Fists and Spells

Rishi reached for the book and found its absence.

His hand touched the satchel at his hip. Provisions pulled at the leather, along with spare cloth, a whetstone, and two packets of herbs Maeril insisted he would forget without supervision. But the worn corner of their book no longer pressed against his side.

Candlekeep had it now.

He lowered his hand and kept walking.

The Lion’s Way ran south beneath low grey clouds. Mud had hardened in the wagon ruts, and grasses leaned inland beneath the sea-wind. Beyond the western rise, surf breathed against cliffs they could not see.

After Candlekeep’s walls, the sky felt too large.

Maeril drew an enormous breath and lifted her face into the wind.

“Gods. I had forgotten the sky was allowed to be this large.”

Rishi looked up. “It is the same size as before.”

“That is exactly the sort of answer that will get monks forbidden to write poetry.”

“I did not know we were attempting poetry.”

“We are not. It would be dangerous to survive Candlekeep and immediately become arrogant.”

His laugh escaped before he could hold it.

Maeril smiled at the road ahead. She had seen his hand touch the satchel. She did not look at it.

When they had left Baldur’s Gate, the book had given every mile a direction. They had carried Lantern Hall, Wyrm’s Crossing, and all the lives between them west in leather, paper, ink, and thread. Now the work rested among other hands, exactly as they had hoped.

The empty place at Rishi’s hip still pulled.

South waited Beregost. North waited Baldur’s Gate: Elisa at prayer before dawn, Maeril’s old counter beneath its patched canopy, and rows of tired people who knew where to find soup, bandages, warmth, and their own names spoken kindly.

Rishi kept walking.

Maeril matched his stride.

Late afternoon cooled the air before Beregost came into view. Smoke rose from its chimneys. The bright sunburst on Lathander’s temple caught a break in the clouds.

Rishi looked toward the low ground outside town.

Then he stopped.

The field was empty.

No patched canvas. No cooking fires trapped under smoke. No families pressed onto the highest ground while children coughed into their sleeves.

The camp was gone.

Grass had returned in uneven patches. Bare paths still crossed it, worn by too many feet taking the same routes between tent, trench, and water. Old fire rings marked the green with circles of black earth. The drains they had cut ran down the slope, their edges softened but still visible.

Rishi tightened his hand around his staff.

“Kargun was trying to get a stretcher through that mud when we found him.”

Maeril’s gaze followed the old trench. “By evening he had me digging in it. I thought I would never get the smell off.”

Beside him, Maeril’s tail gave one hard movement beneath her cloak.

“Well,” she said. “Either things improved…”

She stared at the empty ground.

“…or they improved in the way towns sometimes mean it.”

Rishi stepped off the road.

Old mud shifted beneath the turf and gave under his boot. He listened. Wind passed through grass. A cart rattled somewhere beyond the town’s first houses. No flies rose from the low ground. No carrion birds waited on the fence. The field smelled of damp earth, crushed green stems, and distant chimney smoke.

No sign told him where the people had gone.

Absence was not mercy.

Near one of the fire rings, Rishi turned toward the temple roof.

Maeril came to stand beside him. “The temple?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I would like to know whether I should be relieved, furious, or afraid before supper.”

They crossed into Beregost.

The town had not transformed while they were gone. Two shutters closed too quickly as Maeril passed. A shopkeeper watched Rishi’s staff until he was safely beyond the door.

Near a stable, a boy carried an armful of kindling against his chest.

Rishi remembered him.

Hunger had made the boy look younger before, all sharp wrists and eyes too practiced at finding anger. The watchfulness remained, but his cheeks had filled. His sleeves ended at his wrists instead of hanging from them like borrowed cloth.

Closer to the temple yard, two men argued over a cart listing on a broken wheel. One spoke with the rounder sounds of the north. The other wore a Beregost cooper’s apron and wiped grease on it between gestures.

Neither man looked pleased.

Neither left the other alone with the axle.

Maeril watched them as she passed. “So. Not gone.”

Rishi looked back at the boy, then toward the scarred field beyond the roofs.

“No,” he said. “Not gone.”

They found Dawnmaster Halver beside a side door of the temple. A young acolyte read names from a folded sheet while Halver marked them on a slate.

The acolyte saw them first and lost his place.

Halver looked up.

Use had pared the softness from his face. Ink marked one thumb. Tiredness sat beneath his eyes, but his shoulders no longer held the old, hunted tension.

For one heartbeat, Halver only stared.

“Rishishura.” He gave the full name its old courtesy, then turned to Maeril. “Maeril Greenward.”

“Dawnmaster Halver.”

His gaze passed between them toward the field.

“You saw it.”

Rishi inclined his head.

“Then I should begin there.”

Halver handed the slate to the acolyte and led them through the side door.

The room beyond smelled of wax, ink, and old wood. Rolled blankets filled one corner. Grain crates crowded a bench. The table between them had been cut by knives, stained by cups, and written upon often enough for ink to cloud the grain.

Halver set both palms on it.

“No ceremony. I haven’t the strength to be impressive today.”

Maeril’s mouth softened. “That is often the beginning of wisdom.”

His tired look almost became a smile.

Through the window, the empty field showed between two roofs.

“The camp is gone because it no longer needed to exist,” Halver said. “Not because everyone is well. Not because we found enough beds. We did not.”

He began with those who had lived.

“Some families have cottages now. Empty ones first, then rented rooms, then rooms offered after the council discovered I could make shame useful.”

Maeril lifted her eyebrows.

Halver allowed himself one small breath of satisfaction.

“Others left with caravans. Some found kin toward Nashkel or the Gate. Some found work here—in kitchens, stables, fields, and repairs. The tannery took three men and complained so loudly I knew it meant to keep them.”

Then the satisfaction left him.

His fingers spread against the scarred wood.

“Some died.”

No one hurried him onward.

“Fever took two of the old ones before we could move people far enough apart. A child with the lung sickness did not survive the last rain. One man left in the night before we could stop him. We found him on the road two days later.”

Maeril lowered her eyes.

Rishi knew none of their names. He stood still and gave them room anyway.

Halver drew one rough breath. “Some in town still think we gave too much. Some who lived in that field will not step inside this temple unless hunger drags them through the door. I cannot blame them. There are debts. Grudges. Frightened shopkeepers, proud fools, and children who already know which doors will open and which will not.”

He looked at them.

“But the field is empty because we stopped letting it be the only answer.”

Maeril’s tail had gone still.

“How?” Rishi asked.

“Badly,” Halver said. “Slowly. With arguments.”

“That sounds official.”

“It became official once the council could no longer pretend the work was not already happening.”

Halver crossed to a shelf and took down a roll of parchment. Its edges had softened under many hands.

He opened it across the table.

Columns of names ran beside water-stained circles. Crude lines measured the distance from cookfire to latrine trench, from the eastern well to the camp, from the sick ground to the dry. Maeril’s marks were still there beneath additions in several other hands: the broken ward, the gate she had bent into it, two bucket lines instead of one.

Rishi touched nothing. He could still see where his own work had entered the page. Who could walk. Who could carry. Who needed higher ground. Where one body could stand so fear did not pass into violence.

“You gave me this,” Halver said.

Maeril studied the parchment. “We gave you notes.”

“You gave me something I could put on a council table when councillors who had never stepped into that field said nothing could be done.”

Her gaze followed a muddy thumbprint beside one of her ward-marks. She looked like someone discovering that an argument with drainage had become policy.

Halver turned to Rishi.

“You and Kargun cut the first trench beneath the ward.”

Rishi remembered the shovel striking wet earth, Kargun’s broad hands black with mud, and foul water breaking through Maeril’s gate into the channel they had dug.

“We did.”

“One open well became a rota,” Halver said. “The rota required names. Once I had names, I had promises people could be made to keep.”

He rolled the parchment closed.

“You gave us a first stone. Not a house. Not even a wall. But enough to begin building.”

Rishi lowered his gaze to his hands.

“We did not stay.”

Halver did not soften the answer.

“No. You did not.”

Rishi felt the words land and kept still beneath them.

“Others did,” Halver continued. “Some because they were paid. Some because they were shamed. Some because they remembered themselves. And some because the work had become plain enough that refusing was harder than helping.”

Maeril looked from the parchment to the field. “That may be the most Beregost miracle I have ever heard.”

“A miracle of irritation.”

“The only reliable kind.”

Halver’s smile came back, tired but real. Then he looked at Rishi again.

“You did not solve Beregost. You made it harder for us to keep calling inaction prudence.”

This time, Rishi did not look away.

Halver let the words stand between them before asking, “And Candlekeep?”

Maeril groaned. “Full of books. Alarmingly fond of rules. Some of the rules had names and opinions, which was inconvenient.”

“They let you in.”

“They did,” Rishi said.

“I hoped the letter would help.”

“It did.”

Halver rested one hand on the rolled parchment. “I wrote what was true.”

“You wrote it where the right people had to read it,” Maeril said. “That is a different spell.”

He considered the distinction, then nodded.

Someone laughed outside.

The boy with the kindling had dropped two sticks in the lane. A woman in a baker’s apron said something sharp and bent toward him.

The boy flinched.

Rishi’s weight shifted before he saw the woman gather the fallen sticks and return them to the boy’s arms. She tapped the bundle into place so it would hold.

He stared at her as if she had performed a trick.

Small.

Not nothing.

Halver followed Rishi’s gaze. “His mother works at the inn now. He still steals bread when he is frightened. We pretend not to see every third time.”

“Good policy,” Maeril said.

“Recommended by someone with strong opinions about hunger.”

“I know several wise people.”

“You were the loudest.”

“Then clearly the wisest.”

Halver laughed. Weariness caught the sound, but did not stop it.

When they stepped outside, evening had entered the streets.

Cooking smoke hung between the roofs. Damp straw, horse sweat, and fresh bread warmed the air. Behind them, Halver took back his slate and listened while the acolyte found his place among the names.

Rishi stood in the temple yard and looked across the roofs toward the field.

Empty. Scarred. No longer left to itself.

Maeril came beside him. Her shoulder brushed his sleeve—brief enough to excuse and too deliberate to mistake.

“Well,” she said.

He waited.

“Better is still better.”

She gave him the words like a challenge.

Rishi breathed in smoke, damp grass, old mud, and bread.

“Yes.”

The field held the last light in uneven green.

North lay Baldur’s Gate: Lantern Hall, Elisa, the bridge, Maeril’s old counter, and lives that would know exactly where to find them if they returned.

South lay road, weather, and work they did not yet know how to name.

Maeril looked toward the road.

Then at him.

Neither spoke of Baldur’s Gate.

Not yet.