Skein of Shadows (dungeons and dragons)

by Marsheila Rockwell

  “As your hearthbrother said, it’s been almost two weeks.”

  Twelve days, and at least twice that to get another group back down to the city of the so-called Spinner of Shadows. If Tilde wasn’t dead by then, she’d no doubt wish she were.

  Which didn’t explain why Breven wanted to send someone after her in the first place. Tilde was a powerful sorceress and a family friend, but neither of those was reason enough for Breven to risk another thirty men, regardless of what torture she might be enduring. She hadn’t had access to any great House secrets; she wasn’t technically part of the House at all.

  “Two weeks in which your precious artifact has been sitting there for anyone to take, now that Tilde’s opened at least one of its locks, you mean.” Breven’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and Sabira knew that she was right. This wasn’t about Tilde at all.

  But then why was he here? He hadn’t needed to play messenger boy with Tilde’s medallion-any of his lackeys from Sentinel Tower could have brought Wilhelm the news of her loss.

  No, the House patriarch wanted something specific from someone in this room, and Sabira had a sinking feeling it was her.

  Elix had come to the same conclusion.

  “You mentioned that you became aware of this artifact because of some snippet of the Prophecy the Wayfinder Foundation had recovered,” he said. “What exactly did that snippet say?”

  The draconic Prophecy was an ages-old pattern of portents and omens written in the skies, in the earth, and on the very flesh of the races of Eberron, in the form of the dragonmarks borne by the great Houses. The dragons of distant Argonnessen purported to study these signs to determine the future and understand the past, but Sabira put little stock in such things. Prophecy of any sort was so subject to interpretation that it could mean anything to anyone, and so became little more than an excuse for people to do what they wanted under the aegis of divine or mystical guidance. As far as she was concerned, the draconic Prophecy was no different, save for the fact that dragons were more able than most to ensure that their interpretations were accepted and adhered to.

  Breven regarded Elix for a moment, considering.

  “It’s not even a snippet, really. Just a few incomplete couplets found on a tattered parchment, most of which had either rotted or been burned away.”

  Elix and the others looked at him expectantly.

  The Baron gave a half-shrug and dutifully recited:

  “Far beneath the clawing desert

  In the belly of the She

  Lies a treasure, plainly hidden

  With eight locks but just one key

  When the Anvil next is silent

  The Book is closed, the Warder dreams

  Comes a daughter, Stone and Sent’nel

  Her arrival…”

  When he trailed off into silence, Sabira finished the rhyme for him.

  “What? ‘… not what it seems?’ Or maybe, ‘… met with screams?’ You sent Tilde into the depths below the Menechtarun where Dol Dorn knows what was waiting for her, based on that?”

  Breven bristled, the dragonmark on the left side of his face stretching taut.

  “She wasn’t coerced, if that’s what you’re implying, Sabira. She interpreted the Prophecy the same way I did-the same way scholars far more versed in the subject than anyone in this room did-and she was more than willing to do whatever she could to serve her House.”

  More like, she was more than willing to do whatever she had to in order to finally be acknowledged by that House-a House that continued to punish her for her mother’s decision to marry outside of it, long after her mother was dead and buried. But Sabira kept that observation to herself. Breven already knew what she thought, and Wilhelm wouldn’t welcome the reminder of his sister’s choice to place love ahead of duty.

  Her stomach growled audibly and Sabira decided she was done pandering to convention. She grabbed a slice of vedbread, no longer warm and gooey, but still fragrant and, more importantly, filling. The men watched her devour it in silence, Aggar lowering his head a bit to hide a smile.

  When she was finished, she washed it down with a glass of fruity Orla-un wine. She’d have preferred the tang of Frostmantle Fire, but Wilhelm had all but banned it from his house after the last time she’d drunk her fill of the potent dwarven whiskey. From what she remembered of that night, it had been a wise choice on his part.

  Only after she’d drained the goblet did she address the room again. It was telling that none of them had spoken into the silence-they knew as well as she did why Breven was here.

  “Well, let’s jump past the games and the posturing, shall we? I’m sure everyone else is just as hungry as I am, if a bit more polite.” She looked at the man she’d once considered a surrogate father after Khellin had been imprisoned, but there was no filial feeling left in her hard gaze, and he knew it. “You want the treasure and you need another daughter of ‘Stone and Sentinel’ to fetch it for you. That about sum it up?”

  Aggar’s head was almost on his plate and the beads in his beard tinkled softly with his suppressed laughter. Breven wasn’t quite so amused.

  “While your adoption into the Tordannon clan does, perhaps, qualify you as a ‘daughter of stone,’ that’s not why I’m here.”

  Sabira’s eyebrows shot up at that. He didn’t really expect any of them to believe that, did he? The appellation applied to her just as surely as it did to Tilde-maybe better, since no one could claim Sabira wasn’t a Deneith.

  “The simple fact of the matter is that I need someone-a Marshal-who knows Stormreach and Xen’drik, who knows the deeps, and whose loyalty to the House is not entirely in question.”

  Ah. So Breven didn’t trust Greigur, the captain of the Sentinel Marshals’ Stormreach outpost. Having dealt with the over-reaching soldier many times herself, Sabira couldn’t say that she blamed the Baron. If this treasure was worth losing another thirty lives over, it was something that could easily split the House, turning them into another three-headed gorgon, like Cannith. Or worse, another Phiarlan, whose Thuranni line had split off in 972 YK after exterminating a third family line, the Paelions, for an alleged assassination plot against Karrnath’s king, Kaius III.

  A plot some whispered her own father may have had a hand in.

  “There are other Marshals who fit that description,” Elix said, and Sabira knew him well enough to know how hard it was for him to keep the challenge from his voice. “Why not ask one of them?”

  Sabira waited, wondering if the Baron would keep trying to pretend this had ever been about saving Tilde.

  “None of them are avail-” he began after a moment, but Wilhelm interrupted him.

  “Stop. Just stop,” he said, his voice ragged. He’d been looking down at his plate, but now he raised pained eyes up to meet Breven’s. Pained, but strong. Resolved. “Sabira’s right. This isn’t about my niece, it’s about the House. You don’t have to try and pretty it up for my sake, my lord. This family has sacrificed for the glory of Deneith many times, and will no doubt do so many more. Of course your primary concern is retrieving the artifact, as well it should be. Rescuing Tilde is a… a secondary consideration.”

  Breven couldn’t quite hide a triumphant smile, though he quickly smoothed it over with a conciliatory look.

  “You’re a very wise and reasonable man, Count; I’ve always said as much. Your loyalty to the House has never been in doubt.”

  Sabira couldn’t be sure, but she thought the Baron placed a slight emphasis on “your.”

  Then he turned his gaze on her and she lifted her chin in response.

  “Well, Sabira. Will you take this mission for the honor and protection of your House?”

  She didn’t miss a beat.

  “No.”

  Even Aggar’s jaw dropped at that, but Sabira ignored him, and Elix, and the long velvet box sitting between them on the table. Her eyes were on Wilhelm, who wore the same stoically anguished expression as he had on the night when she’d had to tell
him that Ned had died, and that it was her fault. When she spoke again, it wasn’t to Breven.

  “No, I won’t do it for the House. But I will do it for Ned.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Zol, Lharvion 24, 998 YK

  Vulyar, Karrnath.

  You don’t have to go.”

  They’d argued about it most of the night, until the sky turned violet in the hours before dawn and Sabira reminded him that there were better ways to spend what little time they had left together.

  “You know I do, Elix.”

  They were sitting around the table in the smaller family dining room, enjoying a light breakfast of fruit, ved cheese and bread: her, Elix and Aggar. Breven had departed shortly after he’d gotten what he wanted, giving her the name of her contact in Sharn as well as a letter of credit drawn on his personal account before he left. Khellin’s reprieve from his prison cell was long over; he’d never returned to the manor, and Sabira hadn’t cared enough to find out if that’d been the Baron’s doing, or the Kundaraks’. Wilhelm hadn’t come down this morning; his steward sent word that the Count was feeling ill.

  “Then at least wait a few days, so Aggar and I can accompany you-”

  “Every day I wait is another day Tilde is left to Host knows what horrors. Whatever our differences in the past, I can’t leave her to that. I can’t watch your father go through that again, regardless what he thinks of me.” Maybe because of what he thought of her. “Can you?”

  Elix’s hazel eyes glistened. They both knew the grief the Count had felt over Ned’s loss; it had paled in comparison to their own.

  Sabira reached out a hand to caress his cheek, the one not marred by the Mark of Sentinel.

  “Especially not if he’s going to be my father too.” Well, some day.

  Elix caught her hand in one of his, turning his head and pressing her palm tightly against his lips for a long moment. Then he kissed her wrist lightly, right where a betrothal bracelet would lay, before relinquishing his hold.

  “You knew?” he asked, his lips quirking into a rueful half-smile.

  “Having my father here kind of gave it away.”

  Aggar mumbled something from around a mouthful of bread and silverfruit jam. It sounded like, “Told you so.” Both Elix and Sabira ignored him.

  “I know it’s a silly tradition, but I wanted to honor it-and you.”

  Sabira smiled softly at that.

  “So what did he say?”

  “I said, ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ when he asked me,” Aggar answered, wiping cider from his beard with the back of his hand. “I offered to get a Jorasco to come take a look at him, maybe do a cleansing ritual.”

  “Quiet, you,” Sabira warned, throwing the dwarf a stern look she couldn’t quite hold.

  Elix’s own smile faltered a bit.

  “Does it matter? I realize now it was a mistake securing his release.”

  Sabira quirked an eyebrow.

  “That bad, hmm? Well, it can’t be any worse than what I’d have called him.”

  Like assassin, traitor, excoriate, steaming pile of carver dung-and those were the nice things.

  “He said you were always more Breven’s daughter than you were his, and if Elix wanted to marry you, he was asking the wrong man for permission.”

  The three of them turned to see Count Wilhelm standing in the open doorway, still in the clothes he’d worn the night before. From the dark circles around his red-rimmed eyes, it was clear that he hadn’t slept.

  “Have you told her yet what I said, Elix?”

  Elix’s smile disappeared completely.

  “Father-” Elix began, his voice holding a tone of warning Sabira had never heard him use with the older man before. Wilhelm continued on, either oblivious or uncaring.

  “I said ‘no.’ ” The unveiled disgust in the Count’s words was like a slap in the face, and even though Sabira had her own doubts about her worthiness to be Elix’s wife, hearing his father give voice to that same sentiment so contemptuously made her hackles rise. Who was he to tell her she wasn’t good enough?

  Only the man to whom she’d said those exact words when she’d tried-futilely-to apologize for not being able to save Ned.

  Wilhelm continued, oblivious to both her anger, and her guilt.

  “No to having that scum Khellin under my roof, no to having his traitorous line linked to mine and no to having you one day bear the title of Countess of the Wood Gate.”

  Vulyar had three entrances. There was the Iron Gate in the northeast, which led to Irontown and the Mror Holds; the Sand Gate in the south, which since the Day of Mourning had led only to Fort Bones and Gatherhold in the Talenta Plains; and the Wood Gate in the northwest, which led to the rest of the Five Nations and was named for the several forests that awaited travelers who took that road out of the city-the Nightwood, Shadowmount Forest, and of course, Karrnwood. Each gate served one of the city’s major wards, each of which encompassed several minor wards and was governed by a titled member of House Deneith. Wood Gate was by far the most populous of the three major wards, though Iron Gate was understandably the most prosperous, since all the lightning rail shipments from the mines in the Ironroots came through there.

  Sabira hadn’t even considered the fact that accepting Elix’s still unvoiced proposal would also mean eventually accepting a role in the politics of Vulyar. It wasn’t a thought that particularly thrilled her. Then again, neither was the fact that Wilhelm clearly didn’t think she was suited for the position-even if she did agree with him.

  “I told him that d’Sark girl would have been a much better choice for the family.”

  Elix stiffened beside her, but Sabira couldn’t look at him. She’d never been more grateful for a chair in her life; she might well have fallen otherwise, the blow was so sharp, so unexpected.

  Tabeth d’Sark had trained under Elix for a year back in ’93. She’d been a Marshal at the Vulyar outpost after that, and Elix had known her well enough to take her on a dangerous mission into the Blade Desert-a mission from which she had not returned. Elix still carried the weapon that had killed her in his traveling chest.

  Though Sabira had never met the other woman, she had met Tabeth’s twin, Tobin, a Defender with curly brown hair, sculpted features, and eyes nearly as gray as her own. She remembered feeling a pang of jealousy thinking how beautiful his sister must have been, but at the time she’d pushed it aside, deeming the emotion silly and unwarranted.

  Apparently, she’d been wrong.

  “Saba, I-” Elix began, but his father wasn’t finished yet.

  “But I may have misjudged you, Sabira. You bring my niece back to me, and I’ll withdraw every objection I ever had to your marrying my son. I’ll even step down as Count and leave Wood Gate to the two of you as a wedding gift, if that’s what you want.” His eyes blazed as his gaze bored into hers. “Just bring her back, Sabira. After Ned, you owe me that much.”

  What could she say to that?

  “I will.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled over the room after Wilhelm left. Sabira stared at her plate where the velvet box had sat the night before, unwilling to look over at Elix. Not wanting to see the truth of his father’s words there.

  Logically, she knew she had no right to be angry, or even hurt. She was the one who’d left him behind, fleeing his arms in the wake of Ned’s death, ignoring his letters, rebuffing his every attempt to reach out to her. How could she blame him for turning to someone else for comfort, when she’d given him no reason to believe he’d ever find it with her?

  But logic was a tepid brew that did nothing to ease either the cold taste of betrayal from her tongue, or the hot pain lancing through her heart.

  Predictably, it was Aggar who spoke first, clearing his throat apologetically.

  “I can’t go with you, Saba-I got word late last night that Father needs me back in the Holds-but I think I know someone in Sharn who may be able to help you. He’s been looking to get out of Khorva
ire for a while, anyway. I’ll go make some inquiries.” She heard the beads in his beard clack as he pushed back from the table and crossed over to her seat, but she didn’t look up or acknowledge him. He gave her shoulder a tight squeeze with one hand, then paused for a moment by Elix’s chair, presumably offering him the same gesture. Then he walked quickly from the room, making sure to close the door behind him.

  She expected Elix to say something, to offer an apology, or excuse, or anything. What she didn’t expect was him for him to push her plate out of the way and slam the bracelet box down angrily on the table in front of her.

  “Open it.”

  She hesitated, her hand hovering over the black velvet, not quite touching the embroidered copper hearth that was the sign of Boldrei, the Sovereign invoked to bless marriages.

  “Saba. Please.”

  Inside was a mithral disk set at the center of a thick-linked chain. The circle bore a crest that Sabira didn’t recognize at first, but as she lifted the bracelet out of the box to examine it more closely, she gasped.

  Two weapons were crossed on a field of thin mourngold, a violet-blue metal made from gold alloyed with mournlode mined from within the heart of the Mournland, what had once been Cyre, beneath the Field of Ruins. Many claimed the mottled iron ore could be used to turn undead, but the dwarves-and this bracelet was undoubtedly of dwarven make-seldom used it for that purpose, preferring instead to combine it with other metals to yield an incredible variety of colors. The mourngold plating was probably worth more than the rest of the bracelet combined.

  Even more impressive than the alloy, though, were the weapons themselves. One was a simple broadsword, its pommel a closed fist, identical to the one Elix usually wore. The other was a tiny replica of her own shard axe, perfect in every detail, down to the sliver of a Siberys dragonshard at its tip.

  In addition to the miniature weapons, detailed etchings graced each quarter of the circle. Above the crossed haft and blade was the Deneith chimera; below, the wolf of Karrnath. To the left was the mark of Wood Gate, three trees with sword blades for trunks. The etching on the right looked slightly different from the others, and it took Sabira a moment to realize that an older carving had been painstakingly filled in and then replaced by a newer one-the Tordannon crest.