“Are you unwell?”
She breathed deeply and raised her eyes to his.
“It’s just … I have a feeling I caused pain to something, to some entity or Power the Key is connected to. I felt a cry of pain, and more—despair. Something with no hope, and nothing to do but watch and plan for … for something. A chance to escape, to be free of the Key.”
“But you didn’t intend to hurt anybody.”
“No, of course not. But sometimes you can cause great harm, accidentally. When you were a sailor, and you had to fight a pirate, do you think you ever had to hurt … or kill … someone who was innocent? Because of the circumstances, or the tools of your trade, just in the course of business?”
Gareth turned away to look at the horizon, black starred silk against black velvet, and pulled on his gloves, for the mountain air was chilly. Neither he nor Ivor had told Jandi they’d served on Ping’s ship before they’d met her in Mulmaster.
Gareth found himself wondering if Ivor would tell her, now that she’d thrown her lot in with pirates.
“Yes, I suppose,” he said at last. “You can’t avoid stepping on every ant. And maybe you did injure something in using the Key, but it’s over now, and they’ll likely forget.”
“Yes, very likely.” Jandi’s voice told him she wasn’t so sure. She swayed again.
“Careful of the edge,” said Gareth, guiding her to a stone knob. She didn’t sit but leaned on it, still twisting the torque in her hand.
“Are you all right?” He glanced at the rock beneath their feet and wondered if he was imagining the ambient green glow that seemed to cling to the contours of the rough stone. “Did … did it work?” He tried not to sound too eager.
She nodded wearily. “It worked, possibly in more ways than we’ll ever know. But your palace is warded to you, and I wish you the joy of it.”
He looked at the dull metal she wound between her fingers like a snake. Tentatively he reached out for it.
“Shouldn’t I—shouldn’t I hold that?”
Startled, she looked at him, then down at the torque.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “But … do you mind if I hold it a while longer?”
Reluctantly he pulled back his hand.
“It’s drained me,” she said. “But now it’s over, I feel some of my strength return. And I’d like—I’d like to find out if it can give me any more information before you take it back.”
She looked down at it, brooding.
“I’d like to find out whom I’ve hurt. May I? Just for a while. I’ll give it back tonight.”
Suddenly Gareth longed for the brisk walk down and a slap of cool water on his face at the base of the Fist.
“Come on, then,” he said, taking her elbow. “Dinner and your sweetheart below, and then you can tinker with that Key as long as you like.”
Jandi made it down the rough-hewn stairway unaided, but Ivor persuaded her to mount the donkey for the short trek back to their campsite at the old oak. The donkey grumbled, but Jandi was light and there wasn’t far to go. She kept turning the bracelet over in her hands, and every once in a while the mark on her cheek shone green.
“We’ll need a name for it,” said Gareth to the company in general.
“A name for what?” replied Ivor as Jandi and the donkey were silent.
Gareth gestured with his thumb over his shoulder at the monolith.
“That,” he said. “The Giant’s Fist is an unwieldy name for a trading headquarters.”
“I have a name for you,” said Ivor with a suspicious glance backward. “Jadaren’s Folly.”
NEAR THE GIANT’S FIST, LATER JADAREN HOLD
1461 DR—THE YEAR OF THREE GODDESSES BLESSING
Between the lacework of the oak’s branches, Jandi, staring at the sky darkening from lavender to purple, stretched her neck before looking back down at the torque in her lap. The presence she’d felt while warding the Fist—or the Hold, as Gareth decided to call it on the hike back to the campsite—was gone, but the memory lingered of a great intelligence imprisoned, all too aware of its confinement. It gave her the unpleasant feeling of seeing a forgotten pet in a cage, staring at her with dumb, tortured eyes, mired with filth and too big for its shackles.
Ivor had ventured under the forest’s canopy to restock their wood, taking the donkey with him (“I should’ve thought of that yesternight,” Gareth had remarked), and Gareth was down by the stream, trying to trap a dove or some quail as a change from dried meat. Birds twittered in the elms, and if Jandi listened carefully, she could hear the distant chatter of the stream.
She didn’t hear the shadowed figure behind her, nor did she know the danger she was in until the thick leather cord snapped around her neck and was pulled tight. Jandi’s eyes opened wide and her hands flew instinctively to her throat, but her assailant’s fingers were strong. Jandi tried to wrest the garrote from her neck, but the leather bit deep into her flesh. She reached behind her head to try to grasp her attacker’s wrists and pull them away. But exhausted from the day’s work, she only batted weakly at the wiry forearms that twisted the cord ever tighter.
Desperately, Jandi tried to suck in air—to fill her lungs and call for help, speak a spell of protection, to live—but her windpipe was wrenched shut. She moved her lips, but no sound came out. The fire before her turned red as the blood beat behind her eyes, and black splotches floated before her. Her throat was on fire, and she felt as if her chest was going to explode. She could hear only the roar of her own heartbeat, desperate and fast, in her ears.
Finding her last reserve of strength, she bucked against the hard ground, thrusting against the figure behind her. The cruel grip loosened for a second, and she frantically drew in what air she could. She tried to focus, to make her will into a Key and unlock her assailant’s body.
She couldn’t do it. Her assailant recovered and pulled the cord tighter, cutting off her breath for good. Jandi struggled limply a few more seconds, but her vision was blacked out now, with only a few spots of light floating in front of her, and the pressure on her throat hurt like a raw wound. The fire in her breast was fading, and she didn’t even want to fight anymore. The roar in her ears slowed and faded until she could hear each individual thump-bump, slower and slower, weaker and weaker. Her heartbeat faded, faltered, and stopped.
Jandi was lying on the wet grass, her eyes glazed open, although she saw nothing, a black beyond the darkest night before her eyes. Something seemed to stir inside that blackness, something huge and malevolent. She was paralyzed, as in the terror of a waking dream when nightmare forces advance and the dreamer is powerless to move.
The presence, whatever it was, was made of darkness itself and was therefore invisible, but still she knew it shifted its thick, coiled body, raised its immense bulk, and considered her. Despair filled her as she sensed it gloating.
It was Bane or one of his servants. It did no good to flee Mulmaster and the dreadful bargains with the Dark Lord brewing there. He had hunted her down, and in her death he would take her.
Then, in the center of the blackness, came a spot of light—not the bright painful sparks she saw in her death struggle, but a gentle glow like a hearth fire. It strengthened and lengthened, a long thin oval, and she felt the invisible malevolence retreat, sullen and reluctant. The light grew brighter, until it was almost painful to look at. Then it blazed so brightly that she was as blinded by the light as she had been before by the darkness.
Jandi tried to blink, but her eyes remained open. She was faintly aware of her body, stiff and cooling, in the long grass, the campfire falling apart and dying before her.
She was supposed to keep the fire burning, wasn’t she? She tried to remember who had told her that.
The light faded until it no longer pained her eyes, and the shape in the middle shifted and resolved itself into the tall and long-legged figure of a woman. Jandi watched with a detached curiosity as the woman approached and kneeled beside her.
The woman tilted her head
and considered her. She wore a garment of some river-green fabric that flowed about her as if a breeze were blowing, and her scarlet hair was cropped close beneath her ears. Her eyes, a slightly darker green than her dress, were almond shaped.
The woman smiled suddenly, and her smile was like sunshine on Jandi’s cold flesh. Reaching out, she stroked Jandi’s hair, and her gentle touch broke the icy grip that kept her limbs frozen.
She blinked rapidly. The woman’s elfin features came into focus, and the blaze of light faded until she could see the grass she lay in, the trees beyond, and the dying, stone-banked fire before her. Everything was imbued with a golden, illuminated quality, as if the light had flowed into the landscape instead of dying away.
Jandi flexed her stiff limbs and found she could sit up effortlessly, although the movement made her dizzy. The woman rose and stood over her, still smiling.
“Who are you?” Jandi whispered, expecting her throat to hurt and surprised that it did not.
The woman reached out a long-fingered hand, and Jandi took it.
“You can call me Mandira for now,” she said in a voice that had the tremble of silver bells in it, pulling Jandi to her feet, and seeming to expend no effort doing it. Indeed, Jandi felt as if she were floating.
“I don’t remember …” she began, then, looking down, saw the crumpled body at her feet. The pale face with the blue lips looked familiar, the eyes slightly protruding and staring at nothing. She had the impression of an insubstantial figure bending over the body.
“I don’t understand,” she concluded.
Mandira still had her hand, a touch so light she could barely feel it.
“You will in time,” she said. “But now you have a choice. You can stay here, tied to the flesh and its memories. Or you can come with me, and dwell a while in Brightwater’s gentle realm.”
The red-headed woman tugged her hand, the slightest of tugs, and Jandi let herself be pulled away one step, then two.
“Wait,” she said. “I’m waiting for someone. I’m waiting for …”
Ivor. The name was a whisper in her mind. The woman smiled sadly at her, and Jandi knew she’d somehow heard it.
“It’s a cruel thing,” she said. “To be struck down when love is fragile and new, uncurling like a butterfly from its cocoon. Flesh is mortal and love is not.”
She tugged her hand again. “The lady grants this mercy, because love had found a home in your heart. You may find a home, for a while, with her. You may refuse. You may stay with this body, and see your lover grieve. You may haunt this place, searching ceaselessly for what you can no longer have while your body rots beneath the ground. It is your choice.”
Jandi glanced once more at the body. It seemed a thing utterly alien, nothing to do with her, and now it was fading like a face in the twilight. She saw a small circlet of dull metal beside the body, with a haze of sickly green about it. She felt she should remember something about it, but the memory slipped away like a scarf in the wind.
The oak tree beyond the body was glowing now, its bark burnished gold. The forest beyond faded from view as well, save for individual trees scattered here and there that glowed with the same golden light as the oak. She could see their roots branching beneath the ground, and their leaves were amber and jade.
Jandi made her decision and looked deep into the woman’s eyes, drowning in emerald. The light from the trees grew more intense, until there was nothing but brightness and the distant sound of water.
A tall woman kneeled over the body of the young mage, not loosening the braided cord around her neck until she was sure she was dead. Finally, the woman released her grip and looped the garrote neatly, tucking it into her belt. The moon emerged from behind the clouds, illuminating a lean face with a thick red scar twisting the corner of the left eye and marring the cheek to the jawbone. She pressed two fingers beneath the still girl’s jawline, trying to detect any trace of a pulse.
Satisfied on that point, she plucked a bracelet from the grass. It had tumbled from the girl’s lap in her final struggle. She examined it. It wasn’t silver or gold, and the three red stones embedded in it weren’t rubies or even garnets. She tossed it away like a piece of trash, then rose to her feet.
She didn’t see the bracelet twitch a couple times, elongating and flattening until it became a long chain of links, which crept, snakelike, through the grass and coiled around the dead mage’s limp arm.
Helgre stood, silent, listening intently to the sounds of the dusk. She knew one of her quarry was still down at the stream, and she could hear the other foraging along the verge of the forest, heralded by the heavy tramp of the donkey.
She smiled wolfishly. She had spent months nursing her wounds and hatred in the Mulmaster slums. Many tendays she had spent sniffing out rumors of the deserters in the dockside dives and taverns. She had spent almost a year tracking them and the wench they’d picked up in Mulmaster, north through the unfriendly towns of Turmish, and then following them across borders and back again. By chance she had met one of would-be Baron Berendel’s men in a roadside inn and heard the tale of a mad ex-sailor who wanted possession of a cursed piece of barren rock.
Hard on their trail, she lurked in the cover of the sprawling forest. When she ventured close enough to see their faces, a fierce joy burned in her veins. It was them, after all—Gareth Jadaren and Ivor Beguine, traitors and cowards who had not only abandoned the ship she loved but set those dreadful avengers on her wake.
That had been more than a year ago now. The second she had found Din and Barneb sprawling on the deck in the early morning, still groggy, she knew something was wrong. She knew Gareth and Ivor were on third watch, and their absence was suspicious. A few quick slaps across Din’s face and a knife beneath his jaw elicited the information that the Turmish man and his friend had come last night with wine. She considered knifing the hapless easterner and dropping him over the side.
Instead, she dropped him in disgust and went to tell Ping of the deserters. She’d just reached his chambers when she heard the chaos on deck.
It was too much of a coincidence. Gareth and Ivor had jumped ship and betrayed them in Mulmaster. I never trusted that Gareth, she thought, as she drew her knife. I should’ve cut his throat when he signed on.
She expected to see a fighting ship and a pack of Mulmaster bullies, recruited by what passed for the law in that scabby dock town. Instead, she saw a confused mass of crew, some of them sprawled on the deck, unmoving. Standing on the forecastle deck was a tall figure, armed with a heavy bow. He looked rooted in place, his boots wide-side on the boards. The graceful motion of his upper body as he drew his long black-feathered arrows from the quiver strapped to his back, nocked them to the string, pulled back effortlessly, and loosed into the shambles, finding his mark every time, spoke of long practice and a mastery of the art.
On the deck below, the shifting bodies gave her a glimpse of Krevlak, a burly half-orc they’d picked up near Thay, swinging a mace at another combatant. Krevlak’s opponent ducked, and the mace swung wide, sending the half-orc off balance. As the figure straightened, Helgre saw it was a woman, dusky skinned with a pale mask across her eyes, and hair braided away from her face.
She held a greatsword two-handedly, and, as Krevlak stumbled, she brought it up in a killing stroke across his torso. The half-orc fell in a red spatter, and the woman leaped across his body with insolent ease, engaging another pirate.
The rest of that nightmare day was a blur. She remembered seeing Ping’s head jerk back as an arrow slammed into his throat, and the pain as another ripped into her shoulder as she tried to duck away. She remembered a red-orange ball of fire, like a miniature sun, streaking toward the archer on the deck and the easy movement he made with his hand, as if he were turning away a blow, dispelling it so it sputtered against the rigging. She remembered the sickening impact of the water against her rib cage as she dropped over the side. A man—it was Barneb—had gone the same route and clung to a board floating in t
he water. With her remaining strength she shoved him away and pushed him under, kicking at him until he sank. She prayed the predatory fish that followed the Orcsblood would feast on him and ignore her. She didn’t know how she finally reached the shore. She knew only that it was night when she did, and the rocks were slippery and cold under the docks.
But she had lived, and now she waited, patiently, until their guard dropped and they separated for the first time. She took the girl first as opportunity offered.
That’s the penalty, my girl, for consorting with traitors.
Now she would track Ivor down as he scavenged for wood. Then she would wait, concealed in the trees, for Gareth to return.
She licked her lips. She must kill Ivor slowly and let him know that his ladylove died first.
A fist knotted into her hair, jerking her head back. She gasped at the suddenness of it, too surprised to scream.
“I intended to take that morsel for myself, until you came and robbed me of my game,” a husky voice whispered in her ear. “But perhaps you’ll prove better sport.”
She tried to twist away from the grip on her hair, but her captor was unnaturally strong and had the advantage of surprise. She managed to get her knife halfway out of its sheath before a powerful hand found hers and wrested the weapon away with almost insolent ease, flicking it away from them both. She heard the metal clang against a stone.
Helgre fumbled for the garrote in her belt, feeling it slip through her fingers. In a desperate effort, she flailed at her assailant, trying to find any weak spot.
But suddenly a warm lassitude flowed through her limbs, as did an odd feeling of well-being. Her attacker still held her firmly but now didn’t seem so threatening.
A hand traced the raised line of her scar, caressingly, from the corner of her eye, down her cheek, and over her jawline.
“How does a lady come by such a thing? You must tell me someday.”
Helgre closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling. The hand brushed the ends of her hair back, tucking it behind her ear and leaving her neck exposed. She felt gentle fingers against her skin, tracing the line of her jugular down to the base of her neck, where her pulse jumped. There the light touch of the fingers paused.
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