered sickly plants that seemed to move of their own accord. He wondered whether they were endowed with sentience as he had once thought his rose was, or if they had once been people who had found themselves on the wrong end of a wizard's spell.

He wandered into a tavern, oblivious of the wrinkled noses and the patrons who got up to move or leave when he sat near them. He stared blankly into a mug of mead for a while, and, following sudden dizziness, the world became blank and utterly white.

11

"… go now. Can't keep holding to this… keeping, I mean, to… together."

– Chever's last notes

When he came to-when the white dimmed to the colors of earth-the man lay curled up in swamp mud. The first thing he saw was the rose-a hallucination. An illusion.

He reached out, palm up. The illusion's head rested softly upon his fingers. He wept.

When the tears ceased, the rose was still there.

He felt something hard beneath his ribs, lodged in the mud, and shifted to push it aside. A rock. A light touch brushed his cheek. When he had shifted, he had come nearer to the rose, and now it touched its face to his.

He pushed himself to a sitting position and cupped the bloom between his palms. It had taken root at a slant; it had fallen on its side when he had thrust it from himself in a time that seemed so long ago. Its stem had curved to enable it to capture what rays of sun it could through the swamp's mossy ceiling.

He gradually became aware of his hands; something about them had nagged at the back of his mind ever since he had awakened.

There: they had begun to rot. He felt no pain, and yet the skin hung from them in tatters. He thought he could see the bone of one of his knuckles.

So this was it. The woman had given him a disease as her parting gift, and he would die soon.

It had been worth it.

Now he would remain here. He would not leave his rose again.

Time passed. He did not count cycles of light and dark. Sometimes he lay on his back and stared through the moss and branches at the sky. At night, he saw the stars and thought of his love on their last night together. During the day, he imagined that certain strands of the whitish green moss overhead might be the remnants of Chever's notes, caught and molded to the trees in the rain. But no-the woman had brought them back after he had tossed them away.

Why had she done it? Why had she come to his house, lied, stolen his heart, brought him to the sewers, infected him with rot?

His only regret was that he had never reached an epiphany over Chever's notes. He thought longingly of the table in the sewers where he kept them, where they doubtless rested even now. Or… did they?

He strained to see into the blur of days between her disappearance and the present. And… yes, the image came: himself, standing over a table empty of all but a stump of a candle, frowning slightly, thinking vaguely that something was missing but not caring enough to think on it further.

An empty table. No notes.

She had taken them.

Of course. It made sense. What else of value had he to offer her? He had nothing special, no powers or insights. His rose was valuable only to him, but Chever's notes…

He could imagine those would be valuable to many of the woman's kind. He had been so caught up in his little world of garden, studies, and mountain cabin that he had failed to think beyond it. This was the price of that failure. To ensure he would not come after his treasure… a poison kiss.

But why had she not taken the notes sooner? He would never know. Perhaps he had been the one brief flash of light in her otherwise dark existence, her chance to know love before losing her life to whatever pit dark wizards swarmed in. Perhaps, having known love, someday she might also know remorse, penance… and, somewhere beyond that, peace.

Yes… that's what he would believe.

He had propped himself up on one elbow, and now he let his head fall back to his pillow of mud. Leeches clung to his face, and he smiled. Now the end would come.

That Curious Sword

R.A. Salvatore

The Year of the Shield (1367DR)

"It is not so different from Calimport," Artemis Entreri insisted, somewhat stubbornly.

Across the table from him, Jarlaxle merely chuckled.

"And you call my people xenophobic," the dark elf replied. "At least we are not so racist toward others of our own species!"

"You talk the part of the fool."

"I talked my way into the city, did I not?" Jarlaxle replied with that mischievous grin of his.

It was true enough. He and Entreri had come north and east, to the region known as the Bloodstone Lands. There, word had it, adventurers could do a fine business in goblin ears and the like, taken from the wild lands of Vaasa to the north of the kingdom of Damara and this city, Damara's capital, Heliogabalus. Liberally invoking the name of Gareth Dragonsbane, and reminding the city guards that the Paladin King of Damara was a man known for tolerance and understanding, a man known for judging all people by their actions and not their heritage, the dark elf had convinced the city's stern protectors to allow him entry.

They had agreed mostly because Jarlaxle was like no other dark elf they had ever heard of-and none of them had ever seen one. Outrageously dressed with a flamboyant wide-brimmed hat capped by a huge purple feather, a flowing cape-blue on the day he had entered the city, since turned red-an eye patch that daily changed from eye to eye, and with no apparent weapons, the drow seemed more a conversation piece than any threat to the security of the great city. They had let him and Entreri, with his magnificent sword and jeweled dagger, enter the city but had promised to watch over them carefully.