Nightblade

by Liane Merciel

  His safest options were weak ones, unlikely to save her in time. The dwarf's fate rested with Kyril, and the blazing fury of the paladin's sword. The most Isiem could do was help.

  He could do that, though.

  Forcing himself to inhale slowly, Isiem repeated his chant, loosing a second fiery streamer at the Beast. Teglias added his own prayer to the attack, piercing through the red and orange of the wizard's spell with a lance of blinding white light. The dual assault blasted skeletal limbs and dirt-caked chains off the monstrosity. Its web-snared pincer went black and brittle, then burst apart in the heat.

  The Beast staggered. Kyril hacked into it with renewed ferocity. The paladin threw all her strength into every swing. Beads of perspiration dripped from her brow, glittering like diamonds in the white light of her sword as they fell. Her blade hacked through the chains binding Ena, cutting through the squealing metal as if it were butter, yet she could not get her friend free. More chains rose up to entangle the unconscious dwarf, and more bony hands grabbed her close. And even as Kyril slashed them away, the skeletal claws continued to tear at Ena's neck.

  Then the Beast's back arched up convulsively. Percussive cracks rattled through its body as bones shattered inside and outside the monolith. The skeletal arms grabbing at Ena cracked apart like eggshells; the fingers embedded in her neck drew a necklace of bright blood as they broke under her skin.

  Amid the trees, Ascaros winked back into view abruptly. It was his spell that had saved her.

  Kyril didn't waste any time. She threw her shield aside and grabbed the dwarf, slashing at the remaining chains as she pulled Ena forward. Her blessed blade screamed through the steel, and as soon as she'd torn Ena free, the paladin leaped away from the Beast and ran. The webs clung to her legs, but with Ascaros's spell lending her speed, the paladin was able to jerk free.

  Once Kyril and Ena were clear, both Isiem and Ascaros hurled fireballs at the lumbering Beast. The wizard's was a blue-edged ball of scarlet flame, improbably vibrant in the night; the shadowcaller's seemed a colorless shadow of the first one, its hues washed out and tinged with gray. Both struck with brutal force, and between the two fiery blasts, the Beast collapsed in a stinking heap. The remaining webs burned around it, hiding its bulk in a shroud of fiery lace.

  It was over. They'd won. The Beast had fallen, and they'd lost none of their own.

  Their victory was as complete as Isiem could have hoped for, and yet he felt more fear than joy. The sight of Ena helpless in chains on the Beast's back, her throat ringed in blood and her face ashen as if she was already among the undead, tarnished any real sense of triumph he might have felt.

  Deadly as it had been, the Beast of the Backar Forest wasn't even their primary target. It had only been a means of getting there. They would likely face greater dangers in their pursuit of Eledwyn's nightblade. Some of their number might not return. Isiem had known that from the beginning, of course, but seeing Ena slip into Pharasma's grasp—and then, narrowly, out of it—made the knowledge suddenly more real, and more painful.

  He had friends again, which meant he could lose friends again.

  Could, and almost certainly would.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Gifts of the Dead

  As Teglias tended to their companions, Ascaros strode to the fallen Beast, pulling a curved steel knife from his belt. Kneeling beside it, he yanked away handfuls of sticky charred webbing and sank the knife deeply into the undead creature's side.

  Isiem joined him silently, trying to ignore the carrion stench that burbled up from the Beast's innards when Ascaros plunged his blade in. The smell wasn't as intense as it had been while the monstrosity was fighting; the loss of its animating magic seemed to have also dispelled its unearthly foulness. But it was still a hill-sized pile of crushed and decomposing corpses, and it still smelled like one.

  The reek did nothing to deter Ascaros. The shadowcaller clambered atop the felled Beast and began yanking at the bones that protruded from its carcass. He tossed aside skeletal arms and bony legs, using them as levers to pry away the dirt and layers of ancient, rotted flesh that made up the monster's body. Skulls broke away and jounced down the Beast's lumpen flanks as he worked.

  "What are you doing?" Isiem asked, covering his nose.

  "The older bodies are deeper in," Ascaros grunted, leaning hard on a jutting leg bone to split off a chunk of chain-studded earth almost as large as he was. He kicked it off the Beast's side, causing it to tumble down and crash to pieces against the forest floor. "Buried. Under newer victims. Sukorya won't be that far in ...but she's deeper than any of these. Are you going to help?"

  There didn't seem to be any alternative. Isiem grimaced, wishing he'd brought gloves. His were still with the luggage, unhelpfully stowed wherever they'd left the pack animals to prevent them from being run off or slaughtered by the Beast. "I suppose."

  "Use the bones," the shadowcaller advised. "It keeps your hands cleaner. Slightly." He thrust a long bone between two of the decapitated heads and broke off another slab of dirt and carrion.

  Isiem bit his tongue and began his climb up the Beast's back. The dead creature's body was spongy-soft beneath his hands and feet. It left a sticky reddish-brown residue on his palms and boots, and every time his weight pressed into it, another puff of stench erupted from the accursed thing.

  "We could just wait until Pulcher and Copple are back on their feet, you know." He tried not to inhale as he spoke. It was fruitless; he could taste the Beast's rancid filth coating his tongue like poisoned oil. "Let them do the manual labor."

  "I wouldn't trust them to recognize what we're after," Ascaros said, "or give it up if they did." The shadowcaller stopped his digging to grab Isiem's wrist and haul the wizard up beside him. Even with all he'd chipped away, there was more than enough room for them to stand side by side on the Beast's back.

  Looking down from the crest of the creature's body, Isiem could see that the corpses making up the inner layers did indeed appear to be older than those of the outer shell. The newly unearthed bones were stained a deep yellow-brown, and uncounted years of grinding pressure had forced them into oddly sculptural contortions. Each corpse had been balled into a fetal position and then compacted into a gnarled knot, its bones abraded smooth on their outer surfaces but cracked and rough inside.

  None of them had heads anymore, but many of the corpses still had scraps of clothing and other personal relics wedged between their compressed bones. One of those, Isiem realized with an unpleasant thrill of recognition, wore the remains of a Dusk Hall master's robe. The once-gray fabric was so clotted with the crusted effluvia of decay that its color and cut were impossible to identify, but the distinctive shape of its spiked buttons gave it away.

  Isiem tugged Ascaros's sleeve and pointed down at the skeleton he'd noticed. "Look. It's in a shadowcaller's robe."

  Ascaros had to step to the side and crane his neck to see what Isiem indicated, but once he did, his face twisted with a kind of terrified excitement. The shadowcaller skidded down the Beast's side toward the balled skeleton, using a leg bone from another unlucky victim as a drag pole to slow his descent. Upon reaching it, he knocked it free of the dead abomination and pounced on the skeleton like a cat seizing upon a crippled mouse.

  With nary a shred of sentimentality for his ancestor's remains, Ascaros kicked the bones apart, then stooped to rummage through the rotted cloth that had been compacted in their midst. He pulled two filthy rings from the skeleton's fingers and untangled a long chain, its spikes crusted in carrion-stinking dirt, from its midsection. Several other objects, all unidentifiable beneath their thick coats of detritus, dangled from the chain.

  The shadowcaller dropped the whole thing into a small sack, along with both of the rings, and tied it shut. He poked at the bones a while longer but soon lost interest. Without another word to Isiem, he walked away from the fallen hulk of the Beast.

  "What'd you find?" Pulcher called. The big man was sitting up on the gr
ound, groggy but evidently restored to his senses. Blood and mud crusted half his face and stiffened his short hair into wild spikes. Judging from his squint into the darkness, the spell that had granted him sight had evaporated.

  "My revered great-aunt," Ascaros replied curtly. He paused for a step and conjured a buzzing white spark into the night. The spark hovered over his palm, then darted between the tree trunks, staying just close enough for the shadowcaller to see. He followed it into the woods, never once glancing back to see if the others were coming.

  "Good to see he values our company after all we've been through together." Ena croaked a pained, mirthless chuckle. The dwarf was lying on a pile of dead leaves, her head propped up by a folded cloak—Kyril's, not her own. Isiem couldn't see Ena's cloak anywhere, and suspected that the paladin had discarded it as beyond repair. "Did he get his diamond?"

  "I think so," the wizard replied, climbing down from the Beast's lifeless bulk.

  "Is he going to run off with it?"

  "I hope not."

  "Me too. I'd chase him down, but ..." Ena gestured to her assorted wounds. A nasty line of bruises encircled her throat. More bruises left dark splotches tattooed across the fire scars on her scalp. From the way she winced when she moved, it seemed there were other injuries hidden under her light leather and chain. "He chose his moment well. I'm not going to be chasing much of anything for a while, I don't imagine."

  Despite her poor condition, the dwarf seemed to be in decent spirits. She chortled feebly at Isiem's expression when he neared. Her voice was still hoarse from her near-strangling by the skeletal hands. "Worried?"

  "I was."

  "I'm touched." Ena shifted so that she could peer into the night after Ascaros. "Do you think the diamond might kill him? He seemed to think it was an awfully ominous piece of work. Cursed, even. Maybe someone should go after him. For his own sake as much as ours."

  "I don't doubt the stone is dangerous," Isiem said, "but Ascaros has had a good deal of experience evading his ancestor's snares. I doubt the rest of us would help him much on that front."

  "I suppose you'd know best," Ena said, plainly doubtful. She turned her head as Kyril approached them.

  "We're heading for the Umbral Basin in the morning," the paladin said as she neared. She scowled in the direction of Ascaros's disappearance, then turned back to Isiem and Ena. "I suggest you rest while you can. It will be harder once we enter the shadowlands." She wrinkled her nose, eying Isiem. "Rest, and bathe."

  "Not in that order," Ena added, sweetly helpful, as the paladin left to check on Ganoven.

  "Yes, thank you," Isiem said irritably. "I really was worried about you, you know. Although I'm beginning to wonder why."

  "Because your only other friend in this group's a selfish bastard who'll run off with a sack of cursed corpse-loot while the rest of us are still patching up our wounds after his last idiotic scheme. That'd be my guess." Ena's expression softened, though, and she lifted a hand to offer a conciliatory little wave, grimacing at the effort. "And I really was touched. Now go take a bath."

  "Where do you propose I do that?"

  "There's water by the camp." That was Ganoven, who was standing on decidedly unsteady feet. Under his neat black beard, the half-elf's face was deathly pale. Torn leaves flecked his clothing, but for once the normally fastidious Aspis agent seemed not to notice. Weariness roughened his words. "I'll show you. Come."

  The Aspis agent struck a spark to his lantern and led Isiem through the forest, following a series of marks notched into the trunks of redsap trees. It was obvious why Ganoven had chosen them. Their sap, a garish crimson, stood out so brightly against the trees' silvery-pale bark that it was easy to spot even by the sweeping light of Ganoven's lantern.

  The trail of slashes went on for a quarter-mile or more, winding across creeks and rises. Isiem had expected Ganoven to call his underlings to accompany them, but he never did. They walked in solitude through the wood. Around them, crickets and frogs sang a nocturnal melody, falling silent when the two-legged intruders passed and then resuming when they had gone by.

  At first, Ganoven was quiet, but when they'd put enough distance between themselves and the site of the Beast's death, he glanced back at Isiem.

  "You've never been to the Umbral Basin, have you?" the half-elf said.

  Isiem shook his head. "It's not a place we often have reason to go."

  "Nor we." Ganoven's thin, pinched lips quirked to the side in a humorless facsimile of a smile. His black eyes followed the lantern's light, steadfastly avoiding the dark areas of the wood. "Trade through the valley is profitable, to be sure, and leading that caravan is a prestigious post. It's difficult work, shepherding so many superstitious and bellicose fools through the shadowlands into the realm of the Midnight Lord. Then negotiating with the Nidalese ...well, it has a reputation for challenging our subtlest minds. For a time, I myself thought of attempting the task. I had the opportunity once."

  "Why did you decline?"

  "A post opened in Egorian. I chose the capital over the caravan. I've always considered myself more a scholar than a man of action; the choice seemed obvious." The half-elf had lapsed into his habitual condescending tones, but then he shrugged and shook them off, continuing in a surprisingly reflective manner. "I may have made a mistake in that."

  "How so?" Isiem asked.

  "I was useless against the Beast. Useless." The lantern trembled in Ganoven's hand, throwing shivers of light and shadow against the trees around them, but his voice remained steady and unsparing. "When it charged us, when I saw it ...all the words of magic I'd been practicing just vanished from my head. I couldn't have conjured a spark to save my life. I didn't. The rest of you brought the monster down, but I had no part in it—because I had never seen anything like that in my life. I had never imagined such a thing."

  Isiem remained silent, unsure what the man wanted. Plainly Ganoven wanted something—he doubted the Aspis agent was the sort to confide in anyone casually, and they had hardly been cordial before—but his aim was still unclear.

  "My inexperience made me useless," Ganoven continued, altering his course to the left as they passed another slash-marked tree. His lantern was burning low, its smoky yellow glow shrinking steadily around them. "It will, I'm sure, be worse in the Umbral Basin."

  "Do you propose to turn back?"

  "No." Ganoven gave the Nidalese a sidelong glance. "I want your help preparing. We're both men of learning, practitioners of the arcane. Our arts are the same. But while I may be a master scholar, you have more practical experience."

  "You want me to teach you to fight," Isiem said flatly. He didn't relish the prospect. His own lessons in magic had been filled with fear and pain. As an exceptional student, he had been spared the worst of his fellows' suffering, but the Dusk Hall remained a dark place in his mind. It was not an experience he was eager to revisit, particularly in Ganoven's company.

  He could hear the whickering of horses, and the gurgle of a night-cloaked brook, not far off among the trees. They were nearly to the stream. "On the eve of entering the Umbral Basin. A little late, don't you think?"

  Ganoven shrugged. He set the dying lantern on a fallen log as they reached the water. In a clearing to the west, Teglias had begun setting up their camp. "We're not in the valley yet, and we're not dead. It's not too late."

  A single tent stood among the tethered horses. The sight of it filled Isiem with immense relief and an equally great, bone-deep weariness. All he wanted out of his life at that moment was a bath and a chance to curl into a lumpy bedroll under that travel-stained canvas roof. He still reeked of fear and sweat and his climb up the Beast's decomposing bulk, and every sinew in his body ached with exhaustion.

  But Ganoven was right. They could ill afford to enter Fiendslair with one of their wizards so poorly prepared. And he needed to learn some new spells himself. Demons were known to be impervious to many common methods of attack. Unusual techniques, like Ascaros's bone-cracking spell,
or the specialized magics devised by Nidalese shadowcallers who had fought beasts from the far planes for millennia, were more likely to succeed.

  Isiem sat on the log beside the failing lantern, beckoning tiredly for the half-elf to join him. "The light will die soon. Let's practice while we can."

  Late the next morning, reunited, they made for the Umbral Basin. Ascaros had returned sometime before dawn, withdrawn and preoccupied; the others had trickled in after daybreak. Their physical wounds were healed, although a pall lingered over their travels. While the wild beauty of the forest around them was vibrant as ever, it was overshadowed by memories of the horror they had so recently seen and apprehensions of those that waited ahead.

  They didn't follow the road. Kyril suggested going back to the caravan and entering the Umbral Basin under the protection of its numbers, but Ascaros had dismissed that idea impatiently. "Our destination lies north, near the foot of the Mindspin Mountains," the shadowcaller had said. "The caravan is taking a southern route. Unless you want to spend twice as long in the Umbral Basin as we must, we'll do better to strike out on our own."

  "Do you believe you can find it?" Teglias had asked quietly. "The entrance to Fiendslair is said to be hidden."

  "It is," Ascaros had replied, "but Sukorya's jewel will show us the way."

  That had hardly been enough to satisfy the Sarenite, but it was all the shadowcaller meant to give them. When Kyril and Teglias asked to see the diamond, he showed it to them only briefly, and away from the rest of their company.

  Whatever they saw in the stone, it was enough to silence both the paladin and the cleric. Both of them returned to the group with tight mouths and hooded eyes, and neither spoke of what they'd seen.

  Their reaction solidified Isiem's discomfort. As soon as they resumed their journey on flesh-and-blood pack mules and spell-woven palfreys, he angled to confront his friend.

  "You're certain it's Sukorya's diamond?"