Shadowdale

by Scott Ciencin

  “I’d like not to wait for my cut this time,” she said.

  Quicksal eased his blade from its sheath then slammed it back again, making a sharp scrape that caused the serving girl to smile. “I promise our benefactor won’t have to wait for hers.”

  “I’ll second that,” Cyric said, surprising himself with the sentiment.

  The serving girl winked at Marek. “You know where to find me this evening. We’ll celebrate.”

  She took the serving tray back from Cyric and went to a boiling pot of soup in the kitchen and ladled out another serving. Then she dropped the wet cloth and headed back to the taproom with the steaming soup.

  “Stay here,” Marek said, and followed the girl. Cyric parted the curtains and watched as Marek spoke to the woman. Cyric dropped the curtain when Quicksal tugged on his sleeve.

  “Time to go,” Quicksal said, and moments later they were once again crouched in the shadows of the alley behind the inn. The doorway opened and Marek ushered the woman into the alley. She looked around, disoriented and confused.

  “I don’t understand,” the old woman said. “You say my nephew has been beset in this alley, that he can’t be moved, and—”

  Understanding lit in her eyes as Quicksal pushed away from the shadows.

  “You’re not my auntie,” Quicksal said. “But we’ll take your money anyway.”

  The woman started to scream but Quicksal pushed her against a wall and put his hand over her mouth. He drew his knife and placed it against her throat. “Quiet now, Auntie. I wouldn’t want to have to kill you right away. Besides, this is Zhentil Keep. If your screams do draw someone here, they’ll only want a share of your money.”

  Marek grabbed the woman’s purse and rifled through it. Then he nodded with a pained expression.

  “Alas, this is not enough,” Marek said, and motioned for Cyric to move forward. Quicksal backed away from the woman, but kept his blade extended toward her as he did.

  “I have nothing else!” she cried. “Mercy!”

  “I would respect your request,” Marek said sadly, lowering his head. “But I cannot deny the young ones their pleasure.”

  Cyric drew his blade. Quicksal placed his hand on the boy’s chest and snickered. “You’ll never be able to kill her, Cyric. And then Marek will be stuck with you as an apprentice forever.” The blond thief moved toward the woman again. “You might as well let me kill her, Marek.”

  “Stand away!” Cyric said, and Quicksal turned to face him.

  There were tears in the woman’s eyes. “Help me,” she cried, her hands shaking.

  “Ah, such a dilemma,” Marek said. “Who shall spill this innocent blood?”

  Cyric turned sharply. “There is no innocence in this world!”

  Marek raised an eyebrow. “But what crime has this woman committed?”

  “She hurt the girl.”

  Marek shrugged. “So? I’ve hurt her many times myself. She didn’t seem to be complaining.” Marek laughed. “I think Quicksal should kill the woman. After all, Cyric, you have never showed me that you’re ready to be independent, and the Thieves’ Guild might not approve.”

  “You’re lying!” Cyric shouted. With each step Quicksal took toward the woman, Cyric saw his chance for independence slipping farther away.

  “A moment,” Marek said, raising his hand to Quicksal, then turning to Cyric. “Does she deserve to die, just so you can have your freedom?”

  “I know her. She is …” Cyric shook his head. “She is arrogance and vanity. Privilege and prejudice. Content to ignore the poor and the needy, ready to let us die before she would raise a hand to help. She is distant and cruel, except when her head is on the block. Then she cries for mercy, for forgiveness. I have seen her type before. She is all that I despise.”

  “And she has no redeeming qualities? She is not capable of love or kindness? There is no chance she might change her ways?” Marek said.

  “None at all,” Cyric said.

  “Quite an argument,” Marek said. “But I am not swayed. Quicksal, kill her.”

  The woman gasped and tried to run, but Quicksal was far too fast for her. She hadn’t taken two steps before the blond thief was upon her and her throat was slit. The woman collapsed into the alley. Quicksal smiled. “Perhaps next time, Cyric.”

  Cyric looked into Quicksal’s eyes and felt as if he had delved into twin pools of madness. “I deserve my freedom,” Cyric growled and drew his knife.

  “Then prove it to me,” Marek said. “Show me your worth and I will award you your independence. I will give you safe passage from the city if you want it, and I will make the Thieves’ Guild recognize you as a full member. Your life will be your own, to do with as you will.”

  Cyric shuddered. “Everything I’ve dreamed,” he said absently.

  “But only you can make the dream a reality,” Marek said. “Now be a good boy and kill Quicksal there.”

  Cyric looked back to Quicksal and saw that the blond thief was now holding a sword that he did not have only seconds earlier. However, instead of readying to attack, Cyric’s rival stood in a defensive posture and looked very frightened.

  “Put away your knife” Quicksal said in a voice that was not his own. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  Cyric held his ground. “Only too well. And don’t try to confuse me by disguising your voice. I know all your tricks.”

  Quicksal shook his head. “This isn’t real!” Cyric knew he should have recognized the voice Quicksal was using but he couldn’t concentrate on it. The blond thief took a step backward. “It’s an illusion, Cyric. I don’t know what you think you see in front of you, but it’s me, Kelemvor.”

  Cyric struggled to place the name or the voice, but it was difficult to think.

  “You’ve got to fight,” Quicksal said.

  “He’s right, Cyric,” Marek said softly. “You have to fight this.” But Marek’s voice was suddenly different, too. He sounded like a woman.

  Cyric didn’t move. “Something is wrong here, Marek. I don’t know what kind of games you’re playing with me, but I really don’t care. I expect you to hold to your word.” With that, Cyric lunged at Quicksal.

  Quicksal sidestepped Cyric’s first thrust, and surprised Cyric by retreating a few steps and assuming a defensive posture. This isn’t Quicksal’s style at all, Cyric thought.

  “Stop this at once,” Quicksal said, parrying Cyric’s next thrust. Cyric moved with the force of the parry and crashed his elbow into Quicksal’s face. At the same time, he tossed his blade from one hand to the other and grabbed Quicksal’s wrist. Then Cyric rammed the blond thief’s hand against the wall and forced him to drop his sword.

  “With your death, I gain a life,” Cyric cried and raised his knife to kill the blond thief.

  “No, Cyric, you’re killing a friend!” Marek screamed, and Cyric recognized the voice as Midnight’s just before his dagger struck his opponent’s shoulder. His victim wasn’t Quicksal: it was Kelemvor.

  As best he could, Cyric pulled back on his knife thrust. But it was too late. The dagger sunk into Kelemvor’s shoulder.

  Kelemvor pushed him away, and Cyric crashed to the floor, his dagger still stuck in his victim’s shoulder. The fighter picked up his sword and started toward the thief. “Forgive me,” Cyric whispered as the warrior raised his sword to strike.

  “Kel, don’t!” Midnight shouted. “He can see it’s us!”

  The fighter stood still, then dropped his sword. Cyric backed away and saw Midnight standing where Marek had stood only a second earlier. Then Kelemvor was beside her, blood leaking from his wounded shoulder. The fighter’s face had gone white.

  The alley started to fade and disappear, but the body of the woman Quicksal had killed, the woman Cyric would have murdered if he’d been given the chance, still lay face down in the dirt. A pool of blood was still spreading out from beneath her. Cyric stared at the woman until she, too, faded from sight.

  “What does he see?” Kelemvor wh
ispered. “There’s nothing there.” Midnight shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Kel. I thought you were someone else,” Cyric said as he approached the fighter.

  Kelemvor plucked the dagger from his shoulder, flinching at the incredible pain. He dropped the weapon at Cyric’s feet as Midnight helped him bind up his wounded shoulder.

  “We have to find Adon,” Kelemvor said. “He’s the only one left.”

  “I can guess what his temptation is,” Midnight said as she finished binding Kelemvor’s wound and the heroes raced for the stairs.

  * * * * *

  Adon had turned away from the bars that separated him from Midnight and walked a short way down the hall, just to see if there was some easy way for him to rejoin the mage on the other side of the barrier. Now he found himself staring up at an incredibly beautiful, star-filled sky.

  And such a strange array of stars, too, Adon noted as he looked up at the night sky. They all appear to be moving.

  Indeed the stars were in motion, rocketing across the sky at such speeds that many were only blurs of light. Adon closed his eyes, but the stars remained, playing their games even behind his closed lids.

  Adon gazed at the stars for a long time. When next he looked around, he found himself laid out on a delicate bed of roses, and the fragrance that flooded his senses was sweet and gentle, although it caused his heart to beat faster and his head to grow numb. The pedals brushed against his fingers so lightly that he could not help but smile at the delicacy. Then it occurred to Adon. The stars weren’t moving at all; he was.

  He opened his eyes and gazed over the edge of his bed of flowers only to find a dozen of the most beautiful beings he had ever seen. Their hair seemed to have been set aflame, and their bodies were specimens of utter physical perfection. Adon’s magnificent bed rested upon their willing shoulders.

  The presence of these beings reassured Adon so much that he didn’t even flinch when a wall of flames sprang up around him. His vision blurred a bit, and all he surveyed seemed to take on an amber cast, but there was no heat as the flames leaped from the red to white roses, changing them to black orchids, and finally jumped to the cleric’s flesh. There was no pain, not even mild discomfort, when the fires engulfed him. There was nothing but the bright glow of love and well-being that coursed through his soul as he came to the final understanding of his own death, that must have happened long before this moment.

  Strain as he might, he could remember none of what happened after he was separated from Midnight in the corridors below Castle Kilgrave. He woke upon his funeral pyre, being carried to what could only be his eternal reward.

  But how did I die? Adon wondered, and the shifting, beautiful voices of his bearers filled the crackling air around him.

  “One never remembers,” they said. “The moment of pain is suffered by another, to spare you.”

  Another?

  “Others such as we have become. Our purpose is to alleviate suffering. We live your death that you might be reborn into the Kingdom of Sune.”

  Shining crystal spires cut through the night, and Adon focused his attention on the temple before him. As it stretched across the horizon, the temple’s walls were graced with stunningly beautiful crystalline designs, though no uniform pattern made the infinite palace boring or repetitious. It was as if each of Sune’s followers who found rest in this place had contributed their own concepts of the boundaries and appearances that eternity should reveal. An amalgam of expectations resulted, yet some guiding hand had taken all the disparate images and incorporated them into an ordered whole, disappointing no one and creating a place of beauty that defied Adon’s wildest dreams to surpass.

  The entrance alone was larger than any temple Adon had seen before, and what lay beyond was a world unto itself. His bearers brought him through lands where a countless number of worshipers bathed and frolicked in pools that had been formed from their own tears of joy, and the rocks they lay upon as they luxuriated in the warmth of Sune’s love for them had once been the stones of disbelief that weighted down their souls and made union with the goddess impossible. Relieved of the terrible burdens of life, they could now devote themselves totally to the preservation of order, beauty, and love by worshiping Sune.

  Adon and his bearers passed through many such lands, each new vista overwhelming Adon more than the last, and Adon was surprised at his capacity to take in more and more of these spellbinding raptures until at last his bearers vanished and he found himself standing before a wrought iron gateway that shimmered and became a shower of sparkling water. He passed through it.

  What lay beyond was a very small chamber in comparison to the wonders Adon had witnessed just moments before. There were no walls to this room, though, and all around it vast and intense flames leaped to the sky. Soft, billowing curtains protected the cleric’s eyes from the roaring flames and set the boundaries of the room that lay in the heart of beauty’s eternal fires.

  “A drink?”

  Adon turned and the Goddess of Beauty herself, Sune Firehair, stood before him. Glasses filled with a rich, crimson nectar waited in each of her glowing hands. As Adon took one of the glasses, he saw that his flesh started to blaze with the same amber light as Sune’s flesh.

  “Goddess,” Adon said, and fell to his knees before her, spilling not a drop of the drink in his hand.

  Sune laughed and brought him to his feet with one of her powerful hands. Adon felt his breath freeze in his lungs as she touched him, a power undreamed of flooding through his limbs as he stood before her.

  Breath. I’m still alive, Adon thought, rejoicing at the knowledge.

  Sune seemed to read his thoughts. “You have not died, foolish boy. Not yet. I have brought you here for the most basic of reasons: I am in love with you. You, above all my worshipers, are all that I desire.”

  Adon was speechless, and so he brought the chalice to his lips and felt the sweet nectar run its course through his body. “Goddess, surely I am not worthy—”

  Sune smiled and disrobed before him, shedding a fiery silk robe and allowing it to fall to the floor and vanish. Adon looked down and saw rolling clouds beneath his feet.

  “I am beauty,” Sune said. “Touch me.”

  Adon walked forward, as if in a dream.

  “Truth is beauty, beauty truth. Embrace me and the answers to all your unspoken questions will be made clear.”

  From somewhere Adon heard a voice cry out in warning, but he ignored it. Nothing could be more important than this moment. He took the goddess in his arms and brought his lips to hers.

  The kiss seemed endless. But even before Adon opened his eyes, he felt Sune changing. Her gentle lips had become fierce, demanding. An endless series of sharpened pincers seemed to move from her elongating jaws, seeking to rend the flesh of the cleric’s face. Her fingers had transformed into vicious snakes that latched onto his flesh as they threatened to tear him apart.

  “Sune!” Adon cried.

  The creature laughed as the snaking tendrils of its fingers wrapped themselves around Adon’s throat. “You are not worthy of the goddess,” it said. “You have sinned against her and you must be punished!”

  Across the open, central courtyard of Castle Kilgrave, Midnight, Kelemvor, and Cyric stared as the cleric fell to his knees in absolute terror, driven to this position by something that only he could see.

  “Goddess forgive me!” Adon cried. “I will do anything to win your forgiveness. Anything!”

  “We have to get to him quickly,” Midnight said.

  “You will do nothing!” a thunderous voice rang out, its echoes filling the courtyard. “You will do nothing but die by the hand of Bane!”

  Suddenly the trio was bombarded by illusions. In the span of a dozen heartbeats, Kelemvor was sent into the dream world of his childhood books: he lived an epic love story wherein he was a foreign prince sent to marry a lovely but heartless princess, and he forsook his very kingdom to run off with a peasant girl. Midnight saw herself as a po
werful queen, saving her kingdom from poverty and want. At the same time, images of a free and unfettered life passed before Cyric’s eyes, along with offers of gold and priceless artifacts. But the images of heroism and power and freedom held no sway over them. As one, the heroes charged to the center of the courtyard.

  The challenges occurred more rapidly as the heroes moved on: Sunlar appeared before Midnight, daring her to a magical duel. Her entire class lined up behind the teacher, anxious to try their skills against her. Cyric faced the ice creature that stood guardian over the Ring of Winter. He watched helplessly as the monster reached out for him. Kelemvor faced the executioners who took the life of his grandfather, but now they had come for him. He looked down to find that he was now old and tired. His attempts to find a cure for his condition and salvation for his withered soul had been a failure.

  But still the heroes pressed forward to the center of the courtyard and Adon’s side.

  Still on his knees, Adon stared as paradise tore itself apart and was reordered. The demon creature that had pretended to be the goddess had left him, but Sune’s kingdom had changed. The death and punishment of its charges was now the mainstay of its existence, as robed figures enslaved and tormented Sune’s faithful.

  “This is a lie!” Midnight screamed as she got close to Adon.

  The cleric turned, wide-eyed, and saw someone who looked just like Midnight standing beside him—but she wore the robes of the Sunites’ tormentors.

  “But … it was so beautiful!” Adon said, angry at Midnight’s words.

  “Look about you,” Midnight said. “This is reality!”

  Adon looked and saw the goddess Sune chained to a huge slab. The robed figures were lowering the slab into a river that ran scarlet with the blood of Sune’s followers.

  And each of the robed figures wore a pendant, exactly like Midnight’s.

  “The pendant!” Sune shouted. “It is the source of their power! Take it and I will be free!”

  Midnight grabbed Adon by the shoulders. “Damn it, listen to me!”

  “No!” Adon screamed, and before Kelemvor or Cyric could react, the cleric lunged at Midnight with a ferocity she had not expected. Adon’s hand closed over Midnight’s dagger, and he pulled it away from her. Feet together, Midnight kicked the cleric in the midsection, sending him flying backward, the dagger still clutched in his hand. There was a sharp crack as Adon’s head struck the ground. Then the cleric lay in a heap, stunned by the blow.