Robert Salvatore - Road of the Patriarch

"You've confused me with someone who cares."

"I am a priest of Selûne," the man protested.

"You are a charlatan who sells false hope."

Gositek steadied himself and straightened his robes. "Beware your words…" he said, inquiring of Entreri's name with his expression and inflection.

Entreri didn't blink, and at first didn't respond at all. It was all he could do to keep from leaping across the ten feet that separated him from Gositek and throwing the fool from the cliff.

Entreri reminded himself to do nothing so rash. The young man was barely half his age and could not have been involved with his mother in any way.

"As I said, I am Devout Gositek," the man said again, apparently drawing strength from Entreri's snub. "A favored scribe of Principal Cleric Yozumian Dudui Yinochek, the Blessed Voice Proper, himself. Speak ill to me at your peril. We rule the Protector's House. We are the hope and prayers of Memnon."

He babbled on for a bit, but Entreri hardly heard him, for that name, Yinochek, sparked memory in him.

"How old is he?" Entreri asked, interrupting the fool.

"What? Who?"

"This man, this Blessed Voice Proper?"

"Yinochek?"

"How old is he?"

"Why, I don't know his exact—"

"How old is he?"

"Sixty years, perhaps?" Gositek asked as much as answered.

Entreri nodded as memories came back to him of a young and fiery priest, an oratory prodigy, a blessed voice proper, who had often delivered powerful homilies from the balcony of the Protector's House. He remembered viewing some of those beside his young mother, her eyes upturned, her heart uplifted.

"And this man has been at the Protector's House for many years?" Entreri asked. "And he has been known as Blessed Voice Proper…"

"From the beginning," Gositek confirmed. "And yes, he was a young man when first he came to join the priests of Selûne. Why? Do you know of him?"

Entreri turned and walked away.

"You used to live here," Gositek called after him, but Entreri didn't stop.

"What was her name?" the perceptive priest asked.

Entreri stopped, and turned to regard the man.

"The woman you seek here," Gositek explained. "It was a woman, yes? What was her name?"

"She had no name," Entreri replied. "None that you would remember. Look around you for your answers. Look at all their names, for they are etched on every stone."

Gositek straightened.

Entreri walked out of the graveyard.

Entreri hardly glanced at Jarlaxle as he took the bag of gold.

"You are welcome," the drow said, with more amusement than sarcasm.

"I know," was all he got in return.

The man's mood hardly surprised Jarlaxle. "I see that you are wearing your hat this day," he said, trying to lighten the mood, and referring to a thin-brimmed black top hat he had provided to Entreri, one with many magical properties—though not as many as Jarlaxle's great hat, of course! "I have not seen it on your head in many days."

Entreri stared at him. The hat was tightly form-fitted, owing to a thin wire beneath its band. Entreri reached up and found the magical-mechanical clip, set just above his left temple. With a flick of his fingers, he disengaged it, and with a turn of his wrist, he removed the hat, tossing it to Jarlaxle, as if the reminder of where he had gotten the hat somehow sullied his desire to wear it.

That wasn't it at all, of course, as Jarlaxle clearly understood. Entreri had gotten exactly what he wanted from the hat, for it held much less rigidity, absent the wire. The idea of snubbing Jarlaxle had simply been an added bonus.

Entreri held stares with him for a moment longer, then hoisted the small sack of gold and walked out of the house.

"Must've had a bug crawl up his bum last night," said Athrogate, pulling himself up from the floor and stretching the aches from his knotty old muscles.

Still watching the departing man, and rolling the discarded hat in his hands, Jarlaxle answered, "No, my hirsute friend, it goes far deeper than that. Artemis has been forced to remember his past, and so now he has to confront the truth of who he is. Witness your own mood when speaking of Citadel Felbarr."

"I telled ye I don't want to be talkin' about that."

"Exactly. Only Artemis isn't talking about anything. He's living it, in his heart. We did that to him, I fear, when he was given the flute." Finally, the drow turned to regard the dwarf. "And now we have to help him through this."

"We? Ye're pretty good with throwing around that word, elf. Course, if I knew what ye was talking about, I might be inclined to agree. Then again, I'm thinking that agreeing with ye is just going to get meself in trouble."

"Probably."

"Bwahaha!"

Jarlaxle knew that he could depend upon that one.

The scene at the square that morning was much as it had been when Entreri and Jarlaxle had first looked upon it, as it was almost every morning. The cobblestones could hardly be seen beneath the hordes of squatting peasants, and the long lines leading to the two tables flanking the Protector's House's great doors.

When they arrived, Jarlaxle and Athrogate had little trouble picking Artemis Entreri out from that ragamuffin crowd. He stood in the line at the farthest table, which struck Jarlaxle as odd until he noted the priest seated there, the same one he had seen in the pauper's graveyard the previous day. Entreri wondered if he had made a connection with the man.

Athrogate in tow, the drow cut through the first line of peasants and weaved across the way to move beside his companion. Those immediately behind Entreri protested the cut—or started to, until Athrogate barked at them. With his morningstars so prevalent, and a face scarred by a hundred years of battle, Athrogate had little trouble suppressing the protests of the paupers.

"Go away," Entreri said to Jarlaxle.

"I would be remiss—"

"Go away," the assassin said again, turning his head to look the elf in the eye. Jarlaxle held that stare for a few moments, long enough so that the line had time to thin ahead of them and when he disengaged the stare, Entreri was practically at the table. Entreri snorted at him dismissively, but Jarlaxle did not back off more than a couple of steps.

"First at a graveyard and now here," the priest, Gositek, said when Entreri's turn arrived. "You are truly a man of surprises."

"More than you can imagine," Entreri replied and he hoisted the sack of gold onto the table, which shook under its weight. As the bag settled, the top slipped open a bit, revealing the shiny yellow metal, and a collective gasp erupted from the peasants behind Entreri, and before, from the priest whose eyes widened so much that they seemed as if they might roll out onto the pile.

The guards behind Gositek came forward to hold back the pressing crowd, and Gositek finally sputtered, "Are you trying to incite a riot?" And it seemed as if he could hardly find breath for his voice.

"I am buying an indulgence," Entreri replied.

"The graveyard—"

"For a name long-forgotten by the priests of Selûne, their promises be damned."

"Wh-what do you mean?" Gositek stammered, and he worked to tighten the drawstring and hide away the gold before it could cause a stampede. As he moved to pull the sack toward him, though, Entreri's hand clamped hard and fast around his wrist, an iron grip that halted the man.

"Yes, the n-n-name…" Gositek stuttered, turning to his scribe, who sat with his mouth agape, staring stupidly. "Record the name—and a great indulgence it will—"

"Not from you," Entreri instructed.

Gositek stared at him blankly.

"I will purchase this indulgence from the blessed voice proper alone," Entreri explained. "He will receive the gold personally, will record the name personally, and recite the prayers personally."