Myrin stretched out her scarred hand, which glowed with silver-white light—Torm’s light, drawn from Levia. A searing ray shot out and struck the man full in the chest, and he shrieked and fell away. He reacted to the assault the way he had when her gown’s radiance touched him: it seemed to pain him deeply. He turned and fled.
She wanted to go help Kalen, but she couldn’t leave Rujia and Brace alone where Levia might capture them. She drew out her orb and called to mind the awful spell she’d used in Luskan, when she’d plunged an entire cavern into darkness through which her companions had still been able to see. Rujia and Brace could escape in that. Inky blackness surged from her, and the hall became absolutely dark once more. The power was run through with veins of blue fire.
Next, Myrin called upon her persistent levitation magic and surged into the air. She pierced the darkness but pulled up short, her heart thundering. The platform was descending, and she saw why: no one stood upon it any more.
Locked together, Kalen and Ilira were falling right toward her.
Their hearts beat in unison as Kalen crouched over Ilira, and she pressed herself into his embrace. The silence drew out between them.
“Gods.” Ilira touched her lips with tentative fingers. “I’ve not kissed a man in a century—not without killing him.”
Kalen’s mind felt fuzzy. “You meant to kill me, did you?”
“I did.” Ilira glanced over the side of the platform, into a roiling mass of darkness. “Although perhaps this will do.”
She wrapped her arms around him, kicked in the side of one knee, and they both slipped from the platform, flailing as they fell through the night sky.
Kalen’s insides rushed upward. He wanted to vomit. “You’re mad!”
Ilira threw back her head and laughed, a melodious, wild sound that filled the night around them. Ilira sounded not terrified but exhilarated.
They hurtled past Myrin, who was flying toward them, then plunged toward the darkness.
“Do you want to die?” Kalen demanded of Ilira. “You’re killing both of—”
As soon as they hit Myrin’s conjured shadows, which swallowed Kalen’s light, Ilira’s eyes turned black as death. She danced into the shadows, taking him along.
For one disorienting heartbeat, the world blurred into a shadowy version of itself, and then he was slammed against a solid wall. His bones rattled.
They started to fall again, and Kalen realized that Ilira had teleported them against the high wall of Darkdance Manor. Before he could do more than gasp for air, Ilira shadowdanced once more and slammed him again into the ceiling. Vindicator jarred loose from his nerveless fingers and vanished into the mass of darkness. Then she did it again, and again, and a fourth time, hammering him against one wall and leaping over to hit the opposite wall.
“Wait—” he said, and she slammed him into the floor. “Stop—”
They hit once more, and Kalen lay reeling on the floor with Ilira standing over him. She grasped his collar and pulled him up so that her black eyes blazed into his gray ones. She said nothing, only stared at him, her shoulders heaving. As he watched, her eyes slowly returned to gold, and emotion flooded her face: something deep and long ago buried, only now awakened.
“I—” Ilira tried to speak but could only cough, sending blood leaking down her chin. He must have cut her deeply indeed.
Finally, the darkness dissipated, and as it did, Levia appeared behind Ilira, her mace held high. But her shadow fell across them, cast by the glowing light of Vindicator two paces away. The elf’s ears pricked slightly, not unlike those of a cat. Even as Levia struck her head, Ilira threw herself down on top of Kalen and danced into her shadow. The world spun crazily again.
They appeared by one of the gargoyles atop Darkdance Manor, tumbling out of a shadow cast by an exploding firework. They hit the sloped roof together and bounced apart. Ilira tumbled without control, seemingly senseless from Levia’s strike. Kalen reached for her, but she slipped out of his grasp and he skittered and rolled down the shingled roof toward the edge. He managed to roll over onto his stomach and dig his fingers into the shingles to no avail. Indeed, he left a trail of blood where the shingles tore his skin.
“Not tonight, Helm,” he prayed.
Gray flames spread around his hand and Vindicator appeared in his grasp. He raised the blade into the air and stabbed it down. The shingles and the wood beneath parted easily enough, and the blade cut a path down the roof with an ugly groan. Ilira rolled past him. Unless he did something, she was going to fall to her death when they reached the edge.
Perhaps it was the thought of Myrin and how it would hurt her.
Perhaps it was his vow to protect the innocent and bring justice to the darkness.
Or perhaps it was the kiss.
Regardless, Kalen reached out and grasped Ilira’s bare arm. Instantly, smoke rose from his bare skin on hers, and he knew that whatever had suppressed her spellscar before had worn off. He gritted his teeth and prepared for the heat that built against his own protective scar. For what seemed forever, they fell together, blue fire dancing from her skin to his, Vindicator blazing as it tore open Myrin’s roof.
Then they reached the edge. Vindicator thunked against a crossbeam, halting Kalen with an abruptness that made his arm creak. The impact jarred his hand loose of Ilira’s arm, but he snatched out and caught her gloved forearm. He heard more than felt his arm strain past the breaking point, but his spellscar let him hold her.
How long they hung that way—Kalen just over the edge, Ilira limp in his grasp—he could not say. It might have been breaths or hours.
Then hands closed around Kalen’s wrist and he looked up into Myrin’s terrified face. She helped him push Ilira onto the roof, then pull himself up. He and Myrin sat panting in the warm Westgate evening.
“Kalen. Are you well? I—” Myrin trailed off, eyes wide.
Without even realizing it, he’d summoned Vindicator out of the roof and back into his hand. The blade seemed as pure and sharp as ever, for all its haphazard trip through her roof.
“I have to take her,” Kalen said, pointing the sword at Ilira. “You know that.”
Myrin shook her head. “She’s no threat to me—I swear by Mystra and all the gods.”
“Mystra is long dead,” Kalen said.
“So is Helm, but he still means something to you.”
Kalen coughed. “I have to take her.”
Myrin’s eyes burned. “Are you really Kalen, or are you just Shadowbane?”
He stared at her. “I—”
“And I’m your shadow,” Ilira said.
The elf—who must have awakened during their moment together—swept Kalen’s lower foot out from under him. He tried to catch himself, but with his numbing spellscar he had no balance. He slipped off the roof out over the Westgate night.
Myrin felt a crushing weight on her chest, as though her heart had stopped and would never start again. “What—what have you done?”
Ilira started to respond, but at that moment another voice cried out in rage and fear. Levia came running down the roof toward them, away from the obediently floating platform.
“Myrin, it’s well.” Ilira coughed into her hand. “You have to take us—”
She faltered and fell into Myrin’s arms. The wizard furrowed her brow, stupefied as to what was happening. When she brought up her hand, it glinted with wet blood in the moonlight.
Red-black blood trickled between Ilira’s lips and over her chin, and her flesh smoked where Kalen had marked it with Helm’s sigil. Her eyes seemed vacant and opaque, their gold luster faded to a muddy yellow. The color reminded Myrin of Hessar, when he had looked at her through the shadows. She brushed the comparison aside and held Ilira tight in her arms.
From higher up on the roof, Levia declaimed words of power, and the air before her shaped itself into a hundred scything blades, which came roaring down toward Myrin.
Myrin didn’t know what to think, but she understood
what had to be done. She opened her shadow door and pulled herself and Ilira through it just as the blades fell upon them.
NIGHT, SHIELDMEET
NO, GODSDAMMIT!” LEVIA CRIED AS THE TWO WOMEN vanished, dodging her storm of blades. “No!”
What if she had used the ring? Could she have got to them in time? But no, the platform had been so slow. Perhaps if she had brought a potion of flight … Gods!
Levia slipped on the treacherous shingles and nearly slid off the roof herself. She was panicking, and panic made one stupid. She shimmied down and glanced over the edge, wincing.
Kalen hung about a pace down, clinging to a gargoyle.
“Help?”
Levia blinked down in disbelief. Then such relief swept through her that she laughed.
“I’m glad you’re amused,” Kalen said. “Help.”
She caught his arm and pulled. Muscles straining, she helped him up, and he collapsed half atop her on the roof. They lay together in the moonlight, half supporting one another.
“Levia?” Kalen asked. “Are you all right?”
“Am I all right?” His fingers brushed her face, and she realized her cheeks were wet with tears, despite her relief. “I think so. I—Kalen, your hand!”
His left hand was red and blistered as though he’d plunged it into fire. Magical fire, perhaps, or—or Ilira’s spellscar. The one that hadn’t burned him when Ilira kissed him.
Immediately, all of Levia’s warm relief fled, replaced by cold, murderous focus. Other folk might grow hot and foolish when angered, but Gedrin had long ago taught Levia the self-defeating nature of rage. Instead, she imagined her hands around Ilira’s throat—those gold eyes huge and protruding out of her damnably beautiful face. Her mind went over the steps to make that fantasy a reality.
“We’ll find them,” she said, her voice cold.
Ilira may have received Kalen’s oath of justice this night, but she had earned Levia’s eternal enmity. Levia swore her own vow to her god that Ilira would suffer when they met again.
It would be a mercy if Kalen’s strike had killed her already.
Some ways away, the revelry in the common room of the Purple Lady festhall waned as the night progressed, and many of the patrons retired for more personal amusements elsewhere. There were still two-score folk lounging around the place, smiling blissfully and flirting over their drinks. The previous night’s battle had rattled them, but they had let the excitement go.
Abruptly, a cold wind flowed through the common room, stirring clothes and loose hair. Plates rattled and quivering tankards sent mead and ale foaming onto the tables. Folk looked for the source of the icy breeze: a door of shadow that opened among the tables. Through that door, they saw a desolate landscape of ruined buildings—a bleary, nightmare reflection of Westgate.
Myrin and Ilira stumbled from the door. The nearly unconscious elf clutched her middle with a blood-drenched handful of cloak. The wizard’s hands were slaked with blood, though the mess seemed not to touch her gown through the enchantments woven upon it.
Myrin guided Ilira to collapse on a nearby table. The Helm sigil burned into her shoulder sizzled, and she cried out anew. Black blood ran like spittle from her mouth.
“Don’t just stare,” Myrin cried. “Help us!”
The patrons of the Purple Lady did no such thing, being frozen in awe and terror.
“Allow me to rephrase.” Myrin raised her orb and sent a bolt of magic lancing into a pillar right next to one of the slack-jawed patrons. It reduced a purple tapestry to tatters. “Someone help me, or I aim better.”
“My lady!” The door slammed open, and Brace rushed into the tavern. The gnome looked harried, but little the worse for wear. His eyes widened when he saw Ilira bleeding out on the table and Myrin holding her bloody cloak pressed to her midsection. “Gods!”
“Praise Mystra,” Myrin said. “You can heal her.”
Brace shook his head. “Her wounds are beyond my magic.”
“A healer, then,” Myrin said. “Find a priest!”
The gnome exercised his harsh words to drive back curious onlookers, and a curse sent one of them rushing for the nearest temple. As a group they did nothing, but when offered direct instructions, they jumped to obey. One of them—an elderly man with a medallion of Ilmater, god of healing—came forward, but Ilira slapped away his seeking hands.
“Priest …” she murmured. “Burn …”
The gnome’s face went pale as that of a corpse, and Myrin understood why. A healer would have to touch Ilira, and her ravenous spellscar burned with renewed fury in her skin.
“I’ll take your scar again,” Myrin said. “Then a healer can—”
“Not again.” Ilira’s gloved hand trailed down Myrin’s rune-covered arm. “Don’t make my … last act … killing you.” Her body heaved and she vomited blood onto the table.
Myrin and Brace exchanged a look. Ilira was dying, and there was nothing they could do.
In his borrowed office, Lilten’s hand lingered over the black reaver. He had not seen the piece in check before, and yet the white knight had swept into the space and slain it.
“Fascinating,” Lilten said aloud.
His guest remained unseen, despite Lilten’s sharp senses and unique heritage.
“My compliments,” Lilten said. “I had not expected such a gambit so early.”
The shadows stirred, and a pair of ruby red eyes appeared in the gloom. After a moment, Lilten’s opponent was sitting in the chair across the desk from him. “Surprise wins battles.”
“I see you’ve decided to play the game after all, my old friend.”
“Hardly. I simply kill those who stand in my way.” Kirenkirsalai reached out and very firmly tipped the reaver over. “Your woman is dead, or soon will be. You have lost.”
“It is a mark of your impatient youthfulness that you think you have won before a piece is taken—or even all the pieces declared.”
He reached out to right the reaver piece, but Kire clapped his hand over his. They struggled, matching strength—Kire’s unholy, Lilten’s ancient.
“I see no way your fox can survive this, unless”—Kire’s eyes widened—“No. She won’t do it. She can’t. Taking the elf’s scar will kill her.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Lilten held the reaver firmly. “How does that make you feel?”
Finally, Kire let go of the piece and stood, anger on his dark face. “Would you sacrifice the prize of our game to save your little pet? Are you that mad?”
“Just as you underestimate me, so have you underestimated that woman for the last century and a half. I see no reason to assume you’d change your ways.” Lilten indicated the rest of the board. “I wonder if all the pieces you think are yours are indeed yours.”
Kire stared past him, at a glass case in the corner of the chamber. He’d been in this chamber before, but the way he gazed at the case, he’d never noticed it before. The hand Lilten had thought hovered over his rapier hilt was, in truth, touching an object in his pocket.
“Fascinating,” Lilten murmured. “Do you see something appealing?”
Kire scowled at him. “How’s your daughter?” Then he vanished into the dark.
For a long time, Lilten stared into the empty seat. His hand lingered on the reaver.
“Erevan,” he prayed. “Hear your lapsed servant. Be with her.”
Ilira cried out, her voice burbling with blood and bile. She kicked and scrabbled and would have torn at her wound had two of the larger patrons not restrained her. Myrin made sure they did not touch her skin. Others watched from a distance, terrified of the wizard and her angry gnome companion.
Blood spattered Myrin’s blue gown and slid down like water on glass. The magic kept her perfectly clean, but it could do nothing for Ilira. Myrin conjured a magic hand to hold pressure on the wound, while her own hands were busy.
“Godsdamn it, isn’t there anything we can do?” Myrin’s voice cracked.
“Despair ser
ves no one, Lady Darkdance,” a man said. “Fortunately, I can help her.”
Hessar stepped out from behind a pillar. Instantly, Myrin raised one bloody hand to throw a bolt of golden force at the monk. His shadow magic deflected it to blast a crater in the wall.
“Wait,” Ilira croaked. “He’s … a friend.”
“A friend?” Brace—who had reclaimed his rapier from Ilira—drew both swords into his hands. Hessar looked bemused. “This is one of those Eye of Justice lunatics—”
“Not the Eye …” Ilira coughed blood. “Shade … he’s …” A coughing fit wrenched her up off the table. “He’s a Netherese spy.”
“Netherese!” Brace gaped. “But that’s—that’s so much worse!”
“Stay back.” Myrin raised her orb. “I warn you this once.”
“And I warn you.” Hessar looked calm. “Take your mage’s hand from that wound at her peril. She is bleeding to death while you stand in indecision.”
Ilira struggled against the hands holding her. She curled into a pained ball, making her leather jerkin ride up and revealing the luster of gold: a tattoo of a starburst with many points.
“Very well.” Myrin raised her scarred right hand to Hessar’s face.
“Is this necessary?” the monk asked.
“You’ll give me the spell from your mind,” Myrin said. “Unless you’re here to kill her.”
“If you take the spell, will you not have to touch her?” He gestured to her untouched left hand. “And wouldn’t a second scar be a perfect mate to the first?”
Myrin hesitated.
“Trust me to aid her or no, but decide quickly,” he said. “Else you’ll have to hope you can steal knowledge of how to raise the dead.”
Could Myrin trust Hessar? She remembered the way the monk had restrained himself from striking her during the battle. Hessar had stood over her in the darkness and winked at her. He’d known about Ilira’s spellscar—he’d even told her to use it against Levia. Perhaps …
Ilira moaned. Bloody veins shot through her gold eyes and she convulsed, gasping for air.
Shadowbane: Eye of Justice Page 25
