Shadowdance 05 - A Dance of Ghosts

by David Dalglish

“I was but a child and had only my words,” she said, meeting his cold stare. “Yet still you were frightened of me. But I guess you should know how much power there can be in words.”

  She felt electricity building in the air around her, felt her power growing in her chest and sliding down into her fingers. Whatever Thren tried, she would be ready. Even if he killed her, she would not die without striking back.

  He took another step, bringing him dangerously close. She could smell the blood dripping from the rabbit, almost taste the coppery liquid on her tongue.

  “Because of you, I lost my son Aaron forever,” he said. “I won’t let that happen with the Watcher. Go home, Delysia. Go, and leave him far behind. He’s beyond needing your weak morality, your false teachings. I know what he is, and what he can become, far better than you do. It’s time to let the beast within go unchained so all of Dezrel may cower before his blades. You cost me a son. Don’t cost me an heir, not if you want to live.”

  “I’m not leaving, Thren,” she said, and she prepared for an attack. “I’m staying at his side. I won’t let you have him.”

  Light sparked from her fingertips, but if he was afraid, he showed no sign of it.

  “You mistake my kindness,” Thren said, leaning in close so his cheek was brushing against hers, so that his lips were whispering into her ear. “Leave now, or pay the price for staying. Don’t you see? It won’t be by my hand that you suffer. Keep that in mind when you make your choice.”

  And with that he left, casually strolling back toward the road, rabbit swinging in his right hand. As he faded from sight, Delysia dropped to her knees, letting out a breath she never realized she’d been holding. With both hands, she grabbed the basket’s handle, and she held it as she tried to regain her composure.

  He’s a madman, she told herself. Mad, absolutely mad, and he won’t stop until Haern’s just like him.

  It seemed the whole world stopped, the soft wind blowing through the field becoming still as the realization hit her like a stone to her chest.

  Just like him …

  Thren knew. The Watcher wasn’t an enigma, a foe, a counter to his Spider Guild. No, he had to know, for why else would he be so defensive? Why else would he fear her influence so powerfully?

  You cost me a son … don’t cost me an heir.

  Delysia grabbed the basket and ran back to their camp, ignoring the cuts against her skin from the thorns. She wasn’t sure what she’d say, and part of her feared what Thren would do. But what could he do other than kill her? Even that would be a risk. If he wanted to win Haern over, her death would put an end to their cooperation. Thren needed time; he needed opportunity.

  The sun was almost set and she out of breath, by the time she reached the camp. Haern sat before the fire, a crude spit set up to cook the rabbit above it. He smiled when he looked up and saw her and the berries, but he quickly sensed something was amiss.

  “Del?” he asked.

  Beside him sat Thren, and he glanced at her with a passive expression, as if nothing at all had been said between them only minutes before.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said. “Alone.”

  “Whatever needs to be said I’m sure can be said in front of me,” Thren said.

  “No, it can’t,” Delysia said, glaring. Haern looked between them, and his hand drifted down to the hilt of his sword.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind giving us a moment of privacy,” Haern said as he stood.

  Thren shrugged.

  “Go ahead, but I make no promises on the raspberries. If you take too long, and I eat them all, it’s on you.”

  At Delysia’s lead, the two wandered away from the camp, until she felt comfortable Thren would not hear. Leaning against one of the few trees nearby, Delysia crossed her arms over her chest and tried to make sense of her thoughts.

  “We have to go back,” she said.

  “What?” asked Haern.

  “All of us, we have to go back; we have to stop this. Whatever you’re hoping to accomplish, it isn’t worth it. We can do more good in Veldaren.”

  Haern glanced back to the campfire, and a frown came over his face.

  “Is that why you came all this way?” he asked. “To tell me to turn back? Because I won’t, Delysia. I have to know what is going on, and this is the only way.”

  She knew it wasn’t, but there was no doubt in Haern’s voice, no questioning in his eyes. His mind was set, and she felt her stomach sink.

  “It’s not worth it,” she said, voice quieter. “Not for such a risk.”

  “I can handle a few dark paladins.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Haern let out a sigh, and he kicked at the tall grass.

  “I’m not afraid of him,” he said. “He needs me.”

  “He does,” Delysia said. “And that’s what I’m afraid of.”

  She pushed off the tree, took a step toward him. She put her hand on Haern’s cheek, guided his eyes to hers. His eyes were so blue, she thought. Like a child’s. Like his father’s.

  “He knows,” she whispered. “Who you are. Don’t you understand? He knows.”

  His entire body tensed as if preparing for battle.

  “Did he tell you this?” he asked, his own voice softer.

  “No,” she said. “But I feel it in my gut. After all these years, he views this as a second chance. He wants to bring you back to him, make you as you were. Can’t you see that? Thren Felhorn wants his son returned to him. He wants his heir.”

  “It’s impossible,” Haern said, shaking his head. “Why wouldn’t he have confronted me before now? Why let me live on the streets for so long, working against him? It’s not like him; he wouldn’t have…”

  “He’d do whatever it took to get what he wanted,” Delysia said. “And he won’t let anyone stand in his way. He told me so while I was in the field.”

  His face darkened, and she saw the thought go through his mind.

  “Did he threaten you?” he asked.

  Delysia swallowed. Haern would not return to Veldaren. His mind was set, but if she revealed the threat, she knew what he’d do. He’d send her away, refusing to trust her. That was how Haern worked, and she’d come to accept it. The man would take any risk so long as the consequences were only on himself, but should it be someone else, someone he cared for …

  “He never said he would harm me,” she said, as close to a lie as she could manage, and still she felt ill by it.

  Haern let out a sigh.

  “I’ll pay more attention, all right?” he asked. “But I refuse to believe he knows I’m his son. He’d have acted far sooner. The moment he knew, he’d have torn Veldaren apart to have me back at his side. Listen, perhaps you’re right, and he wants to recruit me in some way. If that is the case, I promise you, I’ll never be what Thren wants me to be. I’m stronger than I ever was, smarter, wiser. I can stand against him far better than when I was a child.”

  The words were like tiny needles to her heart, and she stood on her toes so she could kiss his cheek.

  “Don’t you see?” she asked him. “It’s the child you were that must survive.”

  With that, she returned to the fire, determined to deny her fear of Thren, to be there no matter the cost. At her arrival, Thren tore off a leg of the rabbit and tossed it her way.

  “Dig in,” he said as she caught it. “It’ll be tougher than it looks, though.”

  He winked, and she smiled sweetly back as she bit into the flesh, vowing that no matter the cost, she would not let such a horrible man win.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Lord Victor Kane stood before the mirror and adjusted the collar of his shirt for the third time.

  “Forget it,” he said, yanking off the silken garment. “It’s not me, anyway.”

  Instead, he put on a plain undershirt, followed by his finely woven chain mail shirt. It was heavy, but when he clasped his sword belt to his waist, it helped to distribute some of the weight. That
done, he grabbed his sword, pulled a tunic with his family’s crest over his head, and then looked once more into the mirror. This time, he looked ready for battle, the rings of his chain mail shining in the light streaming in through his window.

  Much better, he thought. Better he be comfortable than pretend to be something he wasn’t.

  “Milord?” asked a man at the door after a quick set of knocks.

  “Come in, Sef,” Victor said.

  The door opened, and into Victor’s small room stepped Sef Battleborn, a heavyset and bearded man whose long brown hair had more than a fair share of gray in it. Sef had been a loyal soldier of his family for decades now, and Victor hoped he’d be around for decades more.

  “Going to Alyssa’s again?” he asked, looking Victor up and down.

  “Hard to woo a woman when you’re not at her side.”

  “The poets say differently.”

  “The poets write their ballads so that young maidens will throw themselves at their feet afterwards,” Victor said, tugging on his chain mail to readjust its weight so it was centered instead of too far on his right shoulder. “And since when do you listen to poets?”

  “When I’m off drinking,” Sef said. “Something you used to do with me before all this started.”

  Victor ran a hand through his hair, glanced at Sef.

  “Is there a reason you’re here, other than to complain about my not getting shit-faced with you at a tavern?”

  “Sadly, there is,” Sef said, and he sighed. “The mercenary captains have all gathered downstairs. They want to be paid, Victor, and they aren’t leaving until they get what they think is theirs.”

  “How many?” Victor asked Sef, who stood in the doorway to Victor’s room looking miserable.

  “Fifteen,” his old friend said. “If you tally up those under their command, it’s nearly six hundred of our mercenaries.”

  Six hundred of their remaining thousand. Victor slowly stood from his chair, walked over to Sef.

  “Fetch me soldiers still loyal to my cause,” he said. “Have them outside in case I need them.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Sef said, bowing his head. “Will you come speak with the captains?”

  “In a moment,” Victor said. “Just … tell them to give me a moment.”

  When the door closed, Victor walked back to his desk and grabbed his dagger off it. Staring into the edge, he asked himself how far he was willing to go. His parents’death … how far must he go before they were avenged? How much spilled blood was the city of Veldaren truly worth?

  “One more drop,” he said to his distorted reflection upon the blade. “Every day it seems I say it: just one more drop…”

  Was that how rivers began, with just one more drop? He didn’t know, but what he did know was that the memory of his parents was worth an ocean; sheathing the dagger on his belt, he flung open the door to his room and marched down the steps into the lower floor of his converted tavern. Sitting in chairs, standing at the bar, by the door, and leaning against the walls were the various mercenary captains. Victor knew them all well, had befriended many of them over the past few years. They’d formed the backbone of his forces required to cleanse the scourge of the underworld from Veldaren. But it’d all been a gamble relying on the king to help shoulder the load of paying them, and as the men had died and the grumbles began, that gamble had failed spectacularly.

  “He emerges,” said Joras One-Eye, sitting at a table with a large glass in his left hand. A bit of foam from the beer within coated his short beard. “I hope you managed to find a few extra bags of gold underneath your bed while we waited.”

  Victor walked over to him, and while the others watched, he stole Joras’s drink and finished it himself. Feeling the burn going down, he used it to give himself the extra push he needed.

  “I see no reason for this farce,” he told them. “Time. That is all I ask for. How much coin have I already poured into your open hands? Surely you can trust me to wait a few weeks more…”

  “Hard for a dead man to pay his debts,” Joras said. “And we all know that’s what you are: a dead man walking.”

  “If you all did your damn jobs, the danger on my life would be irrelevant.” He glared at them, then set his glass back down on the table. “Nothing has changed. Come here and threaten as you wish, but it won’t get you your gold. If you want to disband and send your men home, then do it. If you won’t wait for your payment, then you won’t receive it. The truth is that simple.”

  “Aye, that’s simple, all right,” said another of the captains, a hefty man with two axes strapped to his belt. “So how’s about we make it simple for you, Lord Kane? If we don’t get paid, me and my men go find our payment elsewhere. How about in your family lands? I think there’s a few extra silvers lost in those golden wheat fields of yours.”

  “I hear women can go for a pretty handful of silvers in parts of the world, too,” a third captain piped up.

  “Are you threatening me?” Victor asked.

  “I think we are,” Joras said, standing. The others mumbled their agreement. “And I think you need to give us a better answer than the one we’ve had. All of us have bled and died for you, for this wretched city, and while you might be a weeping-heart fool, we aren’t doing it for the good of our souls.”

  “Good of our pockets, maybe,” someone from the back chimed in.

  Victor swallowed hard, and when Sef stepped inside, Victor nodded.

  “So be it,” he said. “Give me but a moment, and I will see what I can do. Good men as you deserve payment for the work you’ve done.”

  He walked to the door, patted Sef on the shoulder, and then together, they stepped outside.

  Gathered in loose formation by the door were three hundred soldiers, the ones most loyal to Victor’s family. Victor knew he should feel pride at their supporting him, but those three hundred had also been paid. It seemed even the loyal must still be bought.

  “Kill them all,” he said to Sef. With a quick set of hand motions, Sef sent in several squads of the three hundred. They stormed through the door of the tavern, and shouts of warning quickly sounded from within, followed by the clash of metal and cries of pain.

  “Inform the other mercenaries they are to be dismissed,” Victor said to Sef. “Tell them they will be paid in time if they are patient, but the moment I hear what I consider dangerous talk, they will be executed on the spot.”

  “They’re not going to be happy about their captains’ deaths,” Sef said. “They might seek vengeance.”

  “Then they can get in line.”

  As the sound of combat from inside began to die down, Victor turned away and walked down the street. Sef hurried to join him and he asked where he intended to go.

  “Anywhere,” Victor said. “Anywhere but here. I need some fresh air. I need to remind myself why I even bother with this damn city.”

  Sef hardly looked pleased, but he accepted the answer and walked alongside him. Victor’s first thought had been to go to the market, to buy himself a small trinket or perhaps something fine to eat in an attempt to cheer himself up. The coming days would be ugly, for once the various mercenary groups elected new captains and finished with their interpersonal bickering, they’d be back again to demand money … and he doubted those who did would come alone like their former captains had.

  As they walked, Victor noticed how quiet the street seemed, how few people milled about. He felt his instincts begin to cry danger, but the moment the group of five stepped out from one of the alleys ahead, he knew it was too late.

  “Victor…” Sef said beside him, reaching for his ax, but Victor grabbed his wrist so he would not ready it.

  “Stay calm,” Victor said. He glanced over his shoulder, saw three more stepping out to block any retreat. One held a drawn dagger, the other two large crossbows. All of them bore the pointed star of the Sun Guild. Bringing his attention back to the front, he braced himself for a potential fight. He’d long known of the Sun Guild’
s advance, but since their return to Veldaren, he’d yet to strike at them and they at him. Hand settling on the hilt of his sword, he prayed it would remain that way.

  Of the five approaching, the one in the center stood out above the rest. He wore a long leather coat that had been stained a dark black, his umber hair tied into braids and pulled back from his face. His long ears were scarred at the top, revealing his elven heritage. Most obvious of all, though, was the blackened hand when he lifted it in greeting, making his following introduction unnecessary.

  “Greetings, Lord Victor Kane,” said the elf with the scarred ears. “I am Muzien the Darkhand, master of the Sun Guild.”

  “Shit,” muttered Sef.

  “Your reputation precedes you,” Victor said, louder. “I wondered if you would someday come calling.”

  Muzien smiled, and he seemed so pleasant, so calm, it made Victor all the more nervous. Only a man of absolute confidence could enter such a meeting in broad daylight and be so relaxed.

  “Every man and woman of importance within this city shall have their time before me,” Muzien said, and he continued his slow pace, arms clasped behind his back as if he were on a careless midday stroll. “Whether they spend it on their knees or facedown in a pool of their own blood will be up to them.”

  Again, Sef looked ready to grab his ax, but Victor glared his way, ensuring such a foolish action did not happen.

  “Consider me flattered you think of me as a man of importance,” Victor said, trying to keep his voice light. The last thing he wanted was to reveal fear before someone such as Muzien. It’d be like throwing bloody meat before a pack of hungry wolves.

  “How could I not?” Muzien stopped just outside sword’s reach, the remaining four with him lingering behind. The elf crossed his arms before him, and he narrowed his eyes as an amused smile spread across his lips. “After all, are you not the man who was to come into this city and cleanse it to its very core? Were you not here to deny us our shadows, to bring us into the light so we might wither and die? My, how people talk of you. All my ears hear are pomp and pride and an idiocy so stubborn, it must be religious zeal. So, here I am, and here you are, yet you do not act against me. My men live, and trust me when I say this, Victor, they still find plenty of shadows.”