Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel

by Henderson, Samantha

  She could find out more about the artifacts of Jadaren Hold later. Now she needed to concentrate on healing herself. The chill air was growing warmer, and the dull gray light was brightening as the sun rose.

  Dawn was coming, and she was Dawnbringer.

  As such rapid healings were, it was painful. Lakini used all her powers of meditation to find her still center of grace, and drew the lambent, pulsing Power she found there throughout her body. Now and then she felt a gentle touch to her Powers, a gift, she decided, from the sister goddesses, and the strength and duration of the healing increased.

  Split flesh rejoined. Shattered ribs came back together. Broken vessels were whole.

  She would live on as Lakini. But her face, although she didn’t know it yet, would never be the same.

  JADAREN HOLD

  1600 DR—THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

  Lusk paced, uncharacteristically impatient. The pain across his ribs where Lakini had slashed at him stung, and the bruised place on his shoulder ached where she had struck him with her fist closed around the hilt of her dagger.

  He glanced at the Hold. The late-afternoon light was casting purple shadows against the surface.

  Why had she done that? She could have stabbed him rather than punching him. Instead, she turned the point of the knife away at the last instant, giving him the advantage, letting him strike back in return.

  He wasn’t grateful. She should have struck swift and true, the deva way.

  More and more he suspected that his path, twisted though it seemed, was the right one, and that Lakini, companion of his many lives and dagger-mate, was straying away from the gods’ plan for them. He had tried to convince her to listen to the Voice, the Voice of the sanctuary that had set him and so many others on the course to meet their destiny. Instead, she had rejected its guidance and left the sanctuary—left him—to wander among the useless people of the world. She was convinced to return and join him in his quest to bring an artifact, a coil of metal stolen many years ago, back to the sanctuary where it belonged. But when he had revealed himself to her, his true nature, the things he had done to make the world safer, purer, she had rejected him.

  She had called him an abomination.

  She had forced him to fight her.

  She would pay for that, if she was still alive.

  Kaarl vor Beguine stood a little way apart, watching the pacing deva with a wary eye. The Beguine guards were stationed at intervals around the Hold, their bows at the ready for any of the besieged that might try to escape. The great doors that led into the caverns at the base of the monolith had been barricaded, and they had already learned that any attempt to break them down would be met by a volley of arrows.

  Kaarl had vowed to rescue Kestrel and her family, and it broke his heart that they had failed to get them safely out. He knew Arna was dead, killed by some Jadaren treachery, and had heard terrible rumors about the children.

  It went against his every instinct to fight beside the terrible creatures he’d seen preying on mortal men last night. But his guards were too few. As he’d told Sanwar, they were no army. Without the help of the bandits and ghouls, they’d stand no chance against the Jadaren forces. Someone within the tunneled monolith had taken charge last night, organized the defenders, and managed to push them out and keep them out until dawn, until the bulk of the bandits, unable to tolerate the sun, had slunk away.

  He’d told Lusk, and the deva had snarled at him that he must wait until dusk, until the creatures of darkness could use darkness to their advantage. And so Kaarl waited, reflecting on the irony of having to fight beside a vampire.

  Lusk suddenly felt Lakini’s presence behind him, warm as if she touched his back. He whirled, his hand on the hilt of his dagger.

  No one was there. But across the way, on the other side of the road beaten wide by the passage of trading caravans, beneath the spreading limbs of an immense, lone oak that stood apart from the edge of the woods, a shadowed figure stood.

  Lusk shaded his eyes and peered at it. It was standing still in a way few creatures that walked on two legs could imitate—the way a deva stood.

  “Wait here,” Lusk called to Kaarl vor Beguine, earning a startled look, and hastened across the road to meet the figure waiting there.

  JADAREN HOLD

  1600 DR—THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

  Walking the mile or so down the crushed-lava road to the oak, Lusk remembered the halfling thief in Cormyr, and a smile curved his mouth. How naïve Lakini was about it.

  He had felt the slight tug of the thief’s sly fingers on his coin pouch.

  The deva turned on the unsuspecting thief, quick as thought. The halfling found himself gripped around the throat, his air cut off before he could react, then lifted into the air and shoved hard against the rough, slick stones of the alley wall. His eyes widened as he stared into the eyes of his erstwhile mark, the golden eyes and the slanted streaks across the face. What was this creature? He had taken it for an oversize half-elf.

  The little thief grinned ingratiatingly. The deva was stern but would turn him over to the tender mercies of the city watch. Day watch would be problematic, but dusk watch was well bribed by the guild and would let him go for a reasonable fee and a few light cuffs for show. The deva might be angry, but he wouldn’t harm him. The creatures were ridiculously law-abiding.

  Nothing could express the little thief’s astonishment when the deva’s knife pierced his entrails, deep, ripping up, up, up. Lusk leaned close to the halfling’s ear, his lips almost touching it.

  “In your last few moments of life, maggot,” whispered the deva, “it will be my duty and pleasure to teach you a very valuable lesson.”

  It was only a minute before the halfling was beyond all education.

  The sun had long passed its apex, and the figure under the tree stood in a pool of shade. Lusk’s fingers itched for his bow, but the figure didn’t move, and he forced himself to relax.

  He climbed the slight rise to the base of the oak, passing without a glance the small shrine of lava rock that had stood through all time and weather.

  Lakini stepped forward to meet him. Despite himself, Lusk stopped, shocked at the sight of her face.

  The pale band was still across her eyes. But now she was further marked. It was as if her face were a porcelain mask that had been dropped and shattered, and then repaired, leaving a pattern of cracks.

  “By the Sea, Lakini,” he whispered, forgetting for a moment his anger at his once-companion. “What happened to you?”

  Her expression remained placid, but she lifted a hand to her face, tentatively touching it as if she could feel the cracks. He saw her sleeve was brown and stiff with dried blood.

  Her hand fell back to her belt, to the hilt of the knife he had given her, now her only weapon. It was an automatic gesture, not meant to be offensive, so he didn’t react to it.

  “I began to die, Lusk,” she said. “After I got away, I went to the woods.”

  “We tracked you to the edge,” he said. “There was a lot of blood.”

  “Why didn’t you go farther?” There was a genuine curiosity in her voice.

  He paused, frowning, unable to answer. The truth was that he thought he had killed her. And although they had become enemies, he couldn’t bear the thought of desecrating a deva’s death, which was simply the beginning of the process of reincarnation, by hunting her down like a wounded deer.

  After a long pause to allow him to answer, she went on.

  “I started to die, Lusk. I felt myself dissolving. And then, when it came to it, I refused my reincarnation.”

  “You—” Lusk swallowed and looked past her shoulder, at the rough patterns in the bark of the oak, at the ancient letters carved there. “How?” he asked.

  “It’s hard to remember everything,” said Lakini. “But I was … scattering, I suppose you’d call it.”

  Her voice grew bitter. “You can’t remember, because they take that memory away from you, don�
�t they? All the memories of living and dying. How it must have maddened them that we remembered enough to come together within each lifetime. How it must have gladdened them that we turned against each other.”

  Frowning, Lusk looked into her shattered face, searching it. “Who?” he queried.

  “The gods, Lusk, that make us play this game of life and death. When it was time, I told them no. I refused to reincarnate. And since they made me to be reborn, they couldn’t let me die.”

  A corner of Lusk’s mouth turned up. “Were they angry?”

  She toughed her face again, as if self-conscious. “Yes. They were very angry.”

  “Why, Lakini?” His voice was stern. “Why did you defy them?”

  “Because I realized you were right.”

  Unconsciously his hand brushed the hilt of his own knife. “Are you speaking the truth?” There was a thread of hope in his voice.

  “I’ve been well marked for speaking the truth,” she said. “These human families do nothing but sell the same goods back and forth until everyone forgets what they have and buys more. I know now why you were sent here.”

  She nodded at the dark stone eminence over his shoulder. “That bracelet. Shadrun needs it, and I know where Kestrel hid it. I saw her. Let me go inside and get it.”

  “Where did she hide it?”

  She shrugged. “Nowhere original. A box on her dresser. I can find it for you, Cserhelm. For Shadrun.”

  He tilted his head, dubious. “How? They’re well organized now, and fortified. And they still have …” He hesitated, then went on. “The bracelet. The Rhythanko, it’s called. It’s the source of the warding. It holds the spells about the place together, lock and key.”

  That’s why it was so important to Kestrel, thought Lakini. She was its keeper. She was acutely aware of the slight weight of the Rhythanko about her neck, although it wasn’t moving now. But then, if the Rhythanko was the lock and the key to Jadaren Hold, how was it Lusk and his forces hadn’t been able to move right in?

  Perhaps some of its Power remained with Kestrel. Whatever the truth of the matter, she had to get inside the Hold, by any means in her power.

  Even if it meant lying to another deva.

  “They’ll let me in,” she said. “Last they saw, we were going over the side together. Tell your men to fight me, and I’ll break through their line and make for the Hold. They’ll let me in.”

  He considered her a long moment.

  “Your sword is somewhere up there.” He waved an arm at the top of the Hold. “You have your dagger, but … how will you fight convincingly?”

  “I am a deva, and they are but men,” she said. “But tell them not to press too hard. I don’t want to hurt them.”

  Lusk grinned then, a sharp-toothed smile.

  “My mother? You want to see my mother, who killed my father and my brothers and would have killed me if she could?” Brioni Jadaren demanded.

  The surviving daughter of Kestrel and Arna paced the stone floor of the chamber. Lakini had been stunned and amused to find that she had organized the defenses of the Hold the night before, taking advantage of the confusion caused by Lusk’s and her tumbling off the top of the monolith, for despite the wings Lusk had been able to conjure out of thin air, many thought both devas had been killed. Under her command, the Jadaren guards had been able to push back the forces of both the Beguines and Saestra, and although the wards that Lakini now knew the Rhythanko controlled were compromised, much of the magic lingered.

  “I do want to see her,” said Lakini calmly. “I didn’t make my way past the Beguine guards for a lark.”

  She had learned that a body healed of horrific wounds wasn’t as quick as one newly made, but he had managed to get by five of Kaarl vor Beguine’s best men without lasting injury to either side. And they’d put on a good enough show—eager hands had helped Lakini over the doors into the caverns, and archers had discouraged the Beguines from coming closer.

  The girl flashed her an odd look, and Lakini knew it was because of the crazed pattern on her face.

  Brioni bit her lip. “You can imagine that it’s not pleasant to know that the woman who gave birth to you is a traitor to the core.”

  “I don’t think she was.”

  Brioni’s head snapped around at her. “Really? Killing my family and letting the enemy into the heart of our Hold was not the act of a traitor? You have strange ideas, Lakini.”

  “I suspect, Brioni, that she was under a spell.”

  “How can a spell make you hurt your children? I saw my baby brother. She smothered him in his cradle. She killed his nurse.”

  She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, a gesture that recalled to Lakini how very young she was. “The men won’t let me see my father or my brothers. I did see the blood.”

  “Fifteen years. What spell lets you live with a man fifteen years, and bear children with him, and then slaughter them all one night?”

  “A very evil spell,” said Lakini.

  Brioni blinked rapidly and looked down. “I’ll let you see her. I’ll take you there myself.”

  Lakini nodded and turned to go.

  “Wait,” said Brioni, and went to a corner. She lifted a white-wrapped bundle from the floor.

  “It’s your sword,” she said. “We found it on the summit, afterward.”

  The girl, older than her years, studied Lakini’s shattered face as she nodded her thanks and unwrapped the sword, examining the blade for cracks and the edge for nicks before slinging it into its accustomed place across her back.

  “How did you live, Lakini?” Brioni asked finally. “You fell all that way. I saw the two of you, like a ball of fire falling past a window. And the men say you were hurt very badly.”

  She studied the bloodstain on Lakini’s shoulder with frank curiosity.

  Lakini waited until the girl’s eyes met her own.

  “I’m a deva,” she said simply. “It’s not my nature to die.”

  She followed Brioni down a series of passages. Now and then they passed an armed guard, each of whom nodded at Brioni and touched his or her forehead. She recognized some of them, and some greeted her by name.

  “What’s the deva doing with Mistress Brioni?” she heard one guard say to another, both of them thinking they were too far up the tunnel to be overheard.

  “Maybe she’s here to exact divine justice on that filthy bitch,” responded the other guard, with considerable venom.

  Lakini’s keen eye caught Brioni shivering.

  “Why hasn’t she been killed, Brioni? Emotions are running high.”

  Brioni shrugged. “No one understood, at first, that she had let in the attackers and killed my father and my brothers. She was in her bed, lying next to my father. She wouldn’t speak, and we thought she was in shock from what she’d seen. But she had the knife in hand, and she didn’t deny it.”

  She had left Lakini at the top of a passage that led down to Kestrel’s prison and a guard, gnarled and taciturn, led her the rest of the way.

  They’d put Kestrel in a chamber on the lowest inhabited level of the Hold. There were lower tunnels, carved from the rock when the place was still called the Giant’s Fist, but no one ventured there, and despite the tales the children whispered to one another at bedtime, no subterranean horrors came crawling out from beneath. The prison chamber was, like the rest of the quarters at Jadaren Hold, hewn out of the living rock. The walls down here were rough, not smooth and finished, and the room was ten paces wide in either direction.

  A woman sat against the wall, her hair hanging over her face, her hands folded on her tattered skirt. From a small subchamber to the side came a smell that showed it served as a privy.

  Lakini stood in the middle of the room, waiting for Kestrel to notice her. When the woman made no movement, she finally spoke.

  “Kestrel.”

  Kestrel looked up. Lakini started in shock. Kestrel’s gentle brown eyes looked at her from a ruined face that was torn all over
with scratches and gouges. In the witchlight that hung from the ceiling, she could see that her arms were similarly marked.

  Lakini felt a flare of anger. No prisoner, no matter his or her sins, should be treated like this. It would be better to kill the individual and have it over.

  Then she saw Kestrel’s nails, broken and stained, and the dark semicircles of dried blood and tissue beneath the nails. She had done it to herself.

  “Have you come to kill me?” croaked Kestrel hoarsely.

  “No,” said Lakini, and crouched down so the woman wouldn’t have to strain her neck looking up.

  “Why don’t you kill me, Lakini? I should have died. She should have died.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman who did it. Who opened the wards, who took the Key, who killed”—she swallowed painfully—“who murdered my children. She was in me, so how else could you kill her but by killing me?”

  Lakini crossed her legs in the posture of meditation. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  There was another long pause, while Kestrel looked down, rocking back and forth slightly. The silence stretched out, and Lakini waited patiently, without moving a muscle.

  “It was as if I were imprisoned in a glass chamber, while an alien creature possessed my body,” Kestrel began, her red-rimmed eyes staring at the wall past Lakini’s shoulder as if she saw the dreadful scene reenacted as a lantern show. “At first I didn’t understand. I thought it was one of those dreams, those half-awake dreams, where you lie paralyzed while shadowy figures creep about the room. But I realized I was watching myself, my own body, from a place just outside of it. I couldn’t stop it. But I could see everything. I—” Kestrel stopped and shook her head as if to clear it. “It was a gift from my uncle Sanwar, that knife. He was so very angry about my marriage. He’s one of those Beguines who hate anything to do with the Jadarens. But for my birthday this year, he sent me a box. It was a puzzle box, he said, and I’d have to figure out the solution—or smash it open. I laughed, and promised him I’d never break it apart.”