He sorted through the articles showing the least number of cuts and blood splatters. He bent to relieve a man of his boots, then paused. He was reluctant to disturb the deceased. It felt somehow disrespectful.
The breeze picked up, triggering a shivering bout.
He forced his qualms aside. His need outweighed their dignity.
He liberated boots, a long shirt, and a pack stuffed with clean articles, including smallclothes and pants. Everything fit well enough, though the pants were a little short. He didn’t care. He pulled on each piece of clothing in turn, until he was finally warm, and covered.
Maybe he couldn’t remember where he was or who hated him so much that they’d brought him to be sacrificed, but at least his privates were no longer waving in the wind, and that was worth something.
His immediate needs met, he planted his posterior on the edge of the altar as the day brightened. He took several deep breaths, and closed his eyes.
Just think. There has to be an explanation. Even if it’s not one you want to hear.
He cast his mind back, trying to summon up some sort of clue …
And remembered being in the crowded hold of a sailing vessel, lit by the open cargo hatch overhead. He was strangling someone! His hands clutched a long scarf that was looped twice around the neck of a man in priest’s garb. The priest struggled to get air, his mouth gaping like a fish pulled from the net.
The man made one last frantic effort, kicking, twisting, trying anything and everything to get free.
It didn’t make a bit of difference; he’d caught the priest by surprise, and it could only end with the man’s death. But just to be sure, he pulled harder on the free ends of the scarf, grunting with the effort.
The priest’s life whispered away. The man fell to the ground, eyes wide in surprise at finding so unexpected a death. They stared, empty, lifeless … dead.
The memory faded.
He gasped, taking in a huge breath of air as if in sympathy for the man in his memory. He looked at his hands. He could still feel the scarf’s parchment-smooth texture, the man’s panicked fingers as they brushed and clawed at his face, and finally, the way all the tension and volition eased out of the man in a flowing moment …
“Merciful gods,” he whispered. He had strangled a priest!
He struggled to control his accelerated breathing by counting each breath. One, two, three, four—What the Hells had possessed him to …
A new memory prowled forward.
He was in an entirely different place. He didn’t have the strangler’s wrap this time. Instead, he gripped a sword that sported glyphs white as snow on one side of the blade, and red as blood on the other, brighter and entirely more real than the ones that had flickered half formed during his battle with the dretch.
A creature stood before him. It was like a man in shape, save for its head, which bristled with fur striped with predator’s camouflage. Its ears were demonic flaps, and horns leaped askew from its head. It wore man’s clothing, and clutched a black dagger, like a piece of the sky between the stars, in one oddly jointed hand. The creature was laughing at him.
It said, “Demascus. Surprised? Don’t worry, you won’t remember seeing me. You never do. Though, even I have to admit, your sin is almost unforgivable this time. You’re getting so close …”
Demascus’s lips quirked to throw back a smart remark, and the creature moved, more quickly than he had expected by far, more swiftly than he could grasp the reins of time and pull them—
The creature slid its dagger into his stomach.
The memory tattered to nothing and he gasped. He slapped one hand to his belly. He pulled up the borrowed shirt and examined his flesh.
He saw nothing to indicate evidence of such a lethal wound in his ash-pale skin.
It must have happened so long ago that he’d recovered from the injury, though obviously with the aid of some powerful curative. Otherwise some tiny hint of a scar would remain.
And why had the thing called him Demascus …
“By all that’s holy and sovereign, who am I?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erik Scott de Bie lives in the Seattle area with his wife, two cats, and far too much gamer stuff. He writes technical documentation by day, fights injustice by night, and gives the rest of his time to his fiction, gaming, and his lovely lady (not necessarily in that order). Downshadow is his third FORGOTTEN REALMS novel.
He maintains a blog at eriksdb.livejournal.com, which is linked from his website, www.erikscottdebie.com.
Shadowbane: A Forgotten Realms Novel Page 40
