Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [43]
I shook my head fervently. "Not at all. I know that in death I will find peace in the company of Lathandar."
"Truly?" he sneered. "Is that what you believe?"
"Yes," I said with perfect confidence.
All at once he laughed. It was a chilling sound. "We shall see," he said. "We shall see." Then he wiggled his fingers and muttered queer words. I braced my shoulders, expecting something unpleasant to fall on me, but nothing did. All I felt was an odd tingling, then nothing at all.
"Enjoy your afterlife, Muragh Brilstagg," he said, and that didn't make sense. I don't mean the second part, since Muragh Brilstagg was indeed my name, but the first. Why would he wish me a happy afterlife? Then it hit me. Maybe I was getting to him, maybe he was starting to believe in the goodness of Lathandar as I did. I decided this was more than enough progress for one day, and I smiled as I watched Gillar walk away.
My confidence bolstered by what I had interpreted as my victory over Gillar, that evening I decided to take my mission to a local tavern and spread the word of Lathandar there. The Sign of the Bent Nail was a rough and unsavory place. But if I could get my message through to an evil wizard like Gillar, certainly I could convert a few ne'er-do-wells and drunkards.
I approached a likely looking fellow at the bar, a very large man with very small eyes.
"Good evening," I said in my most cheerful voice.
"Did you know that carousing and drinking will consign your spirit to everlasting torture in the Abyss?"
He bared his filed-down teeth in a grin. "No," he said. "Did you know that my dagger is sticking in your heart?"
"No," I said. "Thanks for letting me know."
That was when I died.
It was a strange sensation. I had always thought death would be black and silent at first, and then there would be a great light, and I would find myself in a spring garden at dawn, the abode of my god, Lathandar. Instead I found myself being hauled out the back door of the tavern, into a stinking alley, and thrown atop a garbage heap.
There had been a moment of bright pain when I looked down and saw the dagger protruding from my chest, but that had passed quickly enough. Now I felt only a numbness that was somehow more disturbing than any pain. I was aware of the heavy weight of my body, but I could not feel it, could not move it. It seemed that my eyes no longer worked as they had, and yet somehow I could still sense my surroundings. Unable to do anything else, I lay there while my corpse cooled and stiffened. It was not long before I heard the first scrabbling sounds in the rubbish. Then the rats found me.
It was at that moment I finally realized the truth of Gillar's odd words, and the implication of the spell he had cast upon me. No, not spell, but curse. Even though I was dead, my spirit had not been allowed to fly from my body. I would never see dawn in the garden of my god. Instead I was doomed to dwell, conscious, in the lifeless husk of my mortal body. Forever. I would have cried then, but dead men can't shed tears.
I won't tire you with all the tedious details of my decomposition. For nearly a week I lay on the garbage heap. It did not hurt when the rats gnawed at me. Yet all the same it filled me with a sensation so vile that, had I been alive, I certainly would have never stopped puking.
As it turned out, the rats actually did me a service. For I found that, once my bones were free of the decomposing flesh, I was able to move my jaw and even speak aloud, though my voice, once warm with life, was now thin and reedy. Had Gillar planned this? Somehow I didn't think so. His magic must have had effects even he did not guess. New hope filled me then.
"Help!" I called out. "Please! Somebody help me!"
Little did I know it, but that was the beginning of my journey into Undermountain.
Before long, a drunken soldier heard my call for aid. Unfortunately, soldiers are a notoriously superstitious lot, and he mistook me for the ghost of someone he had killed in war, come back to torment him. He hacked my head from my body and tossed it into Waterdeep