Skein of Shadows (dungeons and dragons)

by Marsheila Rockwell

  There was no line outside the mayor’s house and she pushed the door open, not bothering to knock. She was beyond niceties at this point.

  She walked through the foyer and into the sitting room. Brannan sat in a high-backed seat, sipping from a glass and talking to someone in a chair across from him. He stopped mid-sentence when he saw her, nearly dropping his drink.

  “Sabira!” he exclaimed, standing quickly. The man in the other chair followed suit. As he rose and turned, she could finally see who it was.

  Elix.

  The dark-haired Marshal rushed across the room and gathered her into a tight embrace. For a too-brief moment, the horrors of the past weeks drained away like ice in the new spring sun. Then he sighed and stepped back from her, searching her face.

  “Tilde?” he asked.

  She could only shake her head sorrowfully.

  “What happened?”

  She related the story of Tilde’s last moments as succinctly as possible, leaving out the awful things she and the sorceress had said to each other at the end. As she talked about the aftermath of the explosion and the attack of the spider-lizards, Greddark interrupted her.

  “Those weren’t spiders. They were dragonspawn. Gloomwebs, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Sabira looked at him.

  “ Dragonspawn?” She thought back to the sand dragon that had attacked them outside of Zawabi’s Refuge. Of all the wagons in the caravan, it had just missed theirs.

  A dragon-and then dragonspawn-attacking out of nowhere, bent on stopping a mission triggered by the Draconic Prophecy. Sabira couldn’t deny the truth of it any longer. The Prophecy was real. And she was a part of it, however unwilling.

  Had been. Hopefully it was over, now that Tilde was dead.

  Greddark gave her a rueful smile.

  “So which Conqueror piece did you want to be? I’m thinking paladin.”

  “Queen,” Elix said decisively, touching her cheek. She reached up to press his palm even closer, drawing strength from the simple gesture.

  Greddark chuckled, then moaned, grabbing his arm.

  Brannan bustled over to him.

  “There are healing potions in the back. Let me get them.”

  Greddark arched a brow at her and she gave a barely perceptible nod. She wasn’t sure what role the Wayfinder was really playing in all this, but she didn’t trust him. If he was leaving her sight, she wanted someone else’s eyes on him.

  “I’ll come too,” the dwarf said. Brannan shrugged and led him out of the room.

  After they had left, Elix removed his hand, went over to a small, flask-laden table, and poured her a drink. As he brought the glass over to her, she detected the distinctive tang of ironspice.

  “Frostmantle Fire,” he replied to her unspoken question. “I brought it with me.”

  Which reminded her.

  “What are you doing here? Did Breven get impatient waiting on his prize?”

  Elix shook his head.

  “You first. You said Tilde’s death stopped the Prophecies-plural. What did you mean?”

  She took a quick sip before answering, feeling the warmth of the potent liquor flowing through her, bolstering her. It was a poor substitute for Elix’s embrace, but it would do for now.

  “There were three different bits of Prophecy in play, not just the one Breven told us about,” she said, then recited them all for his benefit. “Greddark figured out that the first one had been mistranslated-it wasn’t referring to all three moons being dark, just Rhaan. When that moon was dark and an unmarked member of House Kundarak-the dreaming Warder-arrived with the ‘Daughter of Stone and Sentinel’ on the day of Onatar’s Rest, then the eight locks could be opened.”

  “You and Greddark? And Onatar’s Rest-that’s today, right?”

  She nodded.

  “So were the locks opened, then?” he asked, looking confused. She didn’t blame him. She wasn’t completely sure she had it all right herself. Even if she had to believe the Prophecy was real, the interpretations were still all too suspect. “And if so, what was behind them?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied. “I think Tilde was the Heart in the second Prophecy. She was certainly intending to bathe this world in tyranny, anyway, and by the looks of it, she’d already done a pretty good job of it down there. And that ties into the third Prophecy, too, the one about her people being doomed from her birth-I think that means her transformation into… whatever she was-and the world being ‘her killing field.’ But I kept her from ‘breaking free’-to the surface, I guess. Which she would have done if she’d been able to sacrifice me to the Spinner, like she’d planned. And since she didn’t break free-or sacrifice me, thankfully-then the locks stay closed and the She stays put.”

  She paused.

  “I think.”

  A sudden widening of Elix’s hazel eyes was all the warning she had.

  She spun, the blade in Brannan’s hand skimming along her battered armor instead of plunging through it and into her back. His eyes blazed red.

  “But you did free her, you smug little fool-when you killed her. And now all that remains to secure my Queen’s release and regain Her favor is your death!”

  He lunged at her again and she sidestepped, pulling her urgrosh from its harness as she did. He recovered and came at her again. She swung at him, going for his skull. He moved at the last second, and the axe-blade of her urgrosh caught his Khyber shard-studded ear, sheering it cleanly from his head and taking off most of the left side of his face with it, exposing glistening muscle and bone.

  As the chunk of bloody flesh fell to the floor with a wet plop, the black Khyber shard still twinkling in its midst, Brannan stepped back with a growl and his humanity fell away, revealing the feline features of a tiger standing on two feet, dagger held in a clawed hand whose palm faced outward instead of in.

  Brannan ir’Kethras was a rakshasa, an ancient servitor of the demons bound below Khyber long ago by the dragons of Prophecy.

  “Not Brannan. Shakvar,” the fiend snarled, lunging again.

  Sabira twisted out of the way, forgoing a riposte as she moved into position on one side of the rakshasa, allowing Elix to step up on the other, broadsword in his hand.

  Shakvar laughed, and suddenly Elix stiffened, a look of grief and terror on his handsome face.

  “The richest wine cannot compare to the taste of a mortal’s fear,” the rakshasa purred, his feline mouth splitting into an evil grin made even more demonic by the ruined half of his face. “And the best part is, when he recovers from the illusion of watching you die, he’ll get to experience the real thing.”

  Sabira stabbed at him with the spear end of her urgrosh, hoping the dragonshard would have the same effect on the fiend as it had had on Tilde. His backward hand closed around the sharpened crystal and pulled her close as he stabbed out at her with the dagger in his other claw. As he did, she noticed the color of the fur on his wrist didn’t quite match that on his hand and she suddenly knew why he’d been so interested in the gnoll’s paw back at Zawabi’s Refuge. Then his blade caught her in the shoulder and bit deep. Shakvar twisted it back and forth, laughing.

  His laughter was cut short as a thrum sounded behind him and the head of a crossbow bolt protruded suddenly from the arm that held the shard axe. He dropped his hold and yanked the dagger from Sabira’s shoulder, turning. As she stumbled backward, she saw Greddark leaning against the door jamb, crossbow hanging down from his good hand and blood seeping from a knife wound in his chest. He took a step forward, trying to raise the crossbow again, but it slipped from his weakened grasp to clatter across the floor. Then Greddark followed, falling to his knees and then forward onto his face, his hand outstretched, reaching for Sabira. Then he shuddered once and lay still.

  Shakvar snorted and tore the quarrel from his arm, tossing it aside. He turned back to face her and Sabira could only watch in horror as the wound sealed, striped fur closing over it as if it had never been. A quick glance at his face showed
that even the wound from her own enchanted urgrosh was beginning to heal over, though much more slowly.

  Shakvar saw the look on her face and sneered.

  “Your petty weapons can’t hurt me,” he crowed. “You might as well-”

  The rakshasa’s gloating cut off abruptly as Elix appeared, Greddark’s blow having disrupted the fiend’s illusions long enough for the dark-haired Marshal to break free of them. He lunged forward and suddenly there were three rakshasas facing him, all laughing scornfully.

  Elix didn’t waver, thrusting the length of his cold steel into the Shakvar in the center, the one who’d first taken the dwarf’s quarrel in his shoulder, though none of the three showed any trace of that wound now.

  It was a mistake. Though Sabira would have made the same choice, from where she stood, she could see what Elix couldn’t-dust motes dancing in the wan light of the everbright lanterns, disturbed by the movement of the rakshasa on the right and not by the other two.

  Not by Elix’s target.

  She didn’t stop to think. As Elix’s blade slid ineffectually through nothing, Sabira darted forward, not even having enough time to raise her urgrosh in defense, intent only on coming between him and the claws heading for his unprotected throat.

  Shakvar’s razorlike talons caught her in the same shoulder he’d skewered, gouging out chunks of flesh as she tried belatedly to bring her shard axe up to block.

  Sabira cried out in agony, and in relief. She knew that the blow that had all but left her arm useless would have torn Elix’s head from his body, and that realization nearly buckled her knees beneath her.

  She’d almost lost him, like Ned and Orin and all the others. Almost had her worst nightmare made real, and all without telling him how she really felt.

  As a regret deeper than grief and more painful than any physical torment she’d ever experienced coursed through her, she cried out again, this time in fear. Fear that she’d never get to tell him what he most needed to know. What she most needed to say-out loud-to him, to herself, and to the world.

  “Elix! Ye-”

  She was interrupted by a bark of laughter.

  “Oh, now that is delicious,” Shakvar crooned, his feline grin marred by the exposed jawbone, which even now was regaining flesh, muscle, and fur. “Your fear is even sweeter than his. As your despair will be also.” His smile widened. “He can’t hear you. He’ll never know. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Sabira risked a glance from the smirking rakshasa over to where Elix stood, once again transfixed by Shakvar’s phantom images.

  The rakshasa laughed again, and Sabira did indeed feel a rush of despair as she realized she couldn’t hurt him. He would kill her, and Elix. He would release the Spinner, and whatever destruction Tilde might have wrought would pale in comparison to the devastation She left in her wake.

  She looked at Elix, frozen, tears rolling down his face as unimaginable horrors unfolded before his eyes. She looked at Greddark, unconscious and maybe dead, sprawled out on the floor, his gold bracelet shining in the light of the everbright lanterns. And then she looked back at Shakvar, smiling his smug, inhuman smile at her.

  “Giving up so soon? I’d expected more from the vaunted Shard Axe, the precious Daughter of Stone and Sentinel.” He gave a small, unconcerned shrug. “But, then, I suppose you’re in a hurry to give your pitiful life its only true measure of significance.”

  To Dolurrh with that. She might not be able to save Eberron, or Elix, or even herself, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  With a growl to match his, she reversed her hold on the urgrosh and charged, swinging as she came.

  It was a wild blow, born of fury and futility, and she knew she’d never land it even as she brought the axe-head down. Shakvar didn’t even bother to move, pivoting on one clawed foot to avoid the too-wide swing and plunging his dagger under her ribs and up into her lung as she rushed by. He stood back as she stumbled forward and fell, collapsing to one knee on the floor near Greddark. She dropped the shard axe and grabbed her injured side with her hand.

  And with her other, she reached out and snatched a certain silver charm off the dwarf’s golden bracelet, feeling it grow in her grasp. She thumbed a switch on the slender rod, then broke it off so it couldn’t be moved back. Then, rolling to the side, she threw.

  The wand caught the surprised rakshasa in the chest and he fumbled to grab it with his backward hand. As his claws closed around it, he triggered the sensitive mechanism, and with a flash of colorless light, he was gone.

  In the silence that came after, she heard a small gasp, and then Elix was kneeling at her side.

  “Saba…,” he moaned, the nightmares of his visions coming to life before his eyes.

  “Healing potions…,” she reminded him through gritted teeth. “In the back…”

  He was gone and back again in moments, holding her gently in his arms as he poured a thick, sweet concoction down her throat.

  Warmth coursed through her, starting in her belly, then spreading to her shoulder and out to every abused extremity. A soothing drowsiness descended on her and she moved in Elix’s arms, trying to get closer to him.

  “Strong…,” she murmured.

  “Only the best for a Queen,” he said softly, smiling.

  “Or a Countess?” she asked, and his smile grew so bright she had to look away to hide her tears.

  “Feeling better already, I see.”

  Blinking, she craned her head to look over at the dwarf, still unmoving on the floor.

  “Greddark…?”

  Elix nodded and laid her back carefully on the floor, then went to check the dwarf. After confirming that stubborn artificer was not, in fact, dead, Elix rolled him over and poured more of the same potion down his throat, only to have the dwarf choke and cough and vomit it back up all over him.

  Grimacing, Elix turned him on his side until the spasm passed, then tried again, more slowly this time. In the time it took for the dwarf’s eyes to open and clear, Sabira was able to sit up on her own. By the time he could get up from the floor, she was ensconced in one of the high-backed chairs finishing off the last of a fresh glass of Frostmantle Fire. She handed another glass to the dwarf as Elix helped him over to the other chair.

  “Sorry it’s not tea,” she said as Elix pulled up a third chair beside hers and sat.

  Greddark took a long drink before replying, nearly draining the goblet.

  “Sometimes the senses need dulling.”

  Sabira snorted.

  “Especially after I let that pampered schoolboy Brannan get the drop on me in the storage room. Though, in my defense, I was distracted by the dead changeling lying on the floor. And he was actually a rakshasa in disguise.” He looked at her over the rim of his glass. “What happened to him, anyway? I assume you somehow managed to kill him, since we’re still here and he’s not.”

  “Not exactly.” At his quirked brow, she added, “I sort of borrowed your plane-shifting wand. I might have broken it, too, right before I threw it at him and he disappeared. Wherever he is, I’m guessing he won’t be back here for awhile.”

  Greddark started to laugh, then winced and thought better of it. As strong as Elix’s healing potion had been, Sabira had a feeling neither she nor the dwarf were going to be engaging in any belly laughs any time soon.

  She looked over at Elix curiously.

  “So, now that we have a moment, are you going to tell me what you’re doing here? You said it wasn’t because Breven got impatient. What, then? Did you argue religion with the Keeper and get kicked out of Thrane? Or did you just miss me that much?”

  The other Marshal had been quiet since he’d healed her and Greddark, and she found herself missing his smile. She wanted it back.

  Unfortunately, asking that question wasn’t the way to get it. If anything, Elix grew even more pensive.

  “She had a dream about me.”

  Sabira frowned.

  “Who? The Keeper?”

  Elix no
dded, and Sabira felt some of her earlier dread returning.

  “It didn’t involve a pool of magma, did it?”

  It was Elix’s turn to look puzzled.

  “No. She had a dream of the progenitor dragons, Siberys and Khyber, fighting a mighty battle at the feet of Emperor Cul’sir. Only she knew in the dream they weren’t the actual dragons, but their champions. Two women that I loved, and which of them won would depend on me.”

  Sabira made a face.

  “Champions? You sure she didn’t mean pawns?” she asked, and a chuckle quickly muffled by the sound of gulping came from Greddark’s direction.

  Elix didn’t laugh.

  “She was talking about you and Tilde, wasn’t she?” he asked, his hazel eyes dark with sorrow.

  Remembering the sight of the Siberys shard of her urgrosh driving into the Khyber shard in Tilde’s abdomen, Sabira could only nod.

  “Seems as though.” And the Emperor had to represent Xen’drik. Though as far as Sabira knew, there was nothing at the base of his statue in the Stormreach harbor except a blank cliff wall.

  “But I got here too late. The battle you two fought was already over, and it had nothing to do with me.”

  Sabira shook her head sharply.

  “No, Elix. It had everything to do with you.” At his pained, questioning look, she leaned forward to take his hands in her own. “I’d never have gone after her if it weren’t for you. And I’d certainly never have fought so hard to get back.”

  He frowned again.

  “I thought you said you were doing it for Ned…?”

  Sabira smiled ruefully. She had thought so too. At first. It had taken the journey to Tarath Marad and back for her to realize the truth.

  “Because I owed my old partner a debt I had to finish paying off before I could enter into a new partnership.”

  Elix’s eyes widened and the darkness in them began to give way to the light of something that looked a lot like hope.

  “I don’t suppose you still have that box with you?”

  Elix nodded and freed one of his hands from hers long enough to pull the thin black rectangle out from beneath his tunic. Sabira wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw it shaking slightly.