The Balic templar just laughed. “And why should I bother fighting you when I have others to do so?” He motioned for his fighters, and three of the men nocked arrows to bowstrings; the other two lifted their short swords and crouched to charge.
With anger roiling through her, Jisanne stepped out of the shadows and began to work her first spell. Drawing energy from all around her in a quick rush, she felt the tension build within her. Her need justified whatever means she might employ, even defilement—fast, powerful, and deadly magic. “Leave us alone!”
Spotting her, the thri-kreen tracker gave an alarmed squawk and his small antennae lifted, twitching. “Koram sent a defiler against us!”
With instinctive terror, Yvoluk’s warriors fired their arrows without any command from the praetor. Three shafts leaped out from twanging bows. One of the arrows clattered on Horizon Finder’s deck—but the other two struck Jisanne, one on the left side of her chest, the second in her abdomen. The impacts drove her backward.
With a howl, Koram thrust his sword deep into the traitorous thri-kreen’s back, piercing the tan chitin; the thri-kreen’s lower set of legs folded and he fell to his knees, dragging Koram’s sword with him, caught in his hard shell. “Ah, so this is how it ends …” He whistled through his mandibles.
Jisanne gasped as her spell died around her. She tried to keep uttering the words, but only blood came out of her mouth, not the rest of the incantation.
With a barked command from Yvoluk, the soldiers fell upon Koram, five against one. Even as he struggled to tear his sword free from the thri-kreen’s body, the warriors swarmed over him, thrusting and stabbing.
Lying in a pool of her own blood on the deck of Horizon Finder, Jisanne saw an image of her sister’s family cut down by mob hatred. Yes, she did know how to use arcane magic, and now her own blood gave her all the power she needed to finish the spell.
The silt stirred beneath the levitating dromond. A line of ivory vertebrae moved in a serpentine ripple, and a pair of ribcages lifted up through the sand. Balanced on puzzle-pieces of stacked bones, two saurian skulls dropped open hinged jaws to brandish sand-worn fangs. The long-dead sea serpents both roared, a dry rasping sound that scratched through their hollow throats. Once so majestic as they glided on Athas’s long-forgotten seas, the fossilized monsters now loomed over the levitating dromond. Jisanne clenched her bloodied fists, drove the monsters into action.
Yvoluk’s warriors looked up and screamed, scrambling away from Koram. The praetor stared in awe, craning his neck up at the giant fanged skulls, then frantically worked his own spell to protect himself—but before he could finish, one of the skeleton serpents darted forward and chomped down. Lifting the bleeding templar into the air, the serpent shook him from side to side, bit him in half, then tossed the severed body off the dromond. Yvoluk was still gurgling as he sank into the silt.
Jisanne crawled to the side rail, lifted herself up, and extended a red hand toward Koram. On the levitating dromond, he was a patchwork of deep wounds, bleeding from numerous slashes and cuts, many of them surely fatal. She tried to call his name, but her lungs were filled with blood.
Koram dragged himself to the bow and somehow found the strength to make a staggering leap back to Horizon Finder. Jisanne attempted to catch him, and they both tumbled together. One of the arrow shafts snapped off inside, and the pain blinded her.
Even without her magical control, the skeletal serpents continued to attack the dromond. Ivory skulls smashed the planks, broke the hull, shattered the rails. The serpents seized the terrified Balic soldiers in their jaws, tossing bodies over the side or leaving them strewn across the deck. The dromond crashed, running aground onto the stone quay.
Jisanne and Koram held each other, barely hearing the screams and the mayhem. Drowning in the pain, she felt the magic fade. The twin sea monster skeletons raised sinuous bone necks as if in a salute, then crumbled into ivory shards in the dust.
Jisanne knew she was dying, and beside her Koram grasped her hand. His wounds looked even worse than hers. “Do you have the navigation crystal?” he said. “Take us back … to when Athas was alive.”
With an effort she removed the worn object, wet fingers fumbling with the strings of the pouch. “The magic won’t last. It destroys. It is what drained this world.”
He leaned closer, his breath rattling. “Then I give you my life energy willingly—take it! I’d rather die there than in this place.”
Jisanne cupped the navigation crystal in her palm. Each breath was like broken glass caught on fire; the arrow deep in her stomach was a grinding spear of ice that twisted in her guts. “Maybe with my life force, too, it will be enough to seal the spell permanently.”
Koram could barely hold his head up. He was fading quickly. If she didn’t act soon, the opportunity would be wasted.
Jisanne clenched her fingers around the crystal. Previously, she had filled a small bowl with her own blood, just enough to work the arcane magic. Now there was so much blood, but she felt so weak … and Koram was so weak.
She pulled the spell from her own core, stronger than ever before. Jisanne used everything she had, and everything Koram had. She scraped both of their existences until they were bone dry and empty, she pulled on any life force around them, the waning energy of the dying guards, the small burrowing creatures in the ground, every faint flicker she could find. Even the sand and dust turned dark. She had never called on so much life force to fuel her magic.
Her vision faded into static and grit, and she could see only the crystal in her hand. Jisanne tried to hold onto it, but the object dulled, then crumbled into small shards and glittering dust in her hand.
Destroyed.
Jisanne collapsed, feeling the weight of Koram beside her but no life there, and no life inside her either.…
Then the deck began rocking beneath them, and the bright sun beating down seemed to have a different quality. The air Jisanne inhaled was moist and salty—and as she sucked in a lungful she realized that the arrow wounds no longer hurt. The spell had worked after all!
With a loud snort, a deep voice grumbled at them. “I see you are back, lady magic user—and you have brought a fighter, too. He looks strong enough, but lazy. Lounging around on the deck—hmmf!” The minotaur captain stood over the two of them.
Koram picked himself up, touching his bare chest and searching unsucessfully to find his deep wounds.
“Are you going to sleep all day?” Hurrun put his powerful hands on his hips. “This ship has places to go—I am not running an inn at sea!”
Jisanne got to her feet and looked off the starboard bow to see the beautiful harbor city of Arkhold with its whitewashed buildings on the hills, the large marketplace down by the docks, the colorful sails of small fishing boats.
“We are glad to be here, Captain,” Jisanne said. She felt more solid now than ever before, more real in this time.
Koram was amazed. “Please let us stay.”
“All right, I won’t throw you overboard just yet.” The minotaur turned and stalked back toward the bow. “Just make yourselves useful.”
Because they had surrendered their life energy voluntarily, perhaps they had twisted the nature of the defiling magic, and the navigation crystal had incorporated them into the past, into its memory of “home.” Maybe they were really there, or maybe it was only a recorded vision that had an objective and persistent reality of its own. Either way, it didn’t matter.
“This is our permanent place now, Koram,” she said, convinced as she stood beside him. “We both made it so. This spell will never fade.” They faced the sun—the golden yellow sun.
Kevin J. Anderson is a science fiction and fantasy novelist. His novels have appeared on national bestseller lists, and he has more than 11 million books in print worldwide. The prolific writer is well known for his immense contributions to the Star Wars and Dune shared worlds, and his solo projects (among them The Saga of Seven Suns septet of epic novels) have achieved tre
mendous critical and popular acclaim. Outside of novels, Kevin has also written numerous comic books.
LORD OF THE DARKWAYS
A TALE OF THE FORGOTTEN REALMS
ED GREENWOOD
Deadly Success
Flickering glows shaped two doors out of empty air, at either end of the large, dark room. The warrior strode through the one at the far end of the room, vanished in mid step—and reappeared stepping through the nearer glowing portal.
Where he immediately stiffened in mid stride to topple, spasming and thrashing helplessly—a strangled scream whistling through his working jaws—and crash face-first to the floor. His eyeballs burst, spattering the flagstones with a foul wetness that hissed into racing wisps of smoke, even before a larger flood spilled out of his mouth to join it.
The tall, slender man in black nodded in satisfaction. Six strong Zhentilar warriors had all found the same swift death.
Consistent results. His new spell was a success.
Smiling, he walked away.
Another Stormy Night
“My superiors at the temple? They think I’m trying to induce my brother to kiss the Holy Lash, of course. Which reminds me—you will embrace Loviatar before all other gods, won’t you, Handreth?”
The wizard across the table gave her a mirthless half smile.
“I’ll consider it,” he said dismissively—then grinned, the bright, boyish flash of teeth Ayantha had known forever. She found herself grinning back.
“So, what brings a high-spells wizard from Waterdeep to cold, uncultured, mage-hating Zhentil Keep?”
“Coins, of course. Lots of them. And by ‘mage-hating,’ I presume you mean Manshoon and his magelings don’t welcome wizards other than themselves?”
“I do. They don’t. Walk warily, Han.” She laid a long, barbed whip of many leather strands on the table, murmured a nigh-soundless prayer over it, then raised her eyes to his again and asked, “Who’s your patron?”
“A merchant hight Ambram Sarbuckho—if you don’t dissuade me from showing up at his doors, by what you tell me of him.”
Ayantha shifted in her seat, supple black leather and tight strands of chain moving in ways meant to catch the eye, and gave him another smile. “So you sought out your little sister to learn how things lie here in the keep before taking service. I like that.”
Handreth shrugged. “To rise to become a darklash of Loviatar—nay, just to survive this long, in service to the Maiden of Pain—takes wits. Wizards soon learn how hard it is to trust. You have wits, and I trust you. So here we are, in this vastly overpriced excuse for a highcoin drinking club, spending my gold. Speak.”
His sister sighed. “We’re not noble, so this is the best Zhentil Keep can offer us. Sit with your hands on the table, palms up. Please.”
“So you can …?”
“So I can lash you across your palms if someone comes into the room, to make them believe a darklash of the pain goddess is meeting alone with an outlander wizard for the right reasons.”
Handreth put his hands on the table, palms up. “I believe I paid for a private room.”
“You did. In the keep, there’s ‘private’ and then there’s ‘private.’ Again, we’re not noble. Or Zhentarim.”
Handreth nodded to signal he’d taken her point. Outside the leaded windows, the wind rose with a sudden whistle. Winter hadn’t thrust its talons into Zhentil Keep just yet, but it was fast approaching, and bringing its cold with it. A time of whirling falling leaves, chill winds, and short, violent, icy rains. Puddles would form brittle skins of thin ice by night but melt every morn, for about a tenday. Then the snows would come, long before the Year of the Blazing Brand found its end.
“Ambram Sarbuckho is one of the wealthiest keep merchants,” Ayantha told him, dropping her voice to a whisper. “He’ll be given a lordship only if he joins the Zhentarim, though, and thus far he shows no signs of doing so. He’s a glib schemer, always spinning little plots and swindles—and, I should warn you, he has hired an endless succession of serve-for-a-month wizards, rather than trying to buy the loyalty of one or two he keeps at his side for many seasons.”
“So he’s difficult?”
“All successful keep merchants are difficult, Brother. This one is open in his mistrust of everyone; he probably hires more informers than anyone in the city—after Manshoon, of course. He’s … just as untrustworthy as he judges everyone else to be.”
“I’ve done business with his factors in Sembia and Waterdeep, a time or ten. What’s he known for, here at home?”
“A dealer in sundries, and importer of curios from afar.”
“Huh.” Handreth Imbreth grunted. “Someone a city ruler’ll be suspicious of, right there.”
His sister smiled thinly. “It’s been a bare few months since Manshoon became First Lord of Zhentil Keep, his toady Lord Chess was named Watchlord of the Council, the priests of Bane started acting as if they were the watch, and we had eye tyrants lecturing us in our own streets. In Zhentil Keep, everyone’s suspicious of everyone else. Watch your back, Brother—and never stop watching it.”
“I thought Manshoon was yesterday’s tyrant,” Handreth muttered, “and some Lord Bellander or other is kinging it now, here in the keep.”
His sister shook her head. “Folk in the streets believe that, and about half the merchants; the rest of us have wits enough to know Bellander’s coup was staged by Manshoon himself. He’s enthroned Bellander to be the target of those enraged by the new taxes and what’s done by all swordsmen now making the lord’s rule—Manshoon’s rule, in truth—a thing of teeth, offering instant obedience or death. Bellander’s a handsome, lecherous fool whose brains are about up to the task of outwitting yonder bowl of flower petals.”
“Ah.” Handreth nodded. “I’m familiar with the tactic; Waterdeep has seen it work a time or three, too.”
Ayantha took up her lash, cracked it in the air, and brought it crashing down across the table. Handreth deftly plucked up his goblet before any wine could spill from it.
“We all know Manshoon’s up to something, and that he will move fast when he strikes,” she announced, lashing the table again as the door opened and an impassive servant brought more wine, unbidden. She held silence until the servant withdrew, then struck the new decanter of wine aside, to shatter on the floor untasted.
Handreth nodded approvingly, and she inclined her head and went on.
“We just don’t know yet what he’ll do. All the spies we can pay—and keep alive, once we start paying them—tell us Fzoul, who speaks for Bane in this city, is still far too furious with the First Purring Lord to aid him in any way, though they’ll end up working together eventually … and the beholders have told him bluntly, at least once, that he’s on his own for now. My thinking is that they want to see if he can really establish rule over the city before they spend any more effort backing him.”
She sipped the last from her goblet, set it down, and added, “Yet that just ensures he will do something; he has to prove himself, and soon, before all the lords he outraged at council manage to kill him off or just fill his platter with so many plots, coups, and small swindles and treacheries that he’ll have no time to do anything but fight them off. So far, he’s divided his time between summoning keep lords and merchants to private talks whereat he gently threatens them, training his ever-growing bands of ruthless warriors and magelings behind wards no one can penetrate, and spending days in seclusion, no doubt crafting dastardly new spells. We keep expecting his spellchamber door to open, and golems as tall as castle towers, and undead dragons with sixteen grafted-on heads to come bursting out and lay waste to the keep … but thus far, only he comes strolling out.”
Silence fell.
Ayantha lifted an eyebrow. “Have I frightened you into scuttling back to the City of Splendors yet, Brother?”
Handreth smiled slowly, and his eyes began to glow red.
At the sight of that, the darklash hissed and stiffened, arching away from
him in her chair.
Then she brought her lash around with vicious skill, letting the wizard taste it, right across his face.
His smile never changed.
“This,” he told her, as her lash suddenly twisted in her hands, its strands leaping to coil around her neck and throttle her—then just as swiftly drop away, leaving her reeling in her seat, coughing and gagging, “sounds like fun.”
The Spellchamber Door Opens
A tall, slender, darkly handsome man sat alone at the head of a long, polished table, his fingers clasped together under his chin. He was thinking, behind the faint half smile on his face that betrayed nothing.
In order to truly rule Zhentil Keep—not just lord it over the council—it would be necessary to break the power of the richest and most influential city merchants. Not to mention the hired wizards working for them.
The nobles he had already conquered, or could destroy at will. He just needed them to refrain from mustering arms against him and banding together while he dealt with the merchants.
The waylords. The sixteen men who could sway or cow all the other merchants and shopkeepers of the keep.
The sixteen who could not be throttled by surrounding their mansions and warehouses, and ruling the streets with sword and fist. The merchants whose mansions held Zhentil’s Darkways, long-established magical gates linking those proud houses with certain mansions in Sembia. Allowing these sixteen to shuttle warriors, craftworkers, goods, and coins back and forth at will and in secret. Advantages that had won them all Sembian investments and Sembian backers whose aid they could easily call upon.
So “waylord” was a good name for them, even if only the Zhentarim called them by that name, or knew the sources of their power. To most citizens, they were merely the powerful merchants who dominated city life; folk to befriend and deal fairly with, who it was very unwise to make enemies of unless departing the city swiftly, never to return, and able to run far and fast. Sixteen men who shared a secret, but were a loose, often-feuding group, not a cabal or guild.
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