Shadowbane: Eye of Justice

by De Bie, Erik Scott

  Myrin also heard a sound like one stone falling on another, although from a great distance. The ground shivered a bit under her feet with each stone’s sound. It came again and again in an unexpected but steady rhythm, like a poorly functioning heart.

  Ilira nodded to Rujia, who approached them. “I heard what she said earlier, about an ‘inevitable betrayal.’ You heard it as well, but said nothing. Do you agree with it, then?”

  “What do you mean?” Myrin asked.

  “That I’m a treacherous, deceitful seducer,” Ilira said. “I am, of course, but I would never do that to you. You have to know that.”

  “Oh.” Myrin wasn’t sure she didn’t want some of those things, although she could do without the treachery aspect.

  “Myrin, I meant to betray the Night Masks, but there was a purpose to it, and it saved a great many lives.” Ilira put her gloved hands on Myrin’s shoulders. “Do I seem treacherous?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but I …” Myrin met her eyes. “I trust you.”

  Relief came over Ilira’s face, and she might have spoken were it not for the buzzing sound that filled their ears at that very moment. Myrin recognized the feel of waking magic, and looked to a small raised dais pulsing with green radiance. Brace stood before the platform, studying it in obvious fascination.

  “Damn and burn,” Ilira said. “Trust the gnome to trigger the trap.”

  There was a blast of reaving lightning, and Brace cried out in pain. His body contorted in the shock, and the crackling energy drew him into the circle. Myrin watched, startled, as the magic whisked him away. “Teleportation?”

  A scowl turned Ilira’s lovely face into a harsh mask. “That leads into the Night Masks’ audience chamber,” she said. “Gedrin never made it there, so it could still have traps.”

  “Why do we wait?” Myrin said. “We have to help him.”

  “You saw the lightning. It’s a warding sigil Orbakh drew to thwart anyone using the circle without permission. Without his blessing—”

  “That doesn’t matter.” Her recent vow never to choose safety while one of her companions suffered came back to Myrin. “Will it kill us outright? Is Brace dead?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then we go,” Myrin said. “Right now.”

  Behind them, Rujia was watching them carefully, her sword in hand.

  After a heartbeat’s hesitation, Ilira nodded. Her eyes turned jet black, heralding her shadowdancing powers. “Prepare yourself. This will hurt.”

  And with that, she leaped through the shadows into the sizzling magic. Sure enough, the lightning struck and her body jerked taut. She vanished in the teleportation circle.

  Myrin and Rujia shared a look, and the deva nodded. Myrin plunged into the magic.

  The crackling lightning set every inch of her skin tingling. She expected pain, but it did not hurt. Instead, the magic caressed her like a lover’s fingers, and she shivered.

  Then she was falling backward through darkness, and abruptly she landed somewhere else—somewhere filled with loud, resonant sounds that made the air shake around her. Something strong was hammering at something very solid. The whispers she’d heard became a chorus of gibbering, damned souls all around her.

  She fell to one knee, disoriented but unhurt. Brace and Ilira both lay at her feet, the gnome seemingly senseless, while Ilira gasped and coughed. As Ilira curled in on herself in pain, a sliver of pale flesh appeared between her leather hauberk and belt. Upon her flesh was inked something in bright, vivid gold. Another tattoo?

  “Mother Mystra, are you well?” Myrin asked.

  “No,” Ilira said. “Be wary. Orbakh’s changed this room. It—”

  That slam of stone on stone came again, deafening in its proximity. Myrin looked up and saw what must once have been an audience chamber with a great throne and four smaller seats. One of these seats was replaced with a great stone coffin, the lid of which shivered from blow after blow. From inside.

  “That—that’s one of them,” Ilira said wearily. “Phultan, Duke of Whispers, he … he never liked me.” Then she collapsed.

  As Myrin watched, the coffin burst open, and the whispers became screams of agony.

  PART FOUR:

  FRENZY UNTO DEATH

  The Tharchions of Thay once held dances that would end in death for those slaves who danced poorly.

  After the rise of the necropolis, these rituals were not abandoned, as one might expect under the rule of Szass Tam. Instead, the necromancer king insisted they continue, with only some of the slaves being alive—and others undead.

  Now, dancing poorly meant becoming a meal for those who danced well.

  Catalan the Mad

  Horrors of the Unapproachable East,

  Published in the Year of the Fourth Circle (1474 DR)

  NIGHT, 30 FLAMERULE

  GRAY FLAME FLASHED AS VINDICATOR CUT IN, BUT KALEN ducked and parried with the black haft of Sithe’s axe. He drew the weapon in the same motion, shoved Levia away, and swiped at his opponent’s legs. The imposter leaped straight up and kicked Kalen high in the chest with enough force to make him stagger back.

  The summer rain had not had time to soak into the roof tiles, so it pooled atop the greasy wood, making balance nigh impossible. Kalen kept his feet firmly under him, his knees wavering. He flicked rain from his hood. “If that’s you, Rhett, I’m very sorry about this. If you aren’t Rhett, then I’m really not.”

  Wordless, the imposter rushed him, but Kalen lunged past, meaning to come around his flank. Whoever he was, this Shadowbane certainly had speed on his side and he used it to dance out of Kalen’s trap. The rain hardly seemed to trouble him.

  They ended up facing each other across half a dozen paces, on equal footing on the slanted roof. The rain pounded on Kalen’s shoulders as he raised the axe over his head and set it spinning, as Sithe had done. In reply, Shadowbane raised Vindicator in both hands.

  “Kalen, wait!” Levia said from a few paces down the roof. “You don’t understand.”

  But Kalen was past words—past hesitation. This man who wore his helm and wielded his sword—the one Gedrin had bequeathed him—could well be the man who had killed Rhett. He almost certainly wasn’t Rhett himself, and if he was, well … Kalen would give him the duel he had started. He vowed to the Threefold God that this foe would fall under his steel.

  Answering his prayer, divine plate armor shimmered into being around him, just as Shadowbane rushed forward with an overhead slash.

  “Impatient,” Kalen murmured.

  He caught Vindicator with the spinning axe and brought the haft around with both hands, wrenching the blade viciously from Shadowbane’s hands. Following the same motion, he came around with a slash at chest level, but his leather-armored quarry leaped clear of his strike. Shadowbane cartwheeled back on one hand, the other hand wide for balance. Flames spread around his fingers and when he landed back on the roof, Vindicator was again in his hand. Rain seared into steam as it fell on the blade.

  “Clever,” Kalen said.

  Silently, Shadowbane beckoned him forward.

  Kalen didn’t disappoint. The power of his god filled him, and he bounded across the rain-slick rooftop with a speed no mortal should know and slashed the jagged axe at Shadowbane. His alacrity took the imposter by surprise, and Kalen managed to catch him with a withering chop that drove him to one knee. Shingles shattered from the force and skittered off into the night. Kalen brought around the axe for another strike but his spellscar chose that moment to numb his legs, and he faltered. The narrow opening was all Shadowbane needed—he danced back across the roof, seemingly unhindered by the acrobatics.

  “Anytime you’d like to help,” Kalen muttered to Levia.

  His teacher stood at the edge of the roof, seemingly uncertain. She looked from Kalen to the imposter and back, her fingers white on the grip of her mace.

  He had only a heartbeat before Shadowbane bounded back toward a crooked turret that boasted a dragon-shaped weathe
rvane, and then he vanished into its shadows. Kalen tried to see where he might have gone, but the cold certainty of an incoming strike filled him. He threw himself forward as a sword seared across his back. The divine armor stopped most of the cut, but he felt Vindicator’s flames pierce his flesh despite his numbing spellscar.

  Kalen tumbled forward and fell to one knee. Blood dripped down his arm from where Vindicator had opened his shoulder. The gray plate looked rent, as though it were real armor rather than divine power. Shadowbane stood just behind where he had been, having emerged seemingly from his shadow. Was he a shadowdancer, like Ilira?

  “Who are you?” Kalen demanded.

  The imposter offered only that same inviting gesture in reply.

  Slick with sweat in the summer rain, Kalen wished that Myrin had come along. With her magic, they could be winning this fight. He hoped she was having a better night than he.

  Sweat froze on Myrin’s neck and she could see her terrified breath steaming before her.

  Until that moment, when the vampire burst forth in a chorus of shrieks, Myrin had held her calm. Now, she had the sudden urge to make enough water to soak her new gown.

  The vampire—Ilira had called him Phultan, Duke of Whispers—was horrid. Bard’s tales often painted such bloodsucking creatures as handsome and seductive creatures that promised lascivious pleasure for those who fed them, but not so Phultan. He might once have been fat—a jolly merchant criminal lord—but now his bulk hung off his bones like gray-white robes far too large for him. Greenish lesions riddled his desiccated skin, which leaked yellow-white pus rather than blood. There was no blood, and had not been in a long time—decades, or even a century.

  Myrin realized she was staring. She should be summoning her magic, drawing out her orb, or at least trying to flee, but she could not move. She could do nothing but stare in abject fear, listening as the mystic chorus of whispers became screams.

  Phultan spoke incoherent words ripped apart by hunger and madness. His eyes fixed upon Ilira, and his parchment-thin lips drew back around black gums and a jaw like a bear trap. His fangs seemed more like serrated daggers than teeth, and one was broken off. The black talons of one hand clicked against one another, while the other held a wand crafted of bone.

  The vampire looked down at Ilira. “Little Fox—Venom’s pet that brought the sun.” A black, withered tongue scraped around his teeth. “I see you. I see—”

  “See me, creature!”

  A gleaming sword swept across and bit into the side of Phultan’s head. The vampire staggered aside and Rujia stepped over Myrin. Somehow, the deva had passed harmlessly through the teleportation circle, just as Myrin had. Perhaps the magic had ebbed after striking Ilira and Brace so hard. Whatever the explanation, the deva gave Myrin a cold look, then followed Phultan to keep her sword between the vampire and her fallen allies.

  Phultan made a sound, equal parts laughter and snarl. The wound in his head gaped open, but no blood ran forth and he did not seem in the least bit slowed. Rujia blasted the creature full in the face with a lance of astral flame, which the vampire shook off. The magic lingered around Phultan—a rune crafted of silvery light—but it seemed to amuse rather than trouble him.

  “Oh, I’ll deal with you, Many-Lives. I will.”

  Phultan gave a choked gurgle of laughter. He bounded away, with an impossible dexterity for his grotesque body, and vanished in a swirl of invisibility magic. The vampire’s laughter filled the chamber, punctuated by hungry snarls. The screaming magic died down into the same whispers that Myrin had heard before—voices that promised pain and doom.

  Somehow, even though it presented an unseen and therefore greater threat, when Phultan disappeared, Myrin could shake off her terror. As Rujia stepped back and forth, casting her defense wide for the unseen enemy, Myrin patted Ilira’s shoulder to rouse her. “Ilira! Wake!”

  The elf moaned. Blood trickled from between her lips.

  Myrin scrambled over to Brace, who breathed shallowly but steadily. She laid her bare hand on his arm, and blue runes swept up her skin. She looked into his mind and soul, reached through him for his magic. When the gnome had spoken earlier of his father telling him to be a bard, it had been true: his thoughts took the form of loud songs and the words of an incorrigible braggart, connected by rainbow curls of magic. He fought with the force of his personality, rather than his arm, and Myrin found … his voice. This she drew into herself, stealing it with blue fire.

  He could heal with words, and thus she could heal with words.

  When Myrin broke contact with Brace, magic filled her mouth with a certain vocal majesty. These words, however, took a distinct flavor all Brace’s own.

  “Get up, you scum-guzzling, Bane-blessed bastard of a gnome!” she cried.

  Magic flowed into Brace, and he coughed into wakefulness. His eyes focused on Myrin. “Why me?” He nodded to Ilira. “Why heal me, and not her?”

  “You’re better at healing than I.” She rose. “Also, I have a vampire to slay.”

  “Right you are, lady.” The gnome clambered toward Ilira.

  Myrin turned to where Rujia kept up her defenses alone in the dark chamber, constantly turning to guard against the unseen vampire. The deva gave her a considering look, then beckoned her to come near. Silently, Myrin stepped toward her, and they stood back to back.

  “So long since the Master locked me here.” The vampire’s voice echoed from every wall of the round chamber. “So long without it.” The vampire squealed in hunger and lust. “Oh, give it to me. I promise I’ll love you—just give it to me.”

  There was no question what he meant—especially not with the way Myrin’s heart thundered in her throat. Blood. Their blood.

  Myrin shivered, but Rujia touched her shoulder. “No fear,” the deva said.

  The words comforted her—and more important, they bolstered her confidence. She thought of Kalen and let the fear flow out of her. “Make of myself a darkness,” she murmured. “No fear, no pain—a darkness where there is only me.”

  Phultan laughed out in the blackness—somewhere. Waiting. Myrin could hear—could feel him casting empowering spells on himself. He was toying with them, enjoying their fear.

  No more of that, then. Myrin drew out her crystal orb and searched the memories she’d absorbed for a spell to remove Phultan’s advantage. They could not fight something they could not see … she remembered herself, her eyes glowing brightly as she searched the darkness. And as though seeing made it so, two tiny lines of runes traced down from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks. She spoke forgotten but familiar words, and suddenly the darkness brightened.

  She saw everything differently. Her allies glowed with various magical treasures. Ilira’s armor, cloak, boots, and gloves were all enchanted, as well as the black silk mask she still gripped tight in one hand and her bracelet, both of which were mightier than the others. Brace had fewer such treasures, but his duplicating sword glowed, as did a ring on his hand. She could see all as it truly was, and the vampire’s invisibility would mean nothing to such vision.

  “Where is he?” Myrin asked, scanning the room. “Where—?”

  Then she saw Rujia, standing at her side, and was shocked to silence. What her truesight saw … Her face …

  “What is it?” Rujia—that is, the creature that called itself Rujia—held Rujia’s sword loosely, but magic burned around its free hand, ready to be used. Possibly on Myrin.

  Phultan loomed out of the darkness and his claws swept toward Rujia’s head.

  “Down!” Myrin threw a swath of hungry crimson flames as the deva ducked, and the arcane fire immolated Phultan’s hands. The vampire hissed and lunged away, but now Myrin could track him with her truesight. He veritably blazed with the various enchantments he’d laid on himself, all of them as translucent as the spell Rujia had laid over herself. Phultan rushed toward where Brace recited healing limericks to Ilira. He reached for the gnome, his mouth like a yawning chasm of blades. Myrin drew in brea
th for a warning.

  Then Ilira’s shadow rose up from around its downed mistress and struck Phultan full in the chest. The vampire staggered, his loose folds of skin flapping around like a sodden cloak.

  When she had seen the shadow before, Myrin had thought it had seemed like a bare outline of nightmare proportions, its limbs warped with barbs and spines. Through her true sight, though, it took the more humanoid form of a hairless giant, shoulders and arms studded with knobbed growths. It—he, Myrin realized with a start—stood protectively over his mistress.

  “Have her, Exiled One, and welcome.” Phultan licked his jaws again with his black tongue. “I’ll have softer flesh—warmer blood.”

  He lunged faster than a man should move, and within a heartbeat he was on them. At Myrin’s gasp, Rujia conjured a lance of witchlight in her hand, but Phultan caught her arm and turned the magic on Myrin. At the same time, his wand flashed and a concussive blast sent the wizard sailing. Crushing pain filled her skull as she flew backward, and she fell, stunned. Rujia’s magic shattered Myrin’s truesight, and she could see little of anything.

  Myrin couldn’t say how much time passed—a heartbeat or an hour—but finally she gathered her wits. Rujia was screaming. Phultan stood two paces away, holding his hands aloft and gnashing his teeth in the air between them. It was only when blood spurted into the air from an unseen source that Myrin realized Rujia had turned invisible—for all the good it did. She couldn’t see what the vampire was doing to her, but she could hear it.

  It gave Myrin the moment she needed. She closed her hand around her crystal orb and sent a wave of force at the vampire, aiming as best she could so as not to strike the woman she couldn’t see. Luck was with her, and the vampire staggered back toward his coffin. Myrin heard a thump and a moan and realized Phultan must have dropped the invisible Rujia.

  Teeth gritted, Myrin leaped to her feet, charged forward, and raised her orb over her head. Fire surged around the orb, and she brought it down upon the reeling vampire with a cry of rage worthy of Kalen. Phultan shrieked, and Myrin poured all of the fire she could muster into his rotting body. Finally, the vampire collapsed next to his coffin.