“Netheril thought much the same,” Vedoran said.
“Yes,” Uwan said. “But you always make your choices with the best intentions. You tell yourself you won’t let it end that way, not this time. Isn’t that what you told yourself, Vedoran, when you swore your oath to Beshaba?”
“But your crime was worse,” Ashok said. When Vedoran glared at him, he said, “You had no faith to give them, only the show of it. It isn’t too late. You can retain your honor.”
As he spoke, Uwan became corporeal. Vedoran didn’t see it, and Uwan raised his sword. He came in sharply at the left before Vedoran could get up a defense. The leader put his blade at Vedoran’s throat, but he held the strike.
“Yield,” Uwan said. “Do as Ashok says: keep your honor, redeem yourself.”
“In Tempus’s eyes?” Vedoran spat. “Work your blade, Uwan. Your god will never save me.”
“Not Tempus,” Ashok said. He met Uwan’s eyes over the raised steel. “Earn forgiveness from Natan, from yourself.”
“From Uwan,” Vedoran said.
Uwan shook his head. “There’s no need—”
The words ended in a choked gurgle. Uwan stumbled back and dropped his sword. It clattered on the stone amid Ashok’s cries of fury.
Vedoran released the hilt of the dagger he’d been holding, the blade now buried in Uwan’s chest. The leader grasped the hilt and pulled the blade free before he collapsed on the ground.
“Now you can forgive me,” Vedoran said as he kicked Uwan’s greatsword across the room and turned to face Ashok. “You’re next,” he said.
“You bastard,” Ashok said. “You worthless, twisted creature.” He released the bars. His muscles trembled, but now it was pure rage, a longing for the release that came with killing. Vedoran had done more to invigorate him, to call back the nightmare’s master, than he would ever know.
Ashok stepped to the door of the cell. He had no weapon, no armor, just the visceral rage to guide him. Vedoran raised his sword to keep him at a distance, but he looked pleased.
“Almost,” he said. “What you need is … ah.” He went to Uwan and retrieved his bloody dagger from the leader’s slack fingers. He tossed it to Ashok, who caught it without thinking, letting the blood smear his palm. “Now we’re ready.”
“You shouldn’t be so smug,” Ashok said. He fell into a crouch. “I’ve killed brothers with blades smaller than this.”
“They were weak, just like you,” Vedoran said.
He came at Ashok hard and fast with an overhand strike that couldn’t be blocked. Ashok dodged, but his reflexes hadn’t nearly recovered enough to keep pace with his emotions. He over-compensated and fell on his stomach. Vedoran’s sword hissed through the air. Ashok gritted his teeth and teleported. Vedoran’s blade rang off the stone floor with another deafening shriek.
Ashok reappeared inside his cell. He stayed in the far corner in his wraith form—the same place where he’d seen his father and brothers and their emaciated shadows, though he tried not to dwell on these thoughts. He thought instead of how to turn the fight to his advantage. That was the first step.
He stayed inside the cell, forcing Vedoran to come to him. The close quarters favored his dagger heavily, and Vedoran couldn’t make him dance quite so much with so little room to maneuver.
“Where is the warrior who stood on the Span with me?” Ashok asked. He could feel corporeality seeping back into his limbs, but the question burned at him through the bloodlust. “Where is that shadar-kai who guided me through the nightmares?”
“We’re still on that bridge,” Vedoran said. “We’re still falling. But it’s almost over now.” He slashed at Ashok’s wraith body. The blade passed through his chest but caught his arm as it became flesh and laid it open.
Ashok grunted and clutched the wound. Blood soaked his fingers, but he didn’t have time to determine how deep the sword had penetrated, because Vedoran had seen the blood too. He reversed his swing. Ashok blocked feebly with the dagger and tried to twist out of the way.
Vedoran’s blade grazed his collarbone. Ashok felt the hot line where it cut him to the shoulder.
No choice. Ashok teleported again, but it took all his strength and concentration. He didn’t think he’d be able to attempt the escape again until he’d rested, and Vedoran was already crowding him, forcing him to move in his incorporeal form to find a better position.
“You’re tiring quickly,” Vedoran said. “Why are you fighting so hard? You know you won’t win. If Uwan could fall to me, you don’t stand a chance in your current state.”
“Uwan trusted you,” Ashok said. “That was his mistake. I won’t underestimate you or what you’re capable of. Not anymore.”
“I’m doing you a service,” Vedoran said, “killing you now while you’re still full of hope. This city does that to you, gives you hope. But even if you survive, they will never accept you fully. You heard the crowd at your trial. Half of them want you dead. Would they embrace you if you came out of these tunnels? Better to die here and never know that disappointment.”
“Is that what grieves you the most, Vedoran?” said Ashok, gathering himself for the last exchange of blows. “All the people who have disappointed you? Uwan, the city, the gods …”
“You,” Vedoran said. He gripped his sword and put it through Ashok’s phantom chest, swirling it around his heart. “You disappointed me more than all the others. I would have been more than a brother. You were supposed to be with me.”
“I was,” Ashok said, “but this is bigger than you or I. Ikemmu is about more than survival. There are things worth protecting here. The city isn’t perfect, but there’s a future in it. There was no such haven in those caves where I prowled and killed.”
His words came faster as his body faded back into the world. When he could hear his boots scrape on stone, Ashok went on the offensive. He dived in under Vedoran’s guard and nicked his cheek, a light blow to get the graceful warrior backpedaling.
Vedoran teleported away over Ashok’s sudden burst of energy, but he didn’t speak, and as soon as he became solid they went at the fight again. Ashok ducked a sharp slash from Vedoran’s blade, but he stumbled and fell prone with his dagger arm trapped beneath him. Vedoran came after him. Ashok grabbed his leg and twisted, bringing the warrior down beside him.
Ashok heard Vedoran’s sword clatter on the ground. He rolled as Vedoran went for his throat and dug the dagger into Vedoran’s shoulder. Pain spasmed across Vedoran’s face, but he got his hands inside Ashok’s guard and around his throat.
Choking, Ashok tried to pull his dagger out of Vedoran’s flesh, but it was wedged against bone, and his strength was rapidly waning. He couldn’t draw breath. The room started to spin, and Vedoran, through it all, looked half-crazed, his eyes bulging with triumph as he pressed Ashok’s flailing body down and choked the life out of him.
Fading. Ashok felt himself become unmoored from his body, except he was aware of everything. The necrotic energy swirling in the room solidified into reaching shadows, and there was the void again before him, where his father and brothers waited. He wouldn’t look at them, Ashok thought. He looked beyond them into the unknown and tried not to be afraid of what waited there.
Ashok glimpsed it then, behind the rest, the form rising up to fill his vision. It no longer wore Ilvani’s face, but it cut through the shadows straight to Ashok’s heart.
Through his dimming consciousness, Ashok reached up and wrenched the dagger free from Vedoran’s shoulder. Vedoran cried out and loosened his grip. Ashok sucked in a desperate breath of air and brought the blade down nearly parallel between them. Driven by a strength Ashok had thought long gone, the blade disappeared into Vedoran’s chest and pierced his heart.
Ashok felt Vedoran’s whole body stiffen. He flailed, and Ashok caught his hands, holding them as the life drained from the graceful warrior. The breath eased out of Vedoran’s chest slowly, and the crazed look left his eyes. He focused for an instant on Ashok’s fa
ce and tried to speak.
“Say it again,” Ashok said, his voice ragged from being strangled. “I couldn’t hear.”
“Forgive …” Vedoran coughed, and there was blood on his lips. “Forgive … yourself. Even … if I can’t.”
Ashok clasped the warrior fiercely to his breast. Vedoran drew his last breath, and Ashok felt the body in his arms go limp.
“You’re in the shadows now, my friend,” he whispered. He hoped that somehow, Vedoran’s soul would find its way out of the void. From there he faced a journey beyond mortal knowledge. But the cares of Ashok’s world could not touch him.
Ashok gently laid Vedoran’s body on the ground. Light-headed with pain and grief, he crawled to Uwan’s side and turned the leader’s body to face him. He put his head against Uwan’s chest and listened for some sign of life. The sign came with the leader’s voice.
“You did well,” Uwan said. His vacant eyes stared past Ashok at the invisible world full of shadows.
“Don’t do this,” Ashok said. “I can get healers here before your next breath. Uwan!” he cried when the leader’s head lolled.
Uwan licked his lips and coughed. “I saw Him, just now. I saw Him, but He wasn’t looking for me. He was watching you. You fought so well … You saw His pride, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what I saw,” Ashok said. “I’m not ready to accept—”
“So … stubborn,” Uwan said. His lips curved in a weak smile. “Always thinking your life means nothing … to the gods. Every life is important.”
“Prove it, then,” Ashok said. “Live, and prove me wrong.”
“I … will try.”
“Don’t look at the shadows,” Ashok said. He stood and ran out of the dungeon, following the scent of the forge fires to the light and Tower Makthar. He prayed, to any and all gods listening, that he would make it in time.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
FOUR DAYS LATER, ASHOK STOOD ON THE TOPMOST SPAN BETWEEN Pyton and Hevalor, his cloak snapping in the wind. He watched the shadar-kai dance in the fire circles over a hundred feet below.
They were preparing a raid on a drow settlement in the Underdark. The Veil between the two parts of the city had been enspelled with golden glows to add to the ferocity of the fire. There were torches all along the wall, and the shadar-kai guarding it were over two hundred strong, or so Skagi and Cree had told him.
Uwan watched the proceedings with his Sworn from the base of Tower Athanon. The leader looked up toward the Span a couple of times, as if searching for Ashok, but Ashok stood behind one of the stone tusks, well hidden in the shadows.
Uwan looked remarkably well for having been near death a handful of days before. Ashok noticed that he did not make any speeches to incite the warriors that night. It was not the time.
Beshaba’s clerics had accepted Ashok’s pardon by Uwan, but their work to publicly discredit Tempus had met with enough success that people’s emotions were still raw. Ashok had no doubt that the clerics of the other gods continued to spread dissent quietly. Uwan meant the raid to help unite the shadar-kai against a common enemy, but they would not soon forget what had transpired over the last month.
Nor should they, Ashok thought. They didn’t need to see Tempus’s emissary—if that was to be his curse—among them. When the celebration reached its peak, he would quietly slip out of the city. Until then, he waited and watched the fires.
Ashok turned when he heard footsteps coming from the Pyton side of the Span. Ilvani walked with her hands clasped behind her and her head tipped back as if she were enjoying the breeze. She didn’t mind her steps at all, but her stride never faltered.
“Aren’t you afraid of falling?” he said when she reached him.
She shrugged. “There are more important things to be afraid of,” she said.
“Did Uwan send you?” Ashok said.
“I’m made messenger,” Ilvani said, with no little disdain, “to ask irrelevant questions. There are more important questions.”
“I’m sorry,” Ashok said. “I thought putting some distance between me and the leader of the city would be a good idea, especially now.”
Ilvani put her hands on her hips. “You have a box you don’t want,” she said accusingly. “What are you going to do with it?”
Ashok considered. “What do you do, when life gives you a box you don’t want?”
“Lock it away,” Ilvani said. “It’s only fair, to survive.”
“I have to leave,” Ashok said, “because I want Ikemmu to survive.”
Ilvani glanced down at the fire circles. She didn’t look happy, but her moods changed so quickly it was hard to tell what she was truly feeling. “Not the best way,” she said.
“But sometimes necessary.”
“Uwan says to give you a message,” Ilvani said. “Guardian, if you want it—equal to Skagi and Cree, equal to all who shared your training.”
Ashok sighed. “Are we back to that again? After everything?”
Ilvani gestured impatiently. “Don’t talk,” she said. “He’s ready. You’re ready. Do you understand?”
“Ready for what?” Ashok said. He could find nothing lucid in the words.
“Uwan always takes things before they’re ready,” Ilvani said. She stared hard at Ashok. “Not this time.”
“You mean, he’ll accept my service without the oath to Tempus?” Ashok said. He could hardly imagine that was what she meant, but the witch nodded.
“The prophecy is fulfilled,” she said, in a tone of finality.
Ashok was stunned. “But … Is Uwan certain? I take no allegiances. I’ll make no secret of where I stand—loyalty and service only to Ikemmu.”
“He was the one to say it,” Ilvani said. “He found the words on his own. They mean something.”
Ashok nodded, but he felt lost. “I don’t know what to do with this box,” he admitted.
Ilvani made a small sound. Ashok, thinking it was laughter, looked up at her, but the woman’s face was composed. Whatever emotion she’d betrayed was well hidden.
“What should I do?” he asked her.
“How can I know that?” she said. “I have too many boxes of my own.”
“You’re right. Thank you,” Ashok said. “Thank you for coming to tell me.”
Ilvani nodded. She closed her eyes as the wind lifted her hair. She drew in a long breath and let it out. “Feels good,” she said.
“What?” Ashok said.
“To see the beginning of something,” she replied. “I’ve seen the end many times.”
They stood in silence, until Ashok heard voices down the bridge from where Ilvani had come.
The witch blew out a frustrated sigh. “I told them to wait. Dogs in heat, they wait for no sign.”
Ashok looked and saw Skagi with his brother behind him. He raised a hand to greet them. “I’m fortunate in my companions,” he said.
“May you always remember it,” Ilvani said quietly, “and keep them safe.” She turned and walked briskly back across the bridge without a farewell. When she reached Skagi and Cree she scowled at them and veered out of their path. She stepped off the bridge and walked on air toward Tower Pyton. With her hands clasped behind her back, she walked above the city and never looked down.
“Thank you,” Ashok whispered, “for going through the Veil with me.”
The brothers were approaching. Ashok could tell them that he was staying. He’d earned the rank of Guardian; Uwan would recognize it before all of Ikemmu. And if the leader held to his word, it would pave the way for the other sellswords and those who did not follow Tempus to join the military, if that was their wish.
Ashok didn’t believe in prophecy. Though it was a start, Uwan’s declaration would not heal the city’s wounds, and it had been Vedoran more than anyone who’d convinced the leader of his error in judgment.
But Ashok couldn’t deny the figure he’d seen in the shadows when he’d been near death. It had looked at him, and in that bre
ath Ashok had known he wasn’t alone. Something—whether Tempus or a power he could not comprehend—watched the shadar-kai from the shadows with compassion. Maybe that force would be enough to help his race survive.
Maybe someday there would be poets, and grand stories of the shadar-kai that would be passed down through the centuries.
Carrying that hope inside him, Ashok turned to greet Skagi and Cree.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jaleigh Johnson is the author of the FORGOTTEN REALMS novels The Howling Delve and Mistshore. She lives with her husband in the wilds of the Midwest, where she enjoys reading, going to movies, and mucking in the garden. You can visit her online at www.jaleighjohnson.com.
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