Shadowbane tap-4

by Eric Scott De Bie

  “Enough.” Sithe indicated her with a black finger and Myrin felt the full weight of her fury fall on her. “Lady of Sorrow,” she prayed, “guide my hand against your foe.”

  The genasi charged.

  Myrin slashed her wand at Sithe, spinning a scythe of fire, but the genasi ran right at the magic. It struck full force but vanished into the genasi as though she were made of nothing. So startled was Myrin by this that she barely remembered to dodge Sithe’s strike, and caught the butt of the axe dead center in her chest. She fell to the floor, gasping for breath.

  Sithe stood over her, her eyes blazing. She was done with words now-she offered only death. She was no longer a woman, but wholly a demon.

  Blearily, Myrin crawled backward. She coughed and blood spattered the ground.

  “Kalen!” she screamed.

  The knife reached its zenith and spun back down.

  Startled by Myrin’s cry, Toytere shot out a hand and caught the blade within a thumb’s breadth of Kalen’s face. Kalen gazed up, panting and gasping.

  “Gods,” the halfling said. He was looking back at the battle illumined by a ring of flame. Sithe stalked toward Myrin, her axe raised high. The darkness enveloped the genasi like a lover-it flowed from her like sweat. “Gods, I didn’t be think-”

  “Look,” Kalen croaked. “Look what you’ve unleashed.”

  When the halfling turned back to him, revulsion filled his face. “You,” he said. “You killed Cellica. You’ve ruined me-ruined everything! Feed …”

  “Let me up,” Kalen said. “Let me save her.”

  Toytere laughed in his face, his shark’s teeth clacking madly. “You? You can barely stand! What can you do?”

  “Save her,” Kalen said. “Let me-”

  The halfling looked at him, horror filling his face. The murderous haze in his eyes lifted, replaced by an understanding of the nightmare he had brought on them all.

  “I’m sorry,” the halfling whispered.

  Without further words, he leaped from Kalen and dashed across the room toward Myrin and Sithe. His broad knife flashed and sank through Sithe’s darkness into her leg.

  Any mortal woman would have fallen or at least cried out in pain. The dark one stared down at the interfering halfling in mild surprise.

  “Kill me instead!” Toytere cried, his voice almost lost in the animal within. “Kill-!”

  She brought the axe around and buried it in Toytere’s chest. The halfling gagged. Sithe wrenched the blade free in a rain of blood, then calmly raised it over Myrin.

  Myrin screamed-for Toy or for herself, Kalen couldn’t say.

  None of this made any sense. Kalen didn’t know what was going on, but he saw Myrin in danger and he had to move. Yet he simply could not. He was so tired.

  He heard a faint melody-a haunting siren’s song-leading him back from darkness. At first, he thought it Toytere, but the halfling was thrashing his way into death not five paces distant. Who …?

  Strength flowed into Kalen and he could move again. It hurt, but he ignored the pain. Myrin needed him. Weaponless, spitting blood, he forced himself to his feet.

  He lunged and raised his hand to stop the deadly blow even as it fell.

  Sithe’s axe struck his arm. He expected searing pain as it cleaved his limb in two. Instead, the axe met resistance-a gray radiance that surrounded his forearm like a vambrace. The genasi looked as shocked as he felt.

  Kalen had not won a thousand fights in a thousand stinking alleys by hesitating. He brought his other fist around with all his strength into Sithe’s face. The warrior staggered back, her deadly axe falling wide.

  Instantly, he fell to the floor, groping for Myrin. “Gods,” he said. “Are you-?”

  Myrin’s eyes glowed blue in the depths of her blood-smeared face. Toytere’s blood, he realized. Gods …

  She looked up, past his shoulder, and he realized Sithe stood over them once again. “Destroyers destroy, Kalen Dren,” the genasi said.

  Kalen had no strength left. He tried to put as much of himself as possible between that brutal axe and Myrin, hoping to buy her a heartbeat to escape.

  Myrin, as it happened, had other plans.

  “Give it to me!” From under Kalen, she grasped Sithe’s leg. Runes raced up her arms as she drew the genasi’s power into herself. “Give me your darkness! Give it all!”

  Sithe’s mouth opened, but she could not speak. She fell to one knee, weakened by Myrin’s spellscar, and the wizard easily pulled her to floor and clambered atop her.

  “This isn’t your fate,” Myrin said to the exhausted genasi. “You can change. You can-” The air sucked in and Myrin vanished as though she’d never existed.

  Kalen’s heart stopped for two whole beats before he realized what had happened: Myrin had taken whatever power Sithe used to vanish and reappear.

  Sithe lay unmoving, seemingly stunned. Kalen breathed again.

  “Little Dren …”

  Two paces distant, Toytere wheezed. The halfling lay in a spreading pool of blood, torn and broken. His face had elongated-his beard growing thicker. It was the infamous wererat blood he bore-that all leaders of the Dead Rats carried. His right arm, where before Kalen had seen a bandage, sprouted thick crystalline patches.

  The Fury.

  Now Kalen understood. Toytere had nearly lost himself in the depths of the plague, but he’d fought free. He’d saved Myrin, simply by demanding Sithe cut him down instead.

  “Did I-” Toytere said, his eyes rolling. “Little Dren … did I do it?”

  Kalen nodded.

  “Fancy,” Toytere whispered. “Thief like me, passing up that much coin. Must be something the matter with me, no?”

  “Who was it?” Kalen asked. “Who hunts her?”

  “Eden.” Toytere shook his head. “But someone hired her. Don’t know who.”

  “Of course.” Kalen had suspected as much. “What you did was very brave, Toytere-worthy of Cellica.”

  “Pah,” the halfling said. “Me sister would have brained me as soon as let me consider it. But then, she be better than both of us, no?”

  Kalen smiled weakly.

  “Lady Darkdance?” Toytere said. “Where be she?”

  “She’ll be back.” Even as he said it, Kalen felt the hint of fear clinging to his fingers-like a phantom sensation he wanted to ignore but could not.

  If Myrin had taken Sithe’s power, shouldn’t she have returned by now?

  “Hold, Toytere,” Kalen said. “Don’t expire just yet.”

  “Easy to say for a body that don’t feel pain or fear.”

  Kalen’s anxiety belied those words, however. Where was Myrin?

  As if prompted by that thought, the wall of fire collapsed. On the other side, Vindicator burned a swath through the Dead Rats. Rhett, lathered in sweat, fought in a shrinking circle of the thieves. Distracted, they turned their attention to the middle of the room. The fighting died away.

  Seeing Toytere in a pool of his own blood silenced the Rats. Seeing Kalen so grievously wounded brought Rhett running. He reached for Kalen, but the man waved him away. “Help Toytere,” he said. “He needs it more than I.”

  Kalen looked to Sithe, who lay motionless on the floor. “Where is she?”

  The genasi was staring blankly at the ceiling, but he saw her chest rising and falling regularly. “She is lost,” Sithe said.

  “Lost where?” Kalen asked. “Bring her back.”

  “The void.” Sithe shook her head. Tears leaked from her eyes. “I-”

  Kalen grasped Sithe’s wrists. “Send me there,” he said. “I’ll bring her back.”

  The genasi looked to him, as though noticing him for the first time. “You cannot.”

  “Do it.” Kalen pulled Toytere’s jagged carving knife from Sithe’s leg and put it to her throat. “Or I’ll send you there myself.”

  Sithe searched his face for a moment, then nodded. Silently, she pressed her hand to his chest. At first, he felt only a niggling tingle all
along his skin. Then the world drew in upon itself and blackness fell.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  26 KYTHORN (NIGHT)

  In the void, there was nothing. No light.

  No sound.

  Nothing.

  It was exactly as his mantra said.

  “A darkness where there is only me,” he said, but his words vanished without reaching his ears. He repeated them in his head, just to assure himself he existed.

  This was, he realized, the end result of his sickness. One day, he would feel nothing-would know nothing.

  Madness closed in around him in the sucking dark. He could not feel his heart racing, but he imagined it. He saw himself breaking into countless figments and dispersing into the endless abyss. Never existing-never being.

  The anger, he thought. The anger was still there. He grasped it and clung to it. His rage gave him form and sense.

  He searched for Myrin. She had to be here somewhere, he thought-she had taken Sithe’s power, but she couldn’t control it. He remembered well when she had absorbed the slaying spells of a wizard far her superior-how the spell had gone wild and nearly slain him and countless bystanders.

  Just like that, as though thinking of her brought them closer, Kalen sensed her. Blue fire filled the void, reaching out from him like tendrils toward something-someone. Someone alone, afraid, and despairing of a way out.

  Myrin, he thought to her.

  Kalen? Oh gods, not you, too!

  The full force of her panic fell upon him, rending his wits such that he almost lost himself in the emptiness. He kept together only by focusing on two things: his anger and his goal. Her.

  He visualized himself holding her, enfolding her in his numb, scarred arms. In some part of reality he understood only dimly, he was holding her. Blue fire wrapped around them. Her presence seemed to calm-albeit slightly.

  You have to take us home, Myrin, he conveyed. You have to do it now.

  I can’t! she replied, refusing to meet his gaze. His vision broke up. I don’t know how. You shouldn’t have come-now you’re trapped, too.

  I came to Luskan to save you. Kalen imagined himself brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. Do you really think I’d leave you in darkness?

  Myrin’s heart hammered. But we’re trapped-

  I suppose we could stay here. At least the smell is less.

  He felt a relaxation of tension, but worry remained. I don’t know if I can do this.

  I do, he said. If you wish it, we will go back.

  Do you wish it, Kalen? she asked. You seemed so upset before. Do you-do you even want me back?

  He clutched her tighter. Of course I do.

  Very well, Myrin said. Here we-

  They came back into the world in a rush, and all of existence bore down upon them in such an unstoppable flood of sensation that Kalen staggered. The otherwise bare chamber was suddenly filled with a teeming swarm of creatures smaller than fleas, flowing all over each other. Heaps of slithering vermin were held together only loosely by a mutual desire for survival. The floorboards, the scant furnishings, the air itself-all were horribly, feverishly alive in infinite minutiae.

  The overwhelming being of that moment was enough to shatter Kalen’s mind. Heartbeats sounded like thunder in his ears. Myrin lay enfolded in his arms, her body curled against him. They gazed into one another’s eyes, at once comforting and taking comfort, seeing each other with a clarity neither had ever known. Kalen wanted nothing more than to lie here with her, and let the world fall apart around them.

  A cry arose, breaking the moment. Kalen saw that the common hall had become a frenzied mass of people. Dead Rats argued in panic and rage.

  Rhett stood among the crowd, his sword ready. “Saer Shadowbane!” he called.

  As though his voice woke her, Myrin stirred and sat up. “We did it,” she said. “We-” Then tears brimmed in her eyes. “Gods. Toy-is he …?”

  Kalen brushed the blood from Toytere’s beating out of his eyes. A few paces distant, Sithe stood over the fallen halfling and a spreading puddle of blood.

  “Get away from him!” Myrin cried, leveling her wand at the genasi.

  Kalen restrained her. “It was mercy, not anger,” he said. “He’s dying.”

  Sure enough, at Sithe’s feet, Toytere’s body shuddered. He loosed a whine like that of a rat caught in a trap. Rhett had tended him, Kalen saw, but the wound was too great-that, or the plague would not permit him to escape.

  Long past the point of coherence, Toytere squealed and roared in pain. His hands grasped at his midsection and his limbs stretched painfully.

  “Why haven’t you ended it?” Kalen indicated Sithe’s axe.

  “It is for her to do,” Sithe said. “He betrayed her, his life is hers.”

  “You also betrayed us,” Kalen said.

  “And my life is also hers,” Sithe said. “But she should decide sooner for him.”

  Myrin sat at Toytere’s side and took his hand. The halfling’s bloody eyes turned to her and his lips formed her name. “Myrin?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Toy, you’re dying.”

  “Hrk!” A cough wracked the halfling’s body. “Die … die a man?”

  “A man,” Myrin said, clasping his hand hard. “The man you should be.”

  Toytere gave her a bloody smile. “Aye, that’s all I wan-” His body jerked taut and his eyes glazed over. A sound emerged from his bloody lips-a low, buzzing hum.

  “What’s happening?” Rhett asked.

  “Prophecy. He-” The halfling clenched Myrin’s hand hard, cutting off her words.

  “Too late,” the gang leader said, in a voice suddenly distant. “Dren will fall to the dark.”

  “What?” Kalen asked, eyes fixed on Toytere.

  Myrin was staring at the halfling, the blood beating in the hollow of her throat.

  “Darkness will take you, Champion of Ruin, fight as you will,” Toytere said in that odd drone. “All that you love will sift as ash through your fingers. It is too late!”

  Kalen pushed Myrin wide of Toytere’s grasp and caught the halfling’s collar. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

  The halfling eyes blinked out of the Sight. “Little Dren,” he said. “Gods, I See it. I’ve got to warn-”

  Then his eyes widened past the red surrounding the whites. He loosed a savage snarl and lunged at Kalen, who kept from being bitten by wincing back. He held the halfling down with a foot on his chest.

  The crowded Rats parted and Myrin approached. “What is-oh gods, Toy!”

  “Stay back,” Kalen said. “He isn’t Toytere anymore-that man’s dead.” He turned to Rhett, who backed away, taking Vindicator with him. Instead, Kalen seized Sithe’s axe and raised it over his head. “Turn away.”

  Myrin stared at him, eyes wide. “No.”

  “I said-”

  “I heard what you said.” Myrin straightened her shoulders. “And I’m not turning aside, Kalen. If this is what you are, so be it.”

  He hesitated, his blade held high. Beneath his foot, the raging beast that had been Toytere uttered a fitful cry and grasped at its midsection. A huge mass was creeping up, like a boil growing before their eyes. The halfling whimpered in pain and fury. The huge pustule rising from the halfling’s chest continued to grow and squirm.

  The ring of Dead Rats expanded, giving the thing more space. Toytere’s body jerked and squirmed, sending blood flailing. Finally, it burst open, spilling forth a quivering horde of half formed insects-locusts, bees, beetles, and gods knew what else.

  Kalen brought the axe down and Toytere stopped dead.

  The steel on wood rang throughout the hall, followed by the utter silence of three dozen men and women looking to Kalen and his burning steel. The axe flared, burning the twitching vermin. They went up like pinecones in a chorus of sickly pops.

  One voice rose from the back of the horde. “Shadowbane!” it cried. “King Shadowbane!”

  “King Sh
adowbane!” another voice answered. “King of the Rats!”

  Myrin stared at him, her gaze dark-disappointed. She drew away, turned to confer with Rhett. Kalen watched her go and felt a part of his heart draining away.

  “King Shadowbane!” the Rats cried, and “Kalen of the Rats!” and “Shadowbane!”

  Kalen nodded grimly.

  Eden leaned back from her scrying pool, letting the image waver and die, and tapped her fingers together. What an unlikely series of events-one that she would need to plan around.

  Seeing the fate that had befallen Toytere when he tried to move against Kalen and Myrin dissuaded her, even considering the kingly sum offered for the lass’s capture. Still, it was the principle of the thing. Offended pride such as hers was worth the ransom of kingdoms, not mere kings.

  The Horned One had told her to stop, so Eden meant to press forward.

  Why would the Horned One, favorite of the Lady, be so adamant Eden not touch this Myrin Darkdance? What power did the girl hold-and how could Eden possess it? How could she use Myrin against the Horned One himself?

  It would have worked, and she would have had Myrin, had not a certain halfling decided to kill himself out of misguided nobility.

  “Bane’s black balls,” Eden murmured. “You can’t trust anyone these days.”

  Well, she’d just have to deal with Kalen’s standing in the way of her next move. And if he met a horrible death in the process, all the better.

  She thought of the scroll the Horned One had given her. Yes.

  A knock at the door announced the arrival of her advisors-two men, one tall and fat, the other short and precipitously lean, both ugly and odious. She’d never bothered trying to learn their names. The short one spoke.

  “Me lady, beloved of Mistress Fortune,” he said. “You summoned us?”

  “Yes, yes,” Eden said. “I’ve called you to say that a miracle has come to pass. The Lady provides protection from the Fury.”

  The men looked stunned. “Me lady, that’s a blessing for true!” said the short one. “We-we must tell everyone! Immediately! Bring adherents flocking to our-to the Lady’s banner! All will be drawn to this cure!”