Or was it?
Deliberately, Ashok snapped his chain in the air to get the nightmare’s attention. The beast whickered softly-amused, Ashok thought-at the display but did not retreat. Then, instead of attacking, Ashok draped the necklace over his own head. He had no idea how the magic would affect him, but wearing the necklace served two purposes. The nightmare would know that the necklace contained no killing magic, and now Ashok was free to wield his chain.
Using his good hand, he threw one end toward the beast, snapped it back with the other, and immediately followed up the feint by charging straight at the beast.
Again, his world exploded in pain.
Ashok dropped to his knees as a dozen needles stabbed him simultaneously in the chest. He looked down to see the bone spurs burrowing into his flesh. They passed through his clothing and bone scale armor, pinning the plates to his chest as if they were parchment. His heart stuttered, and Ashok suddenly couldn’t get his breath.
Maybe he’d been wrong-perhaps it was killing magic after all, or at least a spell meant for a much larger creature than a shadar-kai.
The nightmare circled him. Ashok wondered why the stallion hadn’t closed in for the kill, but then he realized his sudden collapse must have confused the beast. He expected another feint, a trick to lure him close to Ashok. That suspicion probably saved Ashok.
He planted his feet and tried to stand. The ground tilted and blurred with the sky. The disorientation wasn’t from the pain, though that was intense enough to demand his attention. It was the magic coursing through his body. Neimal hadn’t lied-it went to the blood. To experiment, he tried focusing his mind to teleport behind the nightmare. Nothing happened. His body was as solid as ever-and as vulnerable.
The nightmare narrowed his circle, hooves pawing the ground in anticipation of another charge. Ashok knew he would have one chance to react when the beast came near. All or nothing, burn or fly.
He staggered, and this time the nightmare took the bait, surging in to knock Ashok aside. Ashok absorbed the blow as fire licked along his ribs. Reaching up, Ashok wrapped his bad arm around the beast’s neck. His hand passed through flame. The burn and pain of broken bones drove him to the edge of unconsciousness, but he held on. With his other hand, he ripped off the enchanted necklace, tearing the bone spurs from his flesh. He heard a loud roaring and realized it was his own voice screaming in pain and triumph. He slipped the necklace over the nightmare’s head and released it.
Gasping, burning, Ashok collapsed on the ground. He rolled feebly back and forth to extinguish the flames on his cloak and back. Above him, the nightmare bucked and thrashed to try to get the necklace off, but it was too late. The bone spurs dug into his flesh, and the stallion screamed in fury and pain. Hooves smashed the ground inches from his head, but Ashok had no strength to roll away. Instead, he simply stared up at the beast and let him decide to kill him or not.
The nightmare continued to thrash for several minutes more, but gradually, his struggles grew weaker, until he looked more irritated than savage. After a while, the beast just stood still, snorting his foul breath on the air, as if unsure of how to react to the necklace, whether to regard it as a threat or a trick. One thing the nightmare hadn’t done was scream, but Ashok didn’t know whether that meant the beast couldn’t or whether he knew on some level that that power wouldn’t work anymore.
Ashok still danced on the edge of unconsciousness, but he managed to sit up and pull his chain close. He needed to have enough focus to teleport if the beast came after him again.
But the battle appeared to be over. The nightmare regarded Ashok warily but didn’t try to attack. His fire burned purplish blue against the roots of his mane. Ashok wondered if the necklace also suppressed his flames. He doubted it. The fire was part of the beast. That was why the flames couldn’t harm the nightmare’s flesh-they came from within.
Ashok looked down at the blistered flesh of his dead arm, the puncture wounds from the necklace, and wondered what his victory would be worth, in the end. He gazed at the nightmare and saw-Ashok told himself he must be imagining it-the wicked pleasure in the beast’s eyes. Ashok read the expression plainly. You may have bound me, it said, but now we’re brothers again.
Ashok didn’t need the beast’s aura to be afraid.
The beast let Ashok approach and climb onto his back. Gripping fistfuls of mane, Ashok fell forward against the nightmare’s neck, careful not to dislodge the bone spurs. His broken arm throbbed, and the burns caused waves of nausea to roll over him. He needed to stay conscious. The nightmare would not hesitate to dump him off if he lost his grip.
Despite the pain, the ride back to the portal was another world. The nightmare ran full out, as if he could outrun the collar around his neck. The gray shadows of the plain passed before Ashok’s eyes like smoke.
He brought the nightmare back into Ikemmu. Neimal and a cleric from Makthar waited for him at the gate.
“I thought you might need a prayer or two,” the witch said. She looked him over. “Any longer and you would have needed a resurrection.”
Ashok let the cleric lay hands on him. The pain slowly faded away, and when the cleric was finished, Ashok flexed his mended arm. “My thanks,” he said.
“Thank Tempus,” the cleric said.
“Of course.” Hours ago, Ashok declared to himself he didn’t need Tempus. He was a hypocrite after all.
He heard Neimal chanting. He looked up to see the witch make a gesture in the air around the nightmare. A breath passed in which Ashok’s vision blurred. He blinked, and the nightmare was gone. In his place stood a tall brown stallion, thick-bodied with tan fetlocks. The only evidence of his true nature was in the black roots of his mane.
Ashok stood next to the beast and ran his hands along his brown flank. He felt nothing of the aura of fear that he usually experienced in the nightmare’s presence, but his appearance was by far the most disturbing change.
“He looks almost pure,” Ashok murmured.
Neimal shrugged. “Humans and dumb beasts often see what they expect to see and nothing more,” she said. “But you will never forget what this creature can do, will you Ashok?”
He wouldn’t forget. Ashok knew the beast at least as well as he knew himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ilvani awoke in her chamber. She’d dreamed of a brown horse. Something about it frightened her, but she didn’t know what. She rolled over and tried to sleep again, but the room was hot, and her linen shirt stuck uncomfortably to her skin. Giving up, she got out of bed and walked barefoot to the ladder that rested against her window ledge. She climbed up, tucked her legs close to her chin, and leaned against the window. Outside, the city went about its business, all sound muffled by the glass.
“Never more peaceful than now,” she said. “They’re so small, how could they hurt anybody?”
“But you hurt yourselves-it’s your nature.”
Ilvani looked up and saw a reflection in the window. The woman from the plain, the snow rabbit who’d disappeared into the storm, gazed back at her. When Ilvani turned, she stood on the ladder, her arms crossed on the topmost rung.
“You’re still dead,” Ilvani said. “Go away, snow rabbit.”
“You called me that before-why?” the woman asked. Her face scrunched up in consternation, but her eyes didn’t change-they were still dead.
“I saw it. The snow rabbit-spirit used to watch over you when you were a little girl,” Ilvani said.
The woman looked shaken. “How did you know that?”
“Someone whispered it to me. I don’t remember who.” What was it like for other shadar-kai, the ones who didn’t have to wonder what was real and what was a trick played by the shadows?
The woman started to come onto the ledge. She got a knee up on the stone before she saw Ilvani’s malevolent expression. Slowly, she lowered her leg.
“We’re not friends, are we?” the woman said. She didn’t sound angry, only curious. “You don’t like
me.”
“The storm swallowed you,” Ilvani said, “but you keep coming back. You put things in my head, and I don’t have any room for them.” She opened her green pouch and took out the boxes, all the captured memories, and spread them before her. “These are all that matter,” she insisted.
The woman reached down and picked up a small wooden box with a gold latch. For a moment, her eyes seemed to come alive with a stream of thoughts. “I remember something like this,” she said. She stroked the smooth lid, a light wood inlaid with darker squares like a chessboard. “What do you keep in it?”
Ilvani reached across the space between them and opened the latch. She lifted the box lid, and the memory washed over her as if it were newly born.
She was learning magic. The woman who taught her-Ilvani couldn’t see her face-held a wilted rose in her hand. Ilvani saw herself wanting the dead flower, but the woman held it out of reach. Why wouldn’t she let her touch the petals? What was she hiding?
The woman made a gesture, and suddenly the rose sprang to life again, its petals red and dew-covered. Thorns grew from the stem, and Ilvani thought they would puncture her teacher’s skin. That was when she realized it was all an illusion. There was no rose. How could there be? Nothing like that ever grew on the Shadowfell.
“The day I learned that witches lie,” Ilvani said. She stared at the woman on the ladder-what had Ashok and the halfling called her? — the Rashemi. “That’s what I keep in the box.”
The witch on the ladder nodded thoughtfully. “Well, then, if we’re not friends, I suppose I’ll have to die again.” She slammed the box lid down on Ilvani’s fingers.
Ilvani cried out in pain and tried to free her hand, but the woman was all over her now, arms grasping and tearing at her hair. Her fingers elongated, and her nails became viciously sharp claws. The more Ilvani struggled, the more monstrous the Rashemi witch became. Her jawbone stretched, and her body warped into an emaciated husk, all the life sucked out of her at once.
“Please,” she croaked. “Help me. It’s coming … for me.” She wrapped skeletal arms around Ilvani’s neck and pressed withered lips to her mouth.
The kiss filled Ilvani’s mind with chaotic images. One breath she was in the pine tree forest where she’d first met the woman, and the next she soared high above a mountain range. When she looked down, she saw a white dragon fly up to meet her, but the scene changed again before she had time to be afraid. She saw a village on the shores of a lake. Boats with no helmsmen drifted through a thick mist. An owl flew out of the white cloud, its wings grazing the water. Then came another, and another. Symbols covered their bodies. Light so bright it burned Ilvani’s eyes flashed from the markings.
Ilvani shoved the dead woman away from her and fell off the window ledge. When she opened her eyes, she was in her bed. She got up quickly and looked around. She even climbed the ladder to look out her window, but she was alone in the room.
Except for the symbols that still burned behind her eyes. She had to get rid of them. Her trembling hands sought her knife from the table beside her bed, but it wasn’t there. She tried to remember what had happened to it. Oh yes. It was out on the Shadowfell plain. Ashok took it from her. He’d told her not to hurt herself.
She looked down at the bandages on her arms. Her fingernails grazed the stiff material, and it took every ounce of her strength not to tear the bandages away, to carve the symbols into her arms with her bare hands. Put them anywhere but behind her eyes, eating away at her thoughts.…
No, and then, aloud, “No.” Saying the word made her resolve real, gave it power, even if her voice was a feeble whisper. “No.” The halfling had tended her wounds. She’d been kind. It was wrong to repay that kindness with blood.
Ilvani remembered her time at Darnae’s shop better than she remembered the shadows in her boxes. She wished she could go back there, but she didn’t know the way. That wasn’t her place, anyway. Her place was moving, she was moving, and she couldn’t stop the current from carrying her away.
She went back to bed, even though she knew she would not sleep.
The night before the caravan was to leave for Faerun, Ashok, Skagi, and Cree-released finally from his prison at Tower Makthar-walked out to the training yard for Olra’s funeral.
Later, there would be celebrating and fierce dancing to see them off on their long journey, but Uwan had declared this hour the time to honor the head of the Camborrs.
Magic shrouded the lights of Tower Athanon and the surrounding area. The gathered warriors were indistinct shadows, but Ashok made out Uwan, Neimal, and the other Sworn standing near the fence. Guardians, new recruits, and Camborrs stood side by side in silence.
Then, out of the tower came a solemn procession. Six shadar-kai carried a wooden bier between them, three to a side. Olra’s body lay upon it, her form covered from head to foot in white cloth.
Skagi had explained the ritual to him. In Ikemmu, the shadar-kai did not look upon the faces of their dead during the funerary rites. To do so was to glorify the shell, the soulless frame that no longer held the essence of the warrior. Instead, they prayed aloud, using their voices to propel her spirit to the realm of her god. Ashok heard them now, each shadar-kai in the crowd murmuring in a low undertone his or her own private prayer. In this breath, the religions of Ikemmu were truly equal-no matter which god they prayed to, the gathered crowd spoke for Olra’s soul.
Ashok found he had trouble remembering how his old enclave had honored their dead, if they had done so at all.
Behind the procession walked more shadar-kai. Ashok recognized the forge masters. They wore dark robes and carried swords in their hands, the points facing down toward the ground.
Tempus’s symbol, the swords were works of art, breathtaking and deadly. Kerthta came last. She carried a sword and Olra’s barbed whip clasped together in her hands. The whip still bore the blood of the snake. She wore no expression of grief and stood stoically when those in the procession halted and placed their burden on an unlit pyre in the center of the training yard. Then the six bearers turned and formed a line at the head of the bier.
The forge masters spread out to form a loose circle around the pyre. They turned the sword hilts so the blades pierced the sky. Kerthta approached the body and placed the whip and sword together across Olra’s breast.
The Watching Blade himself came forward then, bearing a lit torch, its flame surrounded by black spikes like a steel flower unfurling. He handed the torch to Kerthta.
“In the halls of Warriors’ Rest, Olra waits for us,” Uwan said. His voice carried over the crowd. “Tonight all shadar-kai of Ikemmu celebrate the passage of the soul,” Uwan said. “In life, we struggle always to bind spirit to flesh, to deny the lurking shadows their claim on our souls. Olra won her battle, and now her god Tempus calls her home.”
Ashok felt the tension in the air when Uwan spoke these words. The gathered crowd knew that Olra had worshiped Tempus; their leader’s words were appropriate, but they couldn’t fail to hear the fervor in Uwan’s voice when he spoke of the warrior god. Uwan might change Ikemmu’s laws to accommodate other religions, but it was clear the leader still personally favored Tempus’s children. Silently, Ashok cursed Uwan for a fool. The city would never stand united while its leader valued Tempus above all.
“Tonight we celebrate, for Olra’s soul has found rest and peace at last,” Uwan said. “The rest of us struggle on, and by the gods’ will, we will join her someday, when our time comes.”
The prayers of the crowd wound down, and Kerthta stepped forward to light the funeral pyre. Ashok saw Neimal make a gesture, and the flames glowed blue-white and soared high toward the cavern ceiling. They consumed Olra’s body and illuminated the faces of the watching shadar-kai. The forge master, Olra’s lover, looked on and, by the light of the pyre, Ashok saw the grief break through, not in her face, but in the way she reached up to clasp her arm where the snake had bitten her.
Then it was over. The blaze gradually b
urned down to a few small fires as the crowd began to disperse. Ashok briefly considered approaching Kerthta, who hadn’t moved from her place at Olra’s pyre, but he decided against it. The moment was hers. He would not intrude.
He couldn’t change the past. All he could do was look ahead to the morrow. Ilvani had told him once to value his friends and to keep them safe. Ashok would do all he could to help Ilvani, as she had once helped him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At the Monril Bell, Ashok, Skagi, and Cree were awake, dressed, and ready. Ashok promised to meet the brothers at the caravan staging area. He made a brief stop to say goodbye to Darnae because the halfling had asked it of him, and then he went on to Ilvani’s chambers to see if the witch wanted an escort through the Veil that separated the two halves of the city.
He knocked on her chamber door but got no answer, and he sensed no life within the room. She was already gone. Ashok felt a brief disappointment, but then he moved on to the Camborr pens.
The nightmare stood in his cage, his nose against the iron bars. Though Neimal’s spell made the beast appear in the guise of a common stallion, there was no disguising the intense beauty of the creature or the hatred in his eyes.
Ashok removed the lock and swung open the cage door. “You knew I wouldn’t leave you here,” he said. “You know I’ll give you the blood you crave.”
The nightmare came out of the cage and walked up to Ashok. He felt the beast’s warmth, an unnatural heat that filled the small space. Anyone standing nearby would be able to tell something was wrong with Ashok’s “horse.” He would have to remember that and keep others away.
Ashok led the nightmare through the city, and together they walked through the portal to the Underdark side of Ikemmu.
A strange mirror to the Shadowfell, this city had long been dominated by the trader races and by extension was more hospitable to outsiders and the comforts they sought. The towers were much the same, but the stone buildings below were newer and softer around the edges than the burned-out ruins on the Shadowfell side. The population here was more numerous, which made Ashok uncomfortable. It seemed to him he was constantly elbowing through a crowd.
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