Skein of Shadows

by Rockwell, Marsheila

  She pushed one of the doors open slightly and squeezed through, stepping quickly to the side to let her eyes adjust to the deeper gloom here and to avoid making herself a target. Greddark followed suit, moving to the other side of the door. Xujil came in last, and Greddark had to pull him out of the meager light coming through the open door.

  Though she listened for long moments, she heard nothing but her own breathing and that of her companions. The chapel was deserted.

  Except for the sanctuary.

  Lit by torches that burned red, what appeared to be an altar carved from some black, iridescent metal and fashioned in the shape of a spider sat upon a raised dais. And on that altar lay a blonde, pale-skinned woman.

  Tilde.

  There was something wrong about the way the sorceress’s body lay, and Sabira approached cautiously, wondering if they were too late and Ned’s sister was already dead. She eschewed the main aisle, opting to walk along the church’s wall, beneath the overhanging balcony. Greddark again followed her lead, walking up the other side, his crossbow trained on Tilde while his eyes scanned the balcony above Sabira for movement. Xujil hesitated, then followed Sabira’s path as he, too, searched the balcony for any errant guards.

  As she neared, reaching the chancel, Sabira realized abruptly what was wrong with Tilde, and she felt a moment of horror mixed with profound pity.

  The sorceress had no legs.

  Oh, Tilde. I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner.

  Even as she thought it, Tilde reared up from the altar, its metal legs bucking with her movement.

  And then Sabira realized she hadn’t even begun to comprehend the true horror for the situation, because Tilde wasn’t on the altar, she was the altar. Where her hips and legs had been before, the metal spider’s body now grew, melding with her flesh as if she had burst from her mother’s womb thus made.

  Or her mother’s egg sac.

  The sorceress wore a halter of black silk. A golden chain hung about her neck, the half of Ned’s medallion twinkling in the light, framed now by the bones of a tiny winged mammal. And in her abdomen, where her navel should be, a sphere carved from a large, flawless Khyber shard pulsed with blue-black light.

  “Hello, Saba,” she said, smiling.

  Welcome, Daughter of Stone and Sentinel.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Mol, Rhaan 2, 998 YK

  Tarath Marad, Xen’drik.

  Before Sabira could react, torches flared to life throughout the chapel. She looked back to see the balcony full of spider-armored drow, all with crossbows trained on her and Greddark. More drow filled the rows of pews and stepped up from the shadows of the sacristy.

  “Xujil,” Tilde crooned, “my faithful servant. Come forth and receive your reward.”

  The guide, who Sabira realized belatedly was no longer behind her, materialized in front of the sorceress, or spider, or whatever she was now.

  “My lady,” he replied reverently, bowing low before her as Greddark spat out a string of virulent curses. Sabira understood the sentiment—she’d had her doubts about the drow, but he’d had rational, believable explanations for his actions at every turn and she’d had nothing to hang her suspicions on.

  Which in retrospect should have been her first clue. No one was that logical all the time, especially not an elf.

  Xujil turned to give Sabira a short, mocking bow as well.

  “For the record, Marshal, I don’t really like you that much either.”

  The drow’s sneering smile became a gaping, bloody hole as one of Tilde’s legs punched through the back of his skull and exited out his mouth in a spray of scarlet. The sorceress lifted the guide by his head, let him dangle there for a moment, and then tossed him to one side like trash.

  “Xujil,” she said chidingly. “No one turns their back on me. Not anymore. Not ever.”

  Sabira stared in stunned shock at the thing that had once been Ned’s sister. Tilde saw her expression and covered her mouth with one long-nailed hand, feigning shock.

  “Oh, dear. Was I not supposed to do that? I know She only takes their hands when She’s displeased, but I think even Her patience would have been tested by this one, don’t you?”

  “What happened to you?”

  Tilde’s smile widened, and Sabira saw fangs.

  “She happened to me. I am so much more now than I was, more than I could ever have hoped to be on my own. And this is nothing compared to what I will become, soon.”

  Sabira saw for the first time that Tilde’s eyes were no longer brown, like Ned’s. They were red, and hungry.

  “But at what cost?” she asked, letting her revulsion leak into her voice, wondering if there was anything of Tilde left inside that strange hybrid body. Anything of Ned.

  “Only my mortality. My humanity. Nothing I truly needed, and a small price to pay for what I’m getting in return.”

  “And what’s that? A few extra legs and bad teeth?”

  Tilde’s smile evaporated like tears in the desert.

  “I have always hated you and that smart mouth of yours. It will be a pleasure to sacrifice you and your little friend when the time comes.”

  “Ah. That’s the real price, isn’t it, Tilde? Bringing me here, with that little trick with the medallion? You knew I would come in his place.”

  The sorceress shrugged, her eight segmented legs moving in perfect synchrony with her slim human shoulders.

  “She wants you, Saba, and what She wants, She gets. And when She does, She’ll give me the power to take what has been so long denied me. And She’ll give me Idris.”

  Idris Ismorah, Tilde’s protégé at Arcanix who’d decided to try the Maze of Shadowy Terror without a proctor, before he was ready. And more than her protégé—it was widely rumored that he’d been her lover, and she was as good as admitting that now.

  The sorceress had been unable to save him from his own hubris, and he’d died in agony in her arms. Sabira had often thought the experience should have made Tilde more sympathetic to her when Ned had died, since she, too, had been helpless to save a man she loved from a horrible death. Instead, it had fueled Tilde’s hatred for her, as she became convinced that Sabira had not simply watched as her brother died, but that she’d actually chosen not to save him.

  As if Sabira wouldn’t have gladly traded her life for Ned’s in that moment, and in countless others that had passed since then.

  “And Ned, Saba,” Tilde said, her voice almost gentle. “She’ll give him back to me, as well. You like to boast that you would have given your life for him. Well, now’s your chance.”

  Sabira started at the sorceress’s words. They echoed her thoughts so closely, it was almost as if … of course. The medallion.

  Tilde was no telepath, but she could enchant items in her sleep. It would have been a small matter for her to place a spell on the medallion so that it would transmit the thoughts of whoever held it, and maybe even influence them. After all, there’d been no real reason for Elix to give the necklace to Sabira, especially knowing how much it meant to his father.

  “The nightmares, too, Saba,” Tilde said with her fanged smile. “Don’t forget those. Crafting them was so much fun. Almost as much fun as seeing you writhing helpless in their grasp.”

  With a curse to rival Greddark’s, Sabira snatched the golden half-disk out of her pocket and threw it to the ground. It skittered across the stone floor and came to rest against the base of the dais, where it lay there in the red firelight, twinkling at her accusingly.

  “Get out of my head, you sadistic bi—”

  The sound of a hundred crossbows being ratcheted back in unison echoed through the small chapel.

  “Now, now, Sabira. Your harsh language is upsetting the children.”

  “She can’t do it, you know.”

  They both turned to look at Greddark, who still had his crossbow trained on Tilde, waiting for Sabira to tell him when, or if, to pull the trigger.


  “The Spinner. Whoever—whatever—She is, She can’t bring them back. It’s been too long. And even if She could, what would they be? Ismorah was torn to shreds by the Maze and not even Leoned’s bones could have survived that magma pool. Is that what you want, a lover who is less even than a zombie and a brother who is nothing more than a wraith?” The dwarf had clearly done his inquisitive homework before he’d agreed to come with her to Xen’drik; Sabira was impressed. “And that’s leaving aside the most important question of all—what makes you think either of them wants to come back?”

  Tilde’s red eyes narrowed and she tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder, an incongruously human gesture from such an inhuman being.

  “Do be quiet. You’re boring me.” She gestured, and Greddark stiffened, his mouth slamming shut of its own accord, his eyes growing round and panicked as he realized he couldn’t move. Then she turned back to Sabira. “You really should have taught him not to interrupt while the adults are speaking.”

  “You’re avoiding the question, Tilde. What makes you think they’d want to come back … to you?” Tilde might have untold power now, but she was still the insecure daughter of a House that needed but didn’t want her. Sabira could use that against her. Would use it, and without mercy. She had no other choice. “You know the answer. They wouldn’t. They don’t want you. No one’s ever wanted you, only what you could do for them. Not Idris, not Breven, not even your precious Spinner. If She did—if She really thought you were worthy—then why did She have you go to so much effort to bring me here?”

  “Stop it, Saba.” Tilde’s voice was low and dangerous, and her eyes were wild. “I’m warning you.”

  “Or what? You said yourself She wanted me. She’s not going to let you harm me.”

  It was a mistake, and Sabira saw it in the sudden gleam in Tilde’s eye. It was her only warning before a dozen crossbow bolts buried themselves in her back, sending her to her knees on the stone floor, in too much pain to even scream.

  “Oh, no. She doesn’t care if I hurt you—in fact, she likes it better that way. Pain amuses Her. Just so long as I don’t kill you, I can do whatever I want. And there are so very many things I want to do to you, Sabira.”

  Sabira reached out one shaky hand, grabbing the pew beside her to keep from falling. She could barely breathe through the fire in her back, her belly, her lungs. Drawing on the strength of the urgrosh she still held, she managed to gasp out one bloody word. Despite Tilde’s claim to the contrary, she feared it might be her last.

  “Why …?”

  Tilde laughed, a cold, brittle sound with no true mirth in it. Because there could be no mirth where there was no joy.

  “And you know the answer to that, Sabira Lyet d’Deneith.” The sorceress spat her name out like rancid meat, and as the world darkened around the edges of her vision, she realized that she did.

  “… Breven.…”

  “Bravo. Perhaps you are as smart as Ned always said you were. In exchange for you, She will give me the power to bring the House that never wanted me begging to its knees.” She giggled then, a mad sound that curdled Sabira’s blood. “Just as you are now.”

  “… not … begging.…”

  “Oh, but you will be.”

  Another dozen crossbow bolts thunked into Sabira’s chest, tearing through her armor like a paper target and piercing her heart. A cry of anguish was ripped unwilling from her throat as she slammed back into a pew, then slumped to one side as the life drained from her in tiny crimson streams.

  Ned, she thought as oblivion reached up to swallow her whole. And my dear, beloved Elix. I’m so sorry. I failed you both.

  And then ice, and fire, as every nerve in her body screamed and she was brought rushing back from the edge of infinity by two drow soldiers pouring healing potions down her throat and over her myriad wounds. Sabira bit through her lip trying not to give voice to those screams, and then hot agony blossomed there as well as the drows’ magic sealed the jagged wound closed around her teeth.

  Sabira blinked tears and blackness away and saw Tilde watching her with an expression of false concern. Behind her, Greddark still stood immobilized and forgotten. But as Sabira struggled to focus through the fog of pain, she thought she saw his left eye twitch.

  “Leaving so soon? We’re not nearly finished here yet.”

  Yes, there it was again. His eye had definitely moved; he almost winked. Either Tilde’s spell was wearing off, or she wasn’t able to maintain it at the same strength while her attention was on Sabira.

  Which meant Sabira had to keep it there.

  “I suppose … practice makes perfect.”

  Tilde’s blonde brows shot up and she actually laughed.

  “You have spirit, I’ll give you that much. I’ll enjoy breaking it.”

  At Tilde’s command, the two drow stepped back, taking their places in the silent ranks. They hadn’t bothered to take Sabira’s urgrosh when they’d had the chance; they clearly didn’t see it—or her—as a threat.

  She was going to have to change that.

  She climbed unsteadily to her feet, using the blood-slicked pew for support.

  “Jealousy is so unbecoming in a lady, Donathilde. Good thing you aren’t one.”

  “Jealous? Of you?” Tilde scoffed. “Look around you, dear. I’m the one with the power here.”

  “Here, maybe. Not on the surface. Not in Karrnath. Not anywhere it really matters.”

  Tilde didn’t bother with the soldiers this time. She held out a hand and sent a bolt of pure, crackling energy lancing toward Sabira’s heart.

  Sabira threw herself to the side, tucking into a ball and coming up on her feet in the main aisle. The lightning passed so close to her that her left arm tingled as if asleep and the hair on that side of her head stood on end.

  Tilde swore and sent another bolt at Sabira, too quickly for her to dodge this time. It hit her square in the chest, lifting her off her feet and throwing her backward. She closed her fist around the shaft of her urgrosh as she bounced off a pew and landed facedown on the floor. She could feel her heart spasming in her chest. Bright dots of light filled her vision. Pain radiated down her arm and up her shoulder, into her back. Her heartbeat slowed as she lay there gasping weakly for every labored breath.

  She felt herself lifted again and bodily turned to face the dais. A hand grabbed her jaw and jerked it open, then poured a sour, burning liquid down her throat. As she coughed and sputtered, her heart resumed its normal rhythm and she shook her handlers off, raising her head to glare defiantly at Tilde.

  “That all you got?”

  A huge, unseen fist slammed her down into the floor like a hammer, and she distinctly heard a crack as the bone in her right leg twisted underneath her and broke. But even as it did, the healing potion still coursing through her system went to work, knitting the bone back together with a thousand fiery needles.

  Sabira groaned and struggled to her feet, using her shard axe first as leverage, then as a prop to keep her from falling again.

  “Gonna have to … do better.…”

  Tilde’s eyes blazed crimson.

  “Well, I know how much you love bats.”

  There was a rush of air behind her and Sabira whirled, almost losing her footing again as she brought up her shard axe just in time to block the reaching talons of an enormous bat as it swooped down on her from above.

  Teleportation might be chancy in Tarath Marad, but summoning, it seemed, was not.

  The bat, easily the size of a horse, clicked and roared in anger as it soared past, banking sharply to avoid the drow in the balcony.

  Hampered by the small confines of the chapel, the bat came at her again, but not as fast. Sabira set her feet firmly and waited.

  Surprise no longer on its side, the creature had to rely on brute force. Instead of diving down to strike quickly and dart away, Sabira could see it was bringing its full weight to bear, intending to crush her. She’d have one chance, and one only.
/>   As the giant bat plummeted toward her, Sabira reversed her grip on her urgrosh so that she held it spear-end up. The Siberys shard glowed orange in the red light of the torches. She waited until it was almost upon her, then ducked down, simultaneously thrusting the shard axe up into the air.

  Into the bat.

  Screaming in shrill rage, the bat, unable to check its flight, slammed down onto the dragonshard, impaling itself. Hot blood splashed over Sabira as the creature’s mass bore her down bodily to the stone floor.

  Sabira was trapped under the massive mammal, unable to move as the thing flapped and writhed in agony on top of her. She gasped desperately for air, but the creature’s furry body was pressed up against her face, smothering her. Her chest heaved uselessly, crushed beneath the bat’s inexorable weight.

  Once more, blackness impinged on her vision, beckoning seductively.

  And then the weight was gone, and cool air rushed into her bruised lungs once more, pain lancing into her side with every tortuous breath. She’d broken a couple of ribs this time, and the potion the drow had forced down her gullet had spent itself mending her leg. There’d be no instant healing this time, but she was fine with that. She was tiring of this game.

  She climbed to her feet once more, lurching to one side and almost falling before she found the strength to straighten. She used the movement to hide a glance at Greddark.

  The dwarf blinked twice. He was ready whenever she was.

  Sabira turned her attention back to the gloating sorceress. As she stared at Tilde, trying to regroup, she was mesmerized by the swirling Khyber shard in the woman’s abdomen, pulsing rhythmically, just like a heartbeat.

  “Just think, Sabira. This is only a taste of what’s in store for Breven when he gets his precious artifact. When I deliver it to him personally in his study in Sentinel Tower.”

  At her words, several things clicked into place at once.

  ir’Dayne, lecturing them back in Sharn: