Worst of all, the vermin of Luskan—flies, lice, rats, and all manner of things that crawled and clicked—grew bold in summer. Far outnumbering the population of the city, they feasted on the rotting vegetation, the buildings, and the people alike. The chittering, scratching, biting barrage drove folk in Luskan mad.
As the sun climbed, Kalen shuffled along an alley off the Street of Storms. In Luskan, it was common practice to defile the signs to say something foul that one scoundrel or another had found amusing once upon a time: streets and avenues of Rutted Souls, Stlarner Heroes, Giant Tluiners, and the like. Sometimes, real wit prevailed and the gangs chose to add or alter a letter or two to corrupt the meaning of the sign. The Dragon’s Teeth became the Dragon’s Teat, while Old Swords became Mold Sores. Kalen found the sign for the Street of Storms—with an added expletive for offal—rather amusing, if crude. It was the way of Luskan to taint its own legacy.
He remembered he’d gleefully taken part in that very desecration, once.
He’d done far worse in his time in Luskan.
Kalen was tired. He’d ridden hard for four days, fought his way through guardsmen and thugs alike, set a gang tavern on fire, and his body was finally starting to feel the toll. He didn’t actually feel the aches in his body that indicated weariness, but his limbs weren’t doing exactly what he told them. That meant he needed sleep—or that he was about to die. Either way, he couldn’t very well collapse in the street, if he was to find whoever had Myrin.
Myrin had to be alive. It would be a waste to kill her, if only because of that special talent that she brought to the city: magic.
He moved past various takes happening in broad daylight on the street. An angler dipped a hook toward an unattended pouch, while the victim gazed up at naked flesh in the windows above. Likely, those were nymphers, who lured a mark into bed while an accomplice stole his possessions. Down an alley, Kalen saw a burst of light which sent a man reeling. The thief—a “flash”—ran off with a purloined loaf of bread under his arm.
But these were mundane tricks. Real magic proved a valuable commodity.
In Luskan, those who could work the Art were few and far between. Most rose to leadership in one of the gangs or carved out a piece of the city for themselves. The Dragon, who ran Luskan’s Shou gang, was rumored to be a wizard of some skill. His enforcers wore shifting tattoos that enhanced their strength and speed. The only other mage Kalen knew of was the necromancer who held court in the tower called the Throat. A legion of corpses clawed out of the ground at his command. Kalen hoped he would not have to cross either of those Captains.
Having seen Myrin exercise her own wizardly tricks, her ability to absorb magic and channel it herself, Kalen thought she could disrupt the entire balance of power in the city. And what if she had come by more of her memories in the last year? She could possess far greater power than he remembered.
Another thought came hand-in-hand with that. Would she be someone different?
“Worry later,” Kalen murmured. “Rest first.”
His priority was shelter: somewhere to bandage his wounds and sleep. For this purpose, he searched for an unoccupied, preferably condemned building in which to hole up. It would be easy enough, as much of Luskan was abandoned, leaving hundreds of empty buildings. The city could easily house four times as many folk as lived there, but one did not tend to live long in Luskan.
He settled on the fourth building he’d been eyeing. It must once have been a butcher’s shop but was now unoccupied (unlike the first two, which had boasted squatters and a pack of wolfdogs, respectively) and provided an excellent tactical position (unlike the third, which boxed him into a corner from which he could find no escape). He counted three exits, including the roof, his preferred means of egress. Everything else was covered over in enough wood and stone to create a massive racket should anyone attempt to catch him unawares. A pair of simple snares, and he would have a relatively safe place to rest.
He paused before entering the place and glanced over his shoulder. There was no sign of it, but he could have sworn someone had followed him into the alley. No visible sign, however—only a feeling.
Thieves learned to trust their feelings.
Kalen pulled aside a loose shutter, pushed into the abandoned building, and immediately crouched low and to the side, his daggers drawn.
Drawing pursuit had been part of the plan all along—light some fires, attract attention—but he hadn’t expected it quite so soon. After all, he’d only lit up one tavern and beat up a few bruisers. Chief Duulgrin was no doubt sore about it, but the Dustclaws weren’t known for their street smarts. Perhaps someone had been watching him from the moment he’d entered the city. But who would have known he’d be coming?
That, then, was his best lead: whoever had anticipated his arrival and was having him shadowed might well be the same gang that had Myrin.
He crouched, warmed by the anger that flowed inside him. He wanted someone to come through that window—wanted to plunge his blades into a foe’s flesh. He waited.
And waited.
Eventually, after half an hour had passed, Kalen gave in to weariness and niggling pain from his wounds. Slowly, he put the daggers away and set up his snare: another of the clay flasks of alchemist fire, balanced to fall out into the alley when disturbed. The liquid inside would burn on contact with the air, not needing a spark. Anyone who followed Kalen was in for a screaming surprise. It might not kill, but it would rouse him from slumber so he could prepare.
Stalking room-to-room inside, one dagger drawn, Kalen found them mostly empty. One upstairs held a withered, sweat-stained bedroll and a pair of surprisingly intact boots. Someone must have lived here once, but no one had been here in a tenday at least.
He was about to sheathe his blade when a scrabbling sound came from inside the closet at the end of the chamber. Kalen raised his dagger, which caught the murky rays of sunlight through the boarded-up window. He moved slowly to the door. Closing his fingers carefully around the latch, Kalen breathed in and pulled.
A skeleton lunged out of the closet, its bony fingers scrabbling for his eyes.
Kalen drew aside quickly and the inanimate skeleton tumbled to the floor, its bones flying in every direction. The skeleton’s jawbone bounced and rolled along the creaking floorboards, finally coming to a rest on the abandoned bedroll.
“Skeletons in Luskan’s closets,” Kalen murmured.
He peered down at the source of the scratching: a bulbous rat, newly freed, looked up at him with wide, red eyes. Greenish froth trickled from its mouth. Having grown up in this city—and learning from an early age to tell which animals carried afflictions—Kalen knew the rat to be both diseased and malnourished, and he didn’t like the way it looked at him.
Kalen nodded to the skeleton. “You didn’t eat all of that poor blaggard, did you?”
The rat cheeped, as though considering the question, took two weak steps forward, flopped on its back, and died. Freedom, it seemed, was a mighty curse.
Kalen inspected the bones, which were bleached as though the skeleton had been there for decades. Probably a slaying spell of one sort or another. He found a few other rat bodies in the closet as well. Perhaps they had picked the body clean, though Kalen had never seen vermin that could do that so completely that they left the body in a standing posture. And how had they come to be sealed in the closet?
A feeling of unease crept over him, as though what he’d thought was a good place to rest had turned suddenly very dangerous.
Ultimately, however, he simply didn’t have the strength to move to a new hideaway. He needed to rest and he wasn’t likely to find a more defensible spot soon. He almost wished he had Vindicator’s familiar if uncomfortable grip in his hand.
Almost.
He resolved that, if more rats came to attack him in the night, his blades and four remaining vials of alchemist fire would just have to do.
He picked up the jawbone and set it back by the skull. “You don’
t mind, friend,” he said, “if I share your tomb with you.”
Though it had its jaw back, the skeleton chose silence as a reply.
Kalen kneeled and unbuckled his leather hauberk. Scars and stitched rents crisscrossed the armor, the legacy of thousands of fights Kalen barely even remembered. He’d earned at least one new cut—from Galandel’s sword—that would need to be patched when possible. Before he attended to that, however, he pulled off his leggings and sat bared to his smallclothes in the grimy room. A cough bubbled up in his chest and he covered it with his hand. No blood on his fingers—good.
He drew his pack over and took out a silvered mirror. With it, he inspected himself: hands, arms, legs, back—all those stretches of flesh he could not easily see. He found mostly bruises and small scrapes, but blood trickled from a long and vicious cut on his right shoulder. He remembered the blow that had dealt it—one of the Dustclaws in the alley beside the tavern. Shame, he thought he’d dodged that one. Fifteen years ago, he’d have taken bitter revenge.
He had to do this inspection every day. He usually couldn’t feel his injuries when he received them, let alone afterward. If left untreated, even the smallest of wounds could fester and kill him. He couldn’t die now—he had too much to do.
“I will make of myself a darkness,” he said. “A darkness where there is only me.”
The mantra calmed him, steadying his hands. There was no fear and no pain in the stillness, and he set about to binding his wounds.
The process would have been easy for a true paladin, who could heal at a touch. But Kalen hadn’t felt like a paladin for months—not since Vaelis. And now that he had abandoned Vindicator, the skin-shedding felt complete. He’d honestly been surprised he could heal Ebbius in the alley. Even that touch of grace had grown numb, like his body.
With the efficient confidence of having done it many times before, Kalen cleaned his wounds with liquor from a flask, which stung only dully. His spellscar could be useful at times. Each time he cleaned a wound, he stitched or bandaged it as needed, and then bound it with linen. When he was done, he sat limply against the wall, listening to his breath.
After a moment, with a slightly shivering hand, he drew from among his discarded leathers a folded scrap of paper yellowed with age. Even faded and smudged with tears, the feminine script stood out legibly—Myrin’s last words to him, from a year before.
In the note, she told him she was leaving, that he was looking for something and it wasn’t her. She said she had taken some of his sickness from him—given him some of her life, in exchange for saving her from those who meant her harm.
Myrin asked him not to follow her. She claimed he didn’t owe her anything.
He’d respected her wishes, but he’d kept the note.
He’d read it over and over for a year, usually when crusading in Downshadow turned particularly painful and he considered giving up. The Guard had chased him underground but his quest hadn’t ended. Holed up in one subterranean chamber or another, lit by the last stub of a candle or a burning taper, Kalen had read Myrin’s words when existence had grown most bleak. He’d read them during the undead plague that last winter and when the gangs of Downshadow united to attack Waterdeep above. He’d read them after Vaelis. Somehow, every time, they gave him the strength to go on. No matter how many mistakes he’d made—even mistakes with Myrin—at least he had done something right for her.
But then he’d lost the letter a tenday past. At first, he’d thought it simple forgetfulness, and he’d cursed himself. But ultimately it had been returned to him, four days past, with one significant addition. Another hand had added a single word in blood red letters.
LUSKAN.
The word held terror and wrath, but he found it soothing, too. It gave him purpose.
Before he went to sleep, he thought he heard something down in the alley, but he ignored the sound. A man catching on fire would surely make more noise than that.
Red Logenn waited a good long while—he sang the “Ghost and the Maiden” in his head, which took nigh on half an hour—to make sure his quarry had settled. Then he rose from where he’d been hiding in the alley. Whoever this man was—this Shadowbane—he was good.
Too bad Logenn was better.
At first, he hadn’t wanted to take the job. Not many worked with the Coin Priest if they didn’t have to, but the coin offered was too good. So much for an outsider? He found that interesting, and Logenn the Red Wolf (the best shadow in Luskan and possibly in all the North) charged enough to take jobs only when they interested him.
Even better, the quarry had made this a challenge. Shadowbane hadn’t arrived in the best shape and he’d made a busy time of it since, but still he had the presence of mind to double back and cover his tracks to throw off pursuit. Not that it mattered to Logenn—he enjoyed the hunt and would take pleasure in the kill.
Logenn padded up to the trapped window and pulled it open, bit by bit, until the alchemist fire vial rolled out. He caught it easily.
“Trap foiled,” he said, admiring the vial in his fingers. “What else ya got?”
Then something happened. Somehow, the vial proved too slick and slipped in his fingers. He flailed for it but, try as he might, he could only bobble it into the air.
A white-gloved hand reached around Logenn to catch the vial.
The hunter started to turn, then stopped when a blade touched his back.
“Ah, ah,” whispered a cheery voice. The vial spun in the white hand. “What a delicate thing, with such capacity for destruction. Why, if you were to drop this—”
Logenn gasped as the fingers released the vial, but the gloved hand caught it after it had fallen no more than the length of a dagger.
“Well now,” said the unseen man. “That would have been most unlucky, wouldn’t it? Fortunately for both of us, I overflow in my store of the Lady’s good grace.”
Logenn opened his mouth to utter a curse, but somehow, words would not come. His mouth moved, but he could not hear his own voice. What magic was this?
“Can’t have you crying out for aid, now can I? You’d spoil our conversation.”
Logenn tried to understand what was happening. Somehow, the man had got the drop on him—him, Logenn the Red Wolf—and placed him under a spell. Where had he come from? And how could Logenn fight back? Should he fight back?
“Don’t worry about responding—I can tell what you’re thinking,” the man said. “You are of two minds—two voices, as it were. One voice bids you attack, while another bids you wait. Am I foe or friend? How would you know?”
He reached into Logenn’s tunic and drew the double-faced coin from the tunic’s inner pocket. He examined it, turning it over from the side with a homely but cheery woman’s face to the other, which showed a frigidly beautiful woman wearing a deadly sneer.
Slowly, Logenn reached for the long dagger at his belt.
“We all have those two voices,” the cheerful man said. “Do good or work ill, move or rest, cry out or stay silent—live or die. Life is all about which voice we listen to and whether it leads to good fortune.” He showed the smiling Tymora side of the coin. “Or bad.” He showed Logenn the other, sneering face of Beshaba. “Luck.”
He snapped his fingers and the coin vanished up his sleeve. The wrist at the fringe of the glove was gold. Logenn saw flesh of such a rich color he thought it from another world.
Logenn still couldn’t talk, but he could kill silently, too. He snapped his dagger from its scabbard and slashed around, but his tormentor was gone.
“Oh, very good, very good,” said the man’s soft voice from elsewhere. “I suppose you think you’ve chosen this, don’t you?”
Logenn growled low, his knife raised. With his other hand, he drew out his short sword. He could not see his foe, but the bastard was certainly there.
“Indeed, you chose to follow my cat’s-paw,” the disembodied voice said. “As a consequence, I chose to do something about it. Hence this conversation.”
“I’ll let you choose again—though make your choice fast, for your luck is about to change.” The man reappeared, his golden face gleaming in the moonlight.
Logenn charged.
“Bad luck, old son.” The golden man tossed the vial casually toward him.
The deadly vial spun end over end in the air toward Logenn. He tried to catch it, but his hands were full of steel. He dropped his dagger and groped for it in the air, but the vial shattered in his fingers.
Then Logenn was on fire and could not hear his own screams.
The scrying ended when the focus—the sellsword’s double-faced coin—disappeared into the man’s sleeve. The water in the gold bowl wavered, distorting ripples flowing across the image, and then it was gone.
“Damn,” said the Coin Priest. “Double damned the luck!”
She lounged back on her divan—so much more comfortable than standing—and pursed her red-painted lips. One gray-gloved hand swept through the water, flicking drops that gleamed gold in the candlelight toward the far wall. The Coin Priest’s frustrated growl sank below any sound a human throat might utter, becoming the dull, threatening rumble of a crouching wolf. If her quarry had been there to hear her, he would have backed away warily—and he would have been right to do so.
It was not merely that an agent of the Smiling Lady probably lay dead this day—or worse—but rather the travesty of seeing Tymora’s agents attacked in the streets that drove the Coin Priest absolutely mad. The disrespect! That, and damned Ebbius had not checked back in after a simple assignment to collect protection fees. What was Luskan coming to these days, if folk saw fit to resist what was best for them?
“Master,” came a voice from the door.
Visitors. It would not do to show a lack of control. The Coin Priest shook off the anger and donned a pleasant, false smile. “Come!”
The doors opened into the room with caution. Two men entered—hard men with the eyes of murderers. Men of Luskan.
Shadowbane: A Forgotten Realms Novel Page 6