Baldur's Gate by Philip Athans Page A

taking leave of them, but she didn’t try to stop him.
    “Don’t kill him,” Abdel told her, then turned his gaze to include the two men, “until I get back.”

    The wide-bladed broadsword came out of Abdel’s back sheath with a metallic ring that echoed across the flat plains north of the Way of the Lion. He’d come to Gorion’s grave to finally return the corpse to Candlekeep where breath would once again be breathed into his father by the grace of Oghma, or where the old monk would lie in peace forever. What he found would have made him retch if it hadn’t made him so angry. Maybe anger wasn’t even the right word. He was angry—he hated, he was consumed with hate.
    He’d expected to find Gorion’s holy symbol gone, even cursed himself for being so rash—so distraught—that he’d left it there in the first place. Instead he found the grave not merely desecrated, but completely exhumed. Gorion’s body was nowhere to be found. There was blood, strips of viscera that might have been flesh or tendon, and was that part of a ribcage in the hole there next to one of the ghouls?
    Abdel’s mind went completely away, and he succumbed, as he’d done too many times in his life, to red, murderous fury. Any other man on the face of Toril might have at least hesitated before jumping into an open grave with two reeking, putrescent, flesh-gorged ghouls. Abdel not only didn’t hesitate but grew frustrated with the unhurried pull of gravity on the way down.
    One of the ghouls let out a little girl’s shriek at the sight of this completely dedicated young man, nearly seven feet tall and rippling with muscle, practically flying at them with a huge broadsword swinging back then up and down then in.
    One of the ghouls lost an arm. It went spiraling away and caught the lip of the grave, falling back in and was itself cut in half by another slash of Abdel’s blade. The sellsword let out an inhuman scream of rage and went at the rapidly back-stepping ghoul again. The blade ripped through the undead thing’s chest, and it screamed and flailed its blood-crusted claws at him. Abdel was aware of the stench of his father’s rotted flesh on the ghoul’s breath, and his scream became a shriek. The ghoul echoed the cry but with an edge of cowardice and panic not at all present in Abdel’s. The thing got in a lucky swipe with a claw, and Abdel’s left hand came off his sword and popped up, though the sellsword kept hold of his weapon with his right hand. The ghoul grabbed Abdel’s left wrist with speed born of mortal terror. This thing didn’t want to die again.
    Abdel spun his sword through his fingertips, whirling it back behind him. He was too close, and he knew it. The ghoul brought his left hand to its mouth and bit down hard. Abdel could feel the pain and the cold of the bite, and he roared again in rage. He passed his blade in front of him hard and fast and opened the ghoul’s belly. One of Gorion’s eyes rolled out with the meat and guts, and Abdel screamed from hatred of these ghouls and horror at the sight of his dead father’s body parts. The ghoul went down without twitching, its twisted face serene and begging for some mercy it would never find in whatever hell it went back to.
    Abdel’s muscles started to stiffen right away, and though it only took him a few seconds to climb out of the open grave, it seemed to take hours. The other ghoul had run off, and when Abdel’s eyes finally crested the muddy lip of the grave he could see its receding back. It was fleeing to the north, away from the road, toward a clump of trees that spread out in the direction of Gorion’s grave like a tendril thrown off from the distant Cloak Wood.
    Abdel followed but each step was harder to place than the last and he stumbled twice, following still, working his cramping legs as best he could. Still blinded with rage he didn’t stop to ponder his sudden paralysis. He kept after the fleeing ghoul one painful step at time. He staggered