Kalen smiled thinly. "Only," he said, "only if you give me something."
"And what," she asked, kissing his numb lips, "is that?" "Tell me your name," Kalen said.
Fayne stepped back and regarded him coolly. "You don't trust me, even now?" He shrugged.
"Very well. Can't blame you, really," Fayne said. "Rien. That's my real—"
Kalen shook his head. "No. It isn't."
"Gods!" Fayne laid her head on his shoulder and pressed herself hard against him, kissing his neck once more. He felt her sharp teeth, which meant they must have drawn blood. She wiped her lips before she drew away to speak to him, so he could not know for certain. "Rien is my true name, given me by my mother before she died."
"And it means 'trick' in Elvish," Kalen said. "No need to trick me."
She swore mildly, still smiling. Then she nibbled his earlobe and breathed into his ear. He knew his senseless skin awakened and went red, but he could not feel it.
Kalen sighed. "You can stop lying," he said.
"Eh?" Fayne clutched his lips hard enough for him to feel—hard enough to draw blood.
"You don't have to pretend to love me," Kalen said.
With a last, lingering kiss on the corner of his lip, Fayne pulled away and faced him squarely. His eyes glittered in the candlelight.
"How dare you," she said, half-jesting and half-serious.
"All this," Kalen said. "This is just an act. Isn't it?"
Her face went cold and angry, shedding all pretense of jest. "How dare you." %
Fayne snapped up her hand to strike him, but he caught it and held her arm in place.
nan
"That time," Kalen said, "your anger told the truth."
Fayne said nothing for a long time. Kalen put his hand on her ejbow and though he held it only lightly, he might as well have bound her in iron.
"It's still that girl, isn't it?" Fayne accused. She raised one finger to point at him. "It's that little blue-headed waif with her tattoos you fancy, isn't it?"
She drew the bone wand from her belt and flicked it around her head. An illusion fell over her, cascading down like sparks to illumine her form, which shrank and tightened, billowed out a scarlet silk gown, and became Myrin.
"Is this what you want?" came the soft, exotic voice. Fayne in Myrin's image knelt and pressed her hands together. "Please, Kalen—please ravage me! Oh, ye gods!" She caressed herself and moaned. "I just can't stand the waiting, Kalen! Oh, please! Oh, take me now!"
Kalen shrugged. "This is beneath even you."
"Even me, eh? You have no idea how low I can sink," Fayne said with Myrin's voice. "Wouldn't you like that, Kalen? To see your little sweetling as wicked is I can be?"
"She's far too good for me," Kalen said. "For any of us."
"And I'm what—a perfect fit?" She flicked her tongue at him. "You disgust me."
"No," Kalen said, "I don't."
"Oh?" Fayne crossed her arms—Myrin's arms—and regarded him with an adorable pout.
She took out her wand again and broke the illusion. Her half-elf form reappeared, wavered over something darker, then settled. It was brief, but it made him wonder ...
"Why, O wise knight of shadows," she said, "why don't I hate you?"
"Because you're like me," Kalen said. "A lover of darkness."
Fayne stared at him another moment, anger and challenge in her eyes. Every bit of him burned—wanted him to lunge forward and grasp her, wrench the blanket from her body, throw the paladin aside and free the thief at his heart.
"I should go," she said finally. "You and I... she's the one for you, Kalen, not I. She is better for you." Fayne made to leave, but Kalen stopped her. This time, his grip was firm.
"I know well what's better for me," Kalen said. "And I want you instead."
Fayne blinked at him, wordless.
"Show me." Kalen ran his fingers along her cheek. "I want to see your face."
He saw the shift in her stance, could almost feel every hair on her body rise. He felt her bristle, the way a lion might just before ir pounces. "But you do see my face," she said, her tone dangerous. "I stand here before you, no illusions."
"That's a lie," Kalen said. "I've taken my mask off for you—take yours off for me."
He still held her by the wrist. Could he feel the blood thundering in her veins, or was he imagining it? His grip lessened.
"Run," Kalen said, "or take off your mask. Choose."
"Kalen, you can't—" she said. "Please. I'm frightened."
Perhaps I am cruel, Kalen thought. But Gedrin had taught him the value of pain, with that clout on the ear. Pain reveals who we truly are.
"You want it to be real, then choose." He shook his head. "I won't ask again."
Trembling, Fayne looked at him for three deep breaths. He was sure—so sure—that she would run. But then she drew her wand from her belr with a steady hand. He saw the tension in her body, practically felr her insides roiling and tossing like a rickety boat in a god-born storm, but she stayed calm.
She was like the thief he had been, he thought.
"Very well," she said.
She passed the wand in front of her face and a false Fayne slid away like a heavy robe, leaving her naked before him. Her true face took form—her skin and hair and body. All her lies vanished, and she was truly herself. Regardless of her shape, she was just a woman standing before a man.
Kalen said nothing, only looked at her.
Finally, Fayne looked away. "Am I..." she asked, her voice broken. "Am I really so repulsive?" t She tried to run, but he caught her arm once more. "Your name," Kalen said. "I want your name."
Fayne's eyes were wet but defiant. "Ellyne," she said. "Ellyne, for sorrow." Her fists clenched. "That's my name, damn you."
"No." Kalen looked down at her, his mouth set firm. "No, it isn't."
Fayne's knees quaked. "Yes, it—"
Then he kissed her, cutting off her words.
He kissed her deeper.
The blanket slipped down to the floor and her warm body pressed against him.
THIRTY
Cellica must have dozed at her work. She awoke at the table, needle and thread in hand, to the sound of muffled sobs. The tallhouse rooms were not large—only a central chamber five paces across that served for dining and sitting, and two smaller rooms for slumber. Cellica's room, from whence the sobbing came, was small by human standards, adequate for a halfling. It boasted a window—Kalen, in one of his rare thoughtful moments, had cut it out of the wall.
Myrin was crying, she realized. But why? "Kalen," she murmured.
Cellica slipped down from the chair and padded over to Kalen's door. She peered through the keyhole, much as she expected Myrin musr have—
She looked just long enough to see Kalen's back, a pair of feminine arms wrapped around it, and knew instantly what had happened. She pulled away and her face turned into an angry frown. "Kalen, you stupid, stupid—"
She hurried to her chamber. Sure enough, Myrin was clad in her red gown again, though it was now much rumpled. She sar in the corner, compacted as small as she could manage, and bit her knuckles. She smelled of honeysuckle—Cellica's favorire and only perfume.
"Oh, peach, peach," Cellica said. She crossed to Myrin and embraced her. "It's not your fault. You know that, right?"
Myrin sobbed harder and leaned her head against Cellica's chest. Where their skin touched, Cellica felt a tickle of magic.
It.wasn't difficult for the halfling to connect events. Behind the closed door, Myrin had doffed the more practical attire they'd receive4 at the Menagerie in favor of the red gown, which she'd asked Cellica to mend and clean earlier that day. Armed with that—and Cellica
would confess readily that she looked a true beauty—and a bit of Cellica's perfume, she'd padded out to Kalen's room. fBut Fayne had pounced on Kalen first.
Cellica cursed the man. How could he be so blind? Myrin had been throwing herself at him ever since that morn when they met. No wonder nothing had ever come of Kalen and Araezra. Cellica was surprised Rayse still spoke to the dumb brute.
"There, lass, there." Cellica stroked the girl's hair. "Kalen's just an idiot."
Myrin wrenched away. "No, he's not!" she said. "You know he isn't. Shut up!"
The halfling blinked, stunned by her outburst, and leaned away. She tried to speak, but a compulsion in Myrin's words had stolen her speech.
My voice, Cellica thought. She took my voice?
The girl's anger turned to a sob. "He doesn't love me," Myrin said. "I thought maybe he followed me from the ball because he loved me, but... but..." She sniffed and wiped her cheeks. "He followed because it was his duty, because he was guarding me. That's all."
"But that's not true," Cellica said. "I've never seen him look—"
"Go away," Myrin said. "Take your false hopes and just go away!"
Cellica found herself rising to her feet without thinking. Her conscious mind wanted to stay and talk, but her body obeyed without her consent.
It was the voice. Cellica's own command, but from Myrin's lips. How was this possible?
"Go away and go to sleep," Myrin said. "Here." She handed Cellica the blanket.
The halfling closed her door softly, leaving Myrin alone in her chamber. She wandered, increasingly sleepy, into the kitchen and main room. She felt so tired, as though she had run fifty leagues that day. Just a little—
She slumped down on the floor and was snoring before her chin hit her chest.
"Mother!" Fayne gasped, waking with a start, that one word on her lips.
Merely a nightmare, she assured herself with some disgust. She'd been sleeping again.
Fayne leaned back, her naked body glistening with sweat, while the world drifted back. A sparse tallhouse chamber. A plain bed. A man sleeping beside her, head nestled in her lap. Her tail curled around him like a purring cat, restlessly flicking back and forth.
Who was this man, and why did she smile when she thought of him?
She remembered the dream. An elf woman screamed and tore at herself to fight off a horror that existed only in her mind. A gold-skinned bladesinger without a heart moaned on the rough, slick floor. Fayne's own mother, dark and beautiful and dead, lay impaled at her feet. The cold, bone wand in Fayne's tiny hand sent pain through her arm and into her soul.
And the girl—Fayne had seen the girl wreathed in blue flames. The girl flickered into being just as Fayne's mother's magic burned her from the inside out.
She looked down at the muscled, scarred man who embraced her naked thighs and slept. Kalen, she remembered.
Then ir all returned, chasing the nightmares away once more. She whisrled in relief.
Gods, she hated sleeping. So barbaric. It limited more pleasant activities, anyway.
Fayne slipped out of Kalen's embrace and left him on the bed alone. She smiled at him for a moment before shaking her head. "Belt up, lass," she chided. "You're going all giggly."
She emptied the chamber pot out the wall chute—again, a barbaric necessity—and sat on the cold floor for a moment, collecting herself. Then she rose and stretched.
The moonlight that leaked through the window would not last long—dawn was coming, and she had best take her leave soon. She opened the shutters and put her face out into the cool Waterdeep night. She breathed deep the refreshing breezes off the sea and let loose a
peaceful, contented sigh. Then she shut herself back inside.
She reclaimed her clothes—plain leathers, slightly shabby and wofn. They weren't the ones she remembered wearing there, but she was used to that feeling. When most of one's wardrobe was illusory, one's basic clothes often varied.
Illusion ...
She realized something and crossed quickly to Kalen's mirror, which hung on the wall over a small basin. The water was tepid when she trailed her fingers through it, but the mitror was more important. •
Her true face blinked back at her.
"Gods," she murmured, caressing her pale skin. "Did I really sleep in this?"
She ran her fingers across the scar along her cheek—pushed back the rosy pink hair that obscured it. The scar, from a crossbow bolt, ached, as it always did that time of night.
"This just won't do," she said. "Can't go scaring children, now can we?"
She made to draw her wand from her belt, then stopped. That was for cosmetic changes. Her true body—she really needed to hide that.
She invoked her disguising ritual with the aid of her amulet. Her flesh shifted like putty. The pink hair turned back to her familiar half-elf red, her sharp features smoothed, her ears shrank and rounded slightly, and her wings and tail vanished.
"Now, then," she said.
Over this she slid an illusion, one that suited her. Simply because she felt like it, she made herself look like her mother: a beautiful sun elf with eyes like tar pits and lips like rubies. A gauzy black gown spun itself out of the air around her thin limbs.
It was exactly as Fayne remembered her mother, in the few years they'd had together before the crossbow bolt that had given Fayne the scar on her cheek.
Fayne crossed to the door, opened it as silently as she could, and stepped into the outer chamber. She heard Cellica snoring and saw a sleeping bundle slumped in the center of the room. Fayne smiled gently.
Then she heard a whisper of leather on wood, and she looked just in time to see Rath rushing her out of the shadows. She did not have time to speak.
Once again, Cellica awakened to what sounded like Myrin weeping. "Gods," she murmured, brushing away the stickiness of sleep. She'd had such vivid and bawdy dreams, too.
The first light of early dawn crept through the windows. An hour would yet pass before the sun peered over the horizon. The city lay quiet.
Cellica heard shuffling sounds and stifled sobs from her own bedchamber.
Thinking of Kalen, she lifted her crossbow from the table. Mayhap she'd shoot him for being such an idiot and sleeping with the wrong woman.
She paused to look again through the keyhole into Kalen's chamber. She braced herself for what she w&uld see, but he was alone and unmoving on the bed.
Blushing a little, Cellica tiptoed toward her room. She heard a stifled moan, then something ctashing down, like a chair, and the hairs on her neck rose.
The halfling slid the door open a crack and stopped dead.
On the bed, illuminated by the moon, was a struggling Myrin in a nightgown, two hands tying a cloth around her mouth to gag her. Those hands belonged to a black-robed dwarf—the one they had seen in Lorien Dawnbringer's chamber: Rath. Half his face was a burned wreck, but she knew him.
"Don't move," Cellica said, mustering as much command voice as she could.
The scarred face blinked at her, holding Myrin on the bed with one hand. "Child ..."
"I'm not a child." Cellica aimed at his face. "And if you think this is a toy, you're damn wrong." Her hands trembled. "Kalen!" she cried-"Kalen!" He would hear that, she hoped—unless his wall suddenly blocked all sound, or some such nonsense.
"Calm yourself, wee one," the dwarf said. "I am unarmed."
As if that mattered, Cellica thought. From what Kalen had told her, he could kill them both with his bare hands, if only he could move. Her voice had trapped him.
"Don't call me wee, orc-piss," Cellica snapped. "Take her gag off."
"I wouldn't," Rath said. As he could not otherwise move, his eyes turned to Myrin. "This girl is dangerous."
"Do it!" Cellica hissed. "And where s Fayne?" She raised the crossbow higher. "What have you done with Fayne, you blackguard?"
"Cellica," came a voice.
A shadow loomed out of the corner, and Cellica turned to find—her.
Of all the nightmares she might have imagined, she never would have expected this one. A specter from her past—from before she and Kalen had gone to Westgate, from when she had been slave to a demon cult. One she had never told him about, and one who had haunted her every nightmare through all the years in Luskan and since.
The golden elf lady with the eyes of darkness.
"You," Cellica said, terrified.
The woman paused, considering. Then, finally, she smiled. "Me."
A dagger flashed and pain bit into Cellica's stomach. Her legs died and she slumped to the floor. The world faded. She heard only Myrin's muffled voice crying her name.
THIRTY-ONE
Ralen must have been weary—and indeed, he hadn't slept until shortly before dawn. He awoke near highsun—rested, thirsty, and ravenous.
He was mildly surprised Cellica hadn't awakened him— perhaps with an ewer of water, as was her habit. In a way, he was disappointed he wasn't waking up dripping wet. He would have seized Cellica's pitcher and drank the rest of its contents, he was so thirsty.
Kalen felt around the bed next to him, but Fayne was gone. In truth, he wasn't surprised. A woman like that couldn't be kept abed all night and half a day. And had she stayed, she certainly would have awakened him in the morning—he knew that for a certainty.
The desires of that woman—that creature. ..
"Growing up like that—hated and beaten and unloved," she said, her wide, silver, pupilless eyes gleaming at him. "It muddled you— ruined you for mortal women, did it not?"
"Yes," he gasped. Her magic heightened his senses' and her hands burned him through his hardened skin. Her lips, oh gods, and her teeth .. .
Her sharp-fanged grin widened. "Good."
Kalen shivered at the memory.
He pulled himself from his cool, tousled bed and stretched. It smelled like her. Her scent was everywhere, sweet and intoxicating and wicked.
In the mirror, his face had a short forest of brownish bristle, which he would leave to grow. Fayne had giggled when she touched his rough chin. f
The previous night blurred in his mind—he had an eye for detail but his awareness had ruptured against her. She existed to
him as a forbidding yet alluring ideal—a memory of pleasure and shadowed pain.
*"You have to tell me if I'm hurting you," he had told her.
"Why?" had been her reply.
She whispered a word in his ear that filled him with shuddering agony. He fought through the dizziness to kiss her harder. His fingers dug into her flesh, wrenching a gasp from her lips.
"I can't tell my own strength—I can't always feel everyrhing. You have to—"
"You misunderstand." Nothing about her smile was innocent or confused. "Why?"
He shivered again and the image faded.
There had been pain, yes, but none of it physical. It had been in their hearrs. Things had broken rhat had needed breaking.
He shook his head to clear it. He wandered, in only his loose hose, to the door.
In the main room, all looked much as it always did. But he saw immediately that the coals that kept the simmer stew hot through the nighr in preparation for the morn had gone out, yet the pot still hung over them.
Kalen frowned. Had no one eaten today?
And—when he entered the room fully—he discovered an oily red-black puddle spreading across the floor, coming from the other bedchamber.
Instantly, Kalen was on alert and listening. He heard weak, haggard breathing and recognized it immediately. Heedless of an attack, he hurried to Cellica's room.
The halfling lay within. Her middle was a mess of red and she was paler than chalk. Kalen would have thought her dead if he hadn't seen her chest moving, just barely.
"Cellica," Kalen said, kneeling beside her. "Gods. Gods!"
The halfling's eyes opened and her lips parted. "Well . . . met. Coins bright?"
Kalen cupped her face. "Cellica," he said. "Sister . . ."
"Look at this, Kalen." One feeble hand indicated the black mess that soaked the front of her linen shift. "Killed me, Kalen. Knife cur
all my insides. Poisoned. Too much for you."
Kalen's fingers lingered over her breast. He knew she was right. The wounds were too deep, and puckered black by poison. He couldn't heal her—not with his meager powers.
But he had to try. He had to.
He cupped his hand around his ring and closed his eyes. Eye of three gods, Helm, Tyr, Torm, whoever you are—hear my prayer.
"No, Kalen—even if you'd come four hours gone... it's too late."
"Shut up." Kalen gripped his ring tightly, driving the symbol of Helm into his skin. He had sworn he would never beg, but he would beg for any god who might heal his sister . . .
"Don't do it, Kalen," Cellica said. Her suggestive voice was cracked, broken, but still made him pause. "Not for me."
He looked into her eyes and tried to speak through a choked throat. "Let me save you."
"You can't." She shook her head. "Save it for her. The dwarf. .. he took her."
Rath, Kalen realized. "Who?" he whispered. "Who did he take?" "Myr . .. Myrin."
Cellica shook her head sharply, prompting a series of heaving, gagging coughs. Kalen thought she might spit forth shards of glass. "And Fayne."
"What about her?" Kalen coughed, burying his mouth against his arm. "Did you see her?"
Cellica shook her head. "I saw—" Her eyes widened as though aftaid. "Not important."
"I don't understand," he said. Anger suffused him.
"I know—" Cellica clutched his arm hard. "I know that look in your eye."
"Cellica," Kalen said. "Cellica, I swear to you. I will find him, and when I do—"
"Please don't," she said. "Don't make me die listening ... to dark words." Tears filled her eyes. "If it takes ... me dying to remind you—to save you from .. ." She gestured feebly, as though to indicate the world entire.
"You're not going to die," Kalen said. Cellica grinned wanly. "Just remember who you are." Kalen swallowed. "I'm nothing. Just a shadow of a man—not fit for—"
"Shush." The halfling rolled her eyes. She reached for his face and slapped him lightly on the cheek. "You idiot."
Then blood poured from her lips and she gasped for air. Kalen held her tightly, felt her heart hammering in her chest. "Remember," she whispered.
"I—" Kalen squeezed her hand tighter. "I will, but you'll be right here to remind me."
"So charming." She smiled dizzily. "Always so—" And then her eyes quaked and saw nothing.
THIRTY-TWO
The world swam back gradually, in layers of gray and black. Myrin struggled for several moments to remember who she was, and even longer to reason out where she was: a darkened chamber with a stone floor and walls. A slim shaft of sunlight fell through a high window, lighting the chamber dimly. Overhead and all around her, she heard a great clicking and whirring, as though from some sort of mechanism—grinding stone and metal against one another.
Fayne sat next to her, looking up at the ceiling and murmuring softly. A bruise colored the right side of her face, and something was wrong with her left arm—it hung oddly from her shoulder.
"Fayne?" Myrin tried to ask. Something lumpy and soft filled her mouth.
"Oh good, you're awake," the half-elf said. She was not gagged. "I'm almost.. . there."
Fayne's hand slipped out from behind her. Myrin heard a fleshy pop, and Fayne's arm shifted back into its socket. Her stomach turned over.
Fayne looked around and reached toward Myrin. "Now," she said, "promise not to cry out or try any magic—something the dwarf might hear?"
Myrin nodded.
Fayne removed Myrin's gag. "Kalen will come to rescue you soon, I think," she said. "I left him a note, and I don't think he knows how to give up." She ran her fingers through her hair.
"What's going on? Who was that gold woman?" Myrin asked, hardly daring to speak. Then she struggled against her bonds. "Why aren't you untying me?" *
"Don't be silly—we can't both escape," Fayne said. "If we do that, Rath will get away—and you want him to pay for Cellica, right?"
"I suppose." Myrin didn't want anyone else to be hurt. "But won't he hurt me when he finds you gone?"
"I don't think so," Fayne said. "He's been paid to take us alive, I think." She patted herself as though searching for something. Her hand settled over her belly. "Here it is."
"What?"
Myrin watched as Fayne drew from her bodice a shaft of gray-white wood about twice the length of a dagger. It didn't look at all familiar and Myrin had no idea what it was.
"Wait." Fayne moved to put it in Myrin's hand, but paused. "I can only give this to you if you promise you'll be careful, and only use it when the time is right."
"I promise," Myrin said. "But what is it?"
Fayne slipped the item into Myrin's manacled hand and she knew its touch instantly, though her mind had no memory of it. A wand—her wand.
Fayne slid it gently into the sleeve of Myrin's nightgown. "Remember your promise—only if you think you can defeat Rath." Fayne stood.
"Yes," Myrin said. She longed to feel the wand again, but she could wait. "Hold—"
Fayne had turned to leave. "Aye?"
"Can't you stay with me?" Myrin asked. "Can't we fight him together?"
Fayne knelt down again. "Child—"
"Don't call me a child," said Myrin. "I'm not that much younger than you. Maybe five or six winters—no more." Fayne's eyes glittered. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Myrin lied. She wasn't, now that she thought about it. "But what's more important, I know what you said." "Oh?" Fayne looked dubious.
Myrin narrowed her eyes. "You said Kalen would rescue me—and I also know you aren't unbinding me and putting the wand in my hand because you think I might use it against you. Now why would you do that—unless you were afraid of me?"
"Not convinced by my performance, eh?" Fayne smiled and
gestured to the manacles she'd discarded. "I'm afraid you're right. I'm an opportunist, Myrin—and I see my chance. It's nothing personal, you understand."
"This is about Kalen," Myrin accused.
Fayne looked genuinely surprised. "Why would you think that?"
"You're leaving me here," Myrin said, "so I won't fight you for him."
"Would you?" Fayne knelt before Myrin, her hands a dagger's length from Myrin's bonds. "Would you fight me for him?"
"Yes." Myrin stared her down, looking right into her gray eyes.
Fayne stared back, that same ironic smirk on her face. "You'd be wasting your time," she said. "Kalen's a killer—a hard, brutal killer. He'd never love a softling like you."
"He's different now," Myrin said. "He's changed."
Fayne shook her head. "Folk never change," she said. "They just wear different faces."
Myrin shivered at the words. Her mind raced. "If fighting you for Kalen is useless," she reasoned, "then you would as well release me. So why don't you?"
Fayne shook her head. "You're a clever girl. But I can't do that."
"Why not?"
"I have reasons, I assure you." "I'd like to hear them."
Fayne said nothing, only leaned in to kiss Myrin on the lips, in a gesture that was as sisterly as it was mocking. It lingered, becoming warmer, but Myrin felt trapped—paralyzed as though by a spider's venom.
Dimly, she felt Fayne freeze taut as well. Her hands clasped ineffectually, as though she was trying to escape the kiss but could not.
It felt strange. She'd never kissed a woman—that she remembered, anyway—and it stirred odd, tickling feelings on the back of her neck and down deep in her stomach. She wanted more of Fayne—to drink Fayne in, absorb her into herself.
Myrin saw, reflected in Fayne's widening eyes, blue runes spreading across her forehead.
When Fayne's lips touched hers, Myrin saw her clearly—saw inside he,r. She couldn't say how—as with the lich woman and her magic, Myrin simply saw and did not question.
She was in an underground chamber, she realized, smoky with torches and the reek of burning flesh. She could see no more than half a dozen paces around her.
An elf woman in leathers stood a few steps from her. She looked familiar, and Myrin knew her: Lady Ilira, only younger. Young enough that she could see the difference, which for an elf meant seven or eighr decades, mayhap ten. She held a crossbow pointed at Myrin—no, at Fayne.
Myrin realized she was watching this through Fayne's eyes.
"Where is she, Cythara?" Ilira's voice burned her ears. "Where is the child?"
Myrin felt strong hands grasp her shoulders. "What child?" a woman's velvet-dark voice asked over her shoulder. "I hold none but my own daughter. Why—lost one of yours, did you?"
Myrin saw Ilira shiver in rage.
"By the Seldarine—don't fire!" a man cried from behind Ilira. "You'll hit her child!"
Myrin looked: a tall, handsome, gold-skinned elf, clad in shimmering mail, with a sword that gleamed in the torchlight. The sword should have pulsed with magic, but she felt a pressure she recognized-as a magic-killing field radiating from the elf. A spell he had cast. Bladesinger, she thought, though she had no idea what the word might mean.
She understood that he had meant her—Fayne. She had a sense of feeling childlike. If Ilira was almost a century younger here, how old was Fayne? What was Fayne?
Myrin looked up through Fayne's eyes at the woman holding her protectively. Mother, she realized: a gold-skinned elf, half-dressed in a sweaty black robe. She could have been twin to the bladesinger, were it not for her cruel beauty. Shadows danced in her eyes.
"Kill me if you will, slut, only let my daughter live," Fayne's morher said to Ilira, with a cruel smile. "You see, /can have a child,
while you are barren, no matter how my brother ruts you. I am well pleased with that and can die smiling."
Ilira gave a strangled cry and would have fired, but the bladesinger stepped in the way.
"Twilight, please!" the elf lord begged. "Please—she's my sister, and she has a—"
"That is not a child, YIdar," Ilira said. "That is a demon. A demon!"
Myrin felt white-hot loathing for Ilira wash over her like a wave and knew it was Fayne's hatred. It suffocated her, and she could not move.
The bladesinger put his arms out. "You'll have to kill me, too. I'll not move."
Ilira grasped his arm to pull him aside, and Myrin-as-Fayne saw smoke rise where their skin touched. Yldar's flesh burned, and yet he stood firm. They both looked startled by Ilira's use of her power, and she quickly let go.
"How can you defend her?" Ilira cried. "She murdered your betrothed!"
"That was an accident," he asserted. "She meant to kill—"
"Don't you see?" Ilira cried. "She's controlling you! She's controlled your life since you were a child. She rules you now, though you refuse to see it. She—YIdar!"
The bladesinger had fallen to his knees, clutching his chest. Ilira reached for him, then flinched away as though her touch might kill him. She looked at Fayne's mother. "Stop it!"
Myrin looked up to see a bloody mass in her mother's hand. A heart, Myrin knew—Yldar's heart. She realized Yldar's attention had waned, and his counterspell with it.
"Flee," her mother said, "or he dies."
"Do not do this, Cythara," Ilira said. "He is your brother. You saw how he—"
"Only that he stood between us," Fayne's mother said. "Now you owe him your life—don't waste his. Flee'
Myrin heard the imperative—the magical command in that word—but Ilira fought to hold her ground. Myrin saw something
move in the shadows behind her—thought she saw a face—but it was only for an instant.
. "Flee." Cythara squeezed the heart in her hand and Yldar, still moaning, screamed loud and long. "I won't say it again."
Ilira, tears streaking her face, rose to go. "You win, Cyth." She turned her back.
Myrin could feel Fayne's mother smile.
Then she heard a click and felt a sharp slash across her cheek. She screamed in Fayne's youthful voice and fell. As Fayne fell, Cythara looked down at the crossbow bolt that had sprouted between her breasrs. Myrin realized Ilira had fired behind her back, under her cloak.
Blood—bright red blood—trickled from rhe corner of Cythara's mouth and she fell.
Something caught Myrin: Ilira had appeared, seemingly from the shadows. Their skin touched and Myrin's flesh tingled but did not burn, as had Yldar's. She wanted to speak—Fayne wanted to speak—but the elf only set her down and ran to the bladesinger, who was coughing and trying to sit up.
Myrin looked at Cythara's corpse. Blood leaked around it—hot, sticky fluid that cooled to tacky sludge. Her open eyes stared. Yldar's heart had vanished from her hand, and she lay like some stripped, crumpled doll. Abused by the world, humiliated, and discarded like refuse.
Myrin felt hot inside—Fayne burning with anger, crawled to her mother's body.
Stop, child, came a voice in her head. You cannot.
But she didn't listen. She drew Cythara's wand—a shaft of bone— from her mother's limp hand and turned it toward Ilira's back. The woman was fussing over Yldar and wouldn't see the attack.
Stop, Ellyne, commanded the voice—and she knew it was distracted. A battle was going on, somewhere, between the speaker and some shadowy foe. It is too powerful for you.
Myrin leveled the wand and uttered syllables in a language she couldn't possibly know. But she recognized them, horribly, as the tongue of demons.
~Your worst fear," she said in those black words. "Your worst fear to unmake you!"
Searing pain swept through her, burning every inch of her body. She fell ro her knees and screamed as the horrible power ripped from her and struck the woman she most hated.
And Ilira straightened, back suddenly taut as a wire, and turned toward her. She did not see Myrin, but something between them. Her mouth spread wide in a terrified O.
"No!" she screamed. "No—I don't need you! 1don't needyou!"
Blood trickling down her face, Myrin—Fayne—Ellyne—whoever she was—laughed.
She saw something else, then, behind them—a girl, clad in blue flames.
Myrin.
Herself.
The vision ended as Fayne wrenched herself away from Myrin. Fayne lay shuddering on the floor, her hands pressed to her temples.
"Lady Ilira," Myrin murmured. "Lady Ilira killed your mother. That's why you wanted to hurt her. That's why—"
"What?" Fayne shook her head. "What are you blathering about?"
"I was there—I saw you get cut. Right there." Myrin looked hard at Fayne's cheek, and sure enough, a scar faded into existence along the smooth skin.
Mutely, Fayne raised her hand to the scar. Her lip trembled. She was afraid.
Myrin understood what Fayne wanted. More than that, she understood what Fayne was. She saw the depths of her game—saw the darkness in her heart. "What happened to you?"
Fayne shook her head. She pulled a bone shaft from her belt—the wand from the vision, Cythara's wand—and slid it across her cheek. The scar smoothed out and vanished.
"Whatever you saw, it doesn't matter," Fayne said. "It has nothing to do with you."
tea
"I saw you. Saw what you are. Ah"—Myrin shivered—"what are you?"
t Fayne laughed—and in rhat moment, all the tension went out of her. "Oh, stop it—you're so cute when you're scared." She nuzzled her thumb into Myrin's cheek.
Despite herself, Myrin had to smile.
"You don't have anything to worry about." Fayne traced her fingers down her cheek. "This is one of my rare noble moments." "Noble?" Myrin blinked.
"Indeed," Fayne said. "The very existence of our world is at stake, and you can save it."
Myrin narrowed her eyes. "How?"
"Simple, my dear," Fayne said with a smile. "You can die." Myrin laughed, but the nervous sound died away. Fayne's face was mortally serious.
"You ... you're not jesting?"
Fayne shook her head. "No, tragically. Your very existence is a threat to yourself, everyone around you, and perhaps all of Faerûn."
Myrin was stunned. "But.. . but I haven't done anything!"
"No," Fayne said. "But you will."
"You ... you can't kill me for something I might do!"
"Will," said Fayne. "I didn't say might. Will."
"Tell me what it is!" Myrin said. "I won't do it—I promise!"
"No. I'm sorry, but it's inevitable. You can't stop yourself." Fayne shook her head sadly. "You might do it by accident, or more likely some villain or other will use you. You come across an archmage or one of the plaguechanged ... sooner or later, you will absorb something coo powerful for you to control."
"I don't understand." Myrin's heart was racing. "What do you mean, absorb?"
"Never mind. The point is that the power inside you is simply too dangerous for you to exist," Fayne said. "Thus, I'm going to take you to someone—someone who can contain you safely, without destroying the city in the process." She touched Myrin's cheek, a little more guarded this time, as though fearing another vision. "Don't worry—you might not have to die."
Tears were streaming down Myrin's face. "Why are you saying this? I'm . . . I'm just a girl. I hardly even have any magic! You can't possibly..."
"You're a goddess," Fayne said.
Myrin's eyes went so wide they might have popped. "I'm . . . what?"
"No, no, that was a jest." Fayne tried to stifle her laughter with her hand. "Honestly, you should have seen your face." Myrin wasn't laughing.
Fayne's expression grew grave once more. "To be accurate, you've got a goddess inside you—or, more truly, the death of one," she said. "Metaphorically speaking, you're carrying death, little one—the death of the old world. Just like all the other spellscarred. Like Kalen. Like Lady—" Her eyes narrowed. "Like that whore."
"I—I don't—what?"
"It's complicated." She pursed her lips. "You're all spellscarred, but you, Myrin, are far more interesting than any of them. Your powers..."
"But what are they?" Myrin almost wept. "What do I do?" "This is delightful," Fayne said. "You really don't know, do you?" Myrin shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. "Very well," Fayne said. "I'll tell you, but only because I fancy you well."
"What?" Myrin choked on the word. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Fayne bent as though to kiss Myrin, then recoiled, thinking better of it. "Let us begin this way," she said, catching Myrin by the chin. "You remember the lich, in the alley, when you were kidnapped, yes?"
"Yes, I—but I chased her away. I didn't—"
"Silly girl." Fayne batted Myrin across the chin, almost playfully— the way a cat might. "You didn't honestly think that power was yours, did you?"
Myrin's lungs heaved and she could barely speak. "I ... I don't understand." .t
Then Myrin wept for true—terrified, confused, and frustrated. Had the world gone mad? She was just Myrin—little more than a slip
of a girl, with hardly any magic to her name. She wanted her mother— whose face she didn't even remember. That made her weep more.
"Oh, sweetling, don't—I'll be plain, I promise."
Myrin was crying, and damn it if Fayne was going to stop her with anything less than divine revelation.
Fayne smiled. "Remember when we first met?" she asked. "I fussed over you, then later, you struck me with that spell? The one that hurt me and stripped my strength ?"
"What—what of it?" Myrin asked between sobs.
"That was my spell," Fayne said. "Stolen out of my head."
The words froze Myrin, and she looked up, stunned.
Fayne raised her hand, murmured a few words, and Myrin felt the same pressure in her mind as she had used to strike Fayne in Kalen's tallhouse.
Myrin stared, heart hammering, as Fayne knelt and picked up the gag.
"Please," Myrin said. "Please—I need to know more!" Fayne scoffed. "Only this," she said. "Folk never change. Do not forget that."
"Fayne, plea—!"
Fayne shoved the gag back in Myrin's mouth with enough force to knock her over. By the time Myrin recovered and looked up, rhe half-elf was gone.
THIRTY-THREE
The sun dipped outside his window. Dusk fell quickly, and mist flowed into Waterdeep once more. No strange glowing patches would appeat that night, though—only calm, expectant fog to shroud the city, hiding the unpleasant things that needed to be done.
The faltering light slanted across the blood-stained floor that Kalen had done his best to clean.
Though Kalen didn't feel like eating, he forced himself. However much Cellica had spiced it, the cold stew tasted like soggy paper. In part, it was his curse; in part, it was fate.
The dwarf was giving him some time, and he was glad of that much, at least.
He'd taken Cellica to her adoptive family in a hired carriage. They'd accepted the body with tears and sobs. Kalen hadn't been able to face her adoptive siblings and stood aloof. Philbin, so like a father, had whispered a silent prayer for vengeance. Kalen had nodded silently.
Now, Kalen sat wearing the armor Cellica had repaired, rolling his helm between his gauntleted hand and his bare one. He had only one gauntlet, after rhat noble stripling had taken his second away. He was supposed to do this alone, weakened, without his full armor or even his sword? Impossible, he thought, and yet, he had no choice.
He looked again at the scroll on the table—the note that had been affixed to his door with a dagger. His dagger, that he had given Myrin the night before.
Shadow,
Rath is making me write this.
Come to the Grim Statue at midnight or he will kill us. Come alone.
He says he may just kill one of us and maim the other. He says you can pick. -E
Kalen ran his hand across his grizzled chin, thinking. Why had Rath spared him? And, above that, did Rath know he was Shadowbane?
The dwarf could be toying with him, but Kalen did not think that Rath was the sort to play games with his prey. He must have known Kalen was in the room, helpless and asleep. If he'd known Shadowbane slumbered nearby, he could have slain him easily, or awakened him so they could duel on the spot. And if he didn't know Kalen was Shadowbane, he would have had no hesitations about killing him in his sleep.
For the life of him, Kalen could not puzzle out why he was still alive.
Then he realized: Fayne.
Fayne must have done something to spare his life. Perhaps she convinced Rath that Kalen knew Shadowbane, and could deliver the letter. Perhaps she begged Rath not to kill him—perhaps she offered him lewd favors in return . ..
Kalen grimaced and clenched his fist.
Or perhaps he did not owe Fayne his life at all, but owed it rather to Rath himself. The dwarf came from a monastery—he knew great discipline. Perhaps he would have thought slaying a helpless man to be dishonorable. And leaving Cellica to die hadn't been?
"Twisted sense of honor," Kalen murmured, but in truth, he was hardly in a position to judge. Woujd his own code make sense to anyone besides himself?
It had made sense to Cellica, he thought.
He shook his head. Thinking with his heart was a weakness he could ill afford.
Surely Rath would have obtained healing, but likely the scars on his wrist would stop him fighting with his sword hand, or perhaps compromise his technique. That was an advantage for Kalen—a strength. He passed the helmet to his right hand, in its steel gauntlet.
Kalen did not have Vindicator—that was a weakness. He passed the helm to his left hand.
Rolling the helm back to his right hand, Kalen thought he was the stronger—strength.
Rath had proven, rhough, that his skill more than compensated for Kalen's strength—weakness. He rolled the helmet to his left.
Kalen wore armor that allowed him mobility—strength.
Rath did not need armor and seemed not to tire, while Kalen had to carry the weight of his leathers—weakness.
Kalen had the threefold god—strength.
They almost matched for speed, but Rath was just enough faster—weakness.
Rath had Fayne and Myrin, while Kalen had no bargaining power—weakness.
Rath had picked the dueling ground—weakness.
And, most important, Kalen was dying of spellplague—weakness.
Kalen was holding the helmet in his unarmored left hand. He hefted it, as though trying to dispel his doubts, then shook his head.
Going into this duel was tantamount to falling on his own blades, but he had to try.
"If I don't," he murmured, "then who will?" The words he had shared with Myrin.
He felt the familiar chill at the base of his neck that told him he was not alone—someone stood just outside his door. Had Rath chosen to kill him by stealth after all?
He lifted his helm and slid it on, fastening the buckles with distinct, if muted, clicks.
Then he was up, dagger in his hand, facing the door. It burst open, as if by cue, and a woman in black coat-of-piate armor stood before him. In her hands was a hand-and-a-half sword that dripped with silver fire.
"Waterdeep Guard!" she cried. He knew her voice.
Araezra.
Shadowbane turned to the window, but a red-haired woman sat on the sill, hands at the hilts of twin knives—Talanna. "Lost your other gauntlet, have you?" she asked. "Shadowbane?"
Kalen pressed his lips firmly together—they would know his voice.
"Down arms and doff your helm," Araezra commanded. "In the name of the city."
He looked for another way out. Cellica's window, perhaps, but that was a small fit. He could try his luck with Araezra, but a dagger would be as nothing against Vindicator. He might escape with a wound, but he could hardly fight Rath while hurt.
"Do it now," Araezra said. "Down arms and unveil yourself!"
He dropped the dagger, which stabbed into the floorboards, there to quiver. He made no move to unbuckle his helm.
"You're making a mistake," he said as gruffly as he could, to hide his identity. "I've done nothing illegal or—"
"The time for masks is past, lad," said Talanna. She hefted her blades dangerously.
He thought desperately but could find nothing. He nodded.
"Slowly, then," Araezra said. "Unveil yourself—slowly."
He put his hands out, showing them empty—his left hand bare, his right hand gauntleted. Then he reached up and opened the clasps of his helm and pulled it off. He watched Araezra's face and saw the hope in her eyes fade. And with it, his own hopes.
"I knew it!" Talanna clapped the blades of her daggers together and grinned. She looked at Araezra, who grimaced angrily. "I told you, Rayse—didn't I tell you?"
Kalen blinked. "What?"
"Kalen." Araezra lowered Vindicator, setting the point against the floor. "I tried so hard to believe it wasn't you. Even up until I knocked on your door, I thought there would be an explanation." She shook her head. "I didn't think you would lie to me, but you did."
"I'm sorry," he said. "You were never supposed to know."
Araezra's eyes narrowed. "Never supposed to know? You think me a dullwit, then?"
Kalen blinked.
"All those stories we heard," Araezra said. "About the gray knight who feels no pain? And the colorless eyes. You think I don't know your eyes, Kalen? We've . . ."
She looked at Talanna, who grinned. Araezra nodded toward the window, as though directing her out to give them privacy, but Talanna only shrugged, feigning ignorance.
With a scowl, Araezra looked to Kalen. "It was only circumstantial, until that night in Downshadow—when you saved first me, then Tal. We were chasing you, and you came back for us anyway. You didn't want to be caught, but you didn't want us hurt. You're always like that—taking care of us whether we want it or not."
Kalen looked at the floor. He supposed it was true. "I never meant to offend."
"And the ball," said Talanna. She grinned. "Rayse told me about the ball."
"What about the ball?" Kalen asked. He thought he'd hidden himself well enough there.
Araezra waved. "When all the panic started, Shadowbane appeared and picked up Cellica, of all folk, and leaped up—" She trailed off.
"We're sorry," Talanna said. "That's why we've come—because of Cellica." Kalen opened his mouth, but she continued. "Of course we heard. Her family was just concerned about you, Kalen. They sent word to the Watch, and we requested to go along for the task."
"So, now," Kalen said. "You've come to arrest me?"
Talanna laughed.
Araezra didn't look so amused. "Aye, or so the ten Watchmen below think," Araezra said. "You're a dangerous vigilante, Kalen. We came up alone to talk to you, and they're under orders to follow if either of us shouts. But since we know you and love you well, we came to see if you would come peaceably."
"What happens now?" Kalen looked at the dagger stuck in the floor. He was fast, he knew—could he knock Talanna to the floor before she could put two daggers in him?
"We arrest you," Araezra said. Then she shrugged. "On the morrow."
Kalen blinked. "What?"
"Assuming, of course, you're still in the city," Talanna said. "But why would you leave ? Waterdeep is the city of splendors—everything you could ever want is here, aye?"
Araezra shifted her boots.
"We worked out a wonderful tale," Talanna said. "We found you, agony-stricken, inconsolable. Plying that indefinable charm of yours, you lulled Rayse and I—"
"Mostly her" Araezra noted.
"—into lowering our guard," Talanna continued. "Then you sprang from the window and fled!" She grinned. "Naturally, the story will vary around the Watch for months, and I expect you'll have charmed us both into bed and escaped while we were searching for our trousers, but nevertheless!" She sighed grandly. "Ah, such is the legend of Kalen Dren!"
Araezra groaned.
Talanna sheathed her daggers and stepped toward Kalen. "Here," she said. "Take this." In her hand was her golden ring of carved feathers. "I've had my fill of high places."
"It was a gift," Kalen said. "Won't Lord Neverember be offended?"
"He can always buy me another." Talanna shrugged. "I owe you a debt for saving me."
It was pointless to argue. Kalen did not don the ring, but laced it into the sleeve over his bare hand, so he could use it at a heartbeat's notice.
"I am sorry for this," he said. "I love you both well, and I never meant to hurt you." He looked especially at Araezra. "I mean . . . hurt the Guard."
Talanna laughed. "Surely you jest! Your exile from the city will be the cheeriest bit of news the Guard's had in ages." She winked at Araezra. "It means some certain lass has become free game once again."
Red in the face, Araezra looked ready to strangle Talanna.
"What are you talking about?" Kalen asked.
"Are you that dull?" Talanna asked. "For months, Rayse has been free of suitors because everyone thought that you two—"
Araezra's cheeks were burning. "Shouldn't you be going, Kalen?"
He smiled weakly then said, "I have aught to do, first."
"Does this have to do with Cellica?" Araezra asked gently. "If so, let the Watch—"
"I can't," he said. "I'm sorry—I can't tell you. I must do it alone."
Araezra sighed. "You always seem to have to be alone," she whispered.
Kalen donned his helm once more and secured it in place. "Araezra—I'm sorry."
"I know," Araezra said. "Just—one thing."
He turned toward her, thankful for the helm that hid his anxious expression. "Aye?"
"In the Room of Records," she said. "When Rath was holding me prisoner, and you came in. You... you did what you did, broke your vow, to protect me, didn't you?"
Kalen didn't trust his tongue, so he just nodded.
She stepped forward, snaked her arms about his neck, and pressed her lips to his cold, shining helm. "Thank you," she murmured.
He smiled inside his steel mask.
Then she slapped him lightly, causing his helmet to vibrate and his ears to ring. "I don't need you making decisions about what is best for me," Araezra said. "I can make those myself."
"Yes, Araezra."
"Rayse" she corrected.
Talanna rolled her eyes. "No wonder you two didn't last."
Araezra reversed Vindicator and handed it to him. As she did, her hand lingered on his. She gazed into his eyes, and he into hers. He knew she wanted to say much, but both of them knew she could not say it.
"I will miss you, Vigilant Dren," she finally said.
"And I you," he said, "Rayse."
She smiled widely, as though he'd paid her the finest compliment in Waterdeep.
"Now, go do what you must," she said. She straightened and her face turned stony. "Farewell, and remember—begone by the morrow. You have one day."
Talanna winked at him. "One day," she repeated. "Then I get to chase you down."
Kalen nodded, turned, and leaped out the window. He hit the roof of the building across rhe alley, rolled to his feet, and broke into a run.
He would need only one night.
THIHTY-FOnn
Rath meditated, waiting for nightfall. Fayne had sworn Shadowbane would get the note, and that he would be punctual. The woman had subsequently fled—while Rath had gone in search of food for them—but no matter. The human was the more important, and Fayne's absence meant one less distracrion.
He'd drunk three bottles of brandy the night of the revel, when the elf woman had scarred him. He'd paid for all rhe healing he could afford, but the marks were still there. He'd drunk until he couldn't see them in the mirror anymore. And he'd paid for whores who wouldn't wince to see his face. The next morning, his employer had come upon him as he lay aching from liquor and burns and women.
Now, he would wait for the next move in this game. And he would be sober.
He breathed in and out, in time with the ticking. He'd listened to the clock for a long while—it helped him to focus and align his breathing with the world around him. It was off, he thought, but only slightly. Craftsmen would be required to fix the clock soon—on the morrow, perhaps. After this business was concluded.
The girl fidgeted again, distracting him.
He'd brought her food. He'd even ungagged her long enough to pour soup down her throat—slowly, so as not to choke her. He hadn't unbound her wrists—no need. He'd helped with her roilet so that he didn't have to untie her. She'd nearly died of embarrassment, but he'd just stared at her with the same bored expression until she yielded. There was nothing erotic about it.
Even as he meditated, he was aware of her staring at the back of his head. What a curious creature. At least her fear kept her quiescent enough.
Finally, when he found his thoughts settling too much on her, he opened his eyes and turned his head. She quickly looked away, but he knew she'd been staring at him.
He sighed. Feeling the lightness in his ready joints, he rose and crossed to her. "I will not harm you, girl," he said. "I have not been paid to slay you. If you are hurt, it will be accidental and as a consequence of your own actions." He frowned. "Understand?"
She nodded. From the way she flinched when he turned his head toward her, he could tell the mangled half of his face frightened her. That brought a twinge of anger, but he suppressed it.
"I will remove this," Rath said, touching the gag in her mouth. "But you must promise you will not scream or attempt any magic. There will be consequences. Yes?"
She nodded, and her eyes looked wet.
The dwarf sighed, then pulled the gag out of her mouth. She gasped and coughed but made no loud sounds. This was good.
She looked at him, lip trembling. "What—what are you going to do with me?"
Rath frowned. "Just hold you here for a time. Nothing more."
"Are you—are you going to . . . ?" Myrin trembled and edged a little away.
"Humans." Rath rolled his eyes. "I would swear by any god you could name that you are the most despicable, insecure, bastard blood in the world, but I know the ways of my own kind and find them worse." He shrugged. "You have no dishonor to fear from me."
"Why not—" Myrin swallowed hard. "Why not unbind me? Am I a threat to you?"
"No," he said, perhaps faster than he should have.
She pursed her lips. "You fear me?"
"I fear nothing," Rath said. "I have nothing to fear from you."
"Prove it." Myrin puffed herself up as big as she could in her frail body. "Unbind my hands. If you have nothing to fear from me."
"Hmm." Rath couldn't argue with her logic. "Why do you want them unbound? You cannot escape."
"Uh." Her eyes widened. "My wrists hurt."
Rath said nothing, only reached around to do as she asked. She
hadn't lied: the ropes had left red welts on her wrisrs. He pulled away and let her rub her skin.
"There," said Rath. "Satisfied?"
"Yes." Myrin brought a wand of pale wood from behind her back and rhrust it under his chint. Rath felt sparks hissing out of it. "Hmm," the dwarf said.
Myrin stared ar him, her eyes very wide. She breathed heavily.
"You should do it," Rath said. "I have slain many—men and women both. And children."
Myrin breathed harder and harder. Rath could feel her heart racing, see the blood thudding through her veins on her forehead.
"Do ir," Rath teased.
The girl inhaled sharply.
Then he slapped the wand away and swatted her head at the temple with his open hand, as one might stun a rabbit. She collapsed to the floor limply. Lightning crackled and died.
"Wizards," he murmured, rolling his eyes.
THIRTY-FIVE
On nights when Selune hid behind a veil of angry clouds, the streets of Waterdeep became much like those of Downshadow below. Moon shadows deepened and buildings loomed. Even the drunk and foolish had the sense to lock their doors against unseen frights. Few but the dead walked such nights. Even Castle Ward, protected by the Watch and the Blackstaff, was risky after dark—particularly on a night like this.
But Waterdeep's darkest nights knew something Downshadow never could: rain.
Watet cut against Kalen's cloak like a thousand tiny arrows. Every drop was a command to reverse his course—every one a despairing word. His body told him to lie down and die. The spellplague was taking him, he knew.
Kalen took the crumpled note out of his pocket and read it again. This was surely a trap, he thought, but he had no choice. In particular, he thought of Myrin. Fayne could care for herself, certainly, but Kalen could not abandon Myrin. Powerful as she might be, she was still a lost, confused girl. And if her powers overcame her control, no one could predict what destruction might follow. He'd barely stopped her that night after the ball.
And Rath had to answer for Cellica's murder—he would see to that.
Kalen knew that even if he failed, Talanna and Araezra would hunt down the dwarf, but that gave him little comfort. The Guard could do little more than avenge him, and vengeance would mean little to his corpse and less still to Myrin and Fayne, if Rath killed them.
No, he would go, no matter the obstacles—no matter the rot inside him. He would not fail. One last duel—that was all he needed. Just this one last fight.
He opened his helmet and vomited into the gutter. Passersby hurried along.
He staggered down rhe alley near the Blushing Nymph festhall, which led to a tunnel into Downshadow near the Grim Statue and whispered under his breath.
"I will make an emptiness of myself," Kalen murmured against the rising bile in his throat. "A blackness where rhere is no pain— where there is only me."
He shuffled past rain-slicked leaves and unrecognizable refuse. His head beat and his lungs felt waterlogged. The fronts of his thighs were numb—he felt as though he wore heavy pads beneath his leathers. If he hadn't worn such heavy boots against the rain, he'd have thought his toes frosrbitten. His hands were steady, but that was scant comfort. Dead flesh was steady. His stomach roiled.
"A blackness where there is only me," he said again.
He repeated the phrase until the aches subsided. They did not leave him—not fully—but they faded. He would not recover, he knew. Not if he did this.
"Every man dies in his time," he murmured. "If tonight is my time, so be it."
His hands felt dead as he wedged his fingers under the lip of a metal plate, uncovered beneath the alley's debris. The reek did not offend him, for he could hardly smell it. The trap door had been used that night, he knew—it was loose. It awaited Downshadowers who prowled the rainy streets, and would for hours hence. Crearures of shadow risen from below. What was he, but a shadow come from above?
A shudder, worse than ever before, ripped through him, and he curled over, hacking and coughing. He wedged his helm open and spat blood and bile onto the metal door. It dripped onto the cobblestones and swirled with the rain.
When the fit passed—he had half expected it would not—Kalen righted himself and gazed at the rusty ladder that led into the shadows beneath the city. 't
"Eye of Justice," he prayed. He didn't beg. "Be patient. I am coming soon."
He wiped his mouth and began to climb down. ¦
Downshadow felt surprisingly empty that night. Its inhabitants saw night in the world above as their due, when they could dance or duel at whim, love or murder at their leisure. Those with eyes sensitive to light could walk freely in the streets, and a heavy rain or a mist off the western sea would hide their deeds, be they black or gray.
No space was emptier on such nights than the plaza around the Grim Statue: a great stone monolith of a man on a high pedestal, his head missing and his hands little more than stubs of stone. Tingling menace surrounded the figure, filling the chamber with quiet dread. A careful onlooker would see tiny lightnings crackling around its hands at odd moments.
Kalen knew the legend that this had been an independent and enclosed chamber designed as a magical trap. However, the eruption of the Weave during the Spellplague—as story would have it—caused the statue to loose blasts of lightning in a circle continuously for years. The walls had been pulverized under the onslaught, making the twenty-foot statue the center of a rough plaza.
Eventually, the lightning had subsided as the statue was drained of its magic. In recent years, lightning flashed from the statue only occasionally. The surviving walls, a hundred feet distant from the statue, marked the danger zone of the statue's destruction. The ramshackle huts and tents of Downshadow extended only to that limit, and most of those were abandoned. Only a fool or a fatalist would live so close to unpredictable death.
A favored game among Downshadow braves was to approach the statue as closely as possible, taking cover behind chunks of stone, to see where their courage would fail them.
Kalen stood at the edge of the round plaza, scanning the neighboring hollows and warrens for any sign of his foe. He saw little movement in the dead plaza, but for a pair of figures that stalked through one of the broken passages nearby.
Then he saw Rath step into the open from behind the remains of a blasted column twenty paces distant. His hands were empty, his face calm and emotionless. He wore his sword on his right hip,
as Kalen had hoped he might. The dwarFs right hand was wrapped thickly in linen.
"I thought you wouldn't come," said the dwarf. "Thar her note wouldn't bring you."
"You were wrong." Kalen put his hand on the hilt of Vindicator but did not draw. He knew the tricks of the Grim Statue—knew how its lightning could be random, but it almost always triggered in the presence of active magic. If he drew his Helm-blessed sword.. .
"I am pleased," the dwarf said. He made no move to draw.
Kalen saw that Rath's face, while not as horrible as on the night of the revel, still showed evidence of burn scars across its right side. His left side was unchanged, and Kalen could tell from his stance that he coddled the burned side. Proud of his looks, Kalen thought. He would remember that. If he could find a way to make the dwarf emotional, it could be an advantage.
"Agree to let them go if you kill me," Kalen said. "They mean nothing to you."
A flicker of doubt crossed Rath's scarred face. Then he shrugged. "What is this if?"
"Agree," Kalen said.
Rath shrugged. "No," he said. "Your little blue-headed stripling has anorher use to me."
Kalen didn't like that reply, but it wasn't a surprise. He shivered to think of the possibilities.
"What will you do next, dwarf, after I am dead?" Kalen had approached within ten paces, and the two of them began to circle. "Do you have other vengeance to take?"
Rath sniffed. "I kill for coin—vengeance means little," he said. "But I do know of hatred." He smiled, an expression made unpleasant . by his ruined face. "Two guardsmen. Araezra Hondryl and Kalen Dren—they will die as well."
Kalen smiled, reached up, and pulled off his helmet, showing the dwarf his face. 1
Rath's eyes narrowed to angry slits. His hands trembled for only : a moment. He was realizing, Kalen thought with no small pleasure, how deeply and completely he'd been fooled.
"Well," the dwarf said. "I suppose I need slay only one other after you."
Kalen smiled and put his helm back in place. He circled Rath slowly, keeping his hand on Vindicators hilt and one eye on the statue.
"You should draw your sword this time."
"If you prove worthy of it," said Rath. "This time."
Kalen was so intent on letting the dwarf strike first that when Rath finally moved, it almost caught him off guard. One moment, Rath was circling him peaceably, and the next he was lunging, low and fast and left, where Vindicator was sheathed. Only reflexes and instincts built up over long years on mean streets sent Kalen leaping back and around, sword sliding free of its scabbard to ward Rath away. Vindicator's fierce silver glow bathed them in bright light, making both squint.
But Rath didn't follow. Kalen saw him dancing back, and felt his hairs crackle just in time to see the Grim Statue slinging a bolt of green-white lightning at him. Kalen couldn't dodge and only barely brought Vindicator into the lightning's path. He prayed.
Kalen felt the force of the blast like a battering ram, blowing him back and away from the statue. He tumbled through the air, trying vainly to twist and roll, and landed outside the plaza in a gasping heap. Lightning yet arced around him, and he twitched and hissed as it faded. If Rath had come upon him then, Kalen would have had no defense.
But the dwarf was merely standing over him when Kalen could finally move again, a wry smile on his face.
"What glory would I gain," asked the dwarf, "if I let some relic of another age vanquish you, the mighty Shadowbane? Come. On your feet."
Kalen coughed and spat and started to rise—then slashed at Rath's nearest leg. Laughing, the dwarf flipped backward and waited, a dagger-toss distant, while Kalen rose.
"Draw your steel," Kalen said, brandishing Vindicator high.
"You have done nothing worthy," said Rath.
"Then come to me with empty hands, if you will," Kalen said,
taking a high, two-handed guard. "I tire of your child's games."
That seemed to touch Rath, for his neutral smile faded. He streaked toward Kalen like nothing dwarven. Kalen cut down, dropping one hand from the sword.
Steel clashed, followed by a grunt of pain.
Rath danced back, and Kalen coughed and struggled to stay on his feet.
The dwarf reached down and touched a dribble of blood forming along his right forearm. He looked at the cut curiously, as though he had not been wounded in a long time and had forgotten what it was like. Kalen gestured wide with the dirk he had pulled from his gauntlet, gripping it in his bare left hand. He let himself smile wryly inside his helm.
"I underestimated you, paladin," Rath said. "I shall not make that mistake again."
The dwarf reached for his sword in its gold lacquer scabbard and untied the peace bond. He closed his eyes, as though in prayer, and laid his fingers reverently around the hilt.
"You know what an honor this is," said Rath. "To find a worthy foe."
"I do."
The dwarf drew the sword in a blur, opened his eyes, and lunged.
Kalen almost couldn't block, so fasr was the strike. Rath's steel— short and curved and fine:—screeched against Vindicator, but both blades held. The speed stunned Kalen enough to slow his counter, which mighr have taken out Rath's throat if he'd been faster.
Instead, the dwarf leaped away, rhen lunged back, slashing. He did so again and again, moving so fast and gracefully that Kalen could hardly follow him with his eyes and parried almost wholly by touch.
Kalen worked his muscles as hard as he could, bringing the steel around to foil Rath's strikes, trying always to catch his slender sword between his own blades, but to no avail.
They exchanged a dozen passes before Rath fled, down the hall to the great cavern. Kalen gave chase, and might have lost everyrhing
when Rath came at him suddenly. The dwarf could reverse his motion as though by will, in defiance of momentum or balance.
Kalen parried the blow with his dirk, but he felt Rath's blade slit open the leather over his bicep. He took a wider guard—a narrower profile. He tried to bring Vindicator around, but hit nothing as Rath flowed away from him, running along the wall of the corridor. The dwarf plunged into the tunnels, and Kalen followed.
They ran from corridor to corridor, slashing and scrambling forward. Their swords sparked, trailing silver lightning through the halls of Downshadow. Rath struck a dozen times with his blade, but Kalen parried every attack—with sword, dirk, or gauntlet. Each time, Rath bounded away and Kalen cursed, panted, and followed. Lurking creatures scurried out of their way as the men ran and fought, roused from hiding by the duel. The combatants ran on, heedless.
"A darkness where there is only me," Kalen whispered through gritted teeth.
Rath vaulted off a nearby wall and slashed down hard enough to break through Kalen's guard and ring his helmet soundly. Instead of following through, he leaped away and continued the chase. Kalen grunted and sped after him.
"Why do you keep fighting, Shadowbane?" Rath's calm voice showed no sign of strain. "I can see you tiring—feel you slowing."
Kalen said nothing, but ran on.
They ran between crumbling chambers. The magic of Kalen's boots drove his leaps high and far, but the dwarf still eluded him. The dwarf seemed able to run along the very walls if he wanted.
They broke into the main chamber of Downshadow, with its tents and huts, lit by the dancing firelight that flowed across the ceiling. Inhabitants clustered around cook fires erupted in curses, then fled the path of the avenger and his quarry. Vindicator's silver glow made them bright, shining warriors as they chased each other.
They plowed through the heart of the encampment, leaping over cook fires and around startled natives. Hands reached for steel or spell but Kalen and Rath flew past without pause. They knocked down tent poles, sent stew pots flying, and generally wreaked chaos across
the cavern. Rath struck Kalen several more times, but his leathers held. He could not land a single blow on the dwarf, but felt certain that when he did, Rath would fall.
"What will it take?" Rath asked as he vaulted up a wall, caught an overhanging ledge, and swung over the side, seizing higher ground.
Kalen jumped after the dwarf, grasped a broken handhold—his gauntlet screeching—and swung himself up. He caught a narrow metal pole that lay between the ledge and the wall—a waste pipe for the Knight 'n Shadow, he realized, which perched in the cavern wall just above their heads.
He swung himself around the pipe like an acrobat, once, twice for momentum, then he let himself soar, feet first, up onto the ledge. He twisted in midair and landed on his feet, panting, knees bent, sword wide. He looked up at a huge stack of crates and barrels, above which hung the low platform of the tavern. Near Rath stood a small shack, balanced precariously on numerous long splints for legs, where workers would clean the tavern's rags and dump the waste water.
As Kalen landed, Rath scurried to the shed, slashed through two of the supports, then climbed up the side of the shoddy building, pausing to look down.
As the dwarf watched from atop the platform, Kalen grasped his left arm, gritted his teeth, and tried to still his raging heart.
"Wait, Helm," he demanded, calling upon his dead god. "They need me."
"Still you refuse ro fall," said the dwarf. He stood, in perfect balance on the platform railing. "What admirable valor—foolish, but admirable."
The groan of buckling wood warned of danger, and the supports of the platform splintered and collapsed. The dwarf launched himself again, flipping and sailing through the air—leaving behind a collapsing storm of wood, stone, and water.
Kalen barely threw himself aside before the shack shattered against the narrow ledge, which itself started splintering. Choking on dust, he tumbled backward.
Rath was there, sword dancing like a steel whip, and it was more luck than skill that let Kalen block. He parried with his offhand, but
the sword screeched against his blade and wedged the dirk free—it spun off into the cavern. Rath stabbed, but Kalen kicked his feet out from under him. The dwarf scrambled away before Kalen could get Vindicator in line.
"This will end only one way," Rath said.
He leaped out into the cavern and Kalen jumped after him, falling toward a sea of Downshadow folk who had joined in pursuit of the two crazed duellists. The dwarf bore down on one orc-blooded man and raced across the heads and backs of several others. Kalen crashed down in a knot of folk, sending three or four to the ground, then pushed himself up. He shoved his way through the crowd, holding Vindicator high and muscling the folk aside.
"Move, citizens!" he cried. "Waterdhavian Guard! Stand aside!"
That might not have been the best cry, for several lumbering forms—stirred by anger against that very organization—moved to block his path.
"Damn." Kalen bent his aching legs and sprang up.
His boots carried him up and over the intervening figures, following Rath. He landed badly and stumbled to the cavern floor, face first. Vindicator slipped free, but he recovered it in a roll to his feet. He charged after Rath, who was heading along the corridors toward the Grim Statue. Not attacking—just fleeing. Luring him.
Gods, Kalen thought—was he going toward the place where he'd hidden Fayne and Myrin?
Kalen burst into the plaza just as the statue's hands started glowing. He saw Rath standing before the statue, smiling. The dwarf sheathed his sword and spread his hands.
Whatever Downshadowers had been chasing them stopped at the edge of the cursed plaza, loathe to run into a trap.
With a grunt, Kalen charged.
The first lightning bolt was easy enough to dodge by rolling, but the second came too quickly. He tried to deflect it with Vindicator as before. Fortunately, the blast was at a sharp angle, and the bolt bounced from the enchanted steel into the ground, there to be absorbed harmlessly. The force drove Kalen to his knees, and he threw himself behind a boulder, panting.
"Come, then." Rath stood atop the headless statue. "I wonder if you'll be in time."
Rath leaped up, and Kalen watched as he vanished into the air, as though entering a pocket in the darkness above the statue's head. He saw the shadows wavering, and knew the dwarf had found a portal of some kind. But where did it lead, and how long would it stay open?
Though he knew it was a trap, he had no choice.
Kalen darted out from behind cover. He dodged a lightning bolt with a roll, then leaped over a second blast to grasp the statue's wrist. The figure's heat caused his hairs to rise as lightning gathered, but his eyes stayed on the unseen portal above its head.
He jumped and prayed it was yet open.
Lightning flashed.
THIBTY-SIX
Raien felt a sense of incredible space, as though he had been trapped somewhere cramped and now floated in the open sky. His mind reeled and he wavered on his feet.
Something hit him while he was dazed from his journey. He felt it coming only an instant before it struck and grasped the nearby wall by instinct.
Two feet collided with his face like the lance of a charging jouster. The force sent him arching back, and pain stabbed through his arm as he foughr to retain his hold. His helm shrieked as it tore free of his head and flew off, out into the Waterdeep night.
Rain lashed him as he hung weightless over empty space. He saw the lights of Waterdeep far below, and what could only be the palace roof. He realized the portal had led to the small chamber at the top of the Timehands, the great clock tower.
The temptation rose in him to let go—to sail off into the night and fall like an angel with broken wings. He was tired and beaten, choking with spellplague. The strength it lent him was fading, and soon, he would die. Why not let go? If he hung on, he would hurt more.
He hung on.
He swung into the tower, both feet leading, and kicked only air. He landed on his back with a crack that sent Shockwaves through his insides, below his numbed flesh. Broken and bruised bones, he could feel.
He lay there and listened to the loud, deliberate clicks of the clock mechanisms working all around him. Without his helmet, the noise was so loud he could barely think. His heart beat countless times between each click. He vaguely saw an open stairwell, where candlelight filtered up.
Up, he thought—up. Up.
He spat blood onto the floor and hefted himself to a sitting position. He looked everywhere for his assailant, but Rath must have vanished into the shadows. Waiting.
Kalen expected the dwarf to strike at any instant, but nothing happened. He climbed to his knees, ignoring the complaints from every ounce of his flesh, aching for him to lie down.
"Why don't you come?" he murmured. "Here I am. Waiting."
But he knew the answer. The dwarf didn't want to kill him on his knees.
Up—up.
Kalen swung one foot flat onto the floor. He could feel nothing in his body. His arms and legs were dead wood to him and moved only accidentally. He had nothing left.
"Kalen?" said a voice, cutting through the chamber. Myrin. "Kalen, can you hear me?"
He murmured something that might have been "aye."
"I'm here! Please! Come—" Then Myrin seemed to realize, and he heard her strangled gasp. "No! No—go away! Leave me here! Begone!"
Kalen paused, thinking perhaps Rath had seized her, but then he saw the girl. Tiny blue runes glowed like candles on her skin. He pushed Vindicator in her direction and saw that she was alone, curled up against a corner of the clock room. Runes glowed beneath her eyes, which glittered in the swordlight. He stood and limped to her, fighting to move every pace.
Myrin shook her head, pleading with her eyes that he turn away. He kept coming, though it would kill him. When she saw he would not stop, she sobbed incoherently.
He reached her side and set Vindicator on the floor. He wrapped his dead arms around her and rested his bloody chin on her shoulder. She was shivering.
"Peace," he whispered, shocked at how hoarse his voice sounded.
"It was Fayne!" Myrin moaned. "She said—she said such horrible, horrible things." She shivered. "Oh, gods, Kalen! I'm—gods, all those people!"
"Peace."
"But you don't understand. I'm sick! I'm carrying something that—Fayne said—"
"Stop." Kalen put his fingers across her lips. "Fayne lied."
Myrin stared at him, dumbstruck and frightened and wrathful all at once. Her eyes pooled with tears, and Kalen could see blue flames deep within them.
"Truly?" Myrin asked. "Oh, Kalen—truly?"
Even as Shadowbane, Kalen Dren had never lied. Deceived, yes. Left words unspoken, yes. But flatly lied? Would he be lying to Myrin in that moment? He did not know.
"Yes," he said.
Myrin turned in his arms—held him as tightly as her thin limbs could—and kissed him.
To Kalen, she felt like fire—a wrenching, sucking fire that drained his body. He gagged, breaking the kiss, knowing he would die in that instant. Myrin just held him, weeping.
Then, something returned to him. Life, vitality, strength—it was like healing magic, but painful, and it was pain he could truly feel. He couldn't speak—couldn't think—just held Myrin as she held him, weeping and sobbing. Everything else faded, leaving them the only beings in an empty world.
Then it was over, and they were just holding one another, alone in a tiny chamber at the top of the grandest city in the world. A great sense of space spiraled around them, and Kalen felt weak and vulnerable and very small indeed. But he was strong enough for Myrin.
Kalen pressed her head against his chest, holding her as she sobbed, and fancied that he could feel her hot tears soaking through his clothes. Or was that only phantom feeling?
"How touching." Rath appeared around rhe clock apparatus. He held his thin sword wide. "And now that you're on your feet, I can kill you."
Kalen let go of Myrin and directed her back to the wall. She didn't move. "Myrin," he said. He could barely manage a whisper. "No," she said and rose to her feet. "You're not hurting him."
Rath shrugged. He pulled something from his belt. A grayish white stick of wood. "I told you I would not kill you, girl," he said. "But there would be consequences to your—"
Myrin thrust out her hand and the wand wrenched itself from Rath's grasp. It flew between her fingers and crackled with magic. "Begone!" she cried.
A bolt of freezing amethyst light streaked past Rath as he twisted aside. It slammed into the wall, blowing hunks of stone in every direction and sending lines of frost crinkling across the stone. The dwarf looked at the patch of ice, then at Myrin, his face an arrogant mask.
"No more!" Myrin declaimed words of power and twirled her wand. "No more!"
Rath started dodging, but the bolt of force that shot from her wand stabbed him in the shoulder. The dwarf cursed, faltering in his dodge, and Myrin cried out in triumph.
As though he'd been waiting for just that moment of distraction, Rath lunged at her.
Kalen moved. Vindicator caught the dwarf s blade and pushed it harmlessly wide.
As Rath barreled in, a victim of his own momentum, Kalen whirled and dealt the dwarf a left hook to his burned face. Clutching at his wound, Rath tumbled back.
Kalen drew a circle with the Helm-marked sword, and a ring of silver runes appeared in the air. Their holy radiance sent Rath staggering back, and Kalen saw Myrin's face bathed in his threefold god's light. How beautiful she appeared.
Kalen and followed Rath.
They fought along the floor and off the walls of the small chamber, blades ringing and scraping. Kalen felt new strength—new fury— flooding his limbs. He felt everything, as though the numbness had fled him. He had no need of inner darkness to hide his pain, for it was gone. Rage coursed through him and he fought tirelessly. Vindicator blazed with light as he struck the dwarf's blade, knocking Rath back.
Rath weaved his blade and spun, and Kalen slashed at him. Their swords clashed and sparked, silver fire trailing. Kalen cut wide and
punched around a parry, but Rath danced seemingly along the ceiling, flowing along slashes of Vindicator.
They cut through gears and pulleys, and once Kalen slammed into a bell, setting it to ring the dawn. Waterdeep would awaken many hours before dawn this day. In his fury, he didn't care.
Myrin shouted more words of power and multicolored stars burst into being in Kalen's eyes, dazing him. Rath might have struck in that moment, but the dwarf, too, staggered.
"That isn't helping," Kalen hissed, as he and the dwarf recovered in the same breath.
As Rath fell into a defensive stance, Kalen stabbed high. The dwarf ducked and turned a flip backward, kicking Kalen's hand up. The glowing bastard sword spun up into the darkness.
Rarh twirled back, kicked off the wall, and lunged forward, sword leading—and hit air where Kalen had been standing.
Kalen leaped after Vindicator, caught it, and slashed down. He cut open the back of Rath's robe.
Kalen landed two paces from the dwarf, and they stared at each other.
Then Rath leaped back, avoiding a beam of frost from Myrin's wand.
"Stop!" Kalen cried, but it was too late.
Myrin's face was drawn and haggard, and she collapsed to her knees. Blue tattoos sprouted all across her skin, as though the runes were taking over her body. Her wand sagged roward the floor. She stood near the room's window, where the portal had deposited Kalen.
As Rath surged to her, blade low, Myrin pointed the wand with her shaking hand.
A bursr of flame emerged from her wand and struck Rath's sword. The blade turned red almost instantly, and Rath hurled it at Myrin. The girl gasped and dodged, and the glowing blade flew out the window.
The dwarf's iron hands caught Myrin by the throat and wrist, holding the wand wide.
"Stop!" Kalen said. He held Vindicator level, pointed at Rath.
"Take another step, Shadowbane," Rath said, tapping his fingers on Myrin's cheek.
"Kalen!" Myrin croaked. "Just cut through me if you have to! I'm not important!"
"Myrin," Kalen said. "Myrin, don't be afraid. I'm going to save you.
"What Fayne said, Kalen! I'm not—gkk!"
Rath squeezed her throat tightly enough to cut off air. The knight waited, breathing hard, never taking his eyes from the dwarf's face.
"I wonder." Rath regarded Myrin for a single heartbeat then looked at Kalen. "Which is more important to you—justice or her?"
Kalen said nothing. Vindicator dripped silver-white flame like blood onto the floor.
The dwarf grinned. "Let us see."
He hurled Myrin out the window. She screamed and fell away, arms whirling vainly.
Kalen ran and leaped, sword leading. Rath slid a step to the left, his hands raised, but the knight went past him into the night.
Lightning flashed and an awful screech, as of metal on stone, joined the thunder.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Bain tore the night to shreds, and lightning bathed the high clock tower in light bright enough to match the day. Kalen hung from the tower, his righr hand on the hilt of Vindicator—which he'd wedged between two stones. A struggling Myrin hung from his left.
"You idiot!" Tears fell from Myrin's eyes as she beat at him with her free hand, trying to break his grip on her wrist. "Just let go of me!"
"Stop that," Kalen said. He swung her a little one way, then back the other way, like a pendulum—like the amulet on Fayne's breast. ..
Rath's head appeared in the window.
Kalen kept swinging Myrin, wider and wider. Her feet kicked at the rain-slicked tower stones, but Kalen knew she wouldn't find a hold. There was no ledge between them and the palace roof below. Only Vindicator kepr them aloft.
Kalen gritted his teeth and pulled. Myrin swung over open air—and back the other way.
"What are you doing?" she cried. "Are you insane?"
Kalen kept swinging her. Wider—wider. "Listen to me," he said.
"Just drop me!" she sobbed. "I don't want to kill all those people—"
"Listen," Kalen snapped. Myrin gaped. "The ring... laced in my sleeve. Put it on."
Myrin moaned. "Just let me go!"
"Put it on!" Kalen roared over the rain and thunder.
Then Vindicator shook. Myrin bounced and shrieked, and Kalen gasped at the strain. He looked up, and standing on the broad hilt of his sword—and his gauntlet—was Rath. The dwarf had scrambled
down the wall nimbly as a spider and perched on Kalen's sword. Rain streaked around him.
"Interesting plan," the dwarf said.
Kalen couldn't spare a glance ar Myrin, but he felt her taking the ring from his sleeve. He prayed the dwarf wouldn't notice.
"I don't imagine my standing here hurts you—you can't feel it, can you?" Rath raised one foot, keeping balance. "But even nerveless fingers can'r hold you up when they're crushed."
Kalen gritted his teeth against the storm and the pain in his straining arm. "Make an empriness of myself... in which there is no pain ..." He kept swinging.
Rath stomped.
Kalen felt it—less than he should have, but no amount of spellplague could mask the jolt of a broken forefinger. Just one finger—the dwarf was cruelly accurare. Kalen swung and almost fell, but kept a hold. Myrin gave a cry halfway between a scream and a sob.
"Put... it..-. on," Kalen hissed at Myrin.
Rath grinned. And crushed his middle finger. One ar a time.
Against the slipping agony, Kalen shut his eyes. "No pain— only me."
He kept swaying, swinging back and forth as though he might hurl Myrin to safety—as though any building was near enough or high enough. He could not reach the palace wall from this angle, and his hand was slipping.
"Kalen!" Myrin cried. "Just drop me! You can—"
"Put it on!"he shouted.
"Put what on?" Rath saw the ring and sneered. "Humans. So romantic, even to the end."
He crushed the third finger, almost sending Kalen down. Only by the Eye's grace ...
Kalen coughed harshly. "Have you got it?" he managed.
Fear clouded Myrin's face. She was swinging away from the tower. "Yes, but—"
"Good."
And he let go of her.
Myrin swung to the side before she started to fall, her eyes wide
and her face startled. Her expression changed to shock, and then heartbreak. She drifted into the rain and vanished without a sound.
The dwarf frowned. "I don't under—" Rath started to say, but Kalen, continuing his swing, hauled himself up and grasped the dwarf s ankle in his free hand. He planted both feet on the slippery tower wall.
"Fly," Kalen dared him.
With a fierce kick, he wrenched Vindicator free. For one horrible, perfect instant, they were gliding, failing a little as if they had tripped. Vindicator was arcing, end over end, through the air beside them.
Then Kalen's guts rose up into his throat, and the two combatants were streaking down, wrestling in the air. The dwarf punched him soundly across the face and the world blurred. He held on.
They ricocheted off the palace roof—crashing hard, bones snapping—tumbling madly like dolls. Kalen tried to jump but the dwarf held on. Kalen rolled and wrestled and prayed and .. .
Hit.
THIRTY-EIGHT
For a long time, nothing existed but darkness. Darkness, and rain like knives. Then pain—sharp, stabbing agony that came from every broken limb and ounce of flesh. He had survived the fall—somehow, crashing against roofs and shattering almost every bone in his body.
Rath awoke on the cobbles of Castle Ward, in the shadow of the palace, and coughed up blood before he breathed. This magnified the pain a hundredfold. He couldn't feel his body. He was— Alone.
That couldn't be. Shadowbane had fallen with him. They must have hit something else—some building. Otherwise, Rath surely would have died.
But who had landed on the stone first? Who had borne the brunt of the fall?
Rath saw a silhouette emerge from the mist. No—he saw the sword first. Saw the silver flames rising from it, the fog boiling away. Shadowbane, he thought for a moment, but. ..
It was Myrin. She walked toward him, the sword held awkwardly in her frail hands. Blue runes covered her skin, but they were fading as she strode forward. Her magic was unraveling, leaving only mortal hatred in her eyes.
"Taking vengeance," Rath said. He burbled. "I slew him and you avenge him. Fitting."
His sword lay on the cobbles, where ir had fallen from the window. The hilt, still sizzling from Myrin's fire spell, sent up steam as rain fell on it. It was only a hand's length from his grasp.
A black boot fell on the hilt. Rath looked up.
Shadowbane loomed over him—stooped, bent, but not broken. His damp cloak draped around him. His helm dripped black rain.
"Kalen," Myrin whispered.
He reached toward her with his unbroken hand.
Myrin's face softened. "Kalen, no."
He curled his fingers, beckoning.
"Kalen, please. He's a monster, but he doesn't—you don't have to—"
Kalen said nothing—only held out his hand. Myrin looked at Rath once more, then put the hilt of Vindicator in Kalen's hand.
"Turn away," Kalen said. Myrin shook her head. Turn.
"No!" Myrin backed away. "I want to see what you are. What we are!"
Kalen looked only at Rath. He focused on the dwarf silently, ignoring Myrin's heaving breaths. Then she turned away and darred into the mist, vanishing into the night.
"For Cellica," Shadowbane said, as though in explanation.
Rath smiled, tasting blood in his mouth.
Kalen wrapped both hands around rhe hilt gingerly, reversed Vindicator, and held it ready to plunge into the dwarf's throat. He paused, his eyes unreadable.
"What will ir be, knight?" Rath did his best to smile. "Vengeance ... or mercy?"
Kalen coughed once and steadied himself.
"Justice."
The sword screeched against the stone.
THIRTY-NINE
Iunatic swordsmen cause havoc in Downshadow!" the broadcrier was yelling ar the entrance to the Knight 'n Shadow. "Same culprits suspected in damage to Timehands! Watch ..."
He trailed off and gaped at a gray figure standing before him— bare headed, bare handed, clad toe to chin in black leathers. Bandages wrapped his right hand and a sword was sheathed at his belt. In the dawn light, his brown-black hair was glossy and his chin dark with stubble. His eyes burned like light off snow.
"Boy," he said to the broadcrier. He took a hand out of the scrip satchel at his waist—in it gleamed five gold dragons. "Do you want these?"
The broadcrier had seen so much coin before, of course—this was, after all, the City of Splendors, where coin was king and blood was gold. But never had he owned that much wealth himself.
The boy nodded. The knight handed the coins over, and they quickly disappeared into the broadcrier s belt pouch. Then, his bandaged hand shaking, the knight unbuckled the black-sheathed sword from his hip and held it out as though presenting a gold scepter.
"Hold this for me." The knight nodded to the tavern. "When I collect it from you again, I shall give you twenty more dragons." "And—" The boy shivered. "And if you do not?" The knight smiled. "Then wear it well, and do not try to run from it as I did."
The boy nodded and took the knight's sword in his hands. It pulsed with inner strength—neither good nor evil, only powerful. Waiting for a worthy hand.
Without another word, the knight strode past the boy.
Fayne waited for him, legs crossed on the table. She was in a good mood.
She didn't care about being private or unnoticed; she wore her mosr beautiful red-haired half-elf face and her most revealing black and red harness, which was more leather straps than fabric. A dozen men had come to her with propositions, but she'd casually ignored each of them until they'd gone away. She'd had to fend off one with a charm to make him run away in terror. After her display of magic, no one bothered her.
She was waiting for one man, and one man alone. She hadn't slept that night, and neither had he, she knew. This would be their last meeting.
He came, just as she had anticipated, at about dawn, when the street lamps were being doused and the shadowy dealings in unused alleys gave way to legitimate business in the streets. The Knight 'n Shadow was mostly empty at dawn, though a few Waterdhavians had come for morningfeast before going about the business of the day.
He was dressed in leathers but carried no sword and wore no helm. His brown stubble defined his strong, tense jaw. His right hand was bandaged. His left was bare.
"Last place you expected this, eh?" Fayne asked.
"On the contrary," her visitor said. "Drinks and sly glances are your favored weapons. Why should I expect anything less than your element?"
"Mmm." She nodded to the two goblets of wine on the table, one before her and one before an empty chair. "Drink? 'Ware, though for—"
Kalen seized her gobler—not his own—drained it in a single gulp, then sat down.
Fayne blinked at him, then at the goblets. He'd ruined her game, and it offended her.
"My apologies," Kalen said. "Was one or the other meant to be poisoned?"
"Very well," she said, keeping the anger he'd roused off her face. "We don't have to play this game, if you don't want."
Kalen shrugged, then belched in a way rather unbefitting a paladin.
"So you beat Rath," Fayne said, tracing her finger along the lip of her empty wine goblet. Again, silence.
"And I suppose you know about Cellica," she said. "I imagine the dwarf told you / stabbed her, did he? I thought he might. That was the plan, after all."
"He did not," Kalen said. "But I had guessed."
"Poor puppy." Fayne grinned. "Surely you didn't believe all that romantic nonsense about me loving you."
Again, Kalen said nothing, but Fayne could see the vengeful wrath behind his eyes.
"Ah, Kalen." She smiled at him. "I knew—I knew the moment you went after the girl instead of me at the revel—that we would never work together."
He spoke, his voice grave. "Threatening to turn you in had naught to do with it?"
Fayne laughed. "No, no, silly boy—in my circles, that's just flirtation. No." Her eyes narrowed. "You just don't understand my very humble needs."
"Needs?" Kalen's bloodstained teeth glittered at her. The look of it intrigued her.
"Yes—your heart, body, mind, soul—everything." She flashed her long lashes and feigned a kiss. "Is that really so much to ask?"
"I might have given it," Kalen said. "Before you killed Cellica—I might have given it."
"And what of Myrin, eh?" Fayne asked.
She seemed to have struck him to the quick. Kalen looked down at the table silently.
"Ah, yes, the girl between us," Fayne said. "And how fares yon strumpet?"
Kalen slammed his fist on the table, drawing wary glances. "Don't insult her," he said low. "A creature like you couldn't possibly understand her."
am
"I'm sure." Fayne didn't bother looking around. "She's not with you now?"
Kalen shook his head.
"You let her go," Fayne said, clasping her hands at her breast. "Oh, how romantic! You really are such an insufferably good man—and an arrogant boor, besides." She sneered.
Kalen did norhing but stare ar her.
"You just have to make decisions on behalf of those around you, without consulting them," Fayne said. "Rejecting that slut of a valabrar, for instance, so as not to hurt her. Deciding Myrin would be happier without you. Telling yourself it's to prorecr them, and nor yourself!"
"I do what I must," Kalen said.
"Gods defend us!" Fayne threw her hands up in the air. "The arrogance! The conceir!"
"I know Myrin," Kalen said. "And I do not deserve her."
Fayne couldn't contain her laughter. This was just too much.
"People never change," she said. "Once a rhief, ever a thief. Once a killer, ever a killer. Too much to expect you might stop hating yourself." She blew him a kiss. "But what if Myrin wanted you anyway?"
"I wouldn't let her."
"How perfect!" Fayne said. "Oh, Kalen, the gods endowed you in many ways, but wisdom of the heart was hardly one of rhem."
"Whoever she is," Kalen said, "whatever she is, whatever folk have done to her—Myrin deserved none of it." His eyes blazed. "She is better than me—better than all of us."
"Spoken like a man who knows nothing of women."
Kalen shrugged.
"Ah, Shadowbane, the arbiter of justice—but you're working without all the evidence, love," said Fayne. "You don't know what that girl is. If you did, and you had the slightest love for good and justice, you'd march right out of here and take her to the Watch—or the Tower." Fayne grinned. "Why not do that now? Or are you afraid they'd take her away from you?"
Fayne saw Kalen's hand clench, but the knight resrrained himself.
"But no—you don't need anyone else." Fayne winked. "You're always alone, aye?"
She could see Kalen trembling as he looked down at the table.
"You really do love her, aye?" asked Fayne.
"You know I can't," Kalen said angrily. "She hurts me too much, just by looking at me."
"You idiot." Fayne laughed. "What do you think love is?"
A timid barmaid stood at the edge of the room, and Fayne rolled her eyes and waved to her. Soon, tankards of ale came, and they raised them to each other, even toasted and clinked the tankatds together and smiled. By all appearances they were merely young companions, dressed in the garb of sellswords, sharing drink and conversation.
Through it all, the goblet of wine before Kalen went untouched. "What arc you thinking about, lover?" Fayne asked. "I am thinking about how this will end." There was no warmth in his eyes.
"Then you will not object to assuaging my own wonders," Fayne said.
He shrugged with his tankard.
"First question," Fayne said. "Why did you drink my wine rather than your own? Had you decided what manner of wench I am—one who would expect to be trusted?"
Kalen gestured to the full goblet. "I could drink this," he said. "Or shall we talk more?"
Fayne's smile didn't falter—she wouldn't give him a hint as to her scheme. It was far too delicious. "We should talk, and you should answer my question."
"I knew," Kalen said. "Because I know you, Fayne."
"I suppose you do at that—in a certain sense." She winked lewdly then composed herself. "Second question—you knew I was crooked. How?"
"Lady Dawnbringer," Kalen said.
"Ah." She nodded. "But that didn't let you save Cellica. So you must not have been certain. You didn't know Rath was mine?" "I suspected," Kalen said. "I saw the way you looked at Lady
Ilira—the triumph in your eyes. Was anything accidental about that night?"
"Well struck," Fayne said. "What I told you was true—the whore killed my mother, and nothing pleases me more than hurting her. I didn't pay Rath to kill Lorien, but I don't care that he did. The only part I lied about was whether I would have killed her myself." She smiled. "Yet still you let me share your bed, even after you knew I was bent. I don't suppose you really did love me? Just a touch?" She batted her eyes at him.
"No more than you did," he replied, his eyes never leaving hers.
Good, that was good. All his attention fixed upon her.
"Glad my true face didn't steal your virility," she confessed. "But I'm so terribly curious—make love to many of my kind, do you?"
"I like my lasses wicked." Kalen shrugged. "But I've never known one quite like you."
"Mmm. Good." Fayne laughed lightly. "Not wielding your paladin's sword, I see." She gestured to his empty belt. "You murdered Rath in cold blood?"
"And if I did?"
"Then I can see why Myrin has left you." She reached across the table for his wrist but he drew away. "Ah, Kalen! You and I know too much darkness for a soft thing like her."
"Yes," Kalen murmured. "I suppose we do."
She narrowed her eyes. "Are you—and this is my last question— here to fight me, rather than claim me for your own?"
Kalen said nothing.
Fayne sighed. "Of course. Well—it would have been joyous, saer, but I can't say as I disagree. You and I were not meant for one another. Irreconcilable philosophical differences."
Kalen shrugged. "I suppose this is where I ask how you intend to kill me." He gestured to the wine goblets—hers empry, his full. "I suppose one of those was poisoned."
"Mayhap." Fayne looked him up and down. "You seem to be alive." ,
"This likely would have been some game of yours," Kalen continued. "You'd suggest we both drink, and let me choose which
wine to take for myself. You just had to decide which I would drink—and poison that cup." He gestured to them. "Apologies if I spoiled your plan."
"And I apologize for insulting you earlier," she said. "Mayhap the gods did endow you with some brain after all—just not enough. You've missed one little detail." When Kalen narrowed his eyes warily, she laughed. "I'll tell you for free—a free lesson in Waterdeep, aye?"
"What could you teach me, Fayne?"
"Every thief," she said, "knows that the first rule of thievery is misdirection."
When Kalen frowned, Fayne gestured to his chair. The paladin reached down tentatively, as though to scratch an itch, and felt one of the tiny, poison-coated needles that were stabbing into his legs, buttocks, and back—needles Fayne had placed there an hour gone.
The irony, she hoped, was not lost on him. Because of his sickness, he'd not have been able to feel them pierce his flesh when he sat down, and by then it was far too late.
"Farewell, lover," Fayne said. She gathered her feet off the table and stood. "I would have liked to share a tumble with you again, but ... we never would have come to pass." Then, dipping low to give him one last eyeful down her bodice, she claimed his wine goblet and drank. When she was done, she licked her lips. "You and I are too much alike, and yet not enough."
She started to go, but Kalen laid his bandaged right hand on her wrist. The hand was shattered—only partly healed—and had no strength to stay her, but she stopped anyway.
"You're sweet," she said. "But with that much poison in you, you won't even be wakeful but for a few more heartbeats—and your heart will stop in a ten-count. Hardly time for—"
He started to rise. He came away from the needles, leaking trickles of blood, and rose before her like a black specter. She saw, in the folds of his stained gray cloak, the edge of a watchsword, which he drew into his bare left hand.
"There's—there's no way you could fight off that poison," said Fayne. "Unless—"
"Unless I managed to restrain myself"—he rose fully to his feet
and kicked the table aside—"took Rath to the Watch instead of killing him"—with a flick of his wrist, he laid the watchsword across her throat—"and retained the favor of my three-faced god."
And thus speaking, Kalen began to glow with silver-white light, as though his skin itself was aflame, as though a deity had chosen that moment to smile upon him—and gaze through him. In the face of that divine radiance, the other patrons stared, transfixed.
"Well." Fayne trembled a little bit, then smiled. "Well played, Kalen—you really are a cold-hearted bastard." Her eyes flicked down to the steel he held at her throat, then up to him. "And you saved your soul to spend on me? I'm flattered."
He looked at her impassively.
She smiled bewitchingly. "I've waited many years for someone as clever as you—a foe who could defeat me. I'm glad he was so handsome, too."
Kalen's eyes were cold.
"Come now, lover—don't you want me?" She stepped forward, letting his blade cut a tiny red trail along her throat. She purred. "Don't you want to hurt me? I've hurt you, haven't I—killed your little sister and chased off your blue-haired tart?"
Her face was almost against his. Only the sword, keen enough to slit her throat with a twitch of Kalen's arm—one false step—stopped her from kissing him.
"When you think about that," Fayne said, "when you look at me—you don't have even just a little hate in your heart?" She tapped Kalen's chest. "That big, strong, dying heart?"
Kalen tightened his hand on the sword hilt.
He shoved her back. She fell to the floor and looked up at him, eyes and hair wild, sneering as he stepped forward. Her heart was pounding and she knew this was the end.
"No," he said. He sheathed the sword at his hip and turned his gaze aside.
Fayne trembled. She didn't dare move—he could whirl and open her throat at any instant. But he just stood, silent and still. Death might as well have taken him as he stood—his sickness crept up and slain him. She panted on the floor behind him, blood trickling down
her heaving chest from the wound she had inflicted on herself.
Fayne rose. She dusted her leathers and smoothed her hair.
"Well, then—farewell, Kalen, though I don't expect you will." She winked. "Cellica's dead, Myrin has undoubtedly left, and you just pushed away the only other woman who could have made you happy. But I suppose you'll always have the memories."
She started to walk away.
"Fayne," Kalen commanded. "One last question." She turned. His back was to her. "Yes, lover mine?" "What's your real name?" She pursed her lips. "I told you, it's—"
He whirled and smashed her nose with a left hook. She landed on her backside, dazed and dizzy and coughing.
"Just because I don't hate you," Kalen said, "doesn't mean I'm letting you go."
Fayne tried to retort, but her face exploded in pain.
Kalen pulled a set of manacles out of his belt. "You and Rath might just share a cell," he said. "Perhaps you'll have a nice conversation about how you betrayed him—but I doubt it."
Fayne only moaned on the floor, clutching her bloody face.
"No clever quip?" Kalen sheathed his sword. "Fayne, I'm crushed."
Drizzling blood from her broken nose, she smiled up at him with surprisingly sharp incisors. Her eyes drifted up his frame, lingering in places.
"I've had better, you know," she said.
Kalen smiled. "So have I."
FORTY
Fayne hadn't stopped smiling all day. She'd smiled silently when the Watch stripped her of her possessions, including her mother's wand and her ritual amulet, crippling her magic. She'd pressed herself hard against each of them in turn, inviting with her eyes, but none of them had taken her offer. Pity.
She'd smiled silently when they asked for her name—rhen again when the stuffed peacock from the Watchful Order of Magists had threatened to call the Blackstaff to interrogate her personally. He didn't realize that the red-haired half-elf was a false face, though, so he had not tried to break her transmutation. Thank Beshaba for small blessings.
She'd smiled silently, regardless of how much it hurt, when the gray-faced priest of Ilmater set and bandaged her broken nose. She did lick his hand once, because it amused her. She loved the look in his eyes—desire warring wirh faith.
The Watchmen, the mage, and the priest probably got the impression she was laughing at them, but that wasn't true. Granted, she had not the slightest esteem for the Watch, but today, she felt like laughing only at herself.
Only after they led her into her cell, dressed in her blood-spattered doublet and breeches, and after the door had slid shut behind her, did she finally give voice to the laugh that had been building inside her. It was all so amusing. She was the one, after all, who had trusred a paladin.
She laughed loud and long for quite a while, until the other prisoners—cutpurses and swindlers, hungover nobles and the like— slapped the bars, trying to get her to be silent. But it was just so funny, this whole ludicrous situation, and she was the lead comedienne.
"Oh, Ellyne, Ellyne," she mused. "You're such a gods-tumbled fool! Such a. fool!"
The Watchman on duty thought she was simply mad, and he made the mistake of asking her to be silent. That man—a bulbous-nosed fellow of thirty winters or so—became the target of her lewdest and sharpest barbs. She threw herself into her mockery with a passion, pantomiming the jests and prompting more than a few cheeks around the prison to redden.
For she was Fayne, the Trickster of Waterdeep, and who would she be if she weren't the center of attention?
The Watchman gave up and stopped paying attention to her after a while, and she turned to tease her fellow deviants. Rath dwelt among the prisoners, sitting silently—mostly wrapped in bandages—in the cell opposite hers. He said nothing, no matter how she teased him.
After an unsuccessful hour of teasing anyone and everyone, Fayne grew bored. And thirsty, too. Not for the pond-scum water they'd given her—which she'd emptied on the guard's head—but for good brandy. Enough to make her face stop hurting.
Another hour passed. Having run out of breath to voice her japes and too proud to beg outright for attention, she contented herself with fuming at times, weeping at others.
Then, in the space of a heartbeat, all went silent.
Her sensitive ears could no longer hear the quiet murmur of the Watchmen at the front of the prison. She looked around, and her fellow prisoners all seemed asleep—or dead. Her heart started racing. What had happened?
"Aye!" she called. "Water, sirs! Please, goodsirs?"
No response.
The door swung open at the end of the hall, quiet and calm as soft death, and her heart almost froze. What was coming for her?
She sensed a presence—someone standing not a pace away from her at the door—and she shrieked and fell to the floor. She scrambled backward on her hands and feet and cowered against the wall.
Then came laughter.
"Mercy, child," a familiar voice said out of the air. "You are just like your mother."
A figure materialized before her, invisibility fading around it.
Relief flooded Fayne when she recognized her rescuer. "Gods," she said. "Did you leave me here long enough?"
The gold-skinned elf clad in the loud garb of a dandy swept off his plumed hat and bowed to her. He wore a bright rose pink shirt with dagged lace at the wrists, and his ebony overcoat was trimmed with complex gold swirls on the sleeves. Over this he wore a red half cloak that fell to about his waist, below which he wore white leather breeches. The outlandish garb might have seemed foppish or puerile on someone else, rather than dashing. She suspected, though, that he could wear anything and not fail to dash.
"Truly, Ellyne, you do me such dishonor," her patron said. "I was merely seeing to affairs of my own—I was quite unaware of your unfortunate circumstances."
"Hum." She didn't believe that for a heartbeat. "You've the key?"
Her patron lifted a ring of twenty keys. Then, as Fayne knew he would, he selected one completely at random and fit it in the lock. It turned, and he made a show of gasping surprise.
"You're impossible," Fayne said.
He shook his head. "Just lucky."
Her patron swept in as though he owned the city, and perhaps with good reason; privately, she suspected he was one of the masked lords who did exactly that.
"How positively dreadful." He pointed to her face. "Shall I avenge your honor, love?"
"No, no." Fayne's voice was made ugly and hollow by the broken nose. It rankled her, not being beautiful. "I prefer to do that myself."
"I thought you might." He leaned across the doorway, blocking her path out the door. "My darling little witch, I really must rebuke you."
"Oh?"
"For breaking the first rule of proper villainy," he said. "Misdirection?"
"Point." Her patron smiled. "Very well, the second tu\e of villainy," he corrected.
Fayne spat on the floor indelicately. "And that is?"
"Never do anything yourself." He smiled and bowed. "Hirelings and minions, child! That way, you've no chance being caught—and their antics are always amusing."
Fayne crossed her arms and pouted. "Which am I, a hireling or a minion?"
"Oh, tsch." He kissed her on the forehead.
She pushed past him and started walking down the corridor. He stepped out and, as an afterthought, wove a bit of magic over the lock so that it would work only occasionally. He grinned at the mischief that particular cantrip would cause.
"Hold," he said.
"Aye?" She turned and fell to her knees as a wave of power struck her, pulling apart her disguising spells one by one. It felt like Lorien's rod on the night of the revel, but harsher. The power was not gentle, and Fayne felt every bit of its intrusive touch.
When it was done, she coughed and retched on the ground, reduced back to her true form, with its pale skin, hair the color of his doublet, and gleaming eyes of silver. She had long elf ears and delicate features, leathery wings, and a long tail tipped at the end with a spade-shaped ridge of bone. She glared at him with her fiendish eyes.
"This is my punishment?" Her bright red tongue darted between her too-sharp teeth.
He shrugged. "No hiding for a tenday," he said. "You allowed that paladin to use you because of your insecurities. I won't have that—not in a child of my blood. So deal with your weakness."
"Well." She stretched and yawned.
He blinked—he truly hadn't expected that. "Already? You are content?"
At least one person thinks I'm pretty, Fayne thought, but she didn't say that.
"Mayhap my true face is not so bad." Fayne rose, slowly, and stroked her hands down her silky hips. "Mayhap you should wear your own—or am I the brave one?"
"Mayhap you're not as smart as I," he corrected. "Who's the one with the broken nose, who spent half a day in a Watch cell crying
her eyes out?" He averted his gaze. "Your punishment stands—until you remember your place."
"Hmpf!"¥ayne stuck out her tongue.
He laughed. "Gods know I've made mistakes like yours, and mostly for the same reason." He patted her head. "Love is the sharpest sword of all."
Fayne swore colorfully.
Her patron winked. Then he handed her the amulet and bone wand.
"And what did you do," Fayne asked, "to correct those mistakes?"
"Oh. A bit of this"—he waved three circles in rhe air—"a bit of that." He put his hand on the hilt of his rapier. His white-gloved fingers caressed the starburst guard. Then, as though its touch had reminded him, he looked at Fayne with affectionate, twinkling eyes. "She made the same mistake many times."
"My mother?" Fayne asked. "Cythara?"
He smiled knowingly.
"Not that again," Fayne said, rolling her eyes.
"I speak with all sincerity," he said. "You remind me of your mother at your best—and at your worst. She made many mistakes of the heart—at your birth and at her death. You see?"
Fayne only nodded. She wondered why he wouldn't say her morher's name. He probably found it painful. A weakness, perhaps?
As they left the jail, the binding spell that had frozen the Watchmen expired, and they bolted upright, searching in bewilderment for their prisoner. Fayne almost started to cast a hiding spell of her own, but of course, her patron had prevented that.
She was, after all, his best and most important asset. She could trust him—at least, until her usefulness to him ended.
The bonds of blood, Fayne thought.
As they were leaving, cloaked in invisibility magic, Fayne mused over the one question that she'd been dying to ask—and could, now that this phase of his game had ended.
"Would you permit me to ask a question?"
"I would certainly permir you to ask."
"The dwarf," she said. "You paid him to kill Lorien."
Smiling, her patron waved one casual, delicate hand.
"Lilianviaten," she murmured, speaking his name.
In Elvish, it meant something like "master fate spinner." Liken, she knew some called him. Also the Last Heir, rhough he'd never explained that to her. Mayhap he would, in a decade or so—perhaps a century.
It mattered little, Fayne thought. He was the only man she could trust in the world: trust to love her and betray her with equal frequency.
She wouldn't have it any other way.
She pressed. "So Rath was yours all along? Why didn't you tell me?"
"For my play to work, I had to make your reaction real, didn't I? And I knew you'd just ruin the whole game." He smiled wryly. "You should have seen your face."
Fayne started to ask, but then she understood it all—all of his plan, down to the smallest detail. How he had used her to manipulate events, and let her think he cared about her vengeance on the Nathalan bitch.
"Myrin," she said. "Myrin's the whole game—always has been."
"And?" Her patron waved her on.
"And now she's alone, undefended . . ." Fayne scowled. "You bastard!"
He flicked a lock of gold hair out of his eyes. "That's me."
Fayne couldn't help but laugh. It was so deliciously obvious—so simple—and so perfect. She could only pray to Beshaba she had half this sort of canniness when she came of age—and that the opportunity to pay Lilten back for his deception would arise soon.
"So . . . the game went according to your desire?"
"Of course." He stretched and yawned. "The next move is mine to make."
"I could help you with the rest of the game." Fayne nuzzled close to him—half like a solicitous child, half like a lover—and purred. "I promise I'll play by your rules."
"That's kind of you, but no." He shrugged. "Luck is with me—as she always is."
Of course, Fayne thought. She should have known—being the high priest of Beshaba, the goddess of misfortune, had its advantages.
And he was treacherous—she must never forget that. He'd served anothet god before, in the old world: Erevan Ilesere, if she remembered correctly, one of the faded Seldarine. Liken the Turncloak: the apostate high priest, who had abandoned his god in favor of his bitter enemy.
She wondered when he would betray Beshaba in her turn.
Fayne hugged herself close to his arm, pressing her breast against his side. "You're sure you don't want me?" she purred.
"Quire sure, my little fiendling," he said. "This is my game, and I've dealt myself a shining hand at it."
She leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. "You're such a bastard, Father."
"Indeed I am, Ellyne, indeed I am." Liken winked and returned the kiss. His lips burned like the fires of the Hells. "But you—you are as trueborn as I could make you."
Fayne blushed.
EPILOGUE
yrin wasn't there when Kalen returned.
He hadn't really expected her to be, though he had hoped.
Too much had passed between them, and she had seen the crudest and worst in him, as he had seen it in her. And yet, he had held out hope that mayhap, just mayhap .. .
A parchment letter—wrapped around Talanna's ring—was waiting on the empty, scarred table. That table reminded him of Cellica. How many times had he lain there while his adopted sister stitched his wounds? How many times had they sat together to mend Shadowbane s armor?
But it was Myrin's table, too, where he had first seen her, eating stew. Everything in the tallhouse had her on it—her scent, her smile, her memory.
The letter was brief. There were gaps, where many things went unsaid. It sounded of her and smelled of her, that sweet perfume of her bare skin. She'd crossed things out, and the ink had run in places. The parchment was dry, but he could see water stains. Tears, he realized.
As he read, all he felt was persistent cold,
Kalen, I'm sorry.
I keep thinking [smudge) this wasn't supposed to happen like this. Mayhap I would wait for you, to be yours and to live out the rest of our story with you. Gods know I wanted [smudge]
But life doesn't work like that. I need to find my own way—/ can't have you make my choices for me. And until you see that [smudge] Here's your ring back, by the way.
Farewell.
Ihopeyoufindwhatyou're lookingfor—and that I do too. —M
Kalen sat a long time, looking down at the letter in his hand. He let the aches and sharp reminders of the past days settle. He felt them more keenly, since Myrin had touched him—had kissed him—though he didn't know why.
A tremor of sadness passed through him. It might have been a sob, if he'd not been weighed down by so many years—so many scars earned in service to the memory of a long-dead god—that he could not weep. So much pain, inflicted and suffered. When would it be enough?
He realized, almost immediately, that it didn't matter.
She was asking him to make a choice that went against everything he was, or had ever been. He couldn't make that choice, and she knew it. That was why she had left.
If he followed her now—if he rose and limped out the door and tracked her down—would it be to set things right, or would it be for her? What would he say to her?
He moved to crumple the note and toss it in the bin, but he saw more words scrawled on the back. He smoothed the parchment with shaking hands.
I wasn't goingto say this. I scratched it out on the front, but you deserve to know.
I did something to you, Kalen—/ can't [smudge] I can't feel my hand well, as I write this.
When Ikissedyou, I took some of your sicknessfromyou. I absorbed it. I didn't do it on purpose, it just happened, [smudge] I think you're going to live. Just a bit longer. Some of my life for some of yours. Call it [smudge] a fair exchange, for bringing me to life at all.
You don't owe me.
Kalen blinked. He stared at the letter for several pounding heartbeats.
He was out the window before rhe letter fluttered to the floor.