Tantras

by Scott Ciencin

  “We’re … dead!” Tyzack whispered as he stared at the heavens. “There is no place to go!”

  Cyric forced his horse over alongside Tyzack’s. He grabbed the black-haired man by the collar and shook him hard. “Don’t say that!” the thief hissed. “You’ll lose control of the men.” Cyric was surprised to see that Ren didn’t make a move to stop him.

  “The blades!” Tyzack cried. “There are so many of them, and they’re getting bigger! Look!”

  Looking toward the sky, Cyric saw that the mass of shining silver blades was slowly descending.

  “Ride!” Tyzack muttered, his voice as soft as a child’s.

  A half-dozen shards dropped from the sky like ripe apples from a tree. Those Zhentilar that had shields now struggled to free them from their backs or their saddles. Screams went up from the rear and center of the advance.

  Cyric looked to Slater. “What did he say?”

  Ren glared at the thief. “Tyzack said to ride! We must reach the shelter of the southern rise before the shards drop from the sky!” The blond fighter kicked his horse into motion, and a large group of soldiers followed him.

  The rain of metal shards increased, as if the bottom of the huge, invisible box that had been holding them were torn open, allowing the flechettes to plummet to the ground. Screams sounded from throughout the ranks. Handfuls of Zhentilar were struck down, dead or gravely wounded.

  “Ride!” Tyzack screamed as if he had suddenly realized the danger. The black-haired man kicked at the sides of his mount, propelling the beast forward.

  In seconds, Cyric found himself racing toward the auburn, skeletal ridge. The shadow caused by the cloud of knives was deepening, and it seemed to be following the Zhentish army. The cries of the Zhentilar who were struck down by the shards filled the air, their shrill screeches cutting through the dull roar made by hundreds of galloping horses.

  The Zhentilar are at my back, Cyric mused. Then suddenly his amusement turned to fear. He felt exposed and very much alone at the front of the horde of charging soldiers. The thief’s shoulders tightened, and he strained to listen for any mount that was closing on him, knowing that at any moment the rain of steel from above could end all of his problems.

  The thief focused on the ridge, even though he thought their flight was useless. Then one of the rifts leading off from the skeletal hills beckoned, growing larger, its night-black shadow opening wide in front of the soldiers like the maw of a hungry animal. More and more Zhentish riders were struck by the shards. The lucky ones were killed outright. The unlucky ones fell from their horses and were trampled beneath the hooves of their comrades’ mounts.

  Slater was still riding near Cyric when they finally reached the mouth of the rift, where Ren and a majority of the Zhentish that had followed him had taken refuge. The soldiers’ abandoned horses raced around, frantically trying to avoid the burning pieces of metal. From the number of horses either wounded or riderless at the end of the rift, Cyric judged that a hundred men had already taken refuge inside it.

  But inside the ten-foot-wide gap, the Zhentish were faring no better than those still out on the plain. “This is absurd!” Cyric cried. Then a flechette smashed into his horse’s neck, and the mount tossed the thief onto the ground. Luckily for the thief, however, he was close enough to the rift that the riders behind him had slowed their pace enough to avoid trampling him. Still, Cyric was momentarily shaken by the fall.

  Before the thief could utter a word of protest, Slater grabbed him by the arm, and they were forced into the dark, cool rift by the flood of soldiers desperately crowding into the opening. Once in the rift, Cyric grabbed a rough wooden shield from a trampled body and raised it over his head. Slater, taller than the thief, had to crouch slightly to remain beneath its cover. The warm, smelly crush of bodies surrounded the thief and the warrior, and Cyric cursed loudly whenever he was bumped or pushed.

  “They’re not using their heads!” the thief yelled to Slater, who cowered next to him, listening to the frantic cries of the Zhentish and the hiss of falling shards. Above the Zhentilar, the rain of shards continued. The walls of the rift helped to slow the metal fragments; many struck the rock first, then tumbled with decreased momentum toward the soldiers, burning them but not killing them. But many knives still fell directly into the ranks, and the screams of the dying filled the rift with horrible echoes.

  “Use your shields!” Cyric screamed, then Slater joined him in the cry, trying to make their voices heard above the din. A dozen soldiers immediately surrounded the thief, looking to him for orders, their eyes wide and frightened. But Cyric’s words seemed to slice through the chaos as surely as the sharp edge of a blade through unarmored flesh. “Use your shields! If you don’t have a shield, crawl under a corpse!”

  More soldiers turned to Cyric and obeyed his commands.

  “Interlock the shields, then—” Cyric screamed as a burning metal shard pierced his shield, striking his arm. There was a hiss, and the hawk-nosed man felt his flesh burning. He gritted his teeth and turned to Slater. “Anchor the shield. I’ve been hit.”

  The Zhentish woman complied with Cyric’s commands. As the thief pulled his arm away from the shield—and the shard that still hissed at its center—a group of nearly fifty soldiers with shields closed ranks around the thief, near the center of the rift.

  “Give the tallest men the shields!” Cyric yelled, holding his hand over the blackened wound. “Those without shields, stay low, under the protection!”

  The shards continued to fall, but now the sound of shields being struck echoed through the cavern, drowning out the moans of the wounded and replacing the screams of the dying. Of course, occasionally the steel slivers found the meaty forearms on the undersides of the shields, but no one complained.

  Cyric tore part of his shirt and wrapped a hasty bandage around his arm. “Forget the pain!” he cried. “At least you aren’t dead!” Then he moved between the huddled men as best as he could to give orders to another segment of the frightened troops, Slater always at his side. “Those of you on the ground, help the wounded. Forget the dead; they can’t be helped! Keep those shields up if you want to stay alive!” Cyric yelled, slapping some men on the back, encouraging others as he moved through the ranks.

  Cyric’s plan was working. Throughout the rift, more than one hundred Zhentilar with shields huddled under the network of protection.

  At one point, as Cyric sat resting while Slater rebandaged his wound, she asked Cyric how he had thought of having the men use their shields as one instead of separately.

  The thief smiled, or at least came as close to smiling as he had since the deadly rain had begun. “Storming a castle once … long ago. It’s called ‘forming a tortoise,’ ” the thief said. “It keeps your troops from getting slaughtered when the enemy decides to drop oil on your head or have their archers fire a rain of arrows at you.” He looked up at the men holding the shields over him. “It’s really quite simple.”

  “Cyric!” a low, throaty voice called from the huddled soldiers.

  The thief spun and saw Ren crawling toward him, without a shield, his shirt torn and bloody from a number of small wounds.

  “Tyzack’s dead,” the blond soldier rumbled. “He froze when death looked him in the eye, the coward.”

  Both men stood and stared at each other for a while, waiting for the storm to pass. Eventually the steady thump of shards hitting the shields lessened, then stopped altogether. The hiss of the still-warm fragments singeing the shields remained, as did the murmurs of the men and the cries of the wounded. Many of the men holding shields had begun to lower them, but Cyric shouted for them to hold their shields up until he gave orders to the contrary.

  The thief turned back to Ren. “If Tyzack’s dead—,” Cyric began, his brow furrowed.

  “Then you’re our leader now,” Ren said and bowed his head slightly. “I live to serve.”

  The thief’s head was swimming. Cyric quickly considered turning command over to
someone else, but that would almost certainly turn out to be Ren, and that would most likely mean Cyric’s death. As usual, the hawk-nosed man was sure that he wasn’t being given a choice. “But who do you serve, Ren?”

  Ren frowned. “As I said, I live to serve. You saved the men. You should lead them.” The blond man paused and ran a hand across his dirty, blood-smeared face. “There is no reason to fear me … for now, anyway.”

  The thief ignored the last comment. “Show me Tyzack’s body,” Cyric said quietly.

  The two men maneuvered some distance through the shield bearers. Finally Ren pointed toward a dead man lying ten feet beyond the last Zhentilar with a shield. Although darkness was now descending, Cyric could see that a metal shard had pierced Tyzack’s chest, very near his heart. And the thief noticed something else: Tyzack’s throat had been cut. The shards would not have been so efficient, Cyric thought as he turned to stare at Ren.

  The thief stepped out from beneath the shields and looked up at the empty sky. Metal fragments lay on the ground all around him, some still red hot. Ren followed Cyric out from under the shell of shields and joined the new leader of the two hundred or so Zhentish soldiers that had survived the rain of death.

  “Tell me,” the thief rumbled as Ren came to his side, “what secret did Tyzack bear that was so horrible he had you kill to protect it?”

  The blond man paused for a moment and looked down at Tyzack’s body. “Lately he’d become frantic that someone would discover what he’d done a long time ago at a small temple to Bane north of here.” The guard looked up at Cyric. “Tyzack was hot-blooded and idealistic in his younger days, and he foolishly decided to revolt against the Black Network because they wouldn’t accept him as a cleric. He raided a temple and slaughtered the young Zhentarim who had been sequestered there. If anyone from the Zhentarim ever found out—”

  “It would mean his head,” the thief concluded. Then Cyric laughed. “Tyzack was a fool! What he did might actually have put him in good stead with some of the powers in Zhentil Keep.”

  The soldier frowned and lowered his eyes. Cyric smiled and whispered, “I’ve done far worse than Tyzack ever dreamed of, Ren. But you won’t have to protect my secrets. I take care of that myself.” The blond man’s frown deepened, and the thief turned away from him. “We’ll wait another twenty minutes. It should be safe to send out scouts by then.”

  Cyric paused and looked down at Tyzack’s body. “And then you can announce me as your new leader,” the hawk-nosed man said proudly and walked back to rejoin the ranks of his men.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” Varden said softly as he walked into the small room where Midnight and her allies were hidden.

  Midnight turned from her spellbook, which was braced upon a splintering crate, and looked to the figures standing in the safe house door.

  “Kelemvor!” Midnight gasped as she watched the fighter step into the amber light of the single small lantern that lit the room. The mage rose so quickly that she nearly knocked her book to the floor.

  “You look like hell,” Midnight said, glancing at the leg irons the fighter still wore. Her lips trembled as she tried to smile. “How did you—”

  But as the green-eyed fighter moved toward the mage, Varden stepped in front of him. As the fighter watched, three other members of the resistance—the old man and old woman who owned the safe house, and a rough-looking Sembian soldier—moved to block the room’s exits.

  “I escaped from one set of captors into the arms of another, it seems. May I sit down?” Kelemvor asked, gesturing with his fingers toward a vacant chair beside the raven-haired mage. Midnight nodded and studied the fighter as he walked to the chair in a series of short steps that might have seemed comical were it not for the severity of his condition. By the flickering light from the lantern, Midnight could see the scars, cuts, bruises, and burns that lined Kelemvor’s body. His clothing had become rags, and Midnight was reminded of the first time she had admitted her feelings for the fighter, in the corridors of Castle Kilgrave. Kelemvor had not looked much better then.

  The fighter’s hands trembled as he muttered, “I haven’t eaten in days. If I’m going to be tortured, can I at least have something to eat first?”

  The old woman moved past Varden and Adon to the door. “I need to check on Gratus anyway,” she croaked and left the room.

  “How do you think he found us?” the craggy Sembian soldier said to Varden.

  Looking up sharply, Kelemvor glared at the gruff soldier. “You can ask me if you want to know something about that,” the fighter snarled. “I overheard my guards mention this place as a possible safe house. They didn’t think I was going to survive, and they talked in front of me as if I wasn’t even there, just as you are doing.”

  The others in the room, including Adon, silently stared at Kelemvor, wondering just how much of what the fighter said was the truth. Midnight, however, had no such problems with her former lover’s story. “Are we going to get these chains off him?” the mage cried as she looked around the room at her other allies.

  “We can’t do that,” the old man mumbled, running a hand over his bald head.

  “He’s right, Midnight. What proof do we have—,” Varden began to add.

  Midnight stood up and glowered at Varden. “What proof do you need? Kelemvor is our ally … my friend.” The mage paused for a moment and her voice sank into a growl. “And if you don’t release him, I will.”

  “But he came directly from Bane’s garrison,” the old man said. “He could have led the Zhentilar right to us!”

  The cursed fighter bowed his head and sighed. “I wouldn’t have to lead them here. They know where you are,” Kelemvor mumbled.

  The old man shook his head and looked around the room. “Then why haven’t they attacked us?” he asked sarcastically. “We’re still here, aren’t we?”

  “Listen to me,” Midnight said coldly before the fighter could speak. “I want the chains removed, and I want food brought here. Immediately. Or I’ll cast a spell that will raze this entire building.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the old man stood and muttered, “You win, mage. We’ll do as you ask. But I will not have you threaten me again. I don’t take well to threats … particularly from those who have sought asylum with me.”

  Varden took out his lockpicks and unlocked the fighter’s leg irons, then moved away quickly.

  “Now his hands,” Midnight told the young thief.

  Adon held up his hand to stop the thief from following Midnight’s request. “What if you’re wrong?” he asked. “What if he’s here to capture you?” The scarred cleric pointed at the fighter and added, “He was our friend … once. But it wouldn’t be the first time he’s led a patrol after us.”

  The raven-haired mage was silent for a moment, then turned toward the cleric. “You must trust me, Adon. I know that Kelemvor wouldn’t harm us.” When the cleric bowed his head, the magic-user softly said, “Varden, unlock the other chains.”

  Varden turned away, a scowl on his face. “All right,” the thief muttered and did as she asked.

  When the irons clanked to the floor, Midnight sighed with relief. “Now I want all of you to leave us alone for a moment,” the mage told her allies.

  “Absolutely not,” said the old man, shuffling forward a few steps.

  “Please,” Midnight cried. “Do as I ask, and we won’t trouble you anymore. We’ll leave. Now that Kelemvor’s back, we can leave.”

  “Very well,” the old man grumbled. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way it has to be,” Midnight answered, turning toward the fighter.

  Adon, Varden, the old man, and the Sembian filed from the room. “We’ll be just outside this door,” Adon said, glowering a bit at Kelemvor. In moments, the room was cleared and the door swung shut.

  “Oh, Kel,” Midnight cried, her emotions threatening to overwhelm her as she embraced the fighter. “You don’t know how good it is t
o see you.” She kissed his cheek, then brushed the hair from his face. “Are you all right?”

  “I will be,” he replied, sitting up straight again.

  Midnight kissed him full on the lips, then drew back as she realized that he had not returned the kiss. Something was wrong.

  The mage furrowed her eyebrows and looked into Kelemvor’s eyes. “What happened? What did they do to you?” Midnight asked as she backed away from the fighter.

  “That should be obvious,” Kelemvor growled, glancing at the dried blood on his clothes. The fighter stood and kicked the chains at his feet. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet.”

  “We tried to rescue you,” Midnight told the fighter. “We couldn’t get into the garrison. Durrock found us …”

  There was a momentary flicker of understanding in Kelemvor’s eyes.

  “Kel, I was so afraid for you. For both of us,” Midnight cried, tears running down her cheeks. “We’ve got to get out of this city.”

  “It’ll be difficult,” Kelemvor noted distantly as he looked around the small room. In fact, he found himself looking at anything but the mage’s eyes.

  Midnight wondered why Kelemvor was being so cold and distant. Anger could have been the explanation, but it made no sense that his rage would be directed at her. Perhaps it was the strain of his recent incarceration. She stared into his eyes and saw it was neither of these. Varden and Adon might have been right.

  “Something’s happened to you, Kelemvor. And you should know me well enough to understand that you can trust me with whatever has happened.” The mage paused and looked at the door. “You can whisper if you must, if you’re afraid of the others overhearing,” Midnight told her former lover.

  “There is nothing to tell,” Kelemvor said, smiling weakly. “I just need a meal. I need to clean my wounds. You’re letting your imagination get the better of you.”