by Mark Anthony
"We have to flee," Tyveris urged. He lifted Caledan to his horse. Estah had bound his wound with a makeshift bandage, but already it was stained crimson. Caledan's face was pale.
The others mounted, then guided the horses down the steep slope toward the ravine. "We must ford the river," Morhion shouted to the others. "By its nature the shadevar cannot cross water. Its magic prevents it."
The horses splashed across the stream, clattering up the far bank. Mari cast a look over her shoulder. There was nothing there.
The companions rode hard into the westering sun, their shadows stretching out on the land behind them.
They made camp in a hollow beneath a low hill as the purple veil of twilight descended over the land. Morhion arranged several flat stones around the camp's perimeter, and on each he set a leaf, a blade of grass, or a bit of moss. He spoke several words in the eerie, fluid tongue of magic, and a pale green nimbus sprang to life around each of the stones.
"I suppose a few glowing rocks are going to keep that foul creature away?" Tyveris asked the mage skeptically. The Tabaxi had never placed great stock in sorcery. He didn't much care for the trickery of wizards.
Morhion shrugged, his face impassive. "Speak your prayers if you think it wise, monk. No ward I might conjure would be strong enough to keep the shadevar at bay. This enchantment will disguise our camp, that is all. To anyone outside the nimbus, it will seem as if there is nothing here but a patch of grass and wildflowers. But I would be the first to say this is a temporary solution."
Tyveris grunted, as if this confirmed his low opinion of wizardry.
They had laid Caledan gently on a cloak on the ground. His head was foggy from loss of blood and the hard ride, but he seemed to have control of his senses.
"I am really far too old for this lunacy," he said through gritted teeth. He cried out in pain as Estah removed his shirt.
"I see this isn't the first fight you've ever lost," Man commented. His lean, muscular chest was crisscrossed with a dozen scars, pale white lines that stood out sharply against a dusting of dark hair.
Deftly and efficiently Estah cleaned the dried blood from the wound with a cloth soaked in hot water steeped with medicinal herbs. The shadevar's talons had cut four furrows into Caledan's flesh. Luckily the gouges were not so deep as all the blood indicated. When the wound was clean, Estah carefully pulled out her silvery medallion bearing the likeness of the goddess Eldath. She held it in one hand, while the other hand she placed over the wound. The medallion emitted a faint, sweet humming, and Caledan felt a strange tingling sensation in his body.
When Estah lifted her hand away the blood and pain were gone. The marks had closed; already scabs had formed over the cuts. Caledan shook his head in amazement. It was not the first time Estah had used the medallion of Eldath to heal one of his wounds, but its power in the healer's hand was miraculous.
"It's going to leave a scar," Estah said.
Caledan didn't care. "What's one more?" he returned. Estah rummaged in his pack, handing him a clean shirt. The evening air was cold.
"Now there remains only one question," Morhion said. The mage sat on a low stone, leaning on a staff of ashwood before him. "Who is it who is so eager to see you dead, Cal-dorien?"
"I don't understand," Estah said in confusion. "Isn't it Ravendas who commands the shadevar?"
Morhion shook his head. "Ravendas does not possess the power to summon a creature of such fell magic. There are few, if any, sorcerers among the Zhentarim who would have the ability to gain mastery over a shadevar. The shade-vari are ancient creatures, as old as the world itself by some accounts. As far as I know, their kind has not walked the land in a long age. Once they were thirteen in number. Some scholars argue it was the evil god Bhaal who created them, but that is not so. He discovered them, but even then they were already ancient, as ancient as time itself. For thousands of years they served Bhaal, but eventually even the Lord of Murder in all his power could not control the shadevari. It was Azuth, the High One himself, who banished them far from the worlds of both humans and gods."
Morhion directed his piercing gaze toward Caledan. "Whoever the creature serves, he is a lord to be feared, that is certain."
The companions ate a cheerless meal as the stars appeared one by one in the sky. They took turns keeping watch during the night, but as Morhion had hoped, dawn came without any evidence of the shadevar. The creature's inability to cross water seemed to have worked to their advantage.
All that day, they pressed their mounts as the gray-green plains slipped by. Caledan's wound still ached dully, but thanks to Estah's medallion the pain was fading. Shortly before noon they came upon another small river flowing toward the Chionthar. They guided their horses down the riverbed for a half league before climbing the far bank. There was no sense making their trail obvious for the shadevar.
The sun was beginning to sink toward the western horizon and the light had taken on the thick amber hue of late afternoon when the Harper guided her horse next to Caledan and Mista.
"So how are you feeling, scoundrel?" she asked him. The wind blew her thick dark hair from her shoulders, the sunlight setting its auburn highlights afire.
"You'd better be careful, Harper," Caledan said wryly. "That sounds dangerously like concern in your voice."
She started to nudge her mount away, but he reached out to grab the bridle of her chestnut gelding. Their horses came to a stop. The others riding ahead seemed not to notice. "I just wanted to say… I just wanted to say thanks for worrying about me, all right? It's been a long while since anyone's really done that"
Mari was silent for a long moment. Finally a smile touched the corners of her lips. "Don't mention it, scoundrel." She nudged her mount's flanks, and the chestnut broke into a trot, catching up with the others. Caledan followed after.
"I don't know, Mista," he said to his mount as they rode. "There's simply no understanding women sometimes." The gray mare snorted, giving a sudden sharp kick, and Caledan had to clutch her mane tightly to keep from being thrown out of the saddle.
'Traitor!" he said through clenched teeth. "You females always stick together, don't you?" The gray tossed her pretty head in defiance, and Caledan swore under his breath. That was all he needed-another headstrong female to make his life miserable.
Thirteen
The lord steward Snake slipped the dim crystal into its velvet-lined box. His servant, the shadevar, had just made a disturbing report. Snake was going to have to take action, and he would need Ravendas's help. But first he had to decide how much to tell her.
He paced across his private chamber to a window high in the tower of the city lord and gazed out over the night-mantled city. A thousand lights glowed below him. This was the time of evening when Snake felt most alert and alive. The sunlight only caused him pain of late, and during the hours of brightness he felt constantly weary, his mind dulled. He hated the daytime. It had been that way ever since his ascent upward from the sewers below Iriaebor.
He closed his eyes, and for a moment he was back in the sewers, crawling through the dank pipes and foul-smelling Passageways.
After escaping the dungeons, he had fallen, and the fall left his body broken and dying. But then he had made a bargain and become whole-no, more than whole. The blood sang through his veins, and a strange tingling in his fingers bespoke his new power. He remembered journeying in the darkness beneath the city, wondering what had happened to him in that cavernous, crimson-lit chamber deep in the heart of the Tor.
This is impossible, Snake, he recalled saying to himself over and over. You should be dead. Dead! You are going mad…
But gradually another voice had intruded on his thoughts, growing in power, drowning out his panic. It was the voice that had spoken to him when he lay dying at the chasm's edge. Now the voice whispered in his ear, giving him understanding, purpose-reminding him of the bargain. Eventually his own thoughts drifted into nothingness. After that the voice was everything.
Fin
ally he had crawled through a sewer grate into a dank alley of the Old City. Though the daylight was dim and gray, it seared his eyes all the same. He had been down in the blackness below for too long. He cowered in a shadowed alcove until twilight. Then he moved through the city streets once again.
He was desperately hungry. Once he had been a thief, and that instinct still pulsed within him. He came upon a baker who was just closing his shop, and slipped inside. Just as he confronted the rotund baker, he realized he had no weapon. But his hand moved instinctively. The baker's shout of protest was silenced in a dying gurgle as a livid bolt of emerald brilliance crackled from Snake's fingertips. The green fire burned a hole through the man's heart. The baker slumped to the floor with a look of horror on his face.
Snake stared at his hand. It was unmarked by the fire. The tingling of power was stronger now. His head spun as if he were drunk. Slowly a smile spread across his face. Then he stepped over the baker's body, picked out several loaves of bread, and began to eat. All the while the voice whispered in his ear…
A cool breeze blew through the window, its touch bringing the lord steward Snake back to the present. He looked at his hands resting on the windowsill. The power in them had grown over the last two years. And the voice still spoke to him. It was the voice that had told him to seek out Ravendas when she came to Iriaebor. It had told him how to make himself useful to her, how to help her gain control of the city. Snake had never questioned the voice. The voice was always right.
Snake cocked his head, as if listening to a far-off sound. His dark eyes shone dully, like two black stones. Yes, even now it was telling him what to do. He must hurry to see Lord Ravendas.
He found her in her chamber, reclining languidly on a velvet-covered lounge in a robe of silk as pale as her alabaster skin.
"My lord, I must speak with you," Snake said in his sibilant voice.
"You are disturbing my rest, my lord steward," she said with irritation.
Snake's reptilian face remained expressionless. "It is important, my lord."
Ravendas glared at him, then abruptly stood. She moved to a table and poured herself a goblet of red wine from a crystal decanter. She drained it. "Well?" she demanded.
Snake moved closer to her, his green robe hissing like a serpent's scales against the marble floor. "Caldorien has left the city, my lord. Five travel with him, one of them the Harper."
The goblet crashed against a wall, breaking into tiny shards of glass. "Is that so?" Ravendas said with perfect calmness. "Caledan and his precious Fellowship-I should have known they would still be following him like a band of drooling puppies. Tell me, my lord steward, where are they journeying?"
“To the Fields of the Dead, my lord. That can only mean one thing. Somehow they must have found a copy of the Mal'eb'dala we did not know about They must have learned about the Nightstone, and now they seek to discover the shadow song to counter its magic."
Ravendas laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "Let them try, my lord steward. I doubt they will fare any better than we. They will be unpleasantly surprised by what they find in the Fields of the Dead. And meanwhile we shall continue our excavations." She reclined upon the lounge once again. "Caldorien is more a fool than ever."
"Shall I send a party of your men after them, anyway, my lord?"
"Very well." A secret, wicked smile curled itself about Ravendas's lips. "But remember, my lord steward-I want Caldorien alive. The rest you may do with as you please, but Caldorien must not be slain."
Snake backed from the room, leaving her alone. He made his way down the tower's central staircase to give the orders for an attack party to ride hard to the Fields of the Dead. As Ravendas wished, he would instruct them to capture Caldorien alive.
But the shadevar had no such orders. A smile like the blade of a knife made a slash across Snake's severe visage.
The little room high in the city lord's tower was dark and quiet. Kellen lay in his bed, covered by fine woolen blankets. But he was not asleep. He was waiting. He clung tightly to a small wooden soldier. It was a crudely carved toy, dressed in a torn cloth napkin of royal blue. One of the servants had made it for him, a kind old man who had looked at him sadly when he learned Kellen had no toys other than the exquisite musical instruments his mother gave to him. Mother had ordered the old servant put to death when she learned of the gift, but she had let Kellen keep the toy.
"All gifts have a price, my son," she had said to him, leading him to a window where he could look down upon the old servant, hanging from a gibbet. The kind old man's face had been purple and swollen. It had made Kellen feel sick inside. But she had let him keep the soldier.
The square patch of moonlight falling through the open window spilled slowly across the floor, lengthening as he waited. Suddenly Kellen heard the outside bolt being drawn. He held the wooden soldier more tightly. "Don't be frightened," he whispered to the doll. "It will be all right." He closed his eyes, feigning sleep, as the door opened.
"Rise, Kellen," a sibilant voice whispered. It was the lord steward, Snake. "Your mother has sent for you."
Kellen sat up in bed, nodding wordlessly. He hated the lord steward. It was always Lord Snake who came in the middle of the night, like a phantom, to wake Kellen and take him to Mother if she had called for him. Kellen wished he could run from Lord Snake, but he had to obey, else Mother would be angry with him.
An attendant entered to help Kellen dress, and soon he was shown to his mother's chamber high in the tower. He shivered in the thin silken tunic the attendant had made him don. Wool would have been better on a frigid night like this, but Mother fancied him in silk, so that is what he wore.
His mother, the Zhentarim Lord Ravendas, reclined on a velvet lounge, her blue gaze lost in the flickering fire. "Come, my son. Play for me," she said, not looking away from the flames.
Kellen nodded wordlessly. He picked up the set of polished reed pipes that rested on a low table and knelt on the carpet at his mother's feet.
Sometimes Mother made Kellen drink wine before he played. It was always strange-tasting, bitter, and made him have queer thoughts. The room would go all funny, and his head would feel heavy and dull. Worst of all were the shadows on the walls. К he played for a long time, sometimes it seemed as if they were moving, reaching for him, hungry for a taste of him. Those were the times Mother would talk to him, her red lips smiling. The things she said frightened him, but afterward he could never seem to remember the words, as if everything had been a dream.
This time there was no wine, and he did not feel so afraid. He lifted the pipes in his small hands and brought them to his lips. The notes sounded pure and clear. Soon he forgot Mother, and Lord Snake, and the shadows, and thought only of the music. He loved music, even when it was Mother who made him play.
"Enough," his mother said finally, striking the pipes from his grip. They clattered across the cold marble floor. Kellen stared at her, his green eyes wide. Her cheeks were flushed with too much wine. Something had angered her. "Why did you play those vile pipes, Kellen? They make me remember. You know I do not like to remember."
"But you asked me to," he said in a small voice. She glared at him, her face pale and hard. Kellen cringed. Don't be frightened, he said inwardly to the wooden soldier hidden in his pocket. She raised a hand as if to strike him, then suddenly she laughed, a crystalline sound.
"Ah, my dutiful son," she said, caressing his cheek with the hand that had been poised to strike him only a moment before. "Of course I did. You are good to obey me, my son, my sweet son. Now you must go and get your sleep. Your important day is coming. You must be ready." Kellen rose and started for the door.
"What have you forgotten?" Mother said to him. He reluctantly shuffled to her, then leaned forward and pressed his lips against her cheek. She hugged him, squeezing him so tightly it hurt, but he did not cry out. Then she let him go. Her gaze fell back to the fire, as if he were already gone. Lord Snake appeared to show him back to his chamber, and Kel
len ran ahead of him so that the steward would have no opportunity to touch him.
Lord Snake left him alone in his bedchamber, shutting the door and drawing the bolt. Kellen would not be let out of the room until morning, if they did not forget to let him out. Sometimes they did, not coming for him until evening or, once, even the next day. But Kellen did not mind. He might grow hungry and thirsty, but it was worth it to have some time away from them.
When he was absolutely certain that Lord Snake was gone, Kellen knelt down and pried up a loose tile from the floor beneath his bed. In a hollow beneath the tile was a small tatter of cloth. Kellen carefully unwrapped the rag and pulled out a small object. It glimmered brightly in the moonlight falling through the window.
"This was Father's," he explained to the wooden soldier. He did not take the object out often, for he feared its discovery, but it comforted him on nights when he felt particularly lonely. He had found it in a box in Mother's chamber, and for some reason had fancied it and slipped it into his pocket. It was the only thing he had ever taken from her. Later he had heard Mother shouting at Lord Snake, demanding that the object be found. That was when he learned that it had been Father's.
Kellen did not know who Father was. Mother said he was dead, but at night, in secret, Kellen would whisper to Father, regardless. In that way Father had become his friend, along with the wooden soldier. Sometimes Kellen would lie awake all night, just imagining what Father looked like, wondering what it would feel tike if Father held him in his arms. He did not believe Father was dead, otherwise Mother would not look so angry on those rare occasions when she mentioned him. Mother was never angry with dead people. Kellen knew that. She had nothing to fear from dead people.
"Someday," he said to the wooden soldier, "Father will come and take us from this place, and things will be so good…"
Kellen climbed into bed then, tucking in the wooden soldier carefully. He held the memento of his father tightly, then let the darkness of sleep finally blanket him.
