"But these men didn't betray you, or your family," I insisted, still hoping to make him see what seemed like such an obvious point. "You're condemning innocent men."
"That justice's execution has been delayed is regrettable, but guilt taints these families' blood, and only by spilling it might it be expunged," the prince decreed, his words those of a judge. "Had this happened in my time, the result would be no different."
I took a step before I was even sure what I was doing, my flesh bristling with a chill. I knew I wouldn't convince him, especially as he defended his murders with the skewed logic of the entitled. The assembled dead looked on in silence, siding with neither the prince nor me.
"So good people should die for their parent's sins? Are we really nothing more than our blood?" I kept talking, trying to distract him, taking another slow step.
Lieralt didn't even hesitate, "My lady, you may never know the burden of your blood, and were I you, I would pray to the goddess daily for that mercy. Yet for some of us, our blood is a chain, one that binds us to duties that perhaps we would not choose. We are but links in such chains, bound to our fathers and our sons for generations into infinities past and future. I tried to alter the responsibilities of my blood, and for that I was punished, my place in my family's chain severed. Yet my murderers too denied the responsibilities of their blood, and so does justice demand their families' chains be severed. That their families were given one more link then they deserved should be seen as a mercy, but not a reason to deny justice."
I'd neared the base of the throne, my locked eyes and slow nods hopefully suggesting I'd been listening intently. In truth, the prince's words were distant, nearly drowned out by the sound of blood pounding in my ears. I was close enough to see through him here. That he was a thing of ether and death and not flesh and blood maybe explained his cold vision of justice.
Looking at the floor I shook my head, trying to look defeated, at the same time calling upon whatever nerve I had left. I only expected to have one chance.
Ignoring my repulsion for the thing, my hand was around the dagger and the same motion that yanked it from its sheathe sent it flying at the throne. The blade's gemstone hilt seemed to catch fire as it flew, looking more like the eye of some ravenous creature than ever before. When it struck, it embedded itself into the back of the throne solidly, quivering with a resounding thrum.
Yet it thoroughly missed the prince.
In that second I knew I was dead.
Instantly Lieralt was in motion, rising from the throne, his blade materializing from the shadows. "How could you know what hell it was, locked in that thing for a lifetime? Living for more years in my own corpse than in my living body," he started slowly, even calmly, his voice growing terrible with anger until it was a resentful shout echoing through the throne room. "How could your words color me a tyrant, then your hands repeat an injustice a thousand times worse? Who are you to judge me, who should be your prince!"
He moved with such speed I couldn't follow him. I cringed from the blow I expected to pierce straight to my soul. But it didn't fall. Swiftly I looked about the room. The corpses, the spirits, they were all there—bar one. Prince Lieralt was nowhere to be seen.
Motion from the floor caught my attention. Rarentz. Knocked out, he finally seemed to be coming to. Instantly escape seemed like a possibility. If I could get him to his feet and running, we both might be able to escape the palace, even the city, before the prince attempted to take both our lives.
Rushing to his side, I kneeled to help him up. Whispering urgently, hoping his groggy mind might understand my tone if not my words. He complied slowly, rising and taking a staggering step, still unsteady on his feet. I put an arm around his waist to steady him and he turned to look at me quizzically.
"Have you known betrayal?" came Prince Lieralt's voice from Rarentz's lips.
I gaped and staggered back, jerking my hands from the repulsive things using Rarentz's body like a puppet. Doing so I stumbled into the rigid corpse of Garmand and tripped backward, landing on the first step of the throne.
"Have you known your vision, your life, ruined by the pettiness of the scared and weak?" the prince, or Rarentz, went on, taking a step toward me. The corpses parted to admit their master, and four dead men looked down upon me. I could feel the scream welling up in my lungs as I scrambled up the stairs until my back struck against the base of the throne.
"Do you still think the traitor's dagger a suiting end?" he gestured toward the devil blade above me. "Would you exact the justice you claimed I was so unsuited to?"
My mind grasped for options, for ways to escape. With Lieralt and Rarentz sharing one body, who knows what the dagger might do. It might trap Rarentz, condemning him to a fate like the prince. Or it might trap both of them together, sealing them both away in an entirely different kind of damnation. I shook my head.
"Truly?" he said, reaching out to Garmand's corpse and drawing the dead man's own thin dagger from his belt. "But I find your idea so…" he lifted Rarentz's hand and ran the blade down the length of his forearm, drawing out the final word, "inspired." Blood welled up from the long slash to run courses down Rarentz's arm, dripping from his elbow in a steady stream of heavy droplets.
I gasped my disgust, horrified by the sight of Rarentz's eyes, flickering between the blank dispassion of Lieralt and the panicked helplessness of one held prisoner in his own body. "Stop!" I shouted, knowing it sounded pitiful.
"How, dear lady?" he said mockingly. "How will they speak of him? How will his wretched family be remembered?" He swapped the blade into his bloody hand, "Shall he have died in a duel from a dozen cuts?" As swift as a butcher, Lieralt sliced scores into his captive's arm.
Again I shouted, but was ignored.
"Or shall we indulge irony with an assassination?" he quipped, placing the dagger behind his back. He didn't wait for a response before gasping, "Ah, no. I have it," he put the blade to his throat, "a suicide. How the neighbors will talk." He laughed vicious and terrible.
"Can't choose?" he taunted after a moment more. "I'll do it for you then." Placing the blade to Rarentz's temple, he began pulling it across his brow and down his far cheek in a languid stroke. Again the crimson welled up and overflowed, covering Rarentz's face in a mask of blood, made all the more terrible by the prince's laugh coming from his trembling lips.
Screaming I found my feet and yanked the ruby-hilted dagger from the ancient throne, brandishing it before me in trembling hands. The prince called my sad little bluff, tilting Rarentz's neck up and drawing his own blade to the lower corner of his victim's jaw. "Know that I take no pleasure in this," he lied, smiling mocking. "It's his duty to die."
"And it's mine to stop you," I said, lunging forward and driving the dagger into Rarentz's shoulder.
Instantly the dagger become hot as flame and I yanked my hands away. Its ruby hilt glowing a fearful, hell red, it thrummed swiftly, like the pounding of a panicked heart. Rarentz's body went rigid, convulsing wildly as the screams of two men howled from the bloody wreck of his face. I could see a smoky wisp drawn along the exposed length of the blade, draining from the body and pouring into the flickering hilt. Then something snapped, the swift sheer shriek of metal and suddenly the pounding light and shuddering body halted as if the moment had frozen, then collapsed. Rarentz's fell in an awkward pile upon a floor already slick with his lifeblood, the dagger clattering from his wound to skid away.
I knelt at his side, gasping, apologizing, crying. Desperately checking, I found his heart still beating and did my best to bind his wounds—not truly knowing who I was trying to save.
When next I looked up, the phantasmagoria of forgotten spirits was gone, the dead men lay upon the floor as they should, and the dagger lay at the center of the throne room, pulsing a waning bloody light.
∗ ∗ ∗
"No. You did well, dear," Ms. Kindler said, trying to disguise her lack of conviction. She still seemed to be working through the worst possibilities
.
We were in our usual places back in Ms. Kindler's sitting room. I'd managed to get Rarentz here and Ailson had been quick to send for a doctor. The old man had just left, and to his credit had not asked how the young man had come by his wounds—he'd obviously dealt with Ms. Kindler before. With several days of rest he expected Rarentz to recover, though not without some weakness in his arms where the deepest cuts had been. The scars would never naturally heal.
Ms. Kindler had managed to resist interrogating me until the moment the door shut behind the doctor.
I leaned back on the settee and stared at the ceiling. I felt terrible, and still wasn't sure if we were nursing a monster just upstairs.
"Truly," she said, a measure more convincingly.
I huffed. My guilty conscience wouldn't let me off that easy.
Something landed hard in my lap, jarring me back to attention. It was small book bound in black leather. Flipping through it, every page was blank.
"Your next opus?" I needled.
"No," she scoffed, "Yours."
I arched an eyebrow.
"Its an old Pathfinder trick," she said. "Live it, write it, share it. If you did right, people should know and learn from it. If you did wrong, others make far better judges—saves you the work and helps you move on. Best thing I ever learned from that lot of fools."
"They're really that bad?" I asked, having always been curious.
"You'd fit in just fine," she shot back without hesitation.
I looked at her, assuming she'd be smirking over her quip. She wasn't.
∗ ∗ ∗
"Laurel."
I stepped into Ms. Kindler's darkened guest bedroom.
"Hey," I whispered in relief. "Didn't expect you to be up so fast. How are you feeling?"
Rarentz lay in bed, the covers rising shallowly, but steadily. The bandages on his face and neck muffling his voice.
"Laurel?" he said again.
I came to his side and kneeled down. "The doctor said you'd be out a while. Honestly, my coin was on you not coming back at all, but I've never been much of a gambler."
Rarentz rolled over in the bed, his one uncovered eye closed. He breathed a long soft snore.
Still exhausted. I smiled faintly and stood to leave. As I did, my eyes fell across the small writing desk. Something there was glowing, like an ember fallen upon a hearth.
I heard my name again. The light pulsed with every syllable, the infernal radiance illuminating the shape of a wretched dagger, the prince's dagger.
Gapping, I neared warily. "Prince Lieralt?" I whispered, doubting my senses.
"Laurel Cylphra," the prince's spiteful voice murmured from the blade. "Now my captor has a name."
About the Author
F. Wesley Schneider is the Managing Editor of Paizo Publishing and co-creator of the Pathfinder campaign setting. He is the award-winning author of numerous RPG adventures and source books, including Rule of Fear, Book of the Damned Vol. 1: Princes of Darkness, Seven Days to the Grave, and Endless Night.
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