J. King: Conspiracy

"Have you seen any false followers of the true god Tyr?"

It was a nonsense question, though none of the Mar would tell them so. Instead, they merely shook their heads and averted their eyes.

Miltiades huffed irritably. He regretted everything that had happened today, everything since the fountain- the battle, the slain pirate, the stalemate, the truths he had told to young Noph. It seemed odd that he, a paladin, could regret uttering the truth, but he could not remember his words without wincing.

But worse than all these setbacks was the task that loomed before him: hunt down the terrorist core of the Fallen Temple and pry Eidola from their heretical grasp.

The Fallen Temple. The Fallen of Tyr. Miltiades could imagine no more onerous task than confronting the foul apostates of his own god.

Not just apostates. Violent revolutionaries, political terrorists

… cannibals. Garkim had warned them of the depravities of those they sought. He had told even of following the stink of smoldering flesh to the house where he had been raised, to discover a band of cultists around a spitted and roasting foe. How could followers of Tyr-the one-handed, blind-eyed god of Justice- have fallen so far?

"What's this?" Kern asked. His pace slowed, and he sniffed dubiously at the air. There was a sickly-sweet stench on the wind. "Burning flesh?"

"Yes," Miltiades replied. He drew forth his hammer. "It smells like the pyres of Phlan, the burning grounds."

"Didn't Garkim say the worshipers of the Fallen Temple-?"

"Ate human flesh, yes," Miltiades said grimly. The words tangled chokingly in the rank breeze. "I had hoped we might convert some of these blasphemers, but what justice is there for those who eat the dead? Perhaps only that they, themselves, die."

Kern pointed toward a cluster of two-story adobe hovels ahead. Thin jags of black smoke rose from behind the lodgepole rafters. "There. It's coming from there."

Miltiades nodded and gestured to the other paladins to gather up beside him. "We go. Weapons out." He strode at an angry half-run toward the ragged black doorway of the nearest building.

Kern, Trandon, and Jacob followed.

The heat of exertion was stoked by that of fury. To impugn the holy name of Tyr was bad enough, but to do so with such despicable ceremonies as this? To flaunt all that was right and good by sinking teeth into a corpse and…

The realization came to him out of the very wind, and it struck with all the horrible weight of truth. Eidola. That was why they had taken her. To parade her through some atrocious ceremony, slay her atop an altar desecrated with their sacrifices, and consume her. Cannibals often ate the brains, livers, and hearts of their victims, hoping to gain wisdom, strength, and courage. These cultists, though, sought not the vitality of one warrior woman, but of a whole city-of all Water-deep.

What justice for monsters such as these?

Miltiades charged through the gaping doorway, into a small, dark, cluttered room, bulging with woven mats and crumpled sheets, chipped cups and a pitcher half-full of something red, a tangle of rope and a vacant chair. "Tyr's hammer! She was held captive here last night," Miltiades muttered to himself as he strode through the room. "Tied to that chair, and drained of her very blood, in that pitcher."

From a dark doorway at the back of the chamber came another whiff of burning flesh. The smoke brought with it a low chant-a multitude of Mar voices joined in a deep unison. The scissoring click of teeth and tongues made the song grate, ghastly and diabolical, in Miltiades's ears.

Even now, in the lot behind this house, the Fallen Temple is burning her to death, Miltiades thought.

He stomped through the dark doorway into another room, this one with a mean table lined with low candle stubs. He had no time to inspect the object-no doubt a sacrificial altar-for through a pair of double doors, he glimpsed the courtyard, and the scene of monstrous desecration in it.

Some twenty dark-robed Mar stood in ajiircle around a stack of wood, upon which lay Eidola, in silver breastplate and flowing gown. Her face, darkened by the sun of this hostile place, was twisted in an expression of agony, and her hands curled in tight fists to her chest. Her legs, too, were drawn up beneath the flowing gown, as if she had died in racking pain.

Yes, she was dead, for not a muscle moved on that pile of wood. She was dead, or soon would be. Already, the flames ringed her round in a wall five feet high.

With a righteous roar, Miltiades flung back the double doors and emerged at a run into the courtyard. He swung his hammer in an arc that would pulverize two of the robed heads and splatter them against a third. The wicked celebrants fell back before his onslaught. The silver hammerhead only grazed a shoulder, but that slight contact alone was enough to send the worshiper sprawling.

Not pausing to finish off this foe, Miltiades leapt through the searing wall of fire that surrounded Eidola. He landed beside her in the blazing inferno, snatched her from the smoldering pallet, and wrapped his vast arms around her. Then, his own tabard and cape blazing, Miltiades vaulted through the fire and landed in a crouch beyond. Ignoring the flash of his hair, singing away across his scalp, Miltiades gently laid Eidola down on a verge of grass. He then stood, flung off his burning livery, and hoisted his hammer.

Kern, Trandon, and Jacob had emerged behind him. With hammer, staff, and sword, they had corralled the cultists in a frightened mob at one corner of the courtyard.

Miltiades strode toward them and swung his smoking maul ominously overhead.

"Who is your master!" he roared. "I will slay only him. But if you conceal from me his whereabouts, I will slay each of you in turn!"

A small-framed Mar, eyes raging in his middle-aged face, said, "Who are you? What right have you to do this?"

"Are you the leader of these… these infidels?" Miltiades asked, leveling his hammer at the man.

"I am head of this household, and I demand by what right you-"

"By what right?" Miltiades shouted as he drew himself to his full height before the man. "By what right? By the right of justice. By the right of honor and decency. By the authority of Piergeiron Paladinson of Waterdeep and Emperor Aetheric III of Doegan-"

"These rulers give you the right to barge into our funeral service, break my nephew's shoulder with that hammer of yours, rip my mother from her pyre, and threaten to kill us all?" the man replied, incredulous.

Miltiades's lips drew up in a sneer, "It is too late for your lies. You have slain Lady Eidola of Neverwinter, and for that you will pay in blood."

"What? Slain whom?"

A staying hand fell upon Miltiades's shoulder, and he whirled in anger, almost striking Kern with his hammer. The golden paladin did not shy back, only saying softly, "Look. He's right. Look at the body. That woman is Mar. She's old. She's not Eidola."

Face red from sun and exertion and burns, Miltiades stared at the body he had rescued from the pyre. Kern was right. She was Mar, a withered crone. "B-But how do we know this is a funeral," Miltiades hissed to Kern, "and not a cannibalistic ritual?"

Kern's voice was barely a whisper. "There would have been nothing left of her to eat. Let's go, Miltiades. We need rest. We can search more tomorrow. We need rest."

"Yes," the silver knight said heavily. He took a staggering step away from the Mar, gaping behind him. "Yes. I'm weary to the bone."

"Wait. What of my family? What of my wounded nephew, and my dishonored mother?" the Mar man called after the retreating knights. "What justice is there for us? What justice for the Mar?"

No longer in tatters, Artemis Entreri, Shar, her new plaything, Noph, and the band of pirates settled in beside the garden pool of a local tavern.