Skein of Shadows
Page 27
Sabira risked a glance from the smirking rakshasa over to where Elix stood, once again transfixed by Shakvar’s phantom images.
The rakshasa laughed again, and Sabira did indeed feel a rush of despair as she realized she couldn’t hurt him. He would kill her, and Elix. He would release the Spinner, and whatever destruction Tilde might have wrought would pale in comparison to the devastation She left in her wake.
She looked at Elix, frozen, tears rolling down his face as unimaginable horrors unfolded before his eyes. She looked at Greddark, unconscious and maybe dead, sprawled out on the floor, his gold bracelet shining in the light of the everbright lanterns. And then she looked back at Shakvar, smiling his smug, inhuman smile at her.
“Giving up so soon? I’d expected more from the vaunted Shard Axe, the precious Daughter of Stone and Sentinel.” He gave a small, unconcerned shrug. “But, then, I suppose you’re in a hurry to give your pitiful life its only true measure of significance.”
To Dolurrh with that. She might not be able to save Eberron, or Elix, or even herself, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.
With a growl to match his, she reversed her hold on the urgrosh and charged, swinging as she came.
It was a wild blow, born of fury and futility, and she knew she’d never land it even as she brought the axe-head down. Shakvar didn’t even bother to move, pivoting on one clawed foot to avoid the too-wide swing and plunging his dagger under her ribs and up into her lung as she rushed by. He stood back as she stumbled forward and fell, collapsing to one knee on the floor near Greddark. She dropped the shard axe and grabbed her injured side with her hand.
And with her other, she reached out and snatched a certain silver charm off the dwarf’s golden bracelet, feeling it grow in her grasp. She thumbed a switch on the slender rod, then broke it off so it couldn’t be moved back. Then, rolling to the side, she threw.
The wand caught the surprised rakshasa in the chest and he fumbled to grab it with his backward hand. As his claws closed around it, he triggered the sensitive mechanism, and with a flash of colorless light, he was gone.
In the silence that came after, she heard a small gasp, and then Elix was kneeling at her side.
“Saba …,” he moaned, the nightmares of his visions coming to life before his eyes.
“Healing potions …,” she reminded him through gritted teeth. “In the back.…”
He was gone and back again in moments, holding her gently in his arms as he poured a thick, sweet concoction down her throat.
Warmth coursed through her, starting in her belly, then spreading to her shoulder and out to every abused extremity. A soothing drowsiness descended on her and she moved in Elix’s arms, trying to get closer to him.
“Strong …,” she murmured.
“Only the best for a Queen,” he said softly, smiling.
“Or a Countess?” she asked, and his smile grew so bright she had to look away to hide her tears.
“Feeling better already, I see.”
Blinking, she craned her head to look over at the dwarf, still unmoving on the floor.
“Greddark …?”
Elix nodded and laid her back carefully on the floor, then went to check the dwarf. After confirming that stubborn artificer was not, in fact, dead, Elix rolled him over and poured more of the same potion down his throat, only to have the dwarf choke and cough and vomit it back up all over him.
Grimacing, Elix turned him on his side until the spasm passed, then tried again, more slowly this time. In the time it took for the dwarf’s eyes to open and clear, Sabira was able to sit up on her own. By the time he could get up from the floor, she was ensconced in one of the high-backed chairs finishing off the last of a fresh glass of Frostmantle Fire. She handed another glass to the dwarf as Elix helped him over to the other chair.
“Sorry it’s not tea,” she said as Elix pulled up a third chair beside hers and sat.
Greddark took a long drink before replying, nearly draining the goblet.
“Sometimes the senses need dulling.”
Sabira snorted.
“Especially after I let that pampered schoolboy Brannan get the drop on me in the storage room. Though, in my defense, I was distracted by the dead changeling lying on the floor. And he was actually a rakshasa in disguise.” He looked at her over the rim of his glass. “What happened to him, anyway? I assume you somehow managed to kill him, since we’re still here and he’s not.”
“Not exactly.” At his quirked brow, she added, “I sort of borrowed your plane-shifting wand. I might have broken it, too, right before I threw it at him and he disappeared. Wherever he is, I’m guessing he won’t be back here for awhile.”
Greddark started to laugh, then winced and thought better of it. As strong as Elix’s healing potion had been, Sabira had a feeling neither she nor the dwarf were going to be engaging in any belly laughs any time soon.
She looked over at Elix curiously.
“So, now that we have a moment, are you going to tell me what you’re doing here? You said it wasn’t because Breven got impatient. What, then? Did you argue religion with the Keeper and get kicked out of Thrane? Or did you just miss me that much?”
The other Marshal had been quiet since he’d healed her and Greddark, and she found herself missing his smile. She wanted it back.
Unfortunately, asking that question wasn’t the way to get it. If anything, Elix grew even more pensive.
“She had a dream about me.”
Sabira frowned.
“Who? The Keeper?”
Elix nodded, and Sabira felt some of her earlier dread returning.
“It didn’t involve a pool of magma, did it?”
It was Elix’s turn to look puzzled.
“No. She had a dream of the progenitor dragons, Siberys and Khyber, fighting a mighty battle at the feet of Emperor Cul’sir. Only she knew in the dream they weren’t the actual dragons, but their champions. Two women that I loved, and which of them won would depend on me.”
Sabira made a face.
“Champions? You sure she didn’t mean pawns?” she asked, and a chuckle quickly muffled by the sound of gulping came from Greddark’s direction.
Elix didn’t laugh.
“She was talking about you and Tilde, wasn’t she?” he asked, his hazel eyes dark with sorrow.
Remembering the sight of the Siberys shard of her urgrosh driving into the Khyber shard in Tilde’s abdomen, Sabira could only nod.
“Seems as though.” And the Emperor had to represent Xen’drik. Though as far as Sabira knew, there was nothing at the base of his statue in the Stormreach harbor except a blank cliff wall.
“But I got here too late. The battle you two fought was already over, and it had nothing to do with me.”
Sabira shook her head sharply.
“No, Elix. It had everything to do with you.” At his pained, questioning look, she leaned forward to take his hands in her own. “I’d never have gone after her if it weren’t for you. And I’d certainly never have fought so hard to get back.”
He frowned again.
“I thought you said you were doing it for Ned …?”
Sabira smiled ruefully. She had thought so too. At first. It had taken the journey to Tarath Marad and back for her to realize the truth.
“Because I owed my old partner a debt I had to finish paying off before I could enter into a new partnership.”
Elix’s eyes widened and the darkness in them began to give way to the light of something that looked a lot like hope.
“I don’t suppose you still have that box with you?”
Elix nodded and freed one of his hands from hers long enough to pull the thin black rectangle out from beneath his tunic. Sabira wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw it shaking slightly.
“Saba, are you sure?”
She almost snorted at that. She’d never been more sure of anything in her life.
“I almost lost you once, Elix, back when I left Karrnath. And t
hen again, here in this very room. I don’t want to risk losing you a third time.”
“Nor I, you. But we’re Deneiths; either of us could die tomorrow. Odds are, one of us will.”
“All the more reason,” she replied with a light laugh.
“Saba, I’m serious. The Keeper said the fight between the dragons in her dream wasn’t the end of their war, but the beginning. Whatever chain of events was set into motion or furthered along its path by the discovery of Tarath Marad, it’s not finished.”
“It never is. And neither are we.”
He looked at her for a long, intense moment, then nodded.
“In that case.…”
He slid off his chair on one knee in front of her and opened the velvet box to reveal the mithral and mourngold betrothal bracelet within.
“Sabira Lyet d’Deneith Tordannon, as Greddark here below and the entire gathered Host above are my witnesses … will you marry me?”
She thought about the Keeper’s words and what they could mean for Xen’drik, and Eberron. What they would almost certainly mean for her. More fighting, more pain. More loss.
And then she looked into the eyes of the man who would be by her side through it all and gave him the only answer she possibly could.
“Yes.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marsheila Rockwell is, in no particular order, an author, poet, editor, engineer, Navy wife and mother of three incredible boys. She currently lives in Arizona in the shadow of an improbably green mountain. She is a frequent Rhysling nominee and a sporadic member of the SFWA, IAMTW and SFPA. In addition to her novels, she has penned dozens of short stories and poems, and even an article or two. Visit her at marsheilarockwell.com.
LOLTH ALONE IN HER
DEMONWEB PITS,
IS WEAVING HER DARK
SCHEMATA INTO THE WORLD.
AND HER DROW ARE STIRRING EVERYWHERE, FROM THE LIGHT OF THE SURFACE WORLD TO THE DEPTHS OF THE UNDERDARK.
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