“Kalen, wait!” Myrin said.
Heedless, he snatched up the ugly parcel and tore it open. Then he stood a long time, staring into the contents. Slowly, he raised incredulous eyes to Lilten.
“What is it?” Myrin asked, trying to peek over his shoulder. She made out the writing on the torn paper—“SHADOWBANE,” in big red letters.
Abruptly Kalen dropped the package and lunged. The sun elf managed to put his hand on his rapier before Kalen grasped his wrist and slammed him against the moldering wall. Lilten—looking surprised as anyone—opened his mouth to protest, but Kalen punched him across the face with his free hand.
“What are you doing?” Myrin’s heart pounded. “Stop it!”
She looked to Sithe, who only shrugged.
“I had nothing to do with that package.” Lilten’s usual charming ease wavered on something sharper. “I am merely the messenger.”
Kalen struck again. Lilten managed to twitch his head aside and the fist slammed so hard into the rock it left cracks. The elf writhed, but Kalen held him fast.
“Stop!” Myrin cried. “He’s our friend!”
Kalen got his hands around Lilten’s neck.
“Stop!” Myrin drew the crystal orb with its inner cloud of blue smoke. Lightning pulsed in the tiny cloud—power to match the power flowing down her arm. “Stop now!”
That got Kalen’s attention and he looked levelly at her. If Myrin didn’t know better, she might have thought she saw actual flames in his eyes.
“You should listen to her, hero,” Lilten said. “That lass looks a bit wrathful.”
Kalen let Lilten drop and stepped away, grasping his forehead in his fingers.
“What the Nine Hells, Kalen?” Myrin stepped toward Lilten. “Here, let me help—”
“Nay—’tis well.” The elf eluded her hand and rose with great grace. “I shall forgive this one incident, because of your lad’s grief—but I do not easily forget.”
“His grief,” Myrin said. “What—?”
“Thank you for persuading him of the error of his ways,” Lilten continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. “However, I must correct you in one particular: while I may be your ally for the moment, I am not your friend. You should learn the difference.”
Myrin blinked. Until that moment, the elf had seemed friendly if odd. Now absolutely nothing of affability remained in his tone. It was dry as scoured bone and cold as the heart of glaciers. His eyes seemed suddenly red, not gold.
He laughed and his wrath dissolved in an instant. “What was I saying, my dear? Oh yes. If you’ll excuse me, I have certain”—he touched her cheek with his gloved hand—“missteps to correct. I’m sure you understand.”
“I don’t,” she said.
Lilten shrugged. “Well, I’ve been wrong before.”
She realized it was the second time he had touched her, and that only by his own initiative. She had reached for him once before and he had pulled away. Why? Did he have memories she could absorb? Things he didn’t want known?
A dim rumble sounded in the depths and the drone they had followed for the last hour grew louder. That they heard, and the rattle of talons.
“Scour comes,” Lilten said. “Best of luck with it—and with him.”
Without further explanation, he walked away. Sithe stepped aside and let the elf disappear into the darkness. The genasi had plucked up the discarded parcel and was gazing at its contents. She nodded to Myrin and held it out.
“What the Nine Hells is going on, Kalen?” Myrin repeated.
Kalen breathed heavily and rapidly, his shoulders heaving. His mouth worked. “Not—not again,” he said. “Threefold God, no. Not again.”
What could possibly drive him so completely and suddenly mad?
“What?” Myrin asked. “What is it?”
He shook his head and pointed at the package in Sithe’s hands.
Suddenly wary, Myrin crept toward the proffered package that said “SHADOWBANE.” With trembling fingers, she peeled aside the sticky paper. Blood clung to her fingers.
Myrin drew out the contents of the parcel: the hilt and handle of Vindicator, along with a hand’s length of razor-sharp steel. Two other pieces of the beautiful blade lay beneath it. All were slathered in enough blood to drown a man. On the blade, traced out of the blood with a finger, was a single word: “WESTGATE.”
“Gods,” she said. “Rhett.”
“Not again,” Kalen murmured. “I can’t … not again …”
Sithe clutched her head. “I can feel it in my mind. I can hear it screaming—for him.”
For some reason, Myrin didn’t react the way she expected to. She should have gasped and dropped it to the floor. Her heart should be thudding in her throat, her eyes losing their focus. That was how she had heard such things described in the bards’ tales.
Yet no fear, no horror, not even simple distaste compelled her. She felt these things—indeed, they boiled up and threatened to send her weeping to her knees—but she set them aside. Instead, a pervasive cold possessed her. Above that, she was filled with a sense of what needed to be done. She saw things in clear, cold equations, and pushed emotion far, far away.
The drone of the swarm grew louder, along with the clatter of a thousand sharpened legs. Myrin could see a dull red glow down the deeper tunnel. The demon was coming for them. Sithe drew up her axe and stood ready.
“Kalen,” Myrin said.
The man pulled away from her, but she pressed forward. She clasped the sides of his face and drew his gaze to hers.
“I need you,” she said. “I understand that this is awful. We will deal with it, but we can’t deal with it now. We have to focus on what’s in front of us. Can you do that?”
“Not again.” Kalen looked toward the package. “I shouldn’t have left him. I—”
“Kalen!” Myrin snapped and his eyes met hers. “Can you do that?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Good,” Myrin said. “I have another matter—something very, very important. And I really need you to hear me. Will you hear me?”
Kalen nodded, more vigorously this time.
Myrin cast a glance back at Sithe. “If I become infected and I lose my mind to the Fury—you have to kill me. Do you understand?”
His eyes widened. “But—”
“You have to promise,” Myrin said. “If I become a monster, you have to kill me. It has to be you. Promise me.”
“I—very well,” Kalen said. “I promise.”
“Well.” Myrin nodded grimly. “We’ll talk about the third matter later, if we live.”
“Third?” Kalen asked.
Myrin pushed herself into his arms and pressed her lips to his. Blue fire sparked as their souls sang to one another. They kissed for a long, long moment before she finally pulled away. He started to speak, but she put a finger to his lips. She drew out Lilten’s crystal sphere.
“Right,” Kalen said. “Later then.”
He drew his daggers.
How dare they.
How dare they, the three with their treading feet. Every tremble on the stone, we heard them—every breath we sensed. Did they think we would not?
Shadowbane comes.
We skitter in the deep shadows of the world. We lurk beneath the skin. We are the madness over which the world stretches. Murmur warns us, but we do not listen. We are angry. We hunger.
They are enemy. They are anathema.
Shadowbane. He is here. He exists.
They come to slay us. They three. They few. They alone.
But we are many. We are thousands. We are together—forever.
They will feed us.
Feed.
FEED!
7 FLAMERULE (NIGHT)
IN THAT MOMENT—JUST BEFORE SCOUR BURST LIKE A RAGING hurricane through the tunnel and they began fighting for their lives—everything became clear to Kalen. Seeing the sword—knowing how he had failed Rhett, just like he had failed Vaelis—had undone him. His despe
rate patina of control was swept away in a flow of anger such as he had not known since his days as a thief on the streets of Luskan. Anger at being scarred and doomed. Anger at letting folk he cared about die. Anger at being fooled. Anger at being hopelessly outmatched.
Now, with Myrin’s kiss, all that anger collected into one hot point and became purpose. This creature was going to fall. He swore it.
As if in response, power filled him—power such as he had never known. Myrin’s kiss lingering on his lips, he drew his daggers and ran toward the oncoming death.
With the crashing roar of a thousand voices, Scour flowed up the tunnel and into the dimly lit demon temple. It shattered open a withered door like a fleck of driftwood. The braces of the portal cracked then splinted with the force of its passage. Thousands upon thousands of nightmare beasts came at them. They only vaguely resembled what they had once been—spiders, locusts, gnashing beetles, scorpions, rats, and all things that crept through the shadows and stung or bit in the dark. They had swelled to ten times the size of their mortal kin, sprouted dozens of limbs and stingers, and burned red and black like the demon that drove them. This horrifying army surged forth, laying waste to everything in its path.
Every one of its voices screamed a single word: “FEED!”
Kalen screamed right back, a sound without words.
Blazing with divine fire, Kalen leaped before the first ones could touch him, kicked off the wall, and came down in an explosion of holy force that sent the creatures sailing in every direction. It broke the wave of the swarm like an exploding stone thrown into the water.
Before more could take their place, he sprang again, his boots sparking with magic, and somersaulted free of the swarm. Two demonbeasts flew after him, their stingers flailing. He slashed one out of the air and kicked the second back as he twisted down to land on his feet.
Sithe covered his retreat. She spun her axe and whirled forth a halo of flame that sent destruction scything through the swarm. Any of the beasts that dared to bite at her, claw at her, or even approach her were consumed in her reaving flame. Not, of course, that the swarm could avoid her—more creatures kept flowing from below, pushing their brethren into the flames.
The swarm kept coming.
Kalen landed beside Sithe and immediately lashed out with his knives, cutting down a spider that leaped at the genasi as she lashed at six of its fellows. Blood spattered them, but it was demon blood, not his or Sithe’s.
“Myrin!” Kalen shouted. “Spells!”
Brilliant light flashed, as of the rising sun. A cloud of spiraling, glittering sparks showered among the swarm, sending hundreds of creatures shrieking wildly into burning oblivion. Those who survived turned on their fellows dazedly, scrabbling at one another with fang and claw.
The creatures gushed from the tunnel, filling the chamber with gnashing, roaring bodies. The pestilence flowed around Sithe, even as she lashed out at it. She stood among an enormous circle of dead, growling in challenge.
The swarm kept coming.
“Fight on!” Kalen cut a demon spider down with a swipe of his blades.
“Down!” came a cry.
Sithe thrust out an arm and hauled Kalen to the floor, just as a scything blade of flame shot over them and tore into the horde. Creatures died by the scores as the fire slashed through them, then bounced off the far wall with a roaring clang and spun another rending path through Scour. Kalen saw it spinning toward them and kicked Sithe aside just as it cut through where they had lain together.
“Gods!” Kalen shouted to Myrin. “Look where you aim—” He trailed off. “Gods.”
Myrin hadn’t been hesitating in those first moments. Rather, she’d spent that time layering spells on herself. Now she floated a hand’s length off the ground, blue flame flowing around her rune-covered limbs. Bolts of magical force flashed from her seemingly without direction to strike at lunging beasts. Her hands worked independently, sending blasts of thunder or flame to strike as many as possibly at once. With every spell she cast, a new blue rune appeared on her skin. Her orb floated on its own in front of her face—the cloud within had erupted into a great storm.
He was able to steal only a glance at Myrin before he was slashing and thrusting and stomping with all the force he could muster.
“Do you see it?” Sithe asked as she cut a swath through the horde with a burst of dark force. “Do you see what I have seen in her?”
Kalen let a smile slip across his mouth. “I think I always did,” he said.
The swarm squealed in anger and—Kalen thought—fear. It withdrew, leaving them hacking already wounded stragglers, or else at the empty air. The swarm dispersed into a hundred smaller packs of creatures and backed up against the walls, as though considering whether to press the attack.
“So it fears,” Sithe said.
“If it fears,” Kalen said, “then it can die.”
The swarm drew in on itself, the composite creatures scrambling on one another and climbing onto the wall. Some clung to the ceiling, folding their wings on themselves; others spread acid-bedewed wings as though testing them for the first time. Stingers and claws clicked and made ready.
“What is it doing?” Myrin called from the center of her magical storm.
“Down!” Kalen shouted.
The swarm burst toward them like a great hammering hand. Kalen threw himself wide enough that it struck him only a glancing blow. Still, it sent him flying. Sithe was not so fortunate. The fist of Scour struck the genasi full force, burying her under a thousand biting, tearing creatures. He heard her screaming, a sound that filled him with dread.
“Sithe!” Myrin unleashed flame in a vast arc like dragon’s breath. Hundreds died, but the swarm as a whole merely turned its attention on her. An arm of creatures swept her aside like a doll. Only her shield of fire kept them from devouring her in that instant.
With a roar of helpless anger, Kalen rolled away from the swarm, but a huge crimson spider-thing lunged on him like a pouncing cat. Mandibles clicked at his face, tearing his cheek, and he buried one of his daggers in the soft spot between its head and body. The blade struck in the spider’s carapace, however. When he kicked the corpse away, he lost one of his weapons.
No matter.
He rolled to a halt against a pile of the charred beasts and pushed himself to one knee. His cloak flowed over him, casting him in shadow. Blood dripping from his cut-open face, he surveyed the battle with a quick glance, back and forth.
The swarm coalesced in the center of the chamber, a seething hive of black bodies with crimson talons and stingers. Nearby, Sithe flailed among the biting, rending hordes, screaming as they scrabbled at her. Her armor—her dark faith—had vanished from around her. Kalen realized he was not seeing Sithe, but rather the woman she was underneath—a real woman, beneath the armor of hate and loss. Her axe lay fallen at her side and she beat at the creatures with her hands and feet.
“Sithe!” he shouted, drawing the swarm’s attention. “Flee!”
She looked up at him, her black eyes swimming.
“Get out of there, Sithe!” Kalen said.
The genasi nodded sharply and shut her eyes. A scream wrenched itself from her lips, then abruptly—with a great suction of air—she vanished, taking dozens of the creatures with her. Gone.
Kalen looked desperately around. “Myrin!”
“Kalen!” A cry issued from—he realized with a chill—the middle of the swarm.
He could see her now, a flicker of blue at the heart of the horde of demon creatures. Her fiery shield was holding, but it no longer consumed the creatures. They had adapted, however that was possible. Now it was simply a matter of cracking her shell. To that end they piled on one another like bees, stinging with their barbs and hammering with their talons. Kalen could barely glimpse Myrin at the center of the flaming shield—she was screaming.
“No more,” he said. “No more!”
He looked down at the dagger in his hand. Such a little thing, that
shard of steel, though it had killed scores of these accursed things. It was not the weapon of a proper warrior, but then, he was no such man either. He was the hand of vengeance.
Gray flames sprung from the dagger and he ran at the swarm.
The beasts, preoccupied with their magically warded quarry, began to turn. He kicked off the floor, his boots glowing with blue fire, and with a roar, he plunged his dagger into the heart of the swarm.
Fire exploded from his blade, coating the monsters in liquid flame. Caught in his own blast, Kalen tumbled back, disarmed and burning. The fire spread to nearby demon-spawn, dancing like a voracious thing that lived only to eat.
“The fire exists to consume,” Sithe had said. “It has no other purpose.”
Much of the swarm fell away from Myrin, retreating back toward the deeper tunnel. Kalen could see her through the teeming cloud of death, kneeling in the middle of her sphere of flame and he caught his breath. Runes coated her from fingers to shoulder, from shoulder to hip, from hip to toe. Her face was alive with a blue glow, and her eyes pulsed with darkness.
“Away!” Myrin cried in a voice not quite her own. “Away!”
The orb floating before her turned jet black.
“Myr—” Kalen started.
Darkness roared outward, sending demonic beasts flying. Kalen was thrown away as the chamber went absolutely black.
After a heartbeat, Kalen realized the blackness must not be death. He determined this because, if it was death, then death hurt more than he had expected and he had expected pain.
First, he was on fire, but he put that out without much difficulty.
Also, he heard the scuttling of fiendish creatures, so he knew Scour yet lived. How hurt it was, he could not say, but he knew that lying there offered an invitation to strip him to bones. He had to move. Where, though?
“Feed,” he thought he heard a voice whisper. But perhaps he had imagined it.
“Myrin,” he whispered. He reached out with his spellscar to sense her, but he found nothing. “Are you—?”
Shadowbane: A Forgotten Realms Novel Page 31
