“Why do you wish this?” he asked. “You are a lad and have many paths yet open to you. You say you spoke with Lord Gedrin for all of a moment—why do you follow him?”
For a moment, Levia thought the question was too much for Kalen. He straightened and his bushy eyebrows came together as though reflecting confusion. His eyes darted toward the door, as though planning a quick escape.
Then Levia saw something come over him that changed everything. It was that same glowing-hot resolution that had inspired a servant girl to rise above her station and serve a purpose greater than herself—greater than any of them. Kalen gazed straight at the man he had been menacing, and lowered the crossbow. He spoke, and his words rang throughout the hall.
“Because shadow and darkness must be pursued in every form,” he said, “through every street, down every path, no matter how dark, until it is wiped from the world.”
The words—Gedrin’s words, turned into the vow all knights of the Eye took upon their initiation—filled the council hall like a thunderstorm. Inspiration dawned on the faces of disinterested Watchers Levia had not seen speak up in years. Knights lowered their blades, unable to cross the boy’s steely declaration. Rsalya stopped her incessant picking at her nails and paid rapt attention. Old Sephalus had tears in his eyes; and even Haran looked stunned.
Levia’s stomach churned even as her heart leaped. “Three Watching Gods,” she prayed under her breath. “He is the one.”
“Very well,” Uthias said, breaking the silence left by Gedrin’s mantra. “We have much to discuss. Levia, see that the boy and his companion eat something. They look half starved—”
“Kalen.” Every eye turned to the young man, and he looked a little uncertain for the first time. He clenched his fists. “Kalen Dren. And my sister, Cellica.”
“Kalen Dren, then.” Uthias nodded slowly. “Interrupt me again, and I shall have you removed by force, quest or no quest.”
Kalen gave the Vigilant Lord a curt bow, but Levia could see that strength lingered around him. The lad bore the kind of pride—an overwhelming certainty of purpose—that only Gedrin had known. How could one so young be so sure of himself?
Levia wandered from the Hall of the Eye in a daze, hardly aware of the guards as they closed the door behind them. Her eyes remained on Kalen, who stalked with unassuming grace from the great stone chamber. They passed into a sitting room, where prisoners of the Eye traditionally awaited their judgment. Levia felt unsettled—like both Kalen’s captor and a fellow prisoner of this strange course of fate. Rain hammered at the glass window, and Levia could hear thunder rolling.
“So you’d be her, eh?” Kalen’s halfling companion presented Levia a beaming smile, showing pearly white teeth that belied her otherwise filthy exterior. She looked as hard lived as her companion and a little older.
“Cellica, yes?” She shook the little woman’s arm. “I’m Levia.”
“Oh, I be knowing all about you,” Cellica said. “It’s all me brother’s been about for days. ‘Find Levia Shadewalker,’ ‘give her this ring,’ and all. He can be single-minded.”
“I can imagine.” Levia glanced over at the lad, who was wandering around the room, inspecting the walls as though for spy holes. “You said he’s your brother? How—?”
“Not by blood, but he’s me brother, be sure.” She had pieces of an accent, which Levia understood she was working to overcome. “You take what family you can in Luskan-town.”
“Luskan.” The last letter Levia received from her master said he’d heard of a dark council in the den of thieves on the Sword Coast, and she’d heard nothing since. All her pleas to visit the city had fallen on deaf ears once Uthias had taken over the council. “How long—I mean, how long ago did he …?”
“Seven years,” the boy said.
The women looked over to where Kalen leaned against one of the wood tables. Within a dozen breaths or so he’d grown comfortable in the room, and now looked as though he belonged there. And if his story and Levia’s own instincts held true, he did.
“Your father came to me seven years ago as I begged for coin on the street. He charged me never again to beg for anything and bid me carry the sword.” Kalen’s fingers traced his cheek. “He clouted me a good one to remember, as well.”
“That sounds like him.” Levia couldn’t help smiling even as a lump rose in her throat.
Cellica backed away from the conversation, an eye turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll just be seeing what’s on the simmer,” she said. “We’ve had naught but roots and berries for days.”
Levia nodded, then turned her attention entirely to Kalen. The halfling might as well have ceased to exist as far as she was concerned.
Kalen Dren had the awkward proportions of a boy not yet a man. Levia estimated his age at fifteen winters, although he’d clearly lived a hard life, and as such could be much younger than he looked. Levia saw the structure of hard muscles built into his frame. Coupled with his intensity and raw physical presence, he would be an impressive specimen in a few years.
“What took you so long?” she asked. “If you met Gedrin seven years ago …”
“I ran,” Kalen said without a hint of guile. “I refused the burden he offered, hawked the sword and ring, and ran.” He closed his fists at his sides. “Now I am finished running.”
Something about those words struck Levia, and she understood. She felt a kinship with the lad, despite the years and layers of grime that separated them. The boy truly was filthy: mud clung to his straggly brown hair and several coats of road dust shrouded his face. Levia saw a fresh, deep cut on Kalen’s hand, livid through the caked dirt.
“Torm can heal you.” Although he flinched like a startled cat, she took his wounded hand between both of hers and gasped. “Your hand’s like ice.”
“No.” Kalen pulled his hand away as though from a snake. “No magic. It’ll heal.”
“But—doesn’t it hurt?” Levia asked.
His face might have been chiseled of stone. “No magic.”
The years that separated them fell away, and Levia felt suddenly as though she were facing a man grown, rather than a lad without whiskers on his chin. It kindled warmth in her breast, and for what would not be the last time, she chided herself as foolish to let a mere boy impress her. Though, when this lad became a man, such certainty of purpose would have quite the effect on any number of ladies. He was no pretty boy, but he was striking. He bore mystery in his face with its long-ago broken nose, small scar across his brow, and enigmatic frown. The marks of teeth stood out around his mouth and fingers. The wounds were long-since healed and—Levia realized—self-inflicted.
“You don’t feel them, do you?” she asked. “Your teeth. When you gnaw yourself.”
His eyes cut into her like chips of ice. He nodded slowly.
“I am sorry,” he said, “that I could not save your father.”
Levia couldn’t breathe. Tears welled in her eyes despite her attempts to fight them, and she wept for the first time she could remember.
With the scrape of wood on stone, the door to the council chamber opened. Haran’s face was red and his eyes furious, but when he spoke, he kept a civil tongue. “The Vigilant have seen and conferred. You will leave as soon as you are ready, and, with the blessings of the Eye, you will return with Vindicator by any means necessary.”
Levia’s stomach lurched, and she found herself filled with profound relief. Haran nodded stiffly, and Levia could tell by the words he left unspoken that Kalen had made an enemy today.
Once the council had shuffled out, she looked over to Kalen. The boy had turned to Cellica and they were conferring quietly, using a mixture of words and gestures known only to them. “Well,” Levia said. “You’ll need to be invested, and then there are rituals to be done to start your quest. Perhaps we could clean you up first? A hot bath?”
Kalen shook his head. “No need for the rituals, the bath, or the quest.”
He held out his hand to Cellica
, and the halfling produced a necklace with a sword-shaped pendant. Levia knew immediately that magic hung around the piece—she had not detected it earlier because Cellica had worn it, and Levia had possessed eyes only for Kalen.
“What is that?” Levia asked.
Kalen murmured a word under his breath, and the medallion grew in his hand, swelling in a heartbeat to the span and breadth of a hand-and-a-half sword. The edge of the blade gleamed and a worn sigil adorned the hilt: the eye-in-gauntlet of Helm, the long-dead god of guardians. Levia knew the sword well—she had tried to wield it once before, although she and Gedrin both had decided she had no facility for edged weapons.
She recognized Vindicator.
“You had it the whole time,” she marveled. “You demanded the quest as a ruse.”
“If I had walked in those doors with this sword”—Kalen ran his fingertips along the flat of the blade—“would I have walked out again?”
Levia was impressed. “You don’t trust anyone.”
“I trust her.” Kalen nodded to Cellica. “And now I trust you.” He fixed Levia with his white gaze, weighing her. “Have I chosen well?”
Levia considered. The youth was fearless—that much was certain—and wise as well, which he would need to be to navigate the treacheries of Westgate and the Eye. And even beyond these things, she saw in him a hunger to prove himself and to redeem whatever dark life he had left behind in Luskan. Levia felt the way she imagined Gedrin must have felt when he looked upon her for the first time, and knew why her master—her father—had chosen this one.
“Yes.” At length, she answered his question. “You’ve chosen well.”
“Good.” He gave a curt nod. “When does my training start?”
Levia smiled. “Right now.”
PART ONE:
DEADLY HOMECOMINGS
A traditional dance of the Dalelands, “Deadly Homecomings” has its roots in a time of near constant invasion, when heroic youth would return from war, but some would have sold their loyalties to dark foes: the Zhentarim, or worse. Dancers keep a careful eye upon one another, and many of the movements look but a shade away from violence.
Shalis Ptolexis, Celebrant of Sharess
Wanderings in Love’s Name,
Published in the Year of the Bow (1354 DR)
DAWN, 24 FLAMERULE, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)
KALEN DREN AWOKE SLOWLY, THE LAST VESTIGES OF HIS dream slipping languidly away. As ever, his body slept longer than his mind. It was the nature of his illness—even as it made him stronger and more durable day by day, so, too, did it slow sensation. As he waited, eyes closed, he relished the feeling of disconnection before the needles of his numb flesh creeped back in to stab him.
I will make of myself a darkness, he thought. A darkness where there is only me.
The words let him focus.
A moment before, he’d dreamed about his first arrival in Westgate, ten years before, as a shaking boy of fifteen winters. On that night, he had sought out the Eye of Justice, but this time, Threefold God willing, he would not see any of them. Levia might prove an exception; he would not mind seeing her again, although considering the manner of their last leave-taking, he suspected matters would be far from simple between them. An important task brought him to the city of Shadowbane’s birth, and he would see it through and leave as quickly as possible.
When sensation finally filled him once more, he realized a certain pressure weighed upon his midsection, as if something—or someone—was poised there. When he opened his eyes, it was to a feminine face not a hand’s span away from his own. Iridescent sapphire eyes studied him in exacting detail, and deeper blue lips provided a sharp contrast to her gold-tan skin. Her vibrant blue hair in the morning sunlight seemed to glow against the gray sky.
“Myrin,” he said to the woman straddling him.
“Kalen.” His name was kitten’s purr. The intensity of her gaze—as though he were a new spell she wanted to learn—vaguely unsettled him.
The dagger in her hand was also disturbing, in a more immediate sense.
She raised the blade, and he rolled to the side, throwing off her aim so that she cut only dirt. A year before, when Myrin had been starved and frail, his move might have sent her flying. However, she’d since filled out into increasingly distracting curves, and rolling over merely spoiled her attack and put her beneath him. The knife skittered loose.
They struggled together in the grass for a pair of breaths, each going for the knife and each managing to pull the other back into the grapple. Ultimately, Kalen caught her wrists and straddled her. Myrin’s chest heaved with exertion.
“Very well!” Myrin said, sounding disappointed. “I yield—I yield!”
Kalen, breathing heavily, loosened his grip, although not enough to let her go. “What are you about? Why did you attack me?”
“You said ‘always attack by surprise.’ So …” She grinned awkwardly. “Surprise?”
“A pleasant morn to you as well.”
“I just wanted you to see that I take your lessons seriously.” She looked forlornly at her lost dagger. “It seems, however, that I still have a good deal to learn.”
“Ah.” With the fog of sleep lifted, Kalen remembered their ongoing bladework lessons. “But why did you attack me when I was asleep? I’m teaching you to fight, not to murder.”
“I waited until you woke up,” Myrin said.
“Hmm.” He couldn’t argue with that logic, even if it missed the spirit of his question. The wizard could be very literal in her thought processes, and he could never say for certain whether she actually or purposefully misunderstood. At least until she smiled, and he knew this time it was a jest. She was an odd one, but Kalen found her eccentricity refreshing. “Very funny.”
“I thought so.” She gave him a curious look, then nodded to where he yet lay atop her. “Were you, er, going to get off—?”
Kalen climbed to his feet, then helped her up. They turned their backs to each other and adjusted their rumpled clothing in silence. Kalen sneaked a look over his shoulder and saw Myrin fussing at her hair, which had grown long in the year since they had met. Gone was the girlish waif he had rescued from the machinations of confidence artists and assassins in Waterdeep, and in her place stood a woman who grew lovelier by the day.
Lovelier and more powerful.
“Speaking of murder, I’m afraid I tried cooking our morningfeast.” Myrin nodded to a blackened pot whose sides boasted impressive floes of burned sludge. “It was just the rabbits and bits from yestereve as a simmerstew. I can’t imagine where I went wrong.”
Kalen could. He imagined Myrin spreading her fingers wide with her thumbs touching and summoning fire magic to expedite matters. And knowing her, the comparatively small flame of that spell would hardly serve when she could create an entire ball of flame that would quickly turn their morningfeast to gray rubbish. Hence, murder.
“I’m not hungry,” he said. “Perhaps a little blade practice?”
“Perfect.” Myrin smiled, retrieved her knife from the grass where it had fallen, and took up the position of the apprentice before the master.
They sparred until the sun cleared the mountains of Aglarond far to the east. He’d promised a year ago to teach her daggerwork, and their trek to Westgate provided the first opportunity. An excellent student, Myrin absorbed instruction with rapt attention and demonstrated great potential. Half of bladework was in the mind, and although Myrin could be scattered, she had quick wits. Kalen suspected they would need all of them in Westgate.
In Luskan, someone had sent them a blood-soaked challenge, and he knew their unknown opponent would be waiting and watching. To this end, he’d acquired new, nondescript clothes in Neverwinter and had taken passage with a variety of caravans and barges to get them to this point. They would hike the last few leagues into the city and enter as refugees, offering the best chance of avoiding identification. So long as she avoided using magic, they might pass freely.
“Be observant,” Kalen said. “See where I will move before I do.”
“Right,” Myrin said.
They circled like wolves, testing each other’s defenses. Myrin fought like a novice—her moves obvious and easily blocked—but she was learning. In truth, it wasn’t a fair fight at all, even if she’d been fighting as long as he had. Kalen simply had a knack for seeing through deception, and bluff as she might, Myrin could not strike unless he let her.
“Look beyond my face,” he said. “Eyes tell you much, but a trained liar will keep them blank. Look to my throat and ears—see my blood pulsing. Feel my body.”
“Feel your body,” Myrin said. “Definitely.”
Kalen frustrated her for a full thirty count, then left an opening under his right arm, inviting her practice blade. He could tell she knew it for a trap, but her emotions got the better of her. When she thrust, he brought his arm down, pinned her wrist against his side, and caught her throat lightly with his free hand. She looked up at him with both shock and defiance.
“You rely too much on the blade,” he said. “A duel demands your hands, feet …”
“I’m just doing what you said.” Myrin pressed closer against him. “Feeling your body.”
“There is no mirth when you are fighting for your life.”
“It’s not fair, Kalen!” She disengaged from him, her shoulders heaving from the exertion of their fight. “You’re a far better grappler than I. If I could use a little magic …”
“We talked about this. You’re distinctive enough without drawing attention the way magic will. Not many in Westgate wield your powers, and many will try to exploit you.”
“But what if no one’s here to see?” Myrin asked. “No one’s watching us now. We could exploit my powers right now. Do anything we want.”
Kalen pushed away a possibility or two that flashed through his mind. He saw the way her eyes lingered on her pack by the fire, where she kept the orb of glass Lilten had given her. The orb that pulsed with an inner blue mist. Kalen didn’t trust the elf, and he trusted his gifts even less.
Shadowbane: Eye of Justice Page 2
