Shadowbane: Eye of Justice

by De Bie, Erik Scott

  Even in her triumph, however, she felt her lungs begin to heave. With the toll it took on her body, she could not use the ring for long, but it would serve for the moment.

  The clouds opened and dropped a warm summer torrent on her head as she moved. With the ring’s magic cloaking her, she moved between the raindrops.

  The men had not gone far. Their flight had become a confrontation on the sloping roof of a House Bleth warehouse. Kalen stood near the lower edge, Vindicator pointed up at the unarmed Shadowbane, who stood at the apex of the roof. Kalen was speaking, but Levia, in the grip of the speed magic, could hardly understand him: “Rhhhhhhhettttttttttt, weeee—” He sounded drunk, his distorted words dragging hollowly.

  She turned the ring’s stone back to the outside, and instantly the magic left her. She collapsed to one knee, coughing in the aftereffects.

  “Rhett,” Kalen was saying, “we don’t have to fight. We can—”

  Levia recovered enough to speak. “Kalen, ware!”

  “Levia.” Kalen turned, rain sliding off his cloak. “How—?”

  In the distraction of her sudden appearance, the false Shadowbane charged. As he came on, he thrust out his hand toward Kalen, and Vindicator wrenched itself from Kalen’s grasp in a burst of gray flame. Rainwater sizzled as the sword—now in Shadowbane’s hand—slashed for Kalen’s throat.

  NIGHT, 30 FLAMERULE

  THE MOONLIGHT PIERCED THE GLOOM UP TO THREE PACES.

  At its limit, Brace busied himself with flint and steel to light a torch that had already grown wet in the putrid sewer. Myrin knew from his harried expression that he was having trouble, but was too proud to admit it. Myrin grinned at his oversight and cast a spell to solve the dilemma. A globe of flame appeared over her outstretched palm, bathing the room in golden light that painted their faces with unsettling shadows.

  “Onward, then,” Ilira said.

  They picked their way through a tunnel thick with fumes of decay. A channel running the length of the tunnel hosted a trough of murky liquid. Silently, Myrin thanked Ilira again for the feyweave gown, which repelled the grime. The sewer seemed to bother neither Rujia nor Ilira, or else the two women were too busy watching each other warily to notice. Brace tromped through, glancing periodically at his boots and muttering an apology to his cobbler.

  When they paused at a junction of several tunnels, Myrin spoke up. “Where are we going, anyway? Amusing as this is, I hope we’re not exploring the sewer just for the sake of exploring.”

  “How much do you know of Westgate’s history?” Ilira asked.

  Myrin shrugged and Rujia gave a similar neutral gesture. Only Brace perked up in answer to her question. “I know a great deal about a great deal. Ask away.”

  “You’ve heard of the Faceless?”

  “More than a century past, ’twas he that commanded a thieves’ guild called the Night Masks.” The gnome tapped his nose in thought. “He wore a mirrorlike mask stolen from the temple of some goddess of illusions …”

  That sounded familiar to Myrin, somehow. She found herself remembering something she had absorbed from the doppelganger Umbra. The name of a dead goddess, one he had served and sought to avenge. “Leira,” she murmured.

  The others looked at her, Brace with surprise and Rujia with neutral disregard. Ilira’s face was as hard to read as ever, but Myrin thought she detected a hint of unease there.

  “Leira, that’s right—a goddess who died in the Godswar,” Brace said.

  “And what of their lair?” Ilira asked.

  “Cleared out in the Year of the Banner, 1368 Dalereckoning—by a band of adventurers led by one Alias of Westgate. If I recall correctly, it was hidden under—” His eyes widened. “In the sewers, near where we stand just now! It should lie in yon direction.” He pointed down one of the tunnels.

  “Quite right,” Ilira said. “That isn’t where we’re going, however.”

  “It isn’t?”

  The elf busied herself, feeling along the walls with her gloved fingers. Finally, she pressed a hidden catch, and stone creaked at their feet. The sewer water, which had collected in the middle of the room, whirled around and around before flowing down into an unseen opening. The water vanished, revealing a wide shaft with rusted rungs set into the stone.

  “We’ve only a few heartbeats to climb down,” Ilira said. “No time to explain. Go.”

  “Just a moment, lady—” Brace said, his voice wary. Rujia looked uncertain as well.

  Myrin, on the other hand, trusted absolutely in Ilira, and she followed her command without hesitation. She bent low to climb into the dripping sewer shaft.

  The shaft plunged into interminable darkness below. With a mental command, Myrin sent her flaming sphere floating down into the gloom, and it went down about twenty paces—the limit of the magic. She climbed down toward it, taking care to grip each rung firmly before she shifted her weight to the next. Above her, Rujia came next, followed by Ilira, then finally a less-than-pleased Brace.

  “Why the haste?” Brace asked. “Is something to happen if we—?”

  Stone growled, and the sewer opening above shut.

  “That, for a first,” Ilira said. “Then—”

  As Myrin watched, the top rung of the ladder lit with magical flame. Unlike her golden magelight, this magic was green and angry, and it quickly spread to the next rung, then the next.

  A trap.

  The four descended as fast as they could, chased down the rungs by the green flames. Myrin gasped and clutched at the slippery metal. Could they do this?

  “Master your fear,” Ilira called. “Climb steadily—do not rush. Too fast and you’ll slip.”

  She was right. The magic seemed to be descending only a little faster than a casual climb, so they didn’t have to rush. Kalen wouldn’t be afraid, and with that thought, Myrin could push down the rising fear. She focused on each rung, climbing carefully. The rungs became slippery as she descended, slick with sewer water and grime. It smelled awful, but she kept focused.

  They made it five more paces down before it happened.

  “Garl’s Godsdamned—ahh!” Brace slipped off a rung, scrambled, and fell free.

  “Erevan Spit,” Ilira said, as the gnome fell into her and knocked her off the ladder.

  Rujia and Myrin braced as the two fell toward them, but Ilira wrapped her arms around Brace and they vanished into the shadows with a rush of wind and dust just before they could strike Rujia. The deva looked blankly at Myrin, then at her hands on the ladder. Myrin looked away, over her shoulder, to where Ilira and Brace appeared farther down the shaft, still falling.

  Then Rujia collided with Myrin, knocking her free of the ladder. She must have slipped, or else the near collision had sent the deva tumbling after all. In any case, the two women plummeted upside-down through the shaft, their arms and legs flailing. Myrin’s mind raced through the magics she knew, desperate for something she could do—

  Even without her will, though, she felt protective magic seeping out to shroud her.

  It was the ring she wore: the ring of feather falling Kalen had inherited from a friend in the Guard and given to Myrin, on that rainy night in Waterdeep. The ring’s magic was automatically triggered when the wearer fell, slowing her descent to little more than a crawl.

  Instinctively, Myrin countered the magic with a manifestation of will. After all, if the ring only worked for her, then would not Rujia plunge alone to her death?

  The darkness around them turned to gold light. Myrin looked down over her head.

  “Mother Mystra!” Myrin gasped as they plummeted toward her ball of fire. She dismissed the flaming sphere with a flicker of will just before they would have plunged into it.

  Darkness filled the shaft, and Myrin knew that at any instant, they could strike the ground. She could let the ring save her, but what then of the deva? If Myrin held on to Rujia, the momentum might drive them both to their deaths. Should she not let go and save herself?

  “No,” she
breathed. She had to try to save them both.

  Myrin focused on the ring, and she felt buoyant magic grip her body. Myrin grasped Rujia tight and winced at the pain as the falling woman almost ripped her arms from their sockets. She forcibly grasped the threads of magic with her will, demanding that it extend to Rujia and—to her astonishment—it did with a palpable snap. The magic slowed them, slowed—

  They hit the floor with a splash of sewer water. Air rushed from Myrin’s lungs, and she lay stunned, unsure whether she yet lived. She remembered again that last night in Waterdeep, and thought this must have been what it was like for Kalen, when he and his foe had fallen off Castle Waterdeep. Then air returned, and she lay panting in the impenetrable darkness. Far above her, the green flames roared hungrily, then winked out.

  “Ilira?” She shivered in that cold place. “Brace? Rujia?”

  A silver-flaming torch flickered into life. Ilira held the light aloft, her gold eyes gleaming.

  “An everburning torch,” Brace observed. “Should have thought of that.”

  Rujia pulled another such torch from her pack, this one burning bright red.

  “Don’t everyone spare my feelings all at once,” Brace said.

  The minor magic of the torches hardly penetrated the oppressive, stuffy gloom. Myrin felt the dark like a hot fog that weighed heavy on her skin, and she felt slick with sweat.

  “Are you well?” Ilira stood over Myrin.

  “I think so.” With a pang, Myrin thought of how Kalen would have immediately kneeled at her side, inspecting her for breaks. On the other hand, she rather enjoyed being trusted to care for herself, rather than being treated like a fragile doll. “Just a bit dizzy. Are we ready to move?”

  Ilira extended a gloved hand to help Myrin to her feet. That, Myrin accepted gladly.

  Myrin saw Rujia past the elf’s shoulder. The deva watched her with an uneasy expression—perhaps that was fear on her exotic face or perhaps it was thanks.

  Either way, Myrin made a decision: she would never save herself at the cost of a friend.

  “Well,” Brace said. “I accept that there wasn’t time above to explain—what with the fire trap and all—but now that we’re here …?” He bowed to Ilira.

  “As you wish.” Ilira held her torch aloft to illumine as much of the room as possible, and with the other hand held up something Myrin and Brace had not yet seen: a black silk eye mask. Shadows leak from Ilira’s mask, and ancient magic stirred in the darkness.

  Dim light bloomed into being in the depths of the chamber, illuminating a great iron grate at their feet with nothing but darkness below. Four chains thick with a century’s worth of rust spiraled up into the darkness from the four corners of the grate and connected above. The chains slithered through the grate at equidistant points and connected to cages that hung about six paces below the grate. A skeleton occupied one of the cages. Brace inhaled sharply at the sight.

  “Welcome,” Ilira said, “to the lair of the Night Masters.”

  As she spoke, she pointed with her torch toward the raised platform, indicating a row of four—Myrin swallowed a lump of sudden fear—coffins.

  “The … the Night Masters!” Brace’s voice shook. “The vampires who ruled the Night Masks, after the Faceless fell.”

  “Quite so. This was the dwelling place of Orbakh and his dukes—all of them vampires of great power and influence in their day. Fortunately, Gedrin Shadowbane drove them all out a century ago. Unless they’ve returned, of course, but that seems unlikely.” Ilira indicated the coffins. “Those, incidentally, are fake—a deception to scare rank-and-file operatives or kill would-be hunters.” One of the coffins was, indeed, destroyed, as though some explosion—a trap, perhaps—had ripped it apart. “There are much greater dangers that await us in this place.”

  Myrin’s unease was passing, replaced by an interest in the unknown, as well as a vague familiarity. That was a bit disturbing, but she always felt better when a memory started to creep back, good or bad. “You sound as though you’ve been here before.”

  “Twice,” Ilira said. “Neither time by choice.”

  “You spend your time in odd places,” Brace said. Then, when Ilira gave him a look, he added: “Which I rather fancy about you.”

  The elf smiled. “The first time, I convinced one of the Night Masters to lead me here.”

  “For an inevitable betrayal, no doubt,” Rujia murmured, startling Myrin. Ilira did not seem to have heard. Indeed, Myrin wouldn’t have believed the snide remark of the deva had she not heard it herself, plain as a crossbow firing. Rujia regarded her with a blank stare.

  Brace hadn’t heard either, and he was looking at Ilira speculatively.

  “Yes, friend gnome?” Ilira asked.

  “Convinced, is it?” Brace said. “I’d have thought ‘seduced’ the more proper word.”

  “Indeed.” Ilira smiled. “But Lady Vhammos was the one who did most of the seduction. I was just there for the ride.”

  That made Brace’s eyes go as wide as saucers. Ilira cast Myrin a sly look, as though to say “look how easy that was.” The wizard smiled at the subtle intimacy of their private jest.

  “There’s a false wall around here somewhere,” Ilira said. “I haven’t been here in almost a century, and my memory is hardly perfect. Look around, but take care not to step on the grate. It’s intentionally slippery, and that’s a long fall.”

  Brace, who had been moving in that direction, abruptly stepped away and circumvented the wide grate instead. Rujia sought out the other corner of the room, while Myrin avoided her, a little disturbed at her subtle barb from earlier. Instead, she stuck close to Ilira, who felt along the wall behind the false coffins. “You said you were here before—with Gedrin Shadowbane?”

  “Long ago, Gedrin led a contingent of his fellow Night Masks in driving their masters from the city. Vindicator’s light was particularly effective against the Night Court.”

  “Gedrin was a Night Mask?”

  “I’m surprised Saer Shadow didn’t tell you that.”

  “He …” Myrin remembered a conversation with Kalen in which they’d discussed thieves’ guilds. The word “Mask” had floated in her mind, but he’d seemed not to recognize it and immediately directed her to the Fire Knives instead. But if he’d known about the Night Masks, why hadn’t he spoken of them? “He doesn’t tell me everything.”

  Ilira made no reply to that. “Gedrin was a good man, as it passes. He turned the Night Masks—one of the worst, darkest, most putrid sores in Faerûn—into the shining Eye of Justice. It’s a shame that it didn’t stay that way, as little ever does. But it’s good to see his quest endures in the form of your …” She gave Myrin an uncertain look, as though selecting the right word.

  “Friend.” Myrin didn’t feel like discussing Kalen just then, so she changed the subject. “You came here with one of the dukes—a noblewoman vampire?”

  Ilira nodded. “We didn’t take the same route I showed you, of course, but a much safer one that I happen to know no longer exists,” she said. “Darklady Dahlia Vhammos, Duchess of Venom, didn’t want to damage her new plaything, after all.”

  Myrin could imagine that, and turned away blushing before the elf could catch her.

  Oblivious, Ilira kept searching the wall. “The second time I came here, I was leading Gedrin and his fellows down to kill the Night King. Most of the court escaped, including Dahlia. I wonder if she realized it was me.” She sighed wistfully. “Probably.”

  “Yow!” Brace’s cry interrupted them. The gnome was backing hastily away from what looked like an altar at one end of the huge round room. The altar had long ago been crushed by a massive black boulder from high above. “That must have hurt something fierce, eh Rujia?”

  The deva averted her gaze, which to Myrin seemed to be like rolling her eyes.

  Myrin could see no sign of any deity the altar had been dedicated to—likely, it had been fake, like the coffins. Whatever god the Night Masks had venerated must
have been a dark one.

  “Darklady,” Myrin said. “That’s a Sharran title, isn’t it?”

  Ilira gave her a curious look. “How did you know that?”

  Myrin shrugged. She’d read so many books over the last year, and while she usually had precise recall—she could point to which book, which sage, and even what year a piece of information came from—she couldn’t credit this. Had it been a memory she’d absorbed?

  She heard a tapping sound and looked over her shoulder to see Rujia testing the wall for hollows with the pommel of her sword. The deva met the wizard’s gaze, and Myrin looked away.

  “So …” Myrin grasped her elbow behind her back. “You lie with women, then.”

  “Men and women both,” Ilira said. “Well, that was before my scar, when I could still lie with anyone without killing them. Dahlia, though, was a vampire, so my touch didn’t hurt her.” Ilira halted in her search and regarded Myrin with a speculative look. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” Myrin realized she was grinding her toe into the filthy stone floor and stopped with a wince. “I was curious.”

  “Indeed?” Ilira stepped a bit closer to her, even as her shadow reached toward Myrin’s shadow as though to caress it. This unnerved and excited her both at once.

  “There were those rumors about you and … and Lady Dawnbringer,” she said. “But—”

  “You can ask me anything, Myrin. I promise I’ll answer. Unless, of course, I can’t.”

  They stood so close Myrin realized she was shaking. She realized Ilira trembled, too, which made breathing hard. Ilira’s hand on the wall crept closer to Myrin’s own.

  “Ah,” Ilira said. “Here it is.” ’

  There was a click, a distant whir of gears, and the wall ground open. The secret door revealed a dark hallway filled with billowing mists. Myrin thanked the gods Ilira’s find had interrupted her before she said something she might regret. Whispers filtered from the misty hallway: words that she could not make out, let alone understand. She braced for an attack, but realized the voices were magical in nature, not necessarily belonging to physical foes.