Shadowbane tap-4

by Eric Scott De Bie

  “With utmost hospitality as I bide me time, awaiting the opportune moment,” the halfling replied. “Brandobaris! She actually believes she be in command. What a jest!”

  “You always did play the game with a casual hand,” she said.

  He grinned with his sharklike teeth. “You’d be surprised what me hands can do.”

  “Little surprises me.” Eden rose and proffered her hand. “In that case, my fellow conspirator, I leave you in the goddess’s grace. Do not spurn her gifts.”

  “Me lady.” He took her hand but did not kiss it. “Never would I do that.”

  She walked out, her braced leg making her limp. The patrons of the Whetstone moved out of her way with palpable respect, fear, or both. Back at the table, Toytere smiled and drained the rest of his ale. This tenday would be a good one, Little Dren or no.

  He only hoped that when the time came, he got to kill Kalen Dren himself.

  CHAPTER NINE

  23 KYTHORN (DAWN)

  In the early hours of the morning, Kalen finally gave up trying to sleep in the foul-smelling warren of the Drowned Rat. The fire had burned down to crackling embers and the dim light of imminent sunrise shone through the boarded-over windows.

  Vindicator clasped loosely in his lolling hand, Rhett snored by the smoky hearth, as content as though the common room were that of any other inn in all of Faerun. Kalen admired the boy’s ability to fall asleep so readily, though he didn’t particularly enjoy the snoring. The roaring sound had no rhythm to it: rather than lull Kalen, it startled him awake if he drifted.

  By contrast, Kalen had only managed to doze, never able to let down his guard. He had not dreamed, which was a blessing in and of itself. All too often, when he closed his eyes, he saw bloody dreams and accusing faces. Instead, he dozed and stirred at every noise. Several times, he’d had to stare down Rats who crept toward Rhett, eager to get at his purse or the fabulous sword. Kalen might have enjoyed the game of cat and rat, were it not for Myrin.

  Myrin.

  What had he expected? That he would show up, fight off a dozen captors, and whisk her off in his arms? He should have known Myrin would resent that, but he’d never expected such stubborn resistance. What could he have said differently?

  “I hope you can protect her, boy,” he murmured toward the snoring Rhett. “Or I’ll have my hands full protecting you both.”

  “She does not need your protection,” said a voice.

  It took Kalen a moment to see Sithe, but when he did, his body lit with tension. She sat cross-legged before the fire, more a dark stain than a woman. Even with her black skin against the gray room, she seemed to vanish unless Kalen looked directly at her.

  “You underestimate the wizard, and that is your undoing,” she said without looking at him or even opening her eyes.

  “Myrin?” Kalen asked.

  “Arrogance.” She turned her head toward him but still had not opened her eyes. “Why do you stare?”

  “A proper warrior knows his enemy,” Kalen said.

  “Is that what I am?” she asked. “Your enemy?”

  They were silent a moment. The embers crackled and flames rose in a brief wind that swept through an open window. The light reflected on the black blade of her axe, which lay on the floor like lurking death. Sithe spoke again.

  “Fire has no substance-it exists to consume and has no other purpose.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Sithe nodded as though his admission did not surprise her in the least. She rose and made her way to the stairs. She glanced over her shoulder once before climbing.

  Kalen rose, flexing his numb limbs. He stepped toward the stairs, then paused, considering. After a moment, he bent and retrieved Vindicator from Rhett’s grasp.

  “Rest,” he said to the boy. “I shall return.”

  Kalen climbed out onto the roof. In the predawn light, greasy gray clouds threatened rain.

  A spire stood up from the middle of the tavern, leaning haphazardly east as though to indicate the coming dawn. The rusted weathercock must once have been a dragon, but it had withered over the years to resemble a bulbous rat, around the same time as the Drowned Rat tavern had earned its unappealing name. Perhaps circumstance and weather had chosen to endorse the moniker.

  Sithe waited at the far edge of the roof. The sun peeked over the mountains on the distant horizon to the east, but Sithe’s eyes fell not on its ascending brightness. Rather, she gazed at the fleeing darkness to the west.

  “Mourning the disappearance of your mother, Lady Darkness?” Kalen asked. “She’ll be back this eve, no doubt.”

  Sithe regarded him coolly. She raised her axe on its long haft.

  Kalen drew Vindicator, ignoring the painful warmth of its hilt in his hand. Silver flames flickered along its surface, as subdued as the distant sun in the east.

  The genasi rushed forward, sweeping across and into his parry. Kalen blocked, but the force of the blow sent him staggering. Sithe stepped around him with fluid grace and brought the blade down. Kalen blocked and steel screeched. The force of her blow sent him lurching back three steps. He went down to one knee.

  Sithe stood, her body fully extended, and her axe ringing from the strike. As before, she wore no armor. Her simple black silks shifted as she moved. She dressed not unlike a thief-one who expects no battle, because she will never be caught.

  “Your blade is powerful, but your faith is weak.” Slowly, she lowered her axe until it hung diagonally toward the ground. “You must find stronger faith, if you would be an assassin for a god.”

  “I am no such thing.” Kalen felt his anger stir.

  Silently, Sithe rushed at him. Vindicator clasped in both hands, Kalen deflected her axe enough that it passed harmlessly over him. Her attack had been a feint, however; she lunged and kicked him in the chest. Vindicator swept past her hip, but she swayed just wide of its silvery edge. He felt some kind of resistance, as though invisible armor protected her.

  Kalen growled in frustration. The rage she had awakened in him grew hotter.

  They sprang at each other-meeting in the air, their weapons flashing and singing. When they landed back on the roof, Sithe stepped back and coiled, ready to counter. It was a trap, Kalen realized, but his anger drove him to attack anyway. She knocked his lunge aside with the axe’s blade and used Kalen’s own strength to snap the butt of her weapon’s haft into his face. Vindicator clattered to the rooftop.

  Kalen flinched as Sithe came toward him, her axe hissing back and forth through the air. It spun over her head and cut toward Kalen’s neck. He was lost.

  The axe stopped just a hair from his skin-halted by Sithe’s hand on the haft. She stood facing away, her arms wide. Their eyes met over her shoulder.

  They broke apart. Kalen panted, his muscles strained from where he had caught her axe twice on his blade. Sithe, on the other hand, breathed slowly and softly.

  “You bear death inside you,” Sithe said. “I can feel it.”

  “A spellscar.” Kalen bent to retrieve Vindicator.

  She gestured to his leg, which her axe had cut open earlier that night. Blood had seeped through the binding. “A lesser man would not be able to fight.”

  “I feel nothing-not pain, not pleasure-unless it strikes deep.”

  “That makes you strong.”

  “It makes me stupid,” Kalen said. “If I can’t feel, I can’t tell when I’m about to fall.”

  Sithe seemed to accept that … or else saw no purpose in arguing the point. “Faith guides my blade-faith armors my body. What of you?” She leaned toward him and inhaled, her nostrils flaring. “Boiled leather wrought of mortal hands. The power of a decaying body. You have these things, but they are not your strength. These things are nothing to creatures such as we.”

  “To servants of Shar?” Kalen nodded to her holy symbol.

  “I have a god,” she said. “Do you?”

  Kalen gritted his teeth. “Of course I have a god.”

  “O
ne you do not know,” Sithe said. “And yet you are surprised you fail him.”

  “For all your power,” Kalen said stubbornly, “you have not killed me.”

  “I have not tried.” Sithe spun the axe over in her hand.

  “Try, then.”

  In the next pass, Sithe slammed her axe into Vindicator with enough force to send it flailing wide. It was not strength that drove the axe, but rather sheer providence that struck the weak point in Kalen’s defense. He followed the sword, reeling to one side, and Sithe brought the axe haft around to knock his legs out from under him. He went down with a crash, Vindicator clanging across the roof.

  Two moves. In two moves, she had defeated him.

  Shaking off his dizziness, Kalen reached out for the sword. One black boot trod on his wrist, a second on his chest. Sithe stood over him, her axe raised in both hands over her head. She’d taken her eyes from him and now gazed into the rising sun.

  Rage gave way to despair. He was once again a scrawny boy, rain splashing in his face as he lay gasping in a puddle. A woman screamed in his face and as he tried to rise, she grasped his head and pushed him back into the mud. He could no longer hear-her wails had vanished along with breath, sight, and, soon, life.

  Abruptly, Kalen returned to the wet rooftop, gazing up at Sithe and panting.

  “Do it then, if you will,” Kalen said. “You might have fooled Myrin, but not me. I know you’ll move against us. Kill me now or I will be there to stop you when you do.”

  Eyes yet on the horizon, Sithe lowered her axe. “You are wrong,” she said.

  “Wrong about your impending treachery?” Kalen asked.

  “Wrong about Lady Myrin.” The genasi looked at him. “She is not fooled. There is much about her you do not know. Much you fear to know.”

  “What?” That, he didn’t understand. What had he to fear of Myrin?

  He half expected Sithe to kill him, but instead she stepped off his chest. She looked around the rooftop as though searching for something that she could sense but not see. He looked as well, but saw nothing.

  Finally she spoke. “You and I are not saviors, Kalen Shadowbane,” Sithe said as Kalen climbed to one knee. “We are destroyers. Do not forget.”

  “You are wrong,” Kalen started, but his breath seized in his numb chest. He coughed and could not stop.

  Without another word, Sithe returned below.

  When the coughing fit had passed, Kalen looked around the rooftop, searching for whatever Sithe had glimpsed a moment past, but no such luck. If someone or something had been watching, it was gone now.

  He retrieved Vindicator from where it lay. The hilt felt warm-any other man would have found it uncomfortably hot. The sword resonated in tune with his anger.

  It was this city. It called out to the ruthless creature inside him. Its siren song reverberated through the cobbled streets, summoning the wretch he had been. Try as he might to shut it out, he could not ignore its call.

  “I am not that man,” he said to no one.

  The sun rose fully, heralding another stifling day.

  A gold-skinned man crouched atop the rusted weathercock, one leg dangling. He sat in plain sight, but the duelists hadn’t seen him-magic had seen to that. The genasi had come close to piercing his illusory veil, though, and he rather respected that.

  This Shadowbane’s humbling amused him less than did his persistence. The man hadn’t been close to matching the genasi and yet he kept fighting, only to be beaten down. He wasn’t an idiot-he’d proved that much-and yet he kept fighting against impossible odds as though he would win through force of will.

  “Perhaps there is something to you after all, ‘Little Dren,’ ” he said.

  His pointed ears perked to the sound of chirping, clicking legs, and tiny squeaks-the vermin of Luskan. The city would never know peaceful quiet, even if all the folk lay cold and dead. A fate that might come remarkably soon, if he did nothing.

  “I suppose you’ll just have to do,” he said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  23 KYTHORN (HIGHSUN)

  The rotting city of Luskan bore the scars of centuries of war and neglect. By the Year of Deep Water Drifting, the city was a ramshackle maze of dusty stone, withered trees, and mostly abandoned buildings, many of them gutted hulks. Shady folk wandered the streets doing business, partaking in barter, or shouting up to festgirls and boys leaning out the windows. Making it through a day without being pickpocketed, mugged, or maimed was an accomplishment.

  And Myrin loved it.

  Not that she enjoyed seeing people in distress. But despite Luskan’s misery, she could still see the life shrouded under its dusty surface. She heard laughter in the streets, saw folk smile and jest as coin changed hands. Beneath the reek of mildew and spoiled fish, she smelled hot cakes on the griddle. Perhaps she was naive, but she couldn’t help seeing it.

  “Lady? Wait!”

  She might have enjoyed it more if she hadn’t had an attendant in tow.

  “I don’t think when Saer Shadowbane told me to protect you”-her young bodyguard hurried around an apple stand-“this is what he meant.”

  Myrin sighed. “I disagree with your assessment, Reginald.”

  “It’s Rhett, actually.”

  “I believe following me everywhere is exactly what Kalen meant,” Myrin said. “After all, how can you protect me if you don’t accompany me? It’s simple logic.”

  “I can’t really argue with that,” Rhett said. “Wait, lady!”

  She strode forward, heedless of how closely or tenuously he followed her.

  Wearing cloaks to conceal their distinctive features, Myrin and Rhett cut through Luskan’s market, where two dozen stands opened up by day to trade hard-crusted bread, blistered fruit, nuts, and scavenged foods.

  Normally, trade with pirates on the Sword Coast supplemented the city’s rodent population and together, they supported the food demand. Five days into the quarantine, however, imports had slowed to a trickle and rats grew scarce. The people of Luskan were on the last scraps of food that could be scavenged or killed for and only those vendors who had managed to hold out could stay open. Prices rose every day, until a single mealy apple cost a tenday’s cutpurse work. Merchants tripled their guards as fights in the market became more common with each passing day.

  A priestess of some sort had attracted a crowd for her shrill sermon on the power of providence. “Good luck,” she professed, “is the blessing of the goddess, and one should always follow the path of coincidence.” Her audience seemed less interested in her dogma than the crumbs of bread she handed out to those who praised Lady Luck’s name. Indeed, the folk might have trampled her into her dais were it not for her two extremely ugly bodyguards and their even uglier clubs studded with metal shards.

  “Lady!” The lagging youth had got himself tangled in the arms of two coin “lasses”-Myrin was fairly certain one was actually a lad-who ran their hands all over him, staying him and exploring his pockets. Nymphers, Kalen had called such streetfolk in Waterdeep.

  “I mean, thanks, but no, that is-” Rhett said. “Well, that’s really quite compelling but not entirely appropriate and I-my lady!”

  Myrin stood waiting while he fought to extricate himself. When they were done taking what they could from the boy, the nymphers let him go and he stumbled over. He cleared his throat and sought to recover his composure. Myrin looked at Rhett’s belt, which the lad was checking to make sure everything was intact. “You took Kalen’s advice about leaving your purse behind, right?”

  “Alas, no.” Rhett patted his belt pouches sadly. “I hope this quest of yours to redeem the city is worth it.”

  “My what now?” Myrin asked.

  “Your quest,” Rhett said. “To save Luskan? That is why you’re staying?”

  “Oh, that,” she said. That was certainly part of it. “Let’s go this way.”

  She was looking north of the market, at a blasted area of moldering wood and broken stone, a sweeping plaza of em
ptiness. It resembled an ashen scar on the face of an already ugly city. The dark magic of the place tugged at Myrin’s spirit. Her spellscar ached.

  “Something really, really terrible happened here,” she said. “The land hasn’t healed.”

  “ ’Tis ill luck to enter the Prisoner’s Carnival,” Rhett said. “Saer Shadowbane told me about it. A century ago, the ruling lords tortured and executed prisoners here.”

  “Charming.” Myrin started into the blasted area, but Rhett lingered. “Come. The bridge isn’t far-perhaps a hundred paces. Unless you’d prefer we take the Blood Bridge.”

  Rhett shivered. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Saer Shadowbane said the Shou control that bridge and we shouldn’t go anywhere near it.”

  “You always do what Kalen tells you?”

  “That’s the theme.”

  Myrin found the half-elf’s timidity both annoying and endearing. He was good-looking too, wearing his fey heritage well about his stronger human features. She thought she could develop real feelings for this man, if only he would stop bringing up Kalen every few breaths.

  “Well, I’m going through-you can follow if you want.” She crossed her arms. “Mind, if I get eaten by a ravening beast, I’m not the one who has to explain that to Kalen.”

  Rhett cleared his throat, considering. “Aye, well … let’s away.”

  Myrin heard Rhett suck in a breath as she stepped down the bank into the ruined square, then exhale when no dark terror reached out to snatch her. She pressed on through the sooty, stinking plaza. He hurried to keep up, his plate armor clanking.

  “Will you hear me, majestic-but-stubborn lady?” he said as they crossed.

  “Myrin. Unless you’d like me to call you handsome-but-empty-headed lad.”

  “Well, in that case-wait, handsome, you say?”

  Silently, she crossed her arms and ground her foot into the detritus on the street. He was going to bring up Kalen again, she thought.