She had heard that Neela was dead, but Bodhi had been dead briefly herself once. The priestess had brought only four others with her, a woman and three men in the all-too-familiar black garb of the Shadow Thieves. Bodhi allowed herself a smile at how silly and yet appropriate they looked here, in a necropolis at night.
"Sheeta. ." Bodhi said, nodding in the direction of the assassin now furiously winding his spent crossbow as his fellows advanced. The sound of Bodhi pulling the crossbow bolt out through her back was almost lost under the whir of the little orc woman's sling.
"Just take them all," the priestess hissed, her quiet voice carrying clearly in the still night air.
The stone left Sheeta's sling, and before the assassins could advance more than half a step, it impacted hard against the top of the nearly cocked crossbow. The string pinged off, sent the quarrel dropping impotently to the dry, stubby grass. The assassin jerked his hand away and hissed in pain, then his eyes bulged as he watched his crossbow slowly fall into pieces on the ground at his feet. Bodhi smiled, knowing Sheeta hadn't hit the crossbow that hard, she just knew where to hit it. Bodhi liked this one.
The priestess hung back, but the three other assassins continued forward. One pulled a short, blunt, pointed thing from under his black tunic. The woman drew two slim throwing knives, and the other man let his scimitar shriek for effect as he slid it slowly out of its scabbard.
"Goram," Bodhi said, "Nevilla, Naris, and Kelvan, join us, please."
The priestess was the only one of the Shadow Thieves not to look surprised when four others stepped from behind crypts and large grave markers behind Bodhi. Naris, himself once a member of the Shadow Thieves, spun a gleaming, razor-sharp bardiche and giggled. Kelvan, also a former guild member, drew two short swords. Goram and Nevilla, Bodhi's vampiric thralls, hissed with bared fangs at the approaching assassins, all three of whom hesitated more than their training should have allowed. The one with the broken crossbow just stood there, confused.
"You're Shadow Thieves," the priestess reminded her people. Two of them spared her a glance, but all three came in faster.
The one closest to Bodhi was the one with the stubby, pointed weapon that the vampire quickly recognized as a sharpened wooden stake. So, they were ready for her. The assassin was fast for a human. Bodhi had to give him that, and even with a wooden stake, it took guts to charge a vampire. If Nevilla hadn't come up to Bodhi's side so quickly, she might have been in danger from the stake. Instead, she grabbed Nevilla roughly by the shoulder and pulled the thrall in front of her just as the assassin stabbed down with the stake. Nevilla apparently realized what was about to happen, because she let out a frightened shriek when the assassin corrected in mid-stab and went for Nevilla instead of Bodhi. He must have figured one vampire was as good as any.
The stake went into Nevilla's chest with a loud pop, and the lesser vampire went limp.
The assassin smiled, an expression that proved to be his last. Kelvan was behind him and crossed his two sharp short swords in front of the assassin's neck, drawing them back and together like scissors. The assassin's head came off in a fountain of blood that Bodhi avoided by tossing the limp form of Nevilla into the decapitated man's falling body, pushing them both away from her.
Bodhi gave Kelvan a pleased smile, a smile the man returned with a wolfish grin before turning to meet the other assassins. She'd been lucky to get this one and had been thinking of making him a thrall. Now that Nevilla was dead, she made up her mind to begin the process sooner. Kelvan and Naris had both pleased her most from among the assassins she'd been luring away from the Shadow Thieves on Irenicus's orders. The Shadow Council, who ruled their petty assassin kingdom like the bureaucrats they were, of course assumed that over the last month and a half Irenicus was forming a rival guild of his own. To some degree this was true, but these assassins would not be sent to kill fat merchants for a pouch of gold coins. These men and women would serve the greater purpose of Irenicus's, a plan the Shadow Council couldn't even imagine if they tried. What confused Bodhi more than a little, and disappointed her when she let it, was that this guild of hers was actually good—getting better every day—and was quickly becoming a real rival for the Shadow Thieves. It had started for her as just another in a long string of favors she'd done for the man she admired most, but she'd started to think about… possibilities.
Bringing all these lovely little assassins of mine to some elf city just to kill them, she thought, directing the words to the distant mind of Jon Irenicus, seems like a waste.
Oh no, he replied quickly, not a drop of their blood will be wasted, my dear. These playthings of yours will help me unleash from this child of Bhaal such power … Iwill bring forth the Slayer.
All that to kill a single elf?
A single elf, yes, Irenicus replied. A single elf whose death will make me immortal again.
"That's fifteen days," Abdel said. "We've been down there for fifteen days?"
Jaheira and Imoen looked at him, amazed.
"I'm not sure," Imoen said slowly, "if that seems like more time or less time than it actually felt like."
"And you were told to expect us?" Jaheira asked the thin, stern-faced elf who was obviously the leader of the patrol.
"After a fashion, druid," the elf answered in thickly accented Common.
"Who expects us?" Yoshimo asked, suspicious.
The elf looked at Yoshimo blankly, obviously not willing to answer the question. He turned to Jaheira and spoke a sentence or two in flowing Elvish that made Jaheira blush. Abdel felt his hackles raise at not being privy to all of the conversation. Imoen glanced at him and grimaced.
"We'll need to go with them to their camp," Jaheira said.
"Another few days … on foot," the elf patrol leader said calmly, as if describing an afternoon stroll.
Abdel sighed. He'd walked longer.
The elf patrol leader slipped off his green-dyed cloak and handed it to Jaheira, who took it with a nod of thanks. The night was cool, and the trees hissed with a chilling breeze. The dark forest was alive with the sounds of a thousand animals of all sizes and descriptions, singing away the very last traces of indigo in the now-black sky and greeting the spray of stars that peeked through the thick canopy.
The stern elf looked at Abdel and said, "It's not usual."
"Nothing about this is usual, sir," Imoen remarked, letting sarcasm drip over the understatement.
"The queen is in danger," the elf said. "Exceptions must be made—even to allow humans into the forest."
"The queen …" Jaheira remarked, shooting a stern, surprised look at the elf. "Ellesime."
The patrol leader looked at her for a long time without saying anything, then smiled impatiently and said, "There have been exceptions. We have been told to consider this to be one."
The patrol turned at once, and Abdel, Jaheira, Imoen, and Yoshimo followed them deeper into the forest of Tethir, a place few humans had ever seen.