Skein of Shadows

by Rockwell, Marsheila

  Still, she was Deneith, in blood if not in name, and she served the House with honor, regardless of whether that service was condemned, rewarded, or acknowledged at all.

  Which was another mental path that would only end in thorns. She shook herself again, causing Shieldwing to click at her in annoyance. She didn’t need to dwell on the injustices of the past; if she succeeded in bringing this artifact—whatever it was—back to Karrnath, Breven would have no choice but to recognize her as the woman whose actions had raised Deneith to preeminence.

  Both Brannan and Xujil had assured her that the treasure in question was in fact a powerful magical device from the Age of Giants that would give its wielder control over the depths of Khyber itself, though neither of them had been very clear on what that actually meant. Xujil’s people could not use the artifact themselves—their own magical power came from a force they called the Umbra—but they wanted it removed from their enemy’s arsenal beneath the city of the Spinner, whom they also called simply “the She.” A service Baron Breven was more than happy to provide, since he desired to harness that power for the gain and glory of Deneith. They were already the greatest of the dragonmarked Houses on Eberron (or so Breven liked to claim), and the fact that the Prophecy called out their mark specifically was only proof that they were meant to be the greatest below it, as well. All Brannan cared about, of course, was his finder’s fee.

  But none of them would get what they wanted if Tilde’s group wasn’t able to deliver the artifact to the surface, and the worshipers of the Spinner weren’t likely to just hand such a prize over to them, no matter how politely they asked. So they were sneaking in through a series of tunnels Xujil’s people had discovered in their long war against the Spinner, but which they had never been able to utilize to any great effect themselves because the passages were simply too narrow to accommodate an invasion force. But while no invading army could use the close, labyrinthine tunnels to infiltrate the city, a single spy—or, say, a small party bent on thievery—might just be able to manage it without getting caught.

  Tilde had been checking periodically for magical signatures as they traveled through the depths, using both Shieldwing and her arcane abilities to look for traps, hidden passages, and creatures lying in wait, while Harûn did the same with his more mundane skills. She had to assume the drow was doing likewise, since he’d helped them avoid more than one unpleasant encounter as he’d led them downward into the dark. But now, with the end of their quest so near, the sorceress drew on her innate power to enhance her awareness, not trusting to intermittent castings. So she wasn’t surprised when the small cavern they’d just entered proved to have no exit.

  “Secret door?” Harûn asked as he felt the blank stone in front of them with one hand; the other was still wrapped firmly around the hilt of his sword.

  Tilde shook her head.

  “No—it’s just what it looks like, a wall of rock. But what we want is on the other side. I can feel it.”

  The power emanating from beyond the stone must be incredible, indeed. Tilde felt like she’d stepped too near a bonfire, and the heat would burn her even if the flames did not. No wonder Breven wanted whatever was on the other side of that wall. It wouldn’t just make Deneith the mightiest House—it would make it the only House.

  “One of the eight locks?” the Blademark asked.

  Tilde glanced at him sharply.

  “Maybe,” she conceded. “But if so, it’s one I’ll have no problem unlocking.”

  So saying, she reached into a pouch on her belt and withdrew a small handful of seeds. She spoke a word, drew in a deep breath, threw the seeds into the air in front of her face and blew out again as hard as she could. Propelled both by her breath and her magic, the tiny missiles slammed into the rock wall, burrowing deep into the stone until they disappeared from sight, leaving the gray surface smooth and whole.

  Nothing happened for long heartbeats, and she felt Harûn shift impatiently beside her. Then an opening appeared in the stone, large enough for a gnoll to walk through unimpeded.

  Tilde gestured to Xujil, who had stood by watching curiously as she worked.

  “Lead on.”

  The Umbragen hesitated for a moment, then inclined his head and stepped into the blackness. Tilde followed, Shieldwing alert on her shoulder, and Harûn took up the rear.

  The passage continued for about ten feet, then opened up into another cavern, this one alight with the glow of unfamiliar runes carved into the walls at regular intervals. Tilde counted them swiftly, unsurprised to see that there were eight of the purplish sigils, one on each wall.

  Though the runes pulsed with a power of their own, it was nothing compared to that coming from a stone outcropping in the center of the room. On its unhewn surface rested a circular chest with no visible seam separating lid from base.

  As soon as Tilde stepped into the room, Shieldwing catapulted from his perch on her shoulder with a high-pitched screech, careening about the chamber in crazed circles, slamming into ceiling and walls indiscriminately. Though Tilde couldn’t hear it herself, it was clear she had triggered some sort of alarm when she entered the room.

  She pivoted on one foot, grabbing Harûn as he entered the chamber and pulling him bodily from the passageway she’d created. As the sole of his boot cleared the tunnel, she dismissed her spell and the wall closed off behind them, leaving them trapped in the chamber with no visible means of escape.

  “How much time?” the Blademark asked, his eyes scanning the chamber as he tried to assess from where and in what form the Spinner’s guards would come.

  “Enough,” Tilde answered tightly. She’d prepared for such a contingency; she hadn’t expected to just be able to walk out of the city’s bowels with one of its most potent relics. In fact, she didn’t intend to walk out of the city at all—as soon as she had the artifact in hand, she’d be plane-shifting back to Brannan’s camp, and then from there to Stormreach, where a House Orien courier waited to take her and the device the rest of the way back to Karrnath.

  She just had to get her hands on it first.

  As she moved forward, intent on her purpose, Xujil cried out a warning.

  “ ’Ware the floor!”

  Tilde paused, foot in midair, and looked down. Old stains, black in the runelight, told the tale of those who’d come before and triggered a trap. Her blood would have joined theirs, had Xujil not been watching. She stepped back and nodded her thanks to the drow, inwardly cursing her own inattention. She’d been too focused on the prize, but she wouldn’t let that happen again.

  She studied the floor. She was no stonewright, but judging from other dark stains, a ring of traps encircled the outcropping—probably spikes, if she had to guess. Scorch marks farther in attested to yet more traps.

  Those would be easy enough for her to bypass now that she knew they were there, but she had to assume the circular chest was trapped as well.

  “Harûn, toss me a dagger.”

  The Blademark peeled a blade from a brace he wore across his chest and flipped it to her, never taking his eyes off the surrounding walls and their purplish, pulsing runes.

  Tilde caught the dagger easily by the hilt, and hefted it in her hand for a moment, gauging its weight. Then she reversed it so that she was holding it by the blade, aimed, and threw.

  The weapon flew through the air, straight at the chest. Just before it would have reached the smooth wood, electricity arced out from the base of the chest, forming a crackling blue shield. The dagger bounced off the magical barrier and clattered to the floor, its blade twisted and smoking.

  But Tilde had the measure of the chest’s defenses now and was able to dispel them with an arcane word. Another word, along with a feather from her pouch, and her feet left the ground. She sailed up and over the perilous floor to land safely beside the rock outcropping and the treasure it held. As she did, she heard a voice in her head.

  Welcome, Daughter of Sentinel. I have been waiting for you.

  T
he voice was soft, feminine, and utterly mesmerizing. Tilde thrilled to the words, her pulse pounding in her throat, then despaired and nearly cried out when the voice went silent.

  She understood intuitively that the only way to get it back was to open the chest, but that doing so required blood. She slammed her palm down onto a shard of rock jutting from the outcropping then jerked it sideways, cutting a long gash in the soft skin. As the blood began to seep from the wound, rich and red, she smeared her hand across the smooth, curved wood.

  Ahhh …

  The voice returned, and a shiver of pure pleasure coursed through Tilde at the approval she heard there. A noise started behind her, like stone grating on stone, and she thought she heard Harûn call to her, but the words came from a vast distance and were soon forgotten as she basked in the voice’s approbation.

  Well done.

  As the voice purred in her mind, the top of the chest spun and lifted of its own accord, floating up into the air to reveal the coffer’s contents.

  Inside, on a cushion of rich crimson velvet, rested a figurine the size of Tilde’s head. A spider, its limbs formed of an iridescent metal and its abdomen a sphere carved from the largest, most flawless Khyber shard Tilde had ever seen. Light pulsed and swirled in its blue-black heart, and Tilde could not stop herself from reaching out to it, even as a small voice in the back of her mind screamed at her to stop. But Tilde could no more heed those distant screams than she could the tortured ones coming from Harûn’s throat, somewhere behind her.

  As her fingertips brushed the surface of the dragonshard, the metal spider reared up and sank its icy-cold fangs into her wrist. Pain unlike any Tilde had ever known stabbed up her arm and into her chest, and she knew she was being poisoned. But even as she thought that, the pain changed, became hotter, sharper, more intense. She realized it wasn’t just poison flowing through her veins.

  It was corruption.

  As she fell into unconsciousness, she found some last vestige of will to reach up and snap her gold medallion in half. With the last of her strength, she called out to Shieldwing. The bat, still half-mad with the noise of the high-pitched alarm and now with his mistress’s agony, flew at her, his claws gouging her throat as he snatched the chain from around her neck.

  “Ned …,” she murmured regretfully, sinking into darkness, only to hear the voice respond again, this time with obvious hunger.

  Saba.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mol, Lharvion 23, 998 YK

  Vulyar, Karrnath.

  Sabira Lyet d’Deneith stretched and yawned without opening her eyes, luxuriating in the feel of the soft feather mattress and fine linens. After a week of hard riding on the back of a recalcitrant carver, she’d have been happy with a cot and a blanket, so the huge bed seemed like a gift from Olladra, the Sovereign Goddess of Feast and Fortune. As did the man Sabira shared it with.

  She reached out blindly toward the other side of the soft mattress, expecting to feel the warmth of Elix’s skin beneath her seeking fingers. Instead, all she felt was a tangle of cool sheets.

  She cracked one bleary eye open to confirm what her hand had already told her. Elix had left sometime while she slept, not wanting to wake her after the exhausting week she’d had. Sunlight slanted into the bedchamber from the west, and Sabira realized she’d slept through half the night and most of the day. She needed to get up. Today was her Badge Day—the anniversary of the day she’d been inducted into the elite ranks of the Sentinel Marshals—and though Elix had tried to hide it from her, she knew he had a special dinner planned in her honor. And while she still wasn’t sure it was an occasion worth celebrating, she wasn’t churl enough to spoil his surprise, especially now that they had a chance to be together without any unwanted missions or unhappy memories to come between them.

  Throwing the blankets off of her, Sabira scrambled from the bed and went to the wardrobe. Though she still had a room over at the Whetstone, she spent enough time at Elix’s family manor that she’d moved most of her clothing and other personal belongings here to his suite of rooms. She opened the intricately-carved darkwood door to reveal several sets of clothes hanging neatly, including those she’d worn last night, now cleaned and pressed. Her shard axe hung in its harness on the back of the door, the Siberys dragonshard from which the urgrosh derived its name glinting golden in a stray sunbeam.

  She paused, considering. The urgrosh was so much a part of her, she felt naked when not wearing it for any length of time, but it was hardly appropriate dinner attire, especially in the home of one of the wealthiest and most influential members of House Deneith. Count Wilhelm d’Deneith—Elix’s father and her old partner Leoned’s uncle—might not say anything about her spending more nights than not under his roof, but he’d definitely have a scathing comment or two for her if she showed up at his table with a weapon on her back.

  She ran regretful fingers over the shard axe’s leather-wrapped haft and turned her attention to finding something suitable to wear. Wilhelm also insisted that his houseguests dress for dinner, which was why she seldom stayed to eat.

  After a moment of indecision, she selected a pair of gray leather pants with marginally fewer stains than the rest. Then she chose one of Elix’s crisp white tunics emblazoned with the Deneith chimera done in the House’s signature green and yellow—the lion head on her right shoulder, the goat on the left, and the dragon front and center on her chest. Her boots had also been scrubbed while she slept, so after plaiting her copper-colored hair into a quick braid, she pulled them on, spared a quick glance at the mirror hanging on the back of the other wardrobe door, and decided it would do. Wilhelm should know her well enough by now to realize that clean was about as close to dressed up as she was ever likely to get.

  She exited Elix’s rooms and followed the long hallway to the massive double staircase that dominated the manor foyer. Thick Brelish rugs silenced her footsteps, and the portraits of generations of Deneiths watched her impassively as she passed beneath their hard eyes and proud chins. She paused, as always, at the last painting on the left before the hallway gave way to the foyer balcony.

  Leoned’s dark eyes looked down on her, and not even the artist’s heavy hand and penchant for grimness could completely hide the twinkle that always lay in their depths, accented by the small scar above his left eyebrow. A scar she had given him, during a sparring session where he hadn’t moved quite fast enough.

  Once, that familiar face would have filled her with sharp guilt and suffocating grief, but now there was only a deep sadness and, sometimes, the beginnings of a smile. Ned had been a good partner, and he would have made an outstanding Marshal. She wouldn’t be celebrating her own Badge Day this evening if it weren’t for him and the sacrifice he’d forced her to make, but she no longer blamed him for that. Just as she no longer blamed Aggar, the dwarf he’d died to keep safe. Or even herself, for choosing between them.

  Well, most of the time, anyway.

  A bell sounded somewhere on the lower level, and Sabira left off her musing to hurry down the staircase and into the small, intimate dining room just off the kitchen where the Count usually took his meals. To her surprise, the room was empty.

  Frowning, she made her way through the kitchen toward the formal dining room, her mouth beginning to water as the scents of all her old favorites wafted enticingly around her. The heady aromas of vedbread—still warm enough that the cheese inside would be gooey—brine sausage stew, and apple and ice-berry tarts filled the air, and her stomach grumbled in response. Sabira realized she hadn’t eaten when she’d arrived last night; she’d been too tired to do more than take a quick bath and tumble into bed, and Elix’s waiting arms.

  The thought of the young captain eased the frown from her face, and the corners of her mouth were just twitching upward when she pushed open the servants’ door and entered the dining room. The fledgling smile froze on her lips when she saw the room’s occupants.

  There were guards at both the kitchen door she’d entered t
hrough and on either side of the dining room’s main doors. Stone-faced dwarves in the livery of House Kundarak stood at attention, battle-axes in hand. She didn’t have to be a mage to know those blades were heavily-spelled, possibly the equal to her own urgrosh, the absence of which she felt sharply in the face of this unexpected threat.

  Count Wilhelm didn’t even allow his own guards in the dining room; he considered it uncivilized. If there were warriors from another House here, it couldn’t be with his permission.

  She tensed, mentally calculating how long it would take her to reach the knives on the table and how much damage she might be able to do with them before the dwarves brought her down. But as she surveyed the men sitting around the table, she saw that they were relaxed and seemingly unconcerned about the armed dwarves in their midst.

  Count Wilhelm was at the head, of course, his brown hair shot through with silver and still worn in tight military fashion, though he hadn’t served Deneith in that capacity in many years, leaving that to Elix, and Ned before him. But he still sparred with his swordmaster every morning, and Sabira knew soldiers half his age who weren’t as fit of form. There was no paunch hiding under the bloused shirt he wore, no slackness in the muscles that propelled him to his feet at her entrance, followed by three others.

  Elix, in another of his tunics, this one green with a small chimera embroidered over his heart, beat his father to his feet and smiled hugely at her over the laden table. Across from him, on Wilhelm’s left, was another dwarf—Aggar Tordannon, the heir to the dwarven city of Frostmantle and her own brother, now that she had been formally adopted into his clan by the Ceremony of Blood, Steel, and Stone. His fiery red beard clattered as he stood, the newly-polished beads woven into its many braids dancing with the sudden movement. True to form, Aggar’s clothes were as glaring as the Deneiths’ were understated—a scarlet tunic sporting the Tordannon crest, bright purplish blue pants and a cloak the color of new spring leaves, edged in orange. Just looking at him for too long made her head ache.