by Paul S. Kemp
Cale’s mind turned to the half-drow. Who was he? If he was not one of Riven’s, then for whom did he work? An uneasy feeling took root in his gut. His instincts told him to heed it. He resolved to hear Riven out, tell him to bugger off, and get the Hells out of the Stag as quickly as possible.
Riven eyed Cale over the rim of his tankard. Cale stared back. The silence stretched.
Riven lost patience first. “Well? I don’t have time for more cryptic nonsense. What have you got? Your note was as clear as fog.”
Cale’s breath caught.
“My note?” he said. “You sent me a note.”
They stared at each other for only a heartbeat.
“Dark!” Cale breathed.
“Damn!”
Both jumped to their feet, toppling their chairs in the process, and looked for the nearest exit. There! A large, open window.
Riven was off like a bowshot, dancing nimbly between the patrons. Cale, trailing a step or two behind and much larger than the assassin, had to shove his way through. He had no idea what was coming, but he knew it would be bad.
“Get out! he shouted to the patrons as he ran. “Everybody out now!”
Eyes looked his way, questioning glances and furrowed brows, but no one paid his words any heed.
Riven hopped atop a table, scattering plates and startling the two mercenaries seated there. He dived through the window as the sellswords jumped to their feet and went for their steel. Before they could draw fully, Cale shouldered one to the ground and drove the other back with a punch in the chest.
“Get out!” he shouted at them.
He jumped atop the table and grabbed the window jambs. From out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tiny orange sphere streak through an open window on the wall kitty corner. He knew it for what it was.
He cursed and launched himself through the window as the pea-sized ball slammed into one of the Stag’s crossbeams. It exploded into a hell of fire and heat. Screams erupted, but only for an instant before being cut off by the dull roar of the explosion. The pressure of the blast and the superheated air blew Cale through the window and sent him flying. He hit the ground with a grunt a full dagger toss away from the Stag, in the middle of the street.
It took him a moment to recover his wits. When he did, he rolled over onto his back and stared up into the night sky, breathing heavily. His pants below his knees smoldered and the fire had scorched his boots, but otherwise he was largely unburned. He patted at his trousers dazedly and slowly rose to his knees. His eyes went to the Stag.
Fire engulfed the first floor, and thick black smoke gushed from the windows of the second. The street was alight in orange. Waves of heat blew from the blaze, so intense they stung Cale’s face. The Stag had gone up like kindling—wood walls, wood tables, wood chips … and human flesh.
Cale had expected to see a flood of flaming people, screaming in agony and streaming from the doors and windows. He would have healed those whom he could have, but no one came out. The smoke and fire had done its work almost instantly. The only sound was the hungry crackling of the flames. The Stag had been reduced to an inferno in a matter of moments. So too the people inside. Dozens of them. A few charred corpses that the explosion had blown clear of the building lay smoldering in the street. He didn’t see Riven.
The second floor of the Stag began to give way. Timbers cracked, the sound like bones snapping. Great showers of sparks rose into the night as the building shifted.
Without warning, another orange sphere streaked from somewhere to his left, flew into the Stag, and exploded with a roar. Flames blew from every window in long streamers, as though the building was spitting fire. The upper floor, already weakened, collapsed with a crash into the first. Flames and sparks roared into the sky like a swarm of fireflies.
Cale traced the path of the second fireball back to two men standing in the shadows of an alley a block and a half up the street. In one of the men Cale recognized the slim build and finery of the half-drow who had bumped him on his way into the Stag, the half-drow who had known his name. The other, a tall, dark man with his brown hair cropped close to his scalp, wore a dark cloak. Oddly, the darkness of the alley seemed to cling to him. Streams of shadow swirled around him like smoke swirled around the burning Stag. Cale figured him to be the mage responsible for the fireballs. Neither of the two appeared to have spotted Cale. He had been blown too far from the building.
Moving quickly but keeping low, Cale crawled the rest of the way across the street and sunk into the darkness near a closed chandler’s shop. He drew his long sword and started to move in the direction of the half-drow and mage.
They had lured him and Riven there with forged notes to assassinate them. That they had used a spell in a public place and not steel in an alley suggested that they were not professionals. But why? Cale had never seen them before.
Riven then. What had the one-eyed assassin drawn him into?
To find out, he decided he would kill the wizard quickly, then question the half-drow. He would find out later if Riven had survived the inferno.
Before he had cleared the chandler’s shop, a hand reached from the darkness of the doorjamb, closed on his shoulder, and pulled him close—Riven
Out of instinct, Cale grabbed a handful of Riven’s shirt and thumped him hard against the shop’s door. Riven’s sabers pressed into Cale’s chest. Cale’s long sword found Riven’s jawline. They exchanged glares for a few heartbeats while the Stag burned behind them.
From behind the door, a man’s voice sounded, tentatively, “Go away. I want no trouble here.”
“Stay inside and you’ll have none,” Cale hissed.
The chandler said nothing more. Cale stared into Riven’s face. The assassin had discarded his scarlet cloak and had a hard look in his eye.
“What in the Nine Hells are you into, Cale?”
Despite his desire to open Riven’s throat, Cale heard the sincerity in the assassin’s voice. He calmed himself and lowered his blade.
“I’m not into anything, Riven. You’re not either, it seems.” He released his grip on Riven’s shirt, turned his back to the assassin, and pointed down the block to the half-drow and his comrade. “There.”
Riven stared for a time, straining to see them in the light cast by the fire.
“The short one is that half-elf prig who bumped you,” said Riven.
Cale nodded. “And the other is the wizard who torched the Stag—who tried to torch us.” He turned to face Riven. “I’ve never seen either of them prior to tonight. You?”
Riven shook his head, but didn’t look sure.
Cale went on, “This was a hit. On you, on me, maybe both of us. The half-drow walked out as I walked in, probably to signal the wizard that we were inside.” Cale indicated the burning Stag. “Then that.”
Riven shook his head and spat. “Friggin’ amateurs. Steel, speed, and stealth for a hit. Never spells. And sure as Hells never fire. How can you confirm a kill with a burned body?”
Cale made no comment. He knew well the assassin’s code, but he also knew well the efficacy of spells for either combat or assassination. Since Riven had not learned that lesson, perhaps he wore the symbol of Mask but could not cast spells. Somehow, that thought gave Cale comfort.
Riven started to head up the street.
“Let’s go,” the assassin said. “I’ll take the wizard. Alive, if possible. If not. …”
“Then not,” Cale said. “I’ve got the half-drow. We’ll take him alive.”
Using the shadows and keeping low, both moved forward. As they did, Cale spared a glance behind them.
Spectators had already begun to gather around the burning inn. Passing carts and pedestrians stopped to stare. A few shopkeepers along the street had emerged from the rooms above their shops to watch the blaze from second story balconies. Soon the Scepters and dutypriests would arrive to contain the blaze. That would leave Cale and Riven only a little time to put down the wizard and capture the half-drow
before the street would be too crowded.
For the moment, the half-drow and wizard seemed content to observe their work from the shadows of the alley. Cale figured they were watching to see if either he or Riven had survived the blast. They would know that soon enough.
“Wizard’s got a spell on him,” Cale said softly. “See the way the shadows swirl around him?”
“I see it.” Riven reached behind his back and pulled out a pair of throwing daggers. “I recognize him too, now that I see him more closely. Vraggen’s his name—a shadow adept in the Network. I heard he was dead.”
A shadow adept. Cale had heard of such mages. They seemed more common since the return of the city of Shade.
“Why would the Network want to hit us?” Cale asked.
“They wouldn’t. Vraggen’s a Cyricist.”
Cale nodded. The Banites were driving the Cyricists out of the Zhentarim. Vraggen must have gone rogue, though that still didn’t explain why he had targeted Riven and Cale.
“Payback for Gauston?” asked Cale.
Perhaps Cyric had sent his followers to put down Riven and Cale in the same way that Mask had used Riven and Cale to put down a Cyricist priest several months before.
Riven shrugged and said, “Maybe.” He stared up the street. “No way to get all the way up before they see us. We open with missiles, then finish it in close.”
“Good.”
Cale had a pair of throwing daggers, but also had a spell he thought would work better. He pulled forth his holy symbol.
Moving more slowly, and using as cover building eaves, barrels, posts, and the flickering shadows cast by the fire, they continued to close. Gawkers jogged past them, shouting and pointing. No one spotted them. They kept their eyes on their targets.
When they got to within a long toss of Riven’s daggers, Cale signaled a halt. Any closer and they’d risk being seen. Both scooted in behind some water barrels. Cale’s keen ears caught the tail end of a heated exchange between the half-drow and Vraggen.
“… was reckless!” said the wizard. “I told you not to underestimate those two.”
The half-drow waved a green-gloved hand dismissively and said, “I wanted to see his face and hear his voice. He suspected nothing. Nor did Riven.”
“It was foolish and unnecessary.”
The half-drow chuckled—a menacing sound with no mirth in it—and pointed a finger at the wizard’s chest.
“I’ll not argue with this, Vraggen. If you want to have a discussion with me, you come and look me in the eyes yourself.”
Cale didn’t know what that last meant, but he had confirmation that both he and Riven had been the target of the fireball.
“One may have escaped,” continued Vraggen.
“Perhaps,” acknowledged the half-drow with an enigmatic smile. “Watch, and we’ll soon know.”
That ended their discussion. They turned and watched the street near the Stag. Firelight lit their faces. Cale saw that the wizard wore a brass cloak pin in the shape of a jawless skull within a sunburst—the symbol of Cyric.
“See the pin?” Cale asked softly.
Riven spat. He saw it.
“Ready?” the assassin whispered.
“Ready.”
Cale began his prayer to Mask. Riven stood to throw. The moment he rose, the half-drow looked directly at them and grinned. His expression showed no surprise. He had known the whole time, Cale realized.
Riven didn’t notice, or didn’t care. He threw anyway, one dagger, another, then leaped over the barrels and charged for the wizard.
Riven’s first dagger pierced the wizard’s throat, his second the wizard’s chest, but both passed through him as though he was a ghost. The blades stuck in the wall of the building behind, quivering from the force of the throws. The wizard, or the image of the wizard, stared contemptuously at the onrushing assassin and began to cast.
In the midst of his prayer, Cale felt an itch behind his eyes, a splinter in his mind. He blinked and shook his head.
What the—?
A voice sounded in his brain. He recognized it immediately as that of the half-drow.
This is bigger than you, Cale. I’d stay incidental if I were you.
He saw the half-drow watching him, a feral grin on his face, a blade in his hand.
Cale gritted his teeth. Despite the uncomfortable feeling occasioned by the half-drow’s presence in his head, he maintained his concentration and completed his spell. He mentally selected a location just behind the half-drow. There, a glowing long sword of magical force took shape and hovered in the air, poised to strike. At Cale’s mental command, the blade slashed crosswise at the unsuspecting half-drow as though wielded by an invisible warrior. The blade sheared through the half-drow’s silken pants, cut deep into his thigh, and erased his self-satisfied grin. Blood peppered the alley.
Uttering a surprised gasp of pain, the half-drow clutched at his slashed thigh and staggered. The magical blade continued to attack without Cale’s further mental command, following up with another slash. Despite his wound, the half-drow whirled and managed to avoid a second blow. It took him only an instant to recover himself and parry the magical blade’s next slash. The voice in Cale’s head burned with genuine vitriol, though the subject matter was absurd.
These were new pants, Cale! For that, I’ll tear off your head and eat it raw.
Cale put the threat out of his mind, stuffed his holy symbol into his vest, and ran for the half-drow. Between his own bladework and the summoned sword, he figured to make short work of the white-haired swordsman.
The mage, paying no heed to either the wounded half-drow or the darting blade of force, completed his spell well before Riven could reach him.
He waved his hand and a field of dark energy formed around the assassin, crackling. It stopped his charge cold, and …
Cale could scarcely believe his eyes. He faltered in his own charge. Riven’s shadow, cast on the road before him by the light of the fire behind, rose up from the ground and tackled the assassin. Too late Riven whirled to avoid its grasp. Man and shadow went down in a heap, a tangle of limbs, blades, and swirling darkness. Though prone and scrambling, Riven lashed out with his sabers and tried to regain his feet, but the animated shadow, a featureless black copy of the assassin, anticipated every move and blanketed him like a dark cloud.
Cale shook off his surprise and ran forward to help, but before he could close, the shadow expanded and engulfed the assassin in an ocean of pitch. From within the darkness, Cale heard Riven shout faintly, as though from a great distance, but he could not make out the words. The darkness imploded. A soft pop sounded, and the road was bare. Riven was gone.
“Dark,” Cale murmured.
He couldn’t help it. He had never seen a spell like that before. Never even heard of one.
The wizard began to cast anew.
With Riven gone and the wizard free to cast, Cale changed plans. The wizard—or the image of the wizard, he thought, recalling the half-drow’s words and the ineffectiveness of Riven’s daggers—seemed immune to weapons, perhaps even to Cale’s enchanted blade. And the half-drow, though engaged in a vicious, whirling duel with Cale’s magically summoned sword, was clearly more than he seemed. Gods knew what else he could do in addition to telepathy.
Cale knew he had to get out of there.
With a mental command, he switched the target of his summoned blade from the half-drow to the wizard, hoping against hope that it might somehow affect the image and disrupt the mage’s spellcasting. Cale turned and darted to his right, heading for the nearest alley.
The half-drow responded instantly. Free from attack by Cale’s summoned sword, he limped after as quickly as his wounded thigh allowed. The wizard ignored the attacking sword. To Cale’s frustration, even the blade of force passed harmlessly through the image of the mage, just as had Riven’s daggers.
The alley was three strides away.
Before Cale reached it, the wizard completed another s
pell. A narrow beam of black energy streaked from the mage’s extended finger and caught Cale in the ribs.
He felt as though he had been dumped into ice water. His breath left him, his body went cold, and he stumbled. His senses went dull. Several spells he had prepared vanished from his consciousness. Only adrenaline allowed him to keep his feet and remain moving.
From behind, he could hear the half-drow limping toward him, maybe ten or so paces away. Cale glanced back to see the half-drow gaining speed with every step, as though the wound bothered him less and less. Cale groaned and staggered for the darkness of the alley.
Running? The half-drow’s mental voice mocked. Are you frightened now, little man?
The alley stank of urine. Barrels and trash lay scattered in his way. Breathing heavily, Cale stumbled down the narrow alley a few steps, nearly fell, and caught himself against the right hand wall. Far enough, he deemed. Before the half-drow reached the alley, he fumbled out his holy symbol and whispered a prayer to Mask.
Magical darkness took shape around him, filling the alley almost to its mouth. To Cale, objects within the darkness looked gray and colorless, but otherwise appeared as they would in twilight. To everyone else, within or without the spell’s area, the darkness was impenetrable. The half-drow would be blind if he entered the globe.
Cale leaned against the wall and tried to quiet his breathing and recover his strength. He wiped his hands on his pants to get rid of the sweat and awaited the half-drow. He didn’t have to wait long.
Limping only slightly, the half-drow came into view. His leg had ceased bleeding. He stopped at the edge of Cale’s magical darkness, frowning thoughtfully. He peered within the globe. Cale was again struck by the mismatched eyes and the precision with which he moved. Cale had heard drow were enemies to be respected, and he believed it.
I’ve got my own darkness to visit on you, Cale. The half-drow looked back in the direction of the wizard. But not now.
Cale quietly withdrew a throwing dagger and considered whether or not to throw. No. If he did, they would know he had not fled. He sheathed the blade.
The half-drow stared at Cale, as though he could see through the darkness. Who in the Hells was this man?
