by Paul S. Kemp
“Shadowman,” he said, and smiled. He treasured the stone.
The clouds ate more of the sky. Thunder rumbled its promise.
Cale ran his thumb over the smooth stone, thoughtful. He heard the hiss of approaching rain. The wind set the trees to swaying. Lightning cut the sky. Thunder boomed. He wondered if it would wake Varra. After so much time living underground, she still had not grown accustomed to thunderstorms.
He reached into another pocket and retrieved Jak’s ivory-bowled pipe, the pipe Cale had taken from his dead friend as a token of remembrance. He took out a small leather pouch of pipeweed, grown in Varra’s garden, and filled the pipe’s bowl. He tamped, struck a tindertwig, and lit.
Midnight arrived. Cale felt it as a charge in his bones. Rain came with it.
A year ago, Cale would have spent the next hour in prayer, asking Mask to imprint his mind with the power to cast spells. But not any more. Cale had not prayed to Mask or cast a spell since Jak’s death. He had created his own ritual for the midnight hour.
He took a draw on the pipe and exhaled a cloud of smoke. He watched the cloud dance between the raindrops and stream off into the night sky.
The elm shielded him from the worst of the rain, but he welcomed the downpour. It washed the stink of his travels from him. It lasted only a short time—the rain never lingered.
Cale spent the next hours in his chair, listening to the wind, and communing not with his god, but with his past.
“I do not belong to you any more,” he said to Mask. “And neither does the night.”
It belonged to the shadowman.
I awaken in a perfectly square room. A soft red glow suffuses the air, providing light. I see no sign of Rivalen Tanthul and I no longer smell the sea. My bonds are gone.
Have I escaped? I remember shouting, a flash of green, but little else. My mind feels as thick as mud. I know I tried to do something to escape but I cannot remember.
How long have I been here?
The room looks vaguely familiar to me but I cannot place it. I have been here before, though, I am sure of that. The room reminds me of a prison cell. There are no windows and only a single iron-bound door.
Looking at the door, I feel certain that I am supposed to do something. But I cannot remember. The lapse troubles me.
I sit on the floor and the smooth cobblestones feel cool through my clothes. My body aches, as if I have been in combat, or beaten.
Have I been tortured?
I have none of my gear or weapons. I wear only a loose wool tunic, breeches, and boots. Even my hat is gone, and I never take off my hat. I reach up to feel my exposed horns …
… they are gone.
Startled, I run my hands over my brow. I feel nothing but smooth skin. Has Rivalen removed my horns and healed the wounds? I hold out my arms to examine the rest of my body …
The birthmark on my bicep, the sword ensheathed in flames, the brand of my father, is also gone. How is that possible? I tried for years to efface that brand, scarring my skin in the process. Even the scars are gone. So, too, is the patch of scales on the small of my back. I feel only smooth skin, human skin. My heart races.
Someone has stripped my fiendish blood from me.
“This is not possible,” I say.
“You have come at last,” says a voice behind me.
I scramble to my feet and whirl around. I see no one else in the room. The voice sounds familiar, though, almost …
“Up here. On the wall.”
I look up and my head swims with dizziness. For a moment, I cannot not focus my eyes. I wobble on my feet, hold out my arms for balance. The feeling passes and I notice a thin, horizontal slit in the stone, more than three-quarters of the way up the wall. If it were not so high, it would be a feeding slit.
I move slowly to the wall, wary for a trick.
“Who are you?” I ask. I keep my voice low for no reason I can articulate.
“Come up so you can see me. I will show you.”
The request turns my skin cold. “Tell me who you are,” I demand.
“In a moment. Come up, first. I … need help.”
Help? The word sends a thrill through me. I cannot deny someone who needs help. I study the slit. I might be able to jump up and get my fingers in it, then pull myself up.
“I don’t know if I can make it.”
“You can,” says the voice with certainty. “Do it now.”
Without thinking, I jump up and catch the edge of the slit with both hands. I scrabble my boots against the wall for leverage and heave myself up with a grunt. When I can peer through the opening, I find myself staring at another pair of eyes exactly like mine—black pupils, no color. I gasp, startled, and lose my grip. I fall back to the floor in a heap. The impact knocks the breath from me.
“I am sorry,” says the voice. “I should have prepared you. Are you all right?”
I climb to my feet, eyeing the slit, stammering, “Your eyes are like mine! How can that be?”
“No,” says the voice. “Your eyes are different. I saw them. They are green.”
I reel. Green? I am still groggy from the escape, or from the torture, or whatever has happened to me. This does not make sense. How can my eyes be green?
“Are you still there?” asks the voice.
I nod, though the speaker cannot see me.
“Are you a prisoner here?” I ask. “Where are we? Who are you? And why do you look like … like I should look?” The speaker sighs, as if at a precocious child. “Listen carefully. What I am about to say will alarm you. Are you prepared?”
I’m sweating, and I don’t know why. My skin turns goose flesh.
“Yes,” I lie.
The voice says, “There is no ‘here’ and you are not a prisoner.”
CHAPTER FIVE
10 Marpenoth, the Year of Lightning Storms
Word of the emergency session of Sembia’s High Council spread through Ordulin like a plague. Rumors ran rampant, most of them hurriedly planted by this or that member of the council. Hushed voices in taverns spoke of the Overmaster’s demise and the coming power struggle among the council members.
At Mirabeta’s behest, Elyril had hired several trusted rumormongers to suggest that Overmaster Selkirk had been murdered and that nobles in service to Endren Corrinthal of Saerb had been complicit. The countess was portrayed as an indefatigable pursuer of the murderers.
The Highspeaker of the Council delayed the emergency session for more than a tenday, to allow time for the twenty-one members of the High Council to prepare and receive instructions. Mirabeta and Elyril, though impatient to grab power, used the time to good effect. They exhausted Ordulin’s messengers by sending queries to fellow members of the High Council, trying to determine where each stood on who should be elected the next overmaster. Mirabeta met face to face with seven of her colleagues. Some were coy, but for the most part, the office seemed destined for either Mirabeta or Endren Corrinthal. Elyril marvelled at the loyalty Endren commanded. Saerb was a trade town of little significance, but Endren Corrinthal was the second most powerful member of the High Council. She did not understand how he’d managed it.
Meanwhile, the overmaster’s body was sent in magical stasis to the Tower of the Scales, the small shrine dedicated to his patron god, Tyr. The state funeral was scheduled for a tenday later, a sufficient time to allow outlying nobles to travel to Ordulin to give honor to the dead. The Tyrrans forbade anyone from seeing the body until the questioning before the High Council, and not even Mirabeta dared gainsay them.
Sembia’s High Council was at last summoned to session. The elaborate gong tower of the High House of the Wonderful Wheel, Gond’s temple, sounded the ceremonial summons. The privilege to sound the summons rotated among the faiths of the city every decade and was determined by lot.
Assisted by their coach driver, Elyril and Mirabeta stepped from their lacquered carriage into the shadow of the Great Council Hall of Sembia. Both wore elaborate, high-waisted s
atin gowns, the current custom of noblewomen in the capital, though both had selected subdued colors in order to appear respectful of the overmaster’s death. They also wore small, enchanted knives on thigh sheaths.
Mirabeta, who ordinarily glittered like a dragon’s hoard, had limited her jewelry to a black pearl necklace and matching earrings. Elyril knew both the necklace and the earrings to hold powerful protective and communicative magics. For her part, Elyril wore jewelry that featured amethysts set into antique silver. The purple of the gems and the black of the tarnished metal were Shar’s holy colors, Elyril’s secret homage to her goddess. Elyril also wore her invisible holy symbol on a neck chain under her gown.
The stately Council Hall, a pentagonal affair, sat amid a tree-dotted municipal district in the center of the capital. Autumn had turned the maple leaves blood red. The gated grounds of the Tower of the City Guard and the impenetrable walls of the Sembian mint, called the Guarded Gate, flanked the great hall to either side. A pair of limestone golems, chiseled to look like oversized Sembian guardsmen in archaic armor, stood to either side of the mint’s eponymous metal gate.
The polished limestone facade of the great hall and its five towers gleamed almost white in the setting sun. The glass dome of the central rotunda, known by all to be enchanted with the durability of steel, glittered in the sunlight. Flags flying the Sembian Raven and Silver flapped from the tower tops. Black pennons hung below the flags to mark Kendrick Selkirk’s passing. Pairs of uniformed city guardsmen, standing at attention and holding halberds at arms, flanked the various entrances to the hall. All wore black armbands on the left biceps, also in honor of Kendrick. They appeared as miniature versions of the golems guarding the mint.
Each tower of the hall opened into a wide corridor, which featured several side chambers and halls, and each of the five corridors intersected at the rotunda of the High Council. She had always thought the whole thing looked something like a giant fivestar, with the rotunda as the hub, the five towers as points, and the corridors as legs.
The carriages of the council members ringed the hall, and several hundred armed and armored guards milled among them. All wore the heraldry of one or another member of the High Council. Ordinary citizens were being routed away from the municipal district, but Sembian custom allowed each council member an armed escort of up to twenty guards, though this right had been rarely exercised in the past.
Elyril noted the various tabards and recognized that the guards had drifted into two large groups, reflecting the anticipated schism in the High Council. The soldiers serving the members loyal to Endren Corrinthal of Saerb massed to the eastern side of the building, along the Wide Way, while those in service to the nobles loyal to Mirabeta massed on the west, on Norgrim’s Ride. Mirabeta had sent her force to the hall in the mid afternoon, and they moved among those on Norgrim’s Ride.
The two groups eyed each other. Steel and hostility filled the streets.
“Things could turn bloody quickly,” Elyril said to her aunt.
Mirabeta nodded and the coachman pretended not to hear.
A force of perhaps seventy city guards was spread throughout the street around the Council Hall and kept the nobles’ escorts at a distance. Unlike the sentries posted at the Hall’s doors, dressed in customary ceremonial garb, those in the street bore steel shields, wore chain hauberks under blue tabards, and carried heavy maces. Elyril did not see Raithspur, the tall, grizzled captain of the guard. The captain, it seemed, was wise enough not to wade too deeply into political waters.
The men loyal to Mirabeta cheered upon her appearance—at the urging of Mirabeta’s own twenty men—and Elyril’s aunt smiled in response. Anything more would have been undignified. The men loyal to Endren scowled and a few even booed. Mirabeta only held her smile.
The pair of guardsmen at the nearest doorway of the Hall left their posts and marched down the flagstone walkway to Elyril and Mirabeta.
“Countess,” the middle-aged, bearded guardsman said, snapping to attention. “You are the final member to arrive. By order of the highspeaker, we shall escort you to the doors. The great hall has been cleared. None have been allowed within save the members and their wolmoners.”
Elyril blinked in surprise. She had not heard the archaic term, wolmoner, in many years. Most used the term “vigilman” or “wallman” instead. The custom dated back centuries, when leaders were allowed only one trusted aide, their wallman, in sensitive meetings. Wallmen were originally warriors who served as bodyguards, but as political maneuvering became more important than force of arms, the position shifted to be filled by political advisors like Elyril. The High Council invoked the wallman rule only when a session was politically charged or involved confidential matters.
“My niece is my wallman,” Mirabeta answered. “Lead on.”
The guardsmen nodded, flanked Elyril and Mirabeta, and escorted them up the walkway through the ring of guards. The two guardsmen resumed their stations at the doors and Mirabeta and Elyril left them behind as they entered the Council Hall.
Mirabeta quickened her stride. Elyril hurried to keep pace. Despite the countess’s advancing age—she had seen well over fifty winters, a few less than twice Elyril’s twenty-seven—she remained a trim woman, and her walking speed, when she had a purpose in mind, approached a jog.
Their footsteps echoed off the walls of the tower’s entry hall. Elyril had never before seen it empty. Usually petitioners, merchants, and minor nobles thronged the building, trying to catch the ear of this or that member of the High Council.
They continued into the long, soaring hall of monuments. Towering statues carved from marble, quarried in distant Yhaunn, lined the hall. The sculptures depicted every Overmaster of Sembia since the founding of the realm. Plaques on the bases displayed their names. Magically colored lighting accented the statues to good effect. The exaggerated, heroic proportions of the sculptures made Elyril think of Volumvax. She licked her lips and looked for him in the statues’ shadows.
Mirabeta did not look at any of the statues save the last, that of her dead cousin. There, she stopped. The statue had been completed only two months earlier. Kendrick Selkirk had served as overmaster for just over three years, long enough to get his image carved in stone before dying, but too brief to accomplish anything of note.
“There are no overmistresses in this hall,” Elyril observed, watering the seed of Mirabeta’s ambition.
“There will be,” Mirabeta said.
From the far side of the hall, in the direction of the rotunda, came a man’s voice. “Gloating ill becomes you, Countess.”
Elyril and Mirabeta turned to see Endren Corrinthal walking toward them. The tall nobleman wore a long, ermine-trimmed blue jacket over a collared silk shirt and black breeches. Thick gray hair topped a craggy, careworn face. His overlarge nose had been broken at least once, and his beard and moustache only partially hid a ragged scar that marked his left cheek. A rapier hung from his belt and by all accounts, he knew how to use it.
Mirabeta affected a smile, though the hardness never left her eyes.
“And snide comments ill become you, Endren, who are already so … ill-becomed.”
Endren chuckled as he crossed the hall. He bowed before Mirabeta.
“It is unfortunate, Countess, that you have never turned that sharp intellect to the public good.”
“Quite the contrary, Endren. I have done exactly that for my entire life. And I plan to continue doing so. As overmistress.”
Endren’s eyes narrowed at Mirabeta’s naked statement of ambition but he managed a polite nod. “We shall see,” he said, and turned to Elyril and bowed. “Mistress Elyril. You are as lovely as ever. It is a pity you remain unmarried.”
Elyril curtsied, wondering as she did how Endren’s screams might sound as she offered him to Shar.
“It’s a pity your own wife is dead,” Elyril said, all innocence.
Endren started an angry retort but a man stepped out of the rotunda and called
down the hall.
“Father! The highspeaker is calling for order.”
The younger Corrinthal stood a head taller than his father. He displayed a stronger jaw, thicker frame, shorter beard, and no gray hair, but his eyes and nose looked so much like Endren that he could not be missed as the nobleman’s son. He wore a heavy blade at his belt—its pommel was a stylized rose—and a holy symbol on a necklace around his throat—another rose, symbol of Lathander the Morninglord.
Elyril hated him instantly. This newcomer’s soul shone like the sun. She refused to look at his shadow as he approached them.
“My son,” Endren said. “Abelar Corrinthal.”
Mirabeta smiled and held out her hand, which Abelar took.
“He could be none other,” Mirabeta said. “A pleasure, young sir. I understand you were an adventurer in your youth.”
Elyril smiled at the contempt her aunt managed to load onto the word “adventurer.”
“A folly of my younger days, Countess. I serve Saerb and my father now.”
“And Lathander,” Elyril said, and could not quite keep the venom from her tone.
Abelar regarded her curiously. “Indeed. I call the Morninglord patron.”
Mirabeta gestured at Elyril. “My niece and wallman, Elyril Hraven.”
Abelar’s brown-eyed gaze made Elyril uncomfortable. She feared that he saw through her, that he knew her secrets.
“Mistress Elyril,” Abelar said, inclining his head. “I have … heard your name before.”
Elyril could not bring herself to curtsy or speak, though she did force a half-smile. She touched her invisible holy symbol and resolved to kill Abelar at the first opportunity. Abelar regarded her so intently that she wanted to scream, “Stop looking at me!”
Endren saved her by speaking. “Duty summons us, Countess.” He gestured for Mirabeta and Elyril to precede him and his son into the rotunda.
They did, though Elyril disliked having the Lathanderian dog her steps. She looked back at him frequently and changed direction as she walked to keep her shadow from falling on him. He answered with the expressionless, knowing gaze that Elyril already despised and feared. Her awkward gait eventually elicited a rebuke from her aunt. With nothing else to do, she bit her lip and endured the Lathanderian’s presence.
