'Do you know anything about these green stones?' She held up a small glassy stone she'd pulled from her pouch, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. It was lustrous and sparkled in the firelight, Vheod reached toward her with his hand open. She cropped the stone into his palm, and he felt the stone's smooth surface between his fingers.
He shook his head and said, 'No, I've no idea. Does t have meaning?'
“I’m beginning to think so,' she told him. 'I took his from one of the gnolls that attacked us the first time. I noticed the second group also had some of them. They're collecting them, I think. The stones have meaning to the gnolls. It's a piece of the puzzle is to why they're gathering, I think.'
Vheod nodded and looked again at the stone. 'Do you think,' he asked her slowly, 'it has anything to do with us, or with Chare'en?'
“I’m not sure, but I have a feeling it does.' Vheod just nodded again. He kept the stone. Melann did not object. In fact, she changed the subject entirely. 'Vheod, if you don't feel I'm prying too much, could you tell us a little more about yourself? I mean, we're traveling together, and yet I still feel as if I hardly know anything about you.'
Vheod should have been prepared for this, he realized, but he wasn't. Surely these two, particularly Melann, wouldn't want to hear about the horrors of the Abyss. Whitlock would probably trust him less than he already did. Melann, on the other hand, seemed sincerely friendly and welcoming, though Vheod found that hard to believe. Why should one such as she be so accepting of one such as him?
Perhaps she didn't truly understand what he was. All the more reason not to tell them.
Vheod swallowed his food and lied, 'There's really very little to tell.'
'Oh, I find that remarkably hard to believe,' she replied. Her eyes widened. 'I mean, you don't even come from this world. That alone is the most incredible thing I've ever heard.'
'Well, as I said yesterday, my family-my mothers side-came from this world. I understand they were great sorcerers.'
'That figures,' Whitlock added with his mouth full.
Melann shot a glare at him but quickly looked back to Vheod. If that was meant to be an insult, Vheod didn't understand it, so he chose to ignore it. Vheod put his food down, no longer in a mood to eat. 'I, unfortunately, never knew my mother. She died when I was born. I've been told that's typical when humans give birth to nonhuman offspring. I also never knew my father. Most likely, he doesn't even know I exist. Born in the bowels of the Abyss, I was raised by creatures some call alu-fiends. They're sort of half human like me. Anyway, there were three of them, and they took me after my mother died, deciding to care for me so that I would grow and serve them as a protector. Unfortunately, they died long before I was old enough to protect them. That's the way of things in the Abyss.
'I grew up on the streets of a city called Broken Reach. I met many… unique individuals there.' Vheod chortled humorlessly. 'It's more cosmopolitan than you might think. Creatures from hundreds of worlds and planes walked those streets. That's where I first heard of Toril. In Broken Reach I learned to be a thief first, a warrior second, and a wizard last. Each type of skill was helpful in my survival. You see, they don't care for my kind in the Abyss. I was looked down on because I was a half-breed.'
'I imagine they didn't like the other differences you displayed as well,' Melann said. ''What do you mean?' Vheod asked. 'The tanar'ri,' she answered, matter-of-factly. 'They're completely evil. They embody all that is chaos and evil in the multiverse. You're not like that, right? I don't know if most tanar'ri have the free will to choose to be what they are, but you're different in at least that one way.'
Vheod thought for a moment. Tanar'ri live in dark, tortuous places and think only of death and rage. Life in this world was more than that.
'I hated them,' he answered finally — 'I hated what they did to me, and I hated to think of myself as one of them. I never really gave it much more thought than that. I rarely had time to think about whether what I was doing was evil or not.'
Before he could stop to think, he found himself continuing on. 'Don't get me wrong. In the Abyss I learned to steal, to kill, and to do as I wanted. I worked as a professional assassin.' Vheod sighed deeply and looked at the ground. 'Just before I left I was hired by a tanar'ri named Nethess to kill a man, and I found I couldn't do it. I'd killed tanar'ri before-and other monstrous things-but I couldn't kill this mortal man. Something stayed my hand. I'm really not sure what it was. For my troubles, I was hounded until I fled. I wound up here.'
He looked at Melann with a darting glance. Vheod realized he'd said much more than he'd intended to say, and with much more emotion. He breathed heavily and drew his knees up to his chest. He wished he still had his armor on. He looked away.
'What a sad, sad tale,' Melann whispered. 'So you really are what you say you are.' Whitlock said. It was a statement rather than a question.
'Why would I lie about that?' Vheod retorted, a little more edge to his voice than he wished.
Whitlock just nodded and gave him a stern smile-or perhaps it was a grimace, Vheod couldn't tell. A few more moments of silence passed. Whitlock finished eating. Melann had finished a few minutes before. He took to gathering the remaining food and utensils and packed them into the saddle bags that lay by his bedroll.
'What does your tattoo mean?' Melann asked Vheod quietly.
Again, Vheod's mind reeled. His eyes grew wide-Lords of the Abyss! The Taint! Who knows what shapes it had taken, or where it had placed itself, making his companions believe him to be even more strange. He glanced down at his arms, but it wasn't there.
'The tattoo-on your chest, just below your neck,' Melann nodded in his direction. The red tattoo. I never noticed it before, I suppose because of your armor.' She chewed her lower lip and looked into his face.
Reflexively, he looked down, but he could just barely see it. Fortunately, it looked rather innocuous. Indistinct, actually. He relaxed a little. 'That's not really a tattoo. More a birthmark.'
'Oh, I'm sorry. It just seemed so… I don't know. It just seemed more purposeful than a birthmark. I thought perhaps it had some meaning. Please accept my apologies. I didn't mean to be rude.'
Vheod just shrugged. Now, he realized, he was going to have to worry about what the Taint was doing during the entire time he spent with Melann and Whitlock.
'It's getting late,' Whitlock interjected. He'd finished packing and prepared his bedroll.
Vheod appreciated the change in subject and was more than happy to lay back away from the fire and the light and stop feeling as if he was on trial. After his experience in the village so soon after his arrival, he never knew how the people of this world would react to him or his past, and he was already tired of thinking about it.
Morning came and with it a summer storm. Not like the dangerous storm of a few days before, but rather a cool rainstorm with little wind and only a smattering of thunder. The noise echoed through the mountains in ways Whitlock had never heard before, living in the relatively open Dales all his life. He liked it.
The rain really wasn't so bad. Whitlock appreciated the break from the heat, and he liked how the rain always made Melann so happy. He supposed it was the nurturing nature of the rain and the moisture that it brought to the growing things she loved so much. Anyway, he liked the shine on her cheeks when she smiled in the rain. It made him happy.
While he packed their already soggy things onto the horses, Whitlock noted that the rain would probably make for poor hunting. Most animals would find some sort of shelter. He would have to wait to get the group some food. That thought made Vheod's next comment so strange.
'What sort of bird is that?' the cambion asked. Whitlock looked around, not for the bird, but for Melann, assuming she would answer his question.
Melann, however, was a few feet away, tending to her own horse. Whitlock sighed and looked to where the half-breed pointed. Sure enough, a large raven, black as night, sat in a tree not far away and watched them.
'That's a raven,' he said dismissively. Before Whitlock could turn away Vheod asked, 'Is it an evil bird?'
'Evil?' Whitlock replied. 'No. It's a bird. I suppose some people think they're a bad omen or something sinister like that, but it's just a bird.'
'Sinister. An appropriate word. I don't like that bird.'
Vheod was strange, to say the least. 'Look, this isn't Hell, or wherever you're from. This is… the world. Here, animals can be just animals. You don't have to distrust everything.'
