The Sorcerer

by Denning, Troy

  “No need to cower, my dear,” he said. “We’re friends of—”

  Vala flicked the figure off her foot and heard it hit a wall with a real-sounding thud. She was cowering, frightened of her tortured mind’s own phantasms.

  “I won’t let this happen,” she said to herself. Vala straightened her shoulders and raised her chin—but she did not lower her leg. “Go away!”

  “Softly, child!” This time the voice was female, and it came from over near the door. “Mind the guard.”

  Another voice, on her other side, began what sounded like a spell. The bearded figure returned, this time flanked by two female figures with flowing silver hair, and Vala realized that, phantasms or not, they were all around her. There could be hundreds of them out there in the dark, swarming over the floor. Thousands, maybe, an army of dark little shadow faeries come to feast now that her flesh was suitably battered and bruised. She screamed. She could not help herself, the sound just erupted as she let out her next breath.

  The shadow faeries cringed and looked toward the door, and in the next moment Vala was silent. Her mouth remained open and her throat continued to vibrate, but there was no more sound.

  The male faerie looked toward the door and asked, “The guard?”

  “Still thinking about it,” the female voice whispered. “He’s curious, but not alarmed.”

  Vala could see her, another silver-haired faerie down on the floor, peering around the corner of the archway.

  “Keep an eye on him,” the male said.

  Followed by the two silver-haired females, he circled toward Vala’s head. They were joined by a third female, which fluttered over from behind Vala and settled on the floor next to them. Vala tried to spin around to bring her feet toward them but one of the females made a motion with a sliver-sized wand, and she found herself unable to move.

  “I’m sorry we frightened you,” the male said. “Clearly, your ordeal has taken more of a toll than we imagined.”

  Had Vala been able to talk, she would have suggested that they change places and see what kind of toll being a Shadovar slave took on him.

  “Can you stop screaming?” asked one of the women. “We have some questions.”

  Vala grew aware of her aching jaw and realized that her mouth continued to gape open, that her throat was raw from screaming. She clamped her mouth shut and glared at the black-clad faeries beside her. They certainly looked solid enough.

  The woman nodded, made a dismissive gesture, and a whimpering, rasping sound came to Vala’s ears. It took a moment to identify the source as her own throat.

  “Good,” the man said. He held his hand out and moved it in a placating motion that made Vala want to kick him. “We’re friends of Galaer—”

  “Galaeron?” Vala finished for him.

  She brought her breath under control. Phantasms or not, she could not have these faeries telling Galaeron that she had whimpered when they came for her.

  “He sent you?” she asked.

  The women looked at each other. They looked uncomfortable.

  “What’s wrong?” Vala demanded. “Is he hurt?”

  “We wouldn’t know,” the man, whose manner was gruff, said.

  One of the faerie women stepped in front of the male and said, “Galaeron is on a mission of the utmost importance to all of Faerûn.”

  “As are we,” said the second woman, also stepping in front of the male. “Perhaps it would help if we introduced ourselves. I am Storm Silverhand.”

  “I’m Dove Falconhand,” said the woman at the door.

  “I am Alustriel Silverhand,” said the woman who had cast the spells. She motioned at the last woman, who was still standing beside the black-bearded man. “This is our sister Laeral.”

  “And that would make me Khelben Arunsun.” The faerie man pushed his way between the two women who had stepped in front of him. “Now that you’re properly awed, maybe you’d care to answer a question or two and help us save the Heartlands.”

  Vala scowled down at the male, quite certain that she had lost her mind.

  When she didn’t say anything, Khelben rolled his eyes and turned to the one who had introduced herself as Alustriel.

  “How can she not know who we are?” he asked. “Is Vaasa so backward?”

  “We know of the Chosen even in Vaasa,” Vala said. “We also know the difference between flesh and phantasm. Why would the five of you show up in my cell, the size of dolls, unless I were mad?”

  “Because we need your help,” Alustriel said. She stepped over and placed a hand on Vala’s jaw. Her touch felt real enough, solid and warm. “We must find the mythallar, and you’re the only one who can help.”

  “Trouble!” hissed the woman by the door. “The guard’s coming.”

  The faeries vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving Vala alone in her cell.

  “Wait!” She felt more isolated than ever—and more certain that she was losing her mind, more frightened. “Don’t!”

  The guard appeared in the doorway, a hulking shadow lord with ruby eyes and filed teeth. Vala thought he was Feslath, one of Escanor’s favorites.

  “Don’t what?” Feslath demanded. “Who are you talking to?”

  Though his Shadovar eyes could see in the dark as easily as Vala could see in daylight, he did not even bother glancing around the cell. He knew as well as she did that there was no one in the room, that her mind had finally snapped.

  “I asked a question, slave.”

  Vala glared at him and refused to answer. She was not worried about revealing the presence of her visitors—the delusions were hidden safely inside her mind—but she could not obey, not even in this. Once she started to surrender, it would grow easier and easier, until she finally belonged to them in spirit as well as body.

  “You defy me?”

  Feslath grinned and took the whip off its hook. He did not even need to look to find it.

  “As you like. Assume the position.”

  Vala was supposed to turn her back and bow her head so her eyes would be protected.

  Instead, she glared straight into Feslath’s eyes and said, “Go suckle a veserab.”

  The whip caught Vala across the chest almost before she had finished the curse. Refusing to give him the satisfaction of a scream, she clenched her jaw and took the next strike in silence as well, but the third caught her across the ribs and forced an involuntary gasp. Feslath, in particular, was a master of the technique and delighted in forcing her body to emit the sounds her mind held in check.

  The next lash caught her across the previous one, and Vala began to grow dizzy. The assault would not end until she fell unconscious. Praying that he would keep landing his strikes on top of each other, she glared into his eyes and watched his arm draw back.

  A dark-cloaked figure rose behind Feslath and caught his arm by the wrist. Feslath’s eyes flared red, and he spun around to find the butt of a large black staff crashing into the side of his head. His knees buckled, and he melted to the floor like a suit of empty silks.

  Khelben Arunsun, standing fully six feet tall, kicked the shadow lord in the ribs—hard—to make certain he was unconscious, then came to kneel beside Vala.

  “You could have answered him,” he said.

  Vala shook her head, and vaguely aware of her gaping jaw, gasped, “You are real.”

  Khelben nodded, but made no move to undo her manacles.

  “Does that mean you’ll help us?” he asked.

  Vala shook the chain by which she was attached to the wall.

  “Does that mean you’ll get me out of here?” she asked in return.

  Khelben’s face grew impatient.

  “We’ll come back for you, but our mission depends on secrecy and surprise. We can’t take you along now without the risk of drawing attention to ourselves.”

  Vala considered this a moment then pointed her chin at Feslath’s fallen figure.

  “You’re already running that risk,” she said. “And no of
fense, but if you’re going after the mythallar, I don’t like your chances of getting back here to rescue me before this rock hits the ground.”

  “The fate of Faerûn itself hangs in the balance!” Khelben’s voice was deep and righteous. “You would bargain for your own life?”

  “I have a son who needs a mother.” Vala didn’t flinch at Khelben’s angry scowl, but added, “I am not the one who is bargaining.”

  “She has a point, Khelben.”

  Dove and the other three Chosen appeared on the floor between them, still no more than a hand high.

  Dove continued, “We promised Aris—”

  “We will keep our promise,” Khelben insisted, “without risking our mission.”

  “You’re sure our mind wiping magic will work on a Shadovar?” Alustriel asked. “They are not beings of the Weave.”

  “Even if it does, there will still be the lump on the guard’s head to explain,” Storm said. “He’ll wonder how he got it, and that in itself might give us away.”

  “I know a way it won’t matter,” Vala said, seeing her chance.

  Khelben looked to her and raised his brow.

  Vala explained her plan, and when she finished, Khelben continued to study her with narrowed eyes.

  “This will work,” Vala said. “It stands a better chance than your memory-stealing magic.”

  “Alustriel’s memory-stealing magic,” Khelben corrected. “That’s not what worries me.”

  “Then what does?” Laeral asked.

  “Vala,” he said plainly. “It’s not as though she’s helping us out of the goodness of her heart. If Galaeron couldn’t tell us where to find the mythallar, how do we know Vala can? She might be lying so we help her escape.”

  “Galaeron returned to the Palace Most High via Telamont’s magic,” Vala said. “I walked home.”

  Khelben continued to look doubtful.

  “What if I were lying?” Vala asked. “Would you leave me here to fall with the city?”

  “Of course not,” Alustriel said. “We promised Aris we wouldn’t.”

  “Then why should I lie?”

  Finally, Khelben smiled and said, “I suppose you’re right at that, aren’t you?”

  Khelben dragged the unconscious guard over to Vala and laid him at her feet. While she used the heel of her foot to make it look as though she had knocked him unconscious, Khelben removed the keys from his belt and undid her manacles. Once she was free, Vala wrapped the chain around his throat and began to choke him. None of the Chosen watched this part. They clearly wished there had been another way.

  Not Vala. She had only to think of the beatings she had suffered at Feslath’s hands for this small vengeance to seem not nearly enough. The thought sent a chill down her spine, and she found herself wondering if it was only magic-users who could let their shadows inside.

  Once the guard was dead, Vala took his equipment and dressed herself in his clothes, and Khelben shrank himself back to the size of the others. She stuffed all five of the Chosen into her pockets, and aided by spells of invisibility and silence, crept down the stairs to the base of the confinement tower. Here, she had to kill two more guards, the first when he turned toward the opening door, the second while he was struggling with the dying body she had shoved into his arms. Leaving the bodies inside the stairwell behind the locked iron door, she used the second one’s cloak to wipe the blood off the floor, then tossed it into a garderobe and left the area.

  From there, it would have been a simple matter to descend the back stairs and vanish into the city. Instead, Vala entered a servant’s passage and traversed the back of the great palace. Though she passed a constant stream of maids, pages, and butlers, she remained concealed from both eye and ear, for the magic of the Chosen was powerful enough to remain effective even after combat had been joined.

  A quarter hour later, Vala emerged from the servant’s passage into the dusky lobby outside the prince’s private wing. The great anteroom doors were closed and guarded, as they had been since his return from the battle on the High Ice, and for a moment she despaired of making her plan work. There was no other way into the wing—at least that she had ever seen—and even invisible, she could not best a dozen of Escanor’s shadow lords.

  But, as Vala had hoped, the prince’s duties could not be ignored even when he lay half-dead in his bed. It was not long before a courier approached the great doors bearing a shadow-filled message bottle. Vala fell in on his heels, following so closely that when a guard ordered him to stop three paces from the doors, she had to dodge around his side to keep from running into him. The guard took the message bottle and dismissed the courier, waiting until he had vanished down the corridor before he turned and knocked softly on the door.

  Vala stood at the guard’s side for a seeming eternity, barely daring to exhale lest her breath tickle the hair on his arms. Finally, a steward opened the door just far enough to lean out and take the message bottle. It would probably have been wise to wait for a serving maid or some other domestic whose duties would require opening the door more than a shoulder’s width, but there was precious little time to make the decision, and Vala knew that the deaths in the confinement tower would not go unnoticed for long. She dropped to her haunches, pivoting around in front of the guard, and duck-walked sideways through the narrow opening, trying so hard not to step on his heels that the closing door caught her foot.

  The guard called something to the chamberlain, who was already a step away, then shoved with his shoulder. Vala’s foot seemed to fold along the length, but the heavy door bounced back enough for her to pull her foot into the room after her.

  The door clicked shut, and Vala dropped to her seat, at once sighing in relief and opening her mouth in an unvoiced scream of pain. It would have been nice to set aside one of the weapons in her hand and check for broken bones, but such indulgences killed more warriors than they saved. She rolled to her knees and came up facing the interior of Escanor’s large anteroom, where half a dozen clerks sat attending to the prince’s private business.

  Vala started across the chamber on her hands and knees, angling for the dark corridor that led deeper into the prince’s inner sanctum. There, she had to slip under the crossed glaives of another set of guards.

  Once inside the murky passage, she rose and put some weight on her foot. The pain was dull and general, more like a bad bruise than a break. She took a few steps. Finding the foot would support her, she continued through Escanor’s private study into his dressing room, and passing another pair of guards and a small clique of servants at each stage, from his dressing room into his large and opulent bedchamber.

  Escanor lay alone in his bed, little more than a man-shaped shadow cleaving to a cage of black ribs. His beating heart was visible inside, still glowing faintly with the light of the Weave flames that had nearly consumed him. He was attended on one side of the bed by a servant and on the other by a black-robed priestess wearing the purple mask of Shar. Two of Escanor’s battle lords were standing at the foot of the bed. Vala’s darksword was on display in a rack above the prince’s headboard, locked behind a pair of crystal doors.

  Vala! Khelben’s voice came to her inside her head. In the name of the Weave, what are you doing?

  Vala did not answer. She had not told the Chosen about this part of her plan, but it was as necessary to their success as finding the mythallar. She stepped over to the foot of the bed, and in a single spinning stroke, slashed the throats of both guards.

  The men had barely fallen before the priestess raised her hands and began a wispy prayer to her hidden goddess. Vala cut this short by lashing out with the whip in her other hand. The cord wrapped itself tightly around the woman’s throat, and the prayer ended in a strangled gasp as Vala jerked the priestess off her feet. The servant started for the door, his jaw working in shock, but emitting only strangled gasps. She spun past the end of the bed, bringing her sore foot up in a hook kick that caught him square in the nose with the hardest part of he
r heel. He flew off his feet so hard that the back of his head hit first and made a sickening crack on the stone floor.

  Giving up on her spell, the priestess charged blindly forward, using one hand to pull against the whip around her throat and the other to slash her dagger blindly through the air. Vala waited for the next stroke to sweep past then she stepped forward and snapped the outside of her hand into the hinge of the woman’s jaw. The priestess went instantly limp, her eyes rolling back in her head and the dagger slipping from her hand.

  Vala dropped the whip and turned back to the bed. In Escanor’s shadowy eye sockets were a pair of copper flames, faint and flickering as he struggled back to consciousness.

  Vala! If you’re counting on us to help you kill—

  “Quiet.”

  Though Vala spoke the word aloud, she heard the word only in her mind. She started forward toward the display case. The flames in Escanor’s eyes brightened, and she knew the prince was returning to his senses. She hurled her sword, reached for her dagger, and leaped onto the bed.

  A wisp of shadowy arm rose through the covers. Her tumbling sword ricocheted upward and smashed a crystal door, and something hit her in the chest like one of Aris’s hammers. She fell off the bed backward and landed facedown on the floor.

  “Guards!” Escanor’s voice was barely a croak, but a croak loud enough to cause a stir out in the dressing room. “Help!”

  Vala raised her hand and called silently to her darksword. She heard the tinkling of shattered crystal, and the weapon came sailing over the foot of the bed. The hilt slipped into her palm like the hand of an old friend. The blade was trailing a wisp of shadow where it had brushed Escanor’s body.

  You have your sword—time to go! Storm urged. Out onto the balcony.

  Vala rolled sideways to her knees and came up with her arm cocked to throw. When she saw Escanor swinging out of the opposite side of the bed, she did just that. The blade caught him between the shoulder blades, slicing through two ribs and the faintly pulsing heart.

  The prince died without a scream. His ribcage simply dropped to the floor in two pieces. The guards from the dressing room rushed into the chamber to find the cleaved heart dissolving into a cloud of shadow.