Skein of Shadows

by Rockwell, Marsheila

  The driver looked in her direction, probably awaiting permission from the Wayfinder. After a moment, the warforged nodded, then pulled flint and tinder from a pouch at his hip. He struck the flint against his thigh and had the tinder smoking in moments. A short time later, the gnomes’ pyre was sending up a trail of black smoke into the sky, an offering to whatever gods of the Sovereign Host the two might have worshiped. The warforged driver stayed for a moment with his head bowed and Sabira wondered for the first time what the living constructs thought about death and what came after. She should ask Jester; somehow, she was sure he’d have given the matter some serious consideration.

  “There.”

  While Sabira had been watching the impromptu funeral, Greddark had finally located the weak spot he needed. As Sabira turned back to him, he brought the pick down in a vicious arc. The second crack was even louder than the first, and this time the pick stuck fast.

  The dwarf struggled to pull it free for a few moments, then glared up at her.

  “I could use some of that legendary Shard Axe strength right about now.”

  Sabira almost snorted at that. If there was anything “legendary” about her, it was her temper, or maybe her stubbornness. Definitely not her strength. Of course, she knew the dwarf was really talking about the enchantment on her urgrosh that gave whoever held it the stability and stamina of his rock-loving brethren, but now probably wasn’t the time to quibble over semantics. Or to remind him of the fact that it might not work, given the nature of the area they were in.

  She pulled the shard axe off her back and then grabbed hold of the pick, so that both the urgrosh’s haft and the handle of the pick were in her grasp. She felt a surge through the leather-wrapped wood, but didn’t know if it was the urgrosh’s enchantment or some Traveler-twisted variant.

  There was only one way to find out.

  “On three,” she said. “One … two … pull!”

  With what amounted to two dwarves yanking on the pick, it was either going to give way or break.

  It broke, and both Sabira and Greddark stumbled backward, the shard axe in Sabira’s hand and what was left of the pick handle in Greddark’s. The head of the pick remained firmly lodged in the glass, its recalcitrance proving even more noteworthy than Sabira’s own.

  But not for long.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said impatiently as she regained her footing. “Move.”

  Greddark obliged, opting not to bristle at her tone when he saw the dark look on her face.

  Mimicking the dwarf’s earlier stance, Sabira brought her urgrosh up and back and then down. The adamantine axe-blade sheered through the head of the pick and shattered the glass in a two-foot radius, showering her with tiny stinging shards even as the blow freed Guisarme’s left arm and upper torso from their crystalline prison.

  “Does it always do that?” Greddark asked after a moment, his voice registering awe. He was clearly shocked by the damage her blow had caused.

  Almost as much as she was.

  “Not usually.” She wondered if there might be some way to harness the effects of the Traveler’s Curse. She’d take the urgrosh’s enchantment not functioning at times if this is what happened when it did work.

  She was about to pose the question when a deeper crack sounded below her, followed by a rumbling.

  “That would be the glass near the dragon beginning to break,” Brannan said from behind her. While she and the others had been working to free Guisarme, the Wayfinder and Xujil had commandeered another mechanical wagon and its crew. A few warforged were just finishing up transferring the last of the supplies over from the overturned wagon. “We need to leave. Now.”

  She had to give the man credit. He managed to keep all but the tiniest trace of smugness from his voice.

  Now that Sabira’s shard axe had broken most of the glass encasing Guisarme, Greddark was able to clear the rest away. He dug some implements out of his shirt and various pouches, including a vial of what looked like oil and another of what looked like curdled milk. He muttered incantations under his breath, trying this spell and that to resuscitate the warforged, but without success. Finally, he looked up at Sabira, his eyes shadowed.

  “I think he can be revived, but it’s beyond my skill. He needs to go back to Stormreach, to the House Cannith artificers. They’ve got the time and materials there to do what I can’t here.”

  “So who’s going to take him back?”

  Her question hung in the air, much as the steam cloud had earlier. As the warforged’s employer and the group’s leader, Sabira knew the job should fall to her, but she couldn’t abandon her quest. There was too much riding on it.

  She could see similar conflict on the faces of her companions. They all wanted to see Guisarme to safety, and they all knew they couldn’t afford to. Even Jester, whose face couldn’t betray expression, still managed to convey his quandary by hanging his head, as if in shame.

  “I’ll take him.”

  Sabira turned to see the driver of the gnomes’ wagon, pulling along a soarsled weighed down by two chests marked “Property of the Library of Korranberg.” Sabira also saw books poking out of the mouth of a burlap bag and, finally, the dragonshard-tipped staff.

  “I have to return these items to the doyen’s family. I can transport your companion back with me, as well.”

  Doyen? The staff-wielder had been one of the luminaries of Korranberg? That wasn’t going to go over well back in Zilargo. She wondered briefly who the gnome might have been, then decided it was probably safer if she didn’t know.

  “Thank you,” Sabira said gratefully, relieved and chagrined at the same time. It didn’t matter that it couldn’t be helped—leaving a man behind still stuck in her craw like a mugful of Old Sully’s gone bad. Which was, she supposed, the difference between her and Brannan. They might both choose the needs of the group over the needs of the individual, but she at least felt bad about it, and money was never a factor.

  “I can give you a writ—” she began, reaching for one of her own pouches, but the warforged waved the offer away before she could make it.

  “I’m taking one of my fallen brethren home, either to be restored to his former glory or to be laid to rest. One does not pay an honor guard.”

  Sabira nodded her understanding.

  “Of course; I meant no offense. But Guisarme no longer has anything to go back to, thanks in part to his decision to join us on this expedition. If the artificers can revive him, he’s going to need money, to pay for the repairs if nothing else. And he’s still owed payment for making it this far.” She dug out their agreed-upon fee from her money pouch, plus a handful of extra platinum. If asked, she’d say it was hazard pay, but she knew in her heart it was blood money. “And maybe you can talk to Kupper-Nickel on the way back. He might be able to get Guisarme reinstated to his old job, if he still wants it.”

  The driver took the proffered coins without comment and deposited them into his own pouch. Then he stood aside as Skraad and Greddark lifted Guisarme’s body and placed it carefully on the sled. There was no ceremony, and no words were spoken as the driver led the laden soarsled away, but somehow it felt no different to Sabira than the funeral she’d witnessed earlier.

  No, that wasn’t strictly true. She hadn’t known the gnomes, and neither of them had saved her from being filleted by a dragon. Their deaths were regrettable, but ultimately elicited only a distant, almost clinical pity from her. Guisarme’s death—if that’s what this truly was—did much more than that.

  It hurt.

  They watched the warforged driver until he disappeared over the dunes that were all that was left of the dragon’s sandstorm.

  As they were turning back to Brannan’s new wagon, another deep rumble sounded from the vicinity of the dragon.

  “And now we really are out of time, Marshal,” the Wayfinder called to her. “We’re leaving, with or without you.” True to his word, the mechanical wagon began to hum as Xujil powered it up at his signal
.

  Skraad broke into a sprint, followed by a surprisingly fleet Jester. Sabira could have outrun them both, but she doubted the same was true of Greddark, so she matched his pace instead. Ahead of them, the orc and the warforged clambered up onto the back of the wagon. Greddark reached it moments later as it was starting to move. Sabira pushed him up from behind as the others reached down to pull him in. Then more hands reached down for her and lifted her up into the wagon just as it began to skitter forward faster than she could have run.

  Brannan set her lightly on her feet and released her, grinning sardonically.

  “I was beginning to think you’d grown tired of my hospitality and decided to walk all the way to Trent’s Well instead.”

  “What, and miss out on the opportunity to annoy you for another week?” Sabira replied, meeting his grin with a thin smile of her own. “Not on your life.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Zol, Barrakas 17, 998 YK

  Trent’s Well, Xen’drik.

  Despite the Wayfinder’s justifiable concern, if the sand dragon did indeed escape its glass cage, it apparently decided they weren’t worth chasing, for they saw no further sign of it. They sheltered in the skeleton-like rock formation known as the Bone that night without incident, and the caravan made its way into Trent’s Well a week later, having encountered nothing more serious than assorted mephits and a rabid jackal after that first eventful day of travel.

  The small settlement at the base of the Skyrakers was nothing like Zawabi’s Refuge. Where the djinn’s oasis had large, well-built homes and lush trees, Trent’s Well was a mixture of tents, wooden shacks, and disabled wagons situated around an old, crumbling stone well. A path led from the makeshift village up a rocky slope, and a group of armored men were heading up it as Brannan’s wagon skittered to a halt near the largest tent.

  “What’s up there?” Sabira asked from her place beside the Wayfinder. She’d taken to riding in the front on the second day of the trip, when cramped quarters and short tempers had combined to force Xujil and the wagon’s original warforged driver to move to another covered cart. The final straw had been when the construct made the mistake of saying they should have left Guisarme to rot instead of endangering the entire caravan trying to save him. After that, it had been either transfer the warforged to another wagon, or bury him, much as he’d suggested be done to Guisarme. Xujil had gone with him, ostensibly to keep him from causing any more trouble, but in reality Sabira thought being around so many surface dwellers wore on the drow’s nerves—or at least being around the eating, breathing, sleeping ones. She didn’t blame the drow for making the move. After being kept awake by Skraad’s cattlelike snoring the last few nights, she’d been contemplating finding another wagon herself. But at least it had kept her from doing more than dozing, and hence, from dreaming, so she hadn’t complained too loudly. Another of the Sovereigns’ small blessings, she supposed. Blessings which were getting smaller all the time.

  Since none of the others had wanted to take Xujil’s place next to the Wayfinder after Brannan—predictably—sided with the driver, Sabira found herself there, scanning the sky and sand in front of the caravan, while the rest of her companions took turns doing the same out the rear of the wagon. None of them wanted to be caught unprepared again. Not after the price it cost them last time.

  “Up there? That’s what you’re looking for,” Brannan replied, bringing Sabira’s attention back to the present with that damnably perfect smile as much as with his words. “The rest of the settlement, and the entrance to Tarath Marad.”

  Sabira eyed the steep slope skeptically, wondering where they’d found room for a town between the boulders and the bluffs.

  “Kind of hard to build on that, I’d think,” Greddark commented from behind her, echoing her thoughts. “Well, I mean, for humans. Dwarves are smarter. We wouldn’t bother—we’d just excavate.”

  Brannan glanced over his shoulder, turning his smile on the dwarf who’d poked his head out from the back of the slowing wagon to survey the town.

  “Indeed. Then the settlers of Trent’s Well must have been veritable geniuses, because they built their town inside a cave that was already there.”

  Greddark harrumphed and withdrew back into the wagon, muttering something about unloading. To keep from laughing, Sabira asked another question.

  “They dug the well here, but settled up there? That doesn’t seem like the work of ‘veritable geniuses.’ ”

  Brannan’s eyes sparkled with amusement.

  “Well, just between you and me, the original settlers were thieves, murderers, and pirates who fled from Stormreach when it was founded because it was too ‘lawful,’ if that gives you any idea of their nature. They built their homes here after sinking the well. But, as you can see, the only thing that survives from that time is the well—the people and the town are lost to history.”

  “What happened to them?” She expected some story of horror rising up from nearby Tarath Marad to envelop the unsuspecting citizens of Trent’s Well. Brannan’s tale was quite a bit less bardic.

  “They all died. One of those foolish Flamers would probably tell you it was divine justice, but the causes were far more human—greed and stupidity. Two of the residents got into a fight over a handful of silver and one of them wound up dead in the well. The winner thought it would be better not to tell anyone about it and instead left town. When he returned with the regular supply wagon a month later, thinking the whole thing would have blown over and he’d be welcomed back with open arms, he found the entire populace dead in their homes, victims of some virulent illness.”

  Sabira just stared at him.

  “They drank from the well?” she asked incredulously.

  Brannan shrugged.

  “They didn’t know it was tainted until it was too late.”

  Sabira could only shake her head. An entire town dead over such a small amount of coin. What a waste. Even if they had all been cutthroats, bootleggers, and worse.

  “What about the survivor?”

  The Wayfinder chuckled as he powered down the wagon.

  “Well, the stories differ, but the most common one is that, overcome with remorse, he went looking for a burial place for the townspeople and providentially found a nearby cavern large enough to house a new settlement, complete with a water supply that couldn’t be poisoned—an underground river. He promptly founded a new Trent’s Well, in memory of those poor souls and their unfortunate mishap.”

  Ah. The tale was obviously the most common because it painted the survivor in the best possible light following his little “mishap.”

  “And now?” She sort of hoped Brannan would tell her the intrepid survivor was at the bottom of the old well too.

  If possible, Brannan’s smile grew wider.

  “Him? He’s the mayor.”

  The large tent Brannan had stopped next to turned out to be a tavern of sorts, with something that looked like a convulsing wolf painted on either side of the entrance. While the Wayfinder was busy overseeing the unloading of the caravan, Sabira and the others went inside.

  The interior was hot, dusty, and dim and filled with tables and chairs made from whatever was available—broken bits of crates and wagons, boulders with roughhewn flat surfaces, even the bones of what Sabira surmised were camels, though she didn’t want to look close enough to make sure. A long bar constructed of wooden boxes stood along the far wall, with a warforged who could have been Raff’s twin serving as barkeep.

  Sabira wasn’t entirely surprised to see that the place was full of soldiers, miners, and scholarly types, even at this hour—the place was probably only habitable from sunset to mid-morning, after all. And as more and more powerful artifacts came out of Tarath Marad, more people would come here to seek their fortunes. In another month’s time, there might well be two such taverns in the sand.

  A bored-looking shifter woman swayed to a kobold’s pipe on a shoddily-constructed stage opposite the bar—the tavern’s namesak
e, no doubt. The patrons appeared to pay her little mind, but whenever she missed a step, rocks flew from several points inside the tent, causing her to bob and weave in a much more lively imitation of actual dancing.

  Sabira found the one open table and waved to what she hoped was a server as the others took what passed for seats on either side of her. When the harried gnome reached them, she didn’t ask them what they wanted, just dumped three mugs in front of them, then stuck out her hand expectantly.

  “What’s this?” Greddark asked, sniffing at the rim with a grimace of distaste. Sabira was willing to bet it wasn’t sweet mint tea.

  “Tainted Well—house brew. All we got left till the next shipment comes in from Stormreach. Four coppers each. Got some oil for the ’forged if he wants, but that’s a full sovereign.”

  Jester politely declined as the others dug out the required amount of coin. After the gnome had left, they looked at each other, no one wanting to be the first to try the foul-smelling concoction.

  “It’s not a very auspicious name,” Jester remarked unhelpfully. Sabira decided this probably wasn’t the time to share with them the story of how that name had come about.

  “Well, then it matches everything else about this trip,” she said wryly. “Bottoms up.”

  The others followed half a breath after her, upending their mugs and swallowing. Sabira had braced herself for a taste to match the smell, but the ale was smooth, going down like velvet with a pleasant earthy flavor and a warm finish.

  “Mushrooms,” Greddark said decisively. “And cactus sap, if I’m not mistaken. Probably the flowers too. Could use some ironspice to liven it up, but it’s not bad. Not bad at all.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his fist and signaled for another.

  “Might want to slow down there, mate,” a man at the neighboring table said—a Vadalis, judging from the quick glimpse Sabira got of the dragonmark on his neck before his long blond hair fell forward to cover it. Probably a handler for the magebred camels; if Brannan used them, it stood to reason other expeditions did too. “Stuff’s more potent than it looks.”