Nightblade

by Liane Merciel

  A sarcastic reply leaped to the tip of Isiem's tongue, but he held it back. Much of what she said rang true: he was looking for a challenge worthy of his skills, and he would likely have to leave soon. If Kyril had already heard about the child who'd seen him, then imperial authorities and rival rebels would soon hear the news as well. He'd successfully evaded all his enemies thus far, but only because they hadn't known he was still living in Pezzack. Once they did know, they'd come looking with magic, and no false-face illusions would save him.

  And there was, in truth, little reason to stay. Pezzack was a poor and charmless town, and he'd grown disillusioned with its incompetent rebellion long ago. Only two things kept Isiem in this place: his friendship with Kirii, the rokoa of the Windspire strix, and his dog Honey, who had gotten far too frail for the hardships of the road.

  Kyril saw him looking at the sleeping old dog. "We can find a place for her."

  "I have one," Isiem replied. He'd decided on that the night before, while thinking about Egorian. "Tell me about your task."

  "Eledwyn," the paladin said. "Do you know the name?"

  "No."

  "Mesandroth, then. Do you know that one?"

  "Yes." In the Dusk Hall he'd had a friend—a young sorcerer named Ascaros—who was distantly descended from that infamous, long-gone wizard. Even among the Nidalese, Mesandroth had been legendary for his cruelty and his mastery of magic. He'd commanded extraordinary power, and worked jaw-dropping feats, in another age.

  For that reason, and others, Mesandroth's legacy remained strong in Nidal.

  "Eledwyn was one of his apprentices." Kyril paused, then amended: "Not ‘apprentice,' exactly. She was an elven wizard whom he lured into his service. Although outwardly loyal, she planned a secret rebellion against her master. He wanted to use her, and her research, to find a path toward immortality—and Eledwyn had no wish to help him."

  "What happened to her?"

  Kyril shrugged. "Her rebellion never came to pass. Mesandroth learned of her treachery and crushed her before she had a chance to execute any of her plans. But we believe that one of her secret workshops—a place called Fiendslair—may have survived, and with it some of the research she developed to destroy him. That research may be extremely valuable to our cause."

  "The rebellion in Pezzack?" Isiem affected a lightness he didn't feel.

  The half-elf gave him a flat look. "The rebellion against House Thrune," she said. "The rebellion against the diabolists who hold Cheliax in thrall to Hell."

  "There are some who'd say I'm not much better," Isiem pointed out.

  "None on this expedition." Kyril leaned forward, her voice dropping urgently. Her breath smelled faintly of sweet cloves. "We need you. Mesandroth was Nidalese. Eledwyn was not, but she was trained in his methods and worked at his behest. A Nidalese arcanist is crucial to our expedition."

  "And I'm the one you can get."

  "You're the one we can trust."

  "I'm honored, but—"

  She held up a hand. "Don't answer now." Pushing back her chair, the half-elf stood. "Take some time. Not too much, because I don't know that you have too much, but consider your choices carefully before you make one. Our cause is good. So is our coin. And there may come a time, soon, when you find it useful to have friends."

  Kyril strode to the door and paused, checking her wig and false scar with light, careful touches to ensure her disguise was still in place. Then she put a hand on the doorknob and gave Isiem a last look. "We'll wait three days for your decision. You know how to reach Ena?"

  He nodded.

  "Send word to her. If we hear nothing after three days, we'll take your answer as no. I would prefer it wasn't, of course."

  "What do you hope to find there?" Isiem asked, just as the woman began to open the door. "In Eledwyn's workshop."

  Kyril shut the door again, cutting off the thin line of sunlight that streaked her face. She glanced over a shoulder, her expression impossible to read. "A weapon."

  "What sort of weapon?"

  "I don't know." For an instant, her jaw tightened and her brow creased; then the flicker of apprehension was gone. "My compatriots can tell you more. Eledwyn called it a ‘nightblade.' That's all I know. That, and she wrote that it was capable of destroying empires."

  The hint of hesitation in her voice intrigued him. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

  "It is." The paladin turned away. "Yes." Then she opened the door and was gone, her last word hanging behind her.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Isiem went to Windspire the next morning.

  He rode, although it would have been easy enough to teleport himself there with a spell. The wizard wanted the time alone to think. The day was clear and brisk, with a salt wind at his back, and the solitude cleared his mind. The smoke and clamor of Pezzack receded, vanishing behind the line of ill-kept watchtowers that was meant to guard the town against the strix.

  As the miles rolled by under his horse's hooves, the coastland's tough grasses and thorny bushes gave way to barren hills and wind-sculpted stone. Hour by hour, the ascent grew steeper; the road dwindled into a goat track and then vanished altogether. By twilight, the red and black claws of Devil's Perch were distantly visible against the shadowy silhouette of the Menador Mountains, and Isiem had made peace with his decision.

  He dismounted from his horse and, with a word, unraveled the magic that bound the black steed to him. The animal disappeared, and Isiem began another short incantation. With the last word, he stepped forward, and passed through an infinite instant of aching, surreal emptiness to arrive abruptly in Kirii's tent.

  The rokoa was pouring tea from a kettle when he appeared. For the smallest of moments she froze, then straightened deliberately and turned toward him. Perfumed steam shrouded her face and threaded through the black feathers of her enormous, folded wings.

  "It is rude to come into private rooms without warning," she said. After a year's practice, her Taldane was very good, although the clicks and whistles of strix-tongue inflected her speech heavily. "Even for friends."

  "I'm glad you still consider me a friend." Isiem shook off the lingering disorientation of his spell—teleportation was seldom unpleasant, exactly, but it did take a moment to adjust—and offered her a formal obeisance, hands clasped in front of his chest as he bowed.

  When he raised his head, Kirii was smiling. It was a peculiar smile: the gesture was not natural to the strix, and the rokoa's small, sharp teeth gave it an unintentionally predatory cast. But the awkwardness itself was touching. From the beginning, their friendship had been founded on such halting, clumsy gestures of goodwill.

  "I do," Kirii said. "But I also know that many in Windspire do not, and I cannot fault you for coming here in secret. The itaraak might have given you a sharp welcome."

  "Despite all I've done for them." He'd meant to say it lightly, but a note of bitterness crept into his words.

  "Yes." The strix's odd, pupilless eyes fixed on him, their gold-on-gold striations pulsing slightly. Geometric tattoos covered Kirii's face, masking her youth behind the dignity of a full rokoa. Although Isiem knew his friend had come to her position as a bright-burning idealist, a year of carrying her people's spiritual burdens seemed to have dimmed her early fervor. She seemed more cautious, more measured, less the impetuous young firebrand he'd known. "My people are proud. They do not welcome reminders of their debt to an outsider, and they are quick to believe they won their victories alone. Pride, and suspicion, make them doubt you now.

  "We won on the battlefield, but our enemies strike at us from hiding. On all sides we are beset by faceless evils and treacheries. All the itaraak know of their foes is that they are human—outsiders, like you. Some say you are in league with the soldiers of Cheliax. That is true, if not as they mean it. You do work with the Chelaxians, and sometimes the itaraak see it."

  "I work with rebels to help your people, yes. They've helped you again, by the by." Isiem briefly described what he'd found in the
warehouse with Ena and Kyril. At the end of his tale, he handed over a small, flat box: one of the black-painted avian skeletons and one of the plague birds, sealed safely in glass and with ward spells, along with a copy of his notes on their enchantments and likely purpose. "We disrupted this attempt, but there may be another. It might be wise to prepare a cure, or an antidote, for whatever plague their necromancers had planned."

  Translucent membranes sheeted across the rokoa's eyes in a sideways blink. "This I will do." She accepted the box uneasily, putting it aside quickly and shaking her fingers as if to rid them of invisible filth. "And you? You speak as if you are leaving."

  "I am."

  Kirii nodded. It was another learned gesture, although less affected than her smile. She did not ask why he was going. It was, Isiem supposed, explanation enough that he'd had to teleport into her tent instead of walking openly through Windspire. He had saved the strix—not only their lives but their ancestral homelands and the very identity of their tribe—yet instead of greeting him as a hero, they regarded him with constant distrust. "This is your farewell?"

  "It is." He paused, fidgeting with the knots that tied shut one of his pouches of spell components. "I have one last favor to ask."

  "Ask."

  "My dog. Honey." The words caught in his throat, soft but jagged, like a wad of warm resin rolled in sharp glass. "She's old, and she doesn't have long left. Will you care for her?"

  "The warbeast that could not fight? I remember that one." Another sideways blink. After a pause, Kirii ducked her head in a quick, bobbing nod. "Yes. I will do this."

  "Thank you." The rokoa's tent was the safest place Isiem could imagine for his dog. It was warm, secure, and well guarded, and although it was perched on the top of a flat spire that rose fifty feet above a chasm, that hardly mattered for a dog so old she could scarcely be coaxed past the doorstep to make water.

  Whatever remained of Honey's days, she would live them out comfortably, and that was the best gift he could give the friend who had retaught him the joy of life amid ashes.

  "It is Windspire who should thank you," Kirii said, "but as they will not, I will give the goodwill that should have been yours to the beast."

  "I'm grateful." Isiem bowed his head again, more deeply this time. "Truly. I have been honored to know you."

  Kirii's nostrils flared in half-feigned alarm. "You are not going away to die, I hope."

  "So do I," Isiem said wryly. He took a scroll from a hollow bone case at his belt and unfurled it. "But whatever happens, I doubt I'll return to Devils' Perch. You'll have to find another liaison to the rebels."

  "A difficult task. Perhaps for the best, however. It may serve well to have an itaraak in that position." Kirii sighed in contemplation, then shook her head. "I do not like farewells. Go, Isiem. Go, knowing that without you Windspire would be nothing."

  He did.

  The spell on his scroll brought him back to the chandler's shop, where Honey was snoring on her pillow in the dark. It was late, and the town was sleeping. Isiem summoned a spark of light to break the blackness, dimming the magic so that it would not disturb his dog.

  She hadn't touched the food he'd left her that morning. The sight of the meat and gravy congealed in its bowl made Isiem's heart sink.

  He knelt beside her and buried his face in her fur. Honey lifted her head and licked at his cradling arm. Her tail thumped sleepily against the floor.

  It felt profoundly wrong that he should have to leave his friend in the twilight of her days. It felt like a betrayal. But he couldn't take her with him, and he trusted Kirii to care for her. The selfishness of forcing Honey onto a road she could not walk would be far crueler than leaving her behind.

  Isiem sat helplessly on the floor and breathed in the dusty sweet scent of her fur, and when he could no longer hold it in, he wept.

  When dawn broke, he took her to Windspire.

  Chapter Three

  Companions in the Light

  That night, under cover of darkness, Isiem went to find Ena.

  The dwarf didn't keep a home in Pezzack, as far as Isiem knew, but she did have a few regular haunts. The primary one was the back room of a nameless tavern that catered to laborers visiting from the new silver mines. The owner was a friend to the rebellion, and his workers often caught bits of tavern gossip relevant to Isiem's dealings with the strix. They knew of his interest and, for a new pair of boots or a jug of decent beer, were usually willing to tell him whatever they'd heard.

  They also knew of his relationship with Ena, and when he crossed the threshold into the tavern's smoky warmth that evening, the barkeep nodded to the back room's door. He was a former mountain trapper, a big gruff fellow who'd lost part of his right foot in an accident a few years ago. A passing strix had dropped a waterskin, saving his life, and he'd never forgotten.

  "Got that black beer you like in back," he said. The code phrase meant Ena was in the back room, and she wasn't alone.

  "Thank you." Keeping his hood low, Isiem passed a table full of muddy-booted dwarves and a seamy-faced woman with thin brown hair who sat alone in the corner, staring listlessly into a jar of cloudy grog. He pushed open a door that sagged on hook-latch hinges and went down three short stairs. Rough brick walls hemmed him in, brushing close against his sides.

  At the bottom of the stairs he came to a cellar walled with more bricks. Beer barrels and enormous, brown-fogged glass jugs of homebrewed wine sat on the floor. Wooden racks against the walls held dusty bottles bearing the seals of more expensive vintages. It had been years since the last drop was drained from those bottles, but the inn's owner kept them in their racks as a remembrance of better days.

  And to hide a secret door. Isiem lifted the second-to-last bottle from the left on the third shelf. Part of the wooden support had been carved out under it, creating a gap just large enough to fit a man's finger. He slipped his in and pulled up, then out.

  The wine rack slid toward him, bringing a section of the brick wall with it. Isiem stepped through the gap and into a cramped, oddly configured room where Ena, Kyril, and four unfamiliar men sat around a makeshift table.

  The oldest of the men appeared to be about fifty. Tall and broad-shouldered, he carried himself like a soldier, although he wore the divided yellow robes of a traveling Sarenite priest. He had a short, neat beard of brown streaked with white, and his bright blue eyes twinkled with good humor. A sheathed scimitar hung at his side.

  The other three men seemed to be together. Their apparent leader was a lean, smirking half-elf in a weather-beaten cloak. Over his chest sat a bronze clasp depicting a snake across a shield. He had black eyes and a black beard and, Isiem was willing to wager, an equally black heart. Although rarely worn so prominently, that shield-and-serpent clasp marked its wearer to knowledgeable eyes as an agent of the Aspis Consortium. Isiem had never dealt with the Consortium personally, but he had heard much about its workings from his one-time mistress, Velenne. He distrusted the man immediately.

  Thick-necked thugs sat on either side of the Aspis agent. One was tall and one was short, but both had the dead-eyed, incurious faces of men who dealt in violence for a living and were not overly particular about the recipients of their trade. The short one's arms were covered with colorful, obscene tattoos; the tall one wore wire-rimmed spectacles and chewed an unlit cigar. They looked up as Isiem entered, glanced in unison at the man he presumed to be their employer, then returned by studying the newcomer.

  The tall one cracked his knuckles. Both of his ears were knotty stubs of scar tissue. They made peculiar bookends to the expensive, delicate spectacles. The glasses confirmed Isiem's suspicion that these were members of the Aspis Consortium; no ordinary thug would be able to afford such costly lenses. "You the wizard?"

  "Yes," Kyril answered before Isiem could speak for himself. "Isiem of Pangolais. He has been invited to join our expedition as our advisor on matters arcane."

  All eyes turned to Isiem.

  The wizard pushed his
hood down slowly. He had not expected to be confronted with an audience, and he needed a moment to gather his thoughts. Revealing himself bought a little time: with his unusually pale complexion, near-black eyes, and long ivory hair, he was distinctively Nidalese, and the reputation of his people could give hardened killers pause.

  It did these. The Aspis agent and his heavies drew back visibly as Isiem pulled an empty chair to their table. "Tell me what you hope to achieve."

  The Sarenite cleric leaned forward, steepling his fingers under his neatly trimmed beard. "Kyril told you some of it already."

  "Some." Isiem glanced at the paladin, who nodded in guarded acknowledgment. "She told me that you were seeking one of Eledwyn's sanctuaries, and that you believed there might be a weapon inside. A ‘nightblade,' she called it. But she didn't know what it was. Do you?"

  "Not exactly," the older man admitted. "I've devoted my life to studying Mesandroth Fiendlorn's work, yet I know very little about him. He sought immortality, we know that. One of the avenues he pursued was possession. The question that intrigued the archmage was: if a demon can possess the body of a man, why should a man not possess the body of a demon? In such a form, he could be immortal.

  "Of course, if such a thing were possible, it would undoubtedly corrupt the mortal soul beyond all recognition. Bodies shape our beings, just as words shape our thoughts. Putting a mortal soul into a demonic shell would no more grant true immortality than undeath would. Very possibly, it would grant less.

  "Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, that didn't seem to concern the archmage. Mesandroth devoted considerable resources to exploring this possibility. Eledwyn aided him—but she also plotted against him. Her own research into the far planes revealed a weapon that was particularly lethal to fiends. Devils, demons, and daemons alike were destroyed by its wrath. She wrote that ‘the terror took them, and the oozing death ...and the one sound that came from all their drowning throats, the one song they could muster, was a howling hymn to ruin.' She called it a ‘nightblade,' and hoped it would destroy her unwanted master. Her workshop was somewhere in what is now the Umbral Basin between Molthune and Nidal. We intend to find it."