by David Gross
More damning was the circumstance of Talbot’s adventure of the past year, which ended in the immolation of an old converted warehouse that had once been Malveen property.
Ever since that time, the famed swordsman Radu Malveen had been missing, leaving only his elder brother Laskar and their younger brother Pietro to carry the family name. Their sisters had wisely married away from their family’s notorious reputation.
Despite Tamlin’s ignorance of the recent offenses of the Malveen men, Thamalon was still irritated. The quality of the gift was one thing, but to think it would absolve him of his irresponsible behavior was so blatant a ploy as to be insulting.
Perhaps an insult was exactly what Tamlin intended, thought Thamalon. He was by far the most sophisticated of the children, but perhaps his courtesy was a mask for contempt.
The damned vein began to pulse again, and Thamalon breathed deeply to still it. He looked more closely at the painting.
There must have been a sale on brown paint, he mused. Malveen had used little else in depicting the dark edge of a forest looming over a hunting lodge. Flecks of red showed where the frightened inhabitants had lit torches against the darkness, but the flames dispelled no shadows. Instead, they picked out the glittering eyes of grotesque beasts creeping out from the forest. Their bodies were all rough knobs and acute angles, as were the trees, which leaned and swayed as Thamalon peered at them.
He tried to blink away the illusion, but some intangible force had locked his gaze upon the canvas. The movement was no illusion, as the brush strokes swirled and converged in a spiral that pulled Thamalon toward the painting.
That wasn’t quite right.
The vortex was drawing him into the painting.
He struggled to turn away, but the only movement he could muster was a weak wave of his limp hands. Briefly he thought he must look pathetic staggering around in his housecoat and slippers. He didn’t like to think he looked like one of the feeble old drunks who stumbled about the waterfront begging for charity from superstitious sailors eager to buy good luck for a few copper pennies.
The painting pulled him ineluctably closer. Thamalon could smell the pigment—earth and blood and dung. He could almost taste it as the dark colors flooded over and through him.
His feet left the floor. He felt his body drawn apart.
In that last frantic instant, Thamalon Uskevren ceased to exist.
CHAPTER 3
ASSIGNATION
The stench of dung and urine soured the air, but neither of them smelled it. Steaming warmth from the sewage stream provided respite from the winter chill, but neither of them felt it. Any ordinary man in those wretched tunnels would have yearned to scramble back onto the streets, but not these two.
An assassin and a ghost skulked through the vaulted sewers of Selgaunt.
The living man strode along the cobblestone walkway, his steps no louder than the shadow of an owl’s wing. The stiff collar of his cloak was laced up just beneath his eyes. The rest of his face hid behind a white enameled mask attached to a steel half-cap protecting his forehead. Behind the cap, a black shower of hair spilled down past his fine shoulders.
The man’s shadow crooked upon the walls as he passed each of the eldritch lamps ensconced within its alcove. Eight other shadows rose and fell in turn behind him. Where they oozed along the walls, they left a clammy glimmer on the stones.
“Make a dog,” said the ghost. He looked like nothing at all, and his voice echoed only within the assassin’s head.
The man said nothing, didn’t even break his stride except to slap the edge of his supple leather cloak behind the scabbard at his right hip. The hand that struck the fabric was gnarled and sclerotic beneath a calfskin glove.
“Rrruh! Ruh ruh!” barked the ghost. “Come on, here comes another lamp. You can make a wolfhound.”
The man turned and stared at the point from which he must have imagined the voice emanated. In the flickering green light, the black spots of his eyes seemed to swallow up all the whites.
“Still a sensitive subject? I thought you’d moved beyond recriminations, Radu. After all, it’s not as if he disfigured you so. You managed that handily enou—”
“Be silent.”
Radu Malveen’s voice was the sound of a dry wind shaking shattered reeds. It might have been a human voice, once.
“There was a time, of course, when you could have silenced me with a look. What a scary bastard you were, even before you killed me. Ah, my material days. Still, there are advantages to this ethereal existence. That time you dossed down near the festhall, I had just enough room to slip through the wall and peek in at the new talent.”
Radu lowered his head but kept his eyes focused on a spot very close to the point from which Chaney perceived the world. Chaney smiled, imagining the assassin’s whitening lips, then remembering that Radu no longer had much in the way of lips. That thought made him smile even more.
“If I still had a life to lose, I might think twice before crossing the dread Radu Malveen, prickly, conceited, criminally insane killer from a House of raving no-doubt-on-account-of-profound-venereal-disease lunatics greatest swordsman in Selgaunt. Oh, and pathetic cripple. Mustn’t forget the profound and unmanly injuries.”
The quick snap of his cloak was the only warning that Malveen had moved. Before an eye could capture the blur that was his single liquid motion, he completed his lunge, extending his slender blade through empty air. While he saw nothing there, something caught his eye from below.
Radu looked down into the sewer water and saw the reflection of his blade passing through the specter of Chaney Foxmantle.
The ghost was almost as slender as Radu, but he was less than half past five feet tall. His fair hair was colorless in death, but some faint blue spark danced in his eyes. Maybe it was the last ember of hope. Maybe it was malice.
Chaney whistled. He looked down at the blade and measured its distance from the place his heart had been.
“Even though I assumed you couldn’t hurt me, Seven Sisters and Hopping Ilmater, that was exciting! Good to know for sure, though, don’t you think?”
“Foxmantle,” warned Malveen, “your insipid rem—”
Radu’s eyes darted, seeking something moving out of synchronicity with the ripples of the dark water. He crouched low to view the reflecting water at a sharper angle, watching Chaney’s ghost.
There, seven dark figures stood silently in the water, the foul vapors of the sewage mingling with their own indefinite forms. Two looked like street toughs, one a bony old crone, one a dwarf with hairy shoulders, the others middle-aged noblemen of no remarkable features. Their exposed hands were the color of oysters, as were the points of their chins. They hung their heads so low that their damp black hair covered the rest of their faces.
“Who are they?” whispered Radu.
“It certainly took you long enough to notice them. Don’t you ever look in a mirror?” Chaney paused for dramatic affect. “What am I saying, of course you don’t look in—”
“Who are they?” Radu’s voice was full of razors.
“Don’t you recognize them?”
Radu’s narrowing eyes showed that he did. “They don’t look the same as you.”
“No, but they died after your rather ignoble defeat, didn’t they?”
Radu stared at the shades a moment longer, then he raised his head as if in understanding. He sheathed his sword and strode briskly away.
Chaney chuckled as he watched the man retreat, then gulped as he felt the invisible bonds that kept him within thirty paces of his killer drag him along in his wake.
Radu came to an intersection where three brown streams converged into the wider flow he’d been following. Chaney peered around the corner and saw the amber light of a pair of lanterns twenty feet down one of the passages.
Radu moved silently to the edge of the light.
A well-fed nobleman stood between the lanterns. His velvet gown was heavy with gold thread and tiny j
ewels, except where sewer mud covered his back and left sleeve. Behind him was a wooden ladder, its second rung freshly broken.
Chaney recognized the fat man as Thuribal Baerodreemer. A generation ago, the Baerodreemers had been among the coalition that brought down House Uskevren, the most powerful of House Foxmantle’s allies and the family of Chaney’s best friend. Chaney had little use for a Baerodreemer and hoped the man did something to irritate Radu. That could prove entertaining.
“Ah!” Thuribal clutched at his chest as he suddenly noticed Radu’s arrival. “You come upon our appointment most stealthily, sir!”
Radu said nothing.
“That is … I mean, naturally you would move with the utmost discretion, a man like you, after all …”
“Boo!” said Chaney. “Come now, Radu. Give the jellyfish a bit of a spook, will you? Humor me, and I’ll let you sleep an hour or two tonight.”
“It is d-done, then?” said Thuribal. He couldn’t hear the ghost’s words.
Radu inclined his head slightly.
“Of course it is, of course, of course!”
Thuribal’s face was beaded with sweat. He fumbled at his purse and produced a small velvet pouch, which he held out at arm’s length. Immediately realizing the rudeness of the gesture, he withdrew it an inch or two for courtesy.
Radu placed his petrified right hand beneath the pouch. Carefully, Thuribal placed it between Radu’s curled fingers.
“I assure you, they are of the finest quality, as you required. In the unlikely event you find them wanting—”
“I know where to find you,” whispered Radu.
“Er, ehm …”
“Not bad,” said Chaney. “Still, I’d like to see him fall down again.”
Radu began to withdraw into the shadows.
“Wait!” Thuribal called, stepping forward and slipping in the muck. Chaney almost got his wish. “I, ah, took the liberty of bringing you a new client.”
“What?” hissed Radu.
“I know, I know,” Thuribal said, hastily waving down Radu’s objection in a futile effort to regain his own nerve, “but this is a most special customer, one I am sure you will be glad I brought.” He glanced upward and called, “Drakkar?”
A cloaked figured descended slowly through the sewer hole. The top of his deep blue hood was dusted with snow, as were his wide but shallow shoulders. When his feet met the floor, Chaney saw that the man stood as tall as Radu, but his cloak obscured all of his features except for a single brown hand clutching a knotty length of bloodwood. Black thorns studded the crimson surface of the staff, spiraling up from the tip to form a wicked crown of spikes at the head.
“Who’s this, then?” asked Chaney.
Radu ignored the ghost’s question, as usual. Chaney’s gaze fixed upon the shadow beneath the newcomer’s hood, and he thought briefly of pushing his own face inside to take a look.
“I thought it would be more convenient for everyone,” said Thuribal. “No sense wasting time arranging for another rendezvous, yes?”
The interloper pulled back his cowl. His face was as dark as oiled oak. Fine creases around the black pearls of his eyes spoke of both mirth and cunning. He must have had at least fifty winters, but his hair was as black and wavy as that of any youth. His beard might have been drawn with a pencil, its spare geometry bracketing a strong pointed chin in the Cormyrean fashion.
Drakkar rested his staff in the crook of an elbow and produced a velvet pouch from beneath his cloak. He plucked its strings to reveal the diamonds within.
“I desire a proof,” he said.
Radu drew his sword and stepped toward Thuribal.
“What are you doing?” sputtered Thuribal. “I—”
“Oh, no!” said Chaney, clutching his intangible stomach. “You just did one!”
The first thrust came from above. Chaney turned away, but he still heard the sickening clatter as the steel blade smashed Thuribal’s teeth. The sword must have severed the man’s tongue and jammed it down his throat, for the only sounds Chaney heard from him afterward were muted chokes.
Chaney instantly regretted his earlier wish for Thuribal’s misfortune. He sat and hugged his knees.
After the crippling blow, Radu took his time killing the man, far longer than Chaney had observed in any of the man’s previous murders.
When the killing blow finally came, Chaney dared to look once more at Radu. The killer had already wiped and sheathed his blade.
Drakkar glanced at what was left of Thuribal. “This is not what I had hoped to see,” he said. “I require an irreversible killing.”
Radu leaned against the sewer wall. His posture seemed insouciant, but Chaney knew better. He hugged his ghostly knees all the tighter, bracing for what was to come.
The corpse of Thuribal Baerodreemer turned white as ash, clothes and all. Seconds later, it disintegrated into fine powder. Before the stuff could melt into the sewer, a silent wind swirled it up into a grotesque, friable mannequin. Chaney guessed the phantom was invisible to mortal eyes, but there had been no other witness to Radu’s previous killings.
None who lived, that was.
As if reading the ghost’s mind, Drakkar sketched a shape in the air and ran two fingers over each eyelid. His black pupils flashed viridian, and his eyes widened as he detected the dusty specter.
“Ah,” he said in the confident tone of a man who doesn’t fully understand what he sees but wishes his audience to think otherwise.
Thuribal’s phantom twitched, its hands clawing at the air, head straining to turn away from its killer, mouth yawning wide as its face turned inexorably back toward Radu. Its granular form thickened and flowed, wavered one last time, then cascaded into Radu Malveen.
Radu shuddered and turned his head slowly to the side until his neck popped. With the collar hiding his mouth, the only reaction Chaney and Drakkar could see was the flicker of his black eyes. The three tiny moles beside his left eye briefly converged into one dark blot.
Chaney felt the same bone-hollowing ache that followed each of Radu’s murders, and he heard the liquefying howl of the other ghosts join his own involuntary wail. Most of all, he felt the rapturous agony of life suffusing Radu’s body, bolstering his unholy continuation.
The first time Chaney had felt the euphoric torment was when he died upon Radu’s soul-devouring bone blade. Moments later, Radu turned the blade on his own brother rather than let him confess to their enemies. Stannis Malveen was already undead, however, a sea-rotted vampire whose infernal essence shattered the bone blade, spraying its shards into his killer’s body. Since then, the voracious power resided in Radu, consuming the souls of his victims no matter what weapon he employed.
When it was over, Chaney saw an eighth spectral figure join the undead procession behind Radu. Thuribal’s ghost looked up at Chaney, astonished at its fate.
“I’m sorry,” Chaney said quietly.
Thuribal lowered his gaze to the shadows at his feet, unmoved by the sympathy of his fellow spirit.
“Perfect.” Drakkar smiled, raising a hand to draw a glyph in the air before Radu. “Now, after I cast a few spells on you to verify—”
Radu parted his cloak to show the hilt of his sword.
“Or perhaps you prefer not,” said Drakkar, lowering his hand and backing away. He made a taut smile, the practiced gesture of a man used to accepting corrections from a superior. He carefully proffered the pouch of diamonds. “Let us agree upon the time for another meeting.”
When Radu inclined his head in agreement, Chaney stared at the other ghosts and sadly shook his head.
CHAPTER 4
A SOUND OF THUNDER
“Where is Lady Shamur?” demanded Erevis Cale.
A trio of chambermaids stared at him dumbly, their mouths forming fearful little moues. Cale knew his bearing could awe the staff of Stormweather Towers, and usually he was glad of it, but he had no patience for hesitation in a crisis.
“Speak, one of you!”
/> The eldest of the three found her voice. “She left her chambers in search of Lord Thamalon.”
“Where?”
The maid shrugged, then saw the danger in the butler’s eyes.
“Upstairs,” she blurted. “Perhaps the solar?”
Cale dismissed the servants with a chop of his hand, and they scurried away, the tiny bells on their turbans tinkling. The sound was meant to warn when a servant approached, so one could still a conversation or pull one’s trousers up, but that night Cale found the jingling more irritating than practical.
Minutes earlier, a terrific peal of thunder had shaken Stormweather Towers, and lightning momentarily blinded all of its inhabitants. Strangely, nothing was burned, and the guards stationed outside reported no unseasonable weather. They had seen flashes only from within the mansion windows.
Such a magical effect was unlikely unless an intruder had penetrated the House defenses. Cale lamented once more the death of Brom Selwyn, the house mage who’d given his life in defense of the family a year earlier. He’d advised Lord Thamalon that a replacement was imperative to House security, but even he had to agree that contracting a trustworthy spellcaster could be a long and difficult process.
If one of the Uskevren’s many rivals had found a way past the wards.…
Cale set aside the speculation. He was searching for the master of the house, whose own thunder he’d expected but not heard since the lightning. Once he conferred with Thamalon, he could do more than order the house guard to seal the mansion.
He passed through the front hall in two dozen long strides, then climbed the grand staircase three steps at a time.
Cale picked up the lamp always left beside the glass doors and raised the wick. He lifted his light and entered the solar.
It was a vast garden chamber filled with burlbush, honeyvine, and lady’s promise, among dozens of other varieties transplanted from forests both near and remote. From pots suspended from the ceiling spilled still more flora, interrupted here and there by bright petals nurtured unseasonably beneath glass windows. Amid it all stood a great fountain, its water trickling down huge chunks of basalt sheathed in Lady’s Lace moss before flowing away in a serpentine stream filled with silvery blue fish.
