Perhaps after this business with Rhett was done, they could sit down and discuss it. If it turned out in such a way that allowed her to speak to him ever again.
The Timeless Blade sat atop a small rise not too far north of the Old Beard Tavern. White-blooming cherry trees filled its tranquil courtyard, and the ethereal song of Shou wind chimes wafted down three score paces to the raging waves of the Inner Sea. When the sea level had fallen a century ago, the waters at the south end had exposed a sheer cliff face rather than beach where Tidetown could extend. The waterfall where the River Thunn drained into the Inner Sea provided a backdrop for the studio that might have been beautiful, were the water not fouled by Westgate’s sewers.
Kalen heard the ring of steel as they approached and saw a score of men and women in practice leathers standing in respectful silence around two duelists in the center. The pair cut and thrust with blunted practice swords, honing their craft under the eye of their instructor—an imperiously tall woman with purple-and-white-striped skin. She wore white-dyed leathers with wings of gold fabric at the shoulders and she carried a sword at her belt.
“Mistress Rujia,” Brace said, following Kalen’s eye. “She’s a deva—a creature spawned of divine power, always getting reborn when she expires. Just appeared about a year ago and founded this school, saying she was meant to do so. None have ever seen her fight, but she must have centuries of experience as a hundred different warriors. Here she comes.”
Rujia approached, a dueling mask in her hand. Her lack of expression reminded Kalen of Sithe, but she carried herself with a regal air the genasi had lacked—like a queen or goddess among mortals. By contrast, Sithe had always seemed to move like a hunting panther.
“Master Brace,” she said quietly. “You are late to lessons.”
“A thousand apologies, Mistress of a Thousand Lifetimes,” the gnome replied. “My ankle has taken a bad turn, and I was unable to move with my usual alacrity.”
“I see.” She might have been talking to Brace, but her considering gaze lay upon Kalen. He thought her face held the slightest glimmer of recognition. If Brace had spoken truly and the deva knew multiple lives, it might very well be so. In any case, Kalen did not know her.
“This is my friend, Sir Dren. He has gladly agreed to fill my place today.” Kalen raised a dubious eyebrow at the gnome, but Brace beamed up at Rujia. “He was earnestly hoping to meet an acquaintance of his—one Rhett, by name?”
“Indeed.” Rujia gestured toward the dueling ring, where a cry went up and applause broke the silence of the bout. “He is the defending champion of the day and awaits a challenge.”
Sure enough, one of the duelists had taken a knee to the other, who nodded in victory. Kalen considered the man’s shoulders and stance, wondering if they might be those of Rhett, but the practice leathers and dueling mask made identification impossible.
“Aye,” Kalen said. “I’ll face him.”
Rujia nodded and handed him the mask she carried. This Kalen donned, glad to keep his identity secret for the moment. This way, he would determine if it truly was Rhett before he confronted the man.
“A challenger.” Rujia’s cool announcement cut through the courtyard. “This is Saer—”
“Galandel.” Kalen gave her the name of Rhett’s superior officer in the Waterdeep Guard. “No sir.”
The deva nodded. “Galandel claims right of challenge.”
If the masked man recognized the name Kalen wore, he showed no sign. He flexed his arms and saluted.
They stood across from one another in the dueling circle, wrapped in watchful silence. Kalen tested the weight and balance of the blunt rapier Rujia had given him and found it mediocre. He favored heavy swords, but he’d trained with all sorts of blades and knew how to fight in the fashion of the bladedance bravos. He saluted and took up a defensive posture.
They fought slowly at first, circling to learn how the other moved, jabbing to test the other’s defenses. Kalen wished he had paid more attention to how Rhett had fought in Luskan. True, he had been wielding Vindicator and a shield at the time, but still his movements would have given Kalen a sense. This Rhett wound up too much strength behind his strikes, suggesting he was used to a heavy blade. Kalen thought they were evenly matched.
This he thought, at least, until the would-be Rhett exploded into motion and lunged in a progression of three long steps to strike at him. Kalen barely parried his attack and had to leap back immediately to avoid Rhett’s follow-up attacks. He struck viciously, offering no quarter and giving Kalen no chance to riposte. The brutal slashes made Kalen’s blade vibrate. He fought defensively as he retreated, first back and then to the side when he reached the limits of the circle. Rhett hounded him, striking and cutting with only heavy breaths to punctuate the silence.
Finally, Kalen threw himself to the ground and thrust to halt Rhett’s advance with a warding blade. The youth barely stopped in time. A silent heartbeat passed between them in which they regarded each other—one man on the ground, one standing.
Kalen almost said the boy’s name. Indeed, he drew in air and his lips formed the words.
Then Rhett sent Kalen’s rapier ringing to the side with a smash of his own sword, and brought it immediately back in line with Kalen’s face. The point of his practice rapier tapped the front of Kalen’s mask.
“Point,” Rujia said. “We have a victor, and it is—”
“Rhett.” Kalen rose to his feet and pulled off his mask. “Rhetegast Hawkwinter.”
All eyes turned to him, including those of his opponent. The youth fell back a step. The rapier fell from his open hand and he stared at Kalen, seemingly dumbfounded.
“Rhett—” Kalen started.
Abruptly, the would-be Rhett turned from Kalen and ran. He shoved his way through his fellow students and tore across the courtyard as though a dragon bit at his heels.
Momentarily startled at this unexpected reaction, Kalen let him get a dozen paces away before he pushed himself up from the grass and followed. “Sir Dren—” Brace was saying, but Kalen couldn’t hear. He chased his masked opponent out the doors of the Timeless Blade and into the Shou district.
They shoved through crowds and dodged carts along the labyrinthine streets. The youth threw over a small wagon, dumping the elderly couple inside in a shouting tumble. Kalen leaped over them, hardly slowing. They ran up Eastgate Street, sidestepping an upset cage of squawking chickens. Blood thundered in his ears but Kalen ran on, shoving through to clear a path.
The youth seemed to know an open chase on the cobblestone road was doomed, so he darted across Eastgate right in front of a passing carriage toward Silverpiece Way. Kalen had to pull up short to avoid being trampled. When the street had cleared, he continued after the youth, who left a trail of upset folk in his wake.
If this was Rhett, Kalen thought, then the boy had an athletic ability he had not demonstrated in Luskan. The youth bounded over a pair of homeless Shou and scaled the side of a building, leaping from it to the other across the alley. Kalen called upon the magic of his boots and sailed into the air. He gained the rooftop just in time to see the youth reach the other end and leap across to the next building, the Black Boot Inn. Kalen followed.
A weightless moment later, three ravens squawked and took off from their perch as Kalen landed heavily. The shingles groaned under his weight, and rain the previous night had made them slippery. His balance shot out from under him, and he fumbled to catch hold before he could slide off. This far from Myrin, his spellscar was discontent, and it chose that moment to deny him feeling in his fingers. He narrowly caught himself on the edge and hung over the street. The river’s waterfall thundered off to his left.
The youth had paused at the edge of the rooftop and was looking back at him. Whether he did so out of concern or hope that Kalen would fall, the mask did not reveal.
One of the birds Kalen had displaced pecked at his fingers. He pulled himself up, shooed the raven away, and looked across the roof.
>
The youth was gone.
Levia awoke to the sound of her window being picked open. She had fallen asleep at her desk, and a most unladylike trail of drool connected her cheek to the topmost report. Levia made no obvious movements, such as reaching for her mace or sitting up. Instead, she palmed a crossbow she kept strapped beneath her desk for just such an occasion, and she opened her eyes.
The man who almost fell through her window, exhausted, chased her caution away, replacing it with confusion. She shed all pretense of slumber and rose to face him. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “What happened?”
The man in dueling leathers gave her what could only be a withering glare. She couldn’t read his expression through the dueling mask, but his anger was clear.
Shadowbane’s wrath was always clear.
“Can’t you guess? Kalen Dren chased me across half the gods-burned city.”
Fear grew in the pit of Levia’s stomach. “He saw your face?”
Shadowbane leaned heavily against the wall, breathing hard. He shook his head.
His show of weakness emboldened her—that, and the reassurance that their secret was safe. With that clarified, she could loose her anger. “What the Hells have you been doing? Attacking the Fire Knives and the Swords? It’s like you want him to know about you.”
“I do. But at a time and on a battlefield of my choosing.” He slumped down against the wall. His hands clenched and relaxed, over and over. He barely contained his rage.
“What of Vindicator?” Levia noted the sword’s absence. “You said he bequeathed it to you, but I saw him summon it into his hand. If he wields it, then—”
“Gods spit upon what you saw. Vindicator has chosen both of us. But only one of us will wield it. Me.” The dueling mask turned toward her. “Or do you doubt this?”
“You are Shadowbane. Why else would you have come?”
He put out his hand, and a dull gray radiance spread around his fingers. Levia recognized this—it was the same as when Kalen had summoned the sword. Of a sudden, she wished she had taken the crossbow from under the desk after all.
“What does he know?” Shadowbane asked. “Kalen Dren.”
Levia shook her head. “For all he knows, you’re dead.”
“But does he know there is another Shadowbane in Westgate? Tell me.”
“No. Although after the Knives and Swords, it’s only a matter of time before he hears and puts the puzzle together. He will know of you soon enough, and he will seek you out.”
Shadowbane rose and glared at her. Despite her resolve, Levia backed up a step.
“You’d better gods-be-damned hope he isn’t playing with you,” he said. “And hope that you’re half as good a liar as you think you are. Now listen, and do exactly as I say.”
The young man laid out his plan. Levia heard his words, nodding.
“Are you certain this is what you want?” Levia asked. “You’ll not kill him, will you?”
“Are you with me or with him?”
Levia bowed. “You are my student and Gedrin’s heir. I will stand by your side.”
“Do not forget.”
With that, the shadows coalesced around the man, and he vanished into the darkness cast into the corner of the room.
He left Levia wondering. Perhaps Kalen suspected nothing, but Levia could not say the same of herself. She’d been teaching the boy to become Shadowbane since he’d come to Westgate. She believed him the chosen one, come to redeem the Eye of Justice.
But was she wrong?
“Passing strange,” Brace said as they came upon the gates of Darkdance Manor. “You’d think this ‘Rhett’ fellow would have been pleased to see you. I mean, I’ve only known him a short time, but I never conceived the impression that he was insane.”
Kalen shook his head, not knowing what to think.
“Well, at least you’ve an answer,” Brace said. “You found your friend.”
“Perhaps,” Kalen said.
He hadn’t been able to tell if the youth had been Rhett based on his fighting style, but he thought it possible. When he’d taken off his mask to greet the would-be Rhett, though, the last thing he’d expected was for the youth to run. If he wasn’t Rhett, he would have acted with confusion and the whole incident might have been mildly embarrassing. And if he was Rhett, why would he run from Kalen rather than welcome him? It made no sense.
“Either way, we say nothing to Myrin.”
“Are you quite certain?” the gnome asked. “She’s a smart woman. No doubt she—”
Then Brace trailed off, his eyes drawn into the courtyard. Kalen saw it, too, at the same moment: a hulking warrior in thick plate armor with barbed war-gauntlets.
They drew steel.
HIGHSUN, 26 FLAMERULE
MYRIN AWOKE SHORTLY AFTER BRACE AND KALEN LEFT.
She knew this, because she felt Kalen’s spellscar moving away from her. She shook her head in a long-suffering fashion. Kalen’s plea for subtlety had been valid, but also an obvious excuse. Even if she suspected he was leaving her behind to protect her—as usual—to chase after him would only expose her own insecurities.
Instead, after morningfeast, she spent some time in the library, scouring the books for anything of use. Her ancestors had stocked all manner of historical treatises on a variety of subjects: ancient empires like Athalantar and Netheril, military tactics from far-flung realms such as Amn and Rashemen, and tomes of magical theory. These Myrin set aside for later. She also found a set of familial histories, but they were incomplete. The last volume trailed off about two hundred years ago with a Lord Malderen Darkdance, a privateer captain. There was a place for a subsequent volume, but no book on the shelf.
She was levitating in the library, sending gusts of wind to blow the dust off the top row of tomes, when silvery light swept along a crack in the stone wall behind the shelf. Her eyes traced the fading path of the sweeping light, which had come from the stairs. She slapped shut the tome she was holding—Ecologies by some archmage she couldn’t remember ever hearing of—and willed herself to trace the line of light back. Mastering flight magic made life so much easier.
She followed the silvery radiance back down the stairs into the open ballroom, warmed by the light of the rising sun. It ran along the wall to the front doors, and she realized it indicated a visitor. Also, she realized why Elevar hadn’t answered the door already, as the announcing light made no sound, and the dwarf wouldn’t have seen it.
Myrin alighted on the ground near the door and pulled it open.
An elf woman stood on the threshold, her face partly blocked by a lacy black parasol. Her porcelain skin contrasted sharply with her elaborate bun of midnight hair. She wore a sleek black gown that left her shoulders bare but otherwise covered her head to toe. A star-sapphire bracelet was the only touch of color on her, apart from her eyes. Myrin also knew that the elf was spellscarred—she could feel the azure fire in her soul, burning toward her.
The elf had been looking around the courtyard, her posture rigid, but as soon as the door opened, she turned, her pupil-less gold eyes fixed upon the wizard’s face. Her stance softened. “It’s you,” the elf said, her face both confused and relieved.
“It’s me?” Myrin asked. “Who—?”
The question faded away before she voiced it, however, and they stared at one another in silent recognition. Myrin did know this woman. She had seen her across a crowded fashion studio a year before in Waterdeep, seen her in a vision from a shapeshifter called Fayne, and seen her twice in the last two days. She’d been the noblewoman who distracted the Justice Knights that first day in Waterdeep, and Myrin had run into her in the market. She’d absorbed a memory from that contact: a memory of herself being born.
“I know you,” Myrin said. “You’re Ilira Nathalan.”
Ilira bowed, her eyes never leaving their shared gaze.
Neither of them seemed capable of more words but could only stare into one another’s eyes. Myrin wanted to speak, b
ut there was something about this elf that captivated her. Perhaps it was her face, with its hint of danger as well as promise, or perhaps it was the blue fire that burned within her to match Myrin’s own. The silence between them seemed unbreakable.
Unbreakable, at least, until a soft growl rose up the steps from the overgrown garden. A hulking dragonborn in beaten and scored armor glared up at them, tensing his spiked fists. Myrin recognized the dragonborn bodyguard—Vharan, Ilira had called him.
Magic simmered in Myrin’s hands. Ilira’s face gave no indication of her intentions, but Vharan’s aggression was clear enough. Was this an attack?
Myrin heard footsteps on the floor stones behind her. Elevar stepped to her side, his unseeing eyes fixed on Ilira. For her part, Ilira returned his empty scrutiny and inclined her head.
“Master Elevar,” she said, eyes on Myrin. “It’s been far too long.”
The dwarf took her proffered hand, and pressed his lips to her silk-wrapped knuckles.
Myrin marveled. Blind as he was, how had he known she’d raised her hand? The greeting must have been an old ritual between them, which banished Myrin’s anxiety. If Elevar knew Ilira, then Myrin had naught to fear. And if Ilira knew Elevar, then perhaps she knew things Myrin desperately needed to know.
“Won’t—” Myrin said. “Won’t you come in?”
“Vharan, stand here awhile. The young Lady Darkdance and I have words to share.” Ilira stepped inside with the sinuous grace of an accomplished dancer.
They sat in the garden at the center of the ballroom, on the weathered benches Elevar hadn’t yet refurbished. With the sun out for the first day since their arrival, Myrin realized that the hall was—in reality—a grand arboretum. Sunlight cascaded down through the open roof onto a raised platform of marble wreathed in vines and flowers. In however long it had been since a Lord Darkdance had last dwelt here, the garden had withered somewhat. Curiously, the marble platform in the center evinced no sign of deterioration and stood like a pristine altar among the weeds. Myrin could feel magic radiating from the stone, but did not know its nature. Upon this they sat in silence, neither certain what to say, until Elevar appeared with chilled summer wine and trays of cakes. It seemed as though he’d anticipated guests.
Shadowbane: Eye of Justice Page 9
