Shadowbane: Eye of Justice

by De Bie, Erik Scott

  And how had Ilira known to take her to the Lair of the Night Masters at all?

  These questions swirled in Myrin’s head as she entered the Purple Lady, looking for answers. Perhaps she would find the elf where she had before: dancing sensuously like a queen among the drunken revelers. Gods, perhaps this time, Myrin might join her.

  What she found in the festhall she truly did not expect.

  She’d grown accustomed to the place quickly. The common room hummed with people and was filled with pipe smoke and babbling conversation. Attractive lads and lasses in daring silks drew in breathless onlookers, and much coin changed hands for a variety of entertainments.

  What surprised her was the man sitting in the middle of the common room, the center of his own empty space. No one dared approach him, likely owing to the huge black axe that leaned against the table near his hand. He was the one man she would never have expected to find there.

  “Kalen?” she whispered, with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation.

  His shoulders hung low and his whole body slumped as though he’d dozed in the chair while he waited. He looked tired, as though he’d not slept in days. As she approached, Kalen straightened and his dull gray eyes blinked. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Heart beating fast, she took a seat across the table from him. “Why didn’t you come to the manor?” she asked. “I was there all day.”

  “Last time, you made it clear I wasn’t welcome.”

  “Ah.” That cooled some of her ardor. Myrin sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “So this is an apology?”

  “No.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “And yes. I should not have said those things to you. They were … they were not the way I felt—feel.”

  “Accepted.”

  He reached out and touched her hand. She could feel his spellscar sparking against her own through their joined hands.

  “What’s the matter, Kalen? You look worried.”

  He bit his lip. “Should I be?”

  “Not nearly as often as you do worry—and no, I’m perfectly well.” She thought of the battle in the Night Master’s Lair and amended: “Aside from some peril you likely wouldn’t believe.” In fact, if she described those events, he would believe her only too well, and then he would really have something to worry about. “I haven’t been idle, you know. I’ve learned—”

  All these words meant nothing, when all she wanted to say was that she missed him and she wanted him to come back. She wanted that more than anything.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Lady Nathalan,” Kalen said.

  Myrin’s heart fell. “What about her?”

  “She’s a dangerous woman, Myrin—a wanted murderess.”

  “This again?” Myrin drew her hand away from his. “You know she was falsely accused. Gods, Kalen, you were there.”

  “Not just in Waterdeep. Here in Westgate.” And so speaking, he dropped a sheaf of papers on the table between them.

  “What’s this?” Myrin asked.

  “Reports, from someone I trust.” At Myrin’s raised eyebrow, Kalen added: “My teacher Levia, in the Eye of Justice.”

  “The same one Rhett was supposed to be meeting?” Myrin asked. “What did she have to say about Rhett? Or can she not find him, either?”

  “Don’t change—”

  “No, Kalen, I will change the subject,” she said. “Why waste your time spying on my friends when you could be out finding Rhett?” She saw pain on his face, which he tried to hide. “Gods. You have found something.” Kalen shook his head. “Tell me, godsdamn it!”

  Kalen paused, refusing to meet her eye. “Rhett’s dead,” he said at last.

  “Oh, indeed?” Myrin clasped her hands tightly in mock anxiety. “You’ve found his body? You’ve poured libations over his grave?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you don’t know, and until you know, you have a duty to him.” Myrin glared. “I can only hope you wouldn’t take it so lightly if I were in deadly peril.”

  She hadn’t meant to say that, but now that she had, she couldn’t take it back. Kalen didn’t seem to have taken it at anything other than face value, though, and he went red with anger.

  “Lightly?” he asked. “If you knew what I have done these past days—”

  “Then tell me,” Myrin said. “Tell me what you’ve been doing, and I’ll tell you the same. We can talk, like we once did.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Well, perhaps there’ll be more than a little shouting involved, but we don’t have to fight.”

  He opened his mouth to object or to agree—she could not say for certain—when a cheer went up in the common room. Ilira had appeared, dressed in one of her daring black gowns—this one with feathers. She bowed to all with considerable grace. At her gesture, wine was poured and the bards of the evening struck up louder music than before. She met Myrin’s gaze and gave her a promising glance, as though she had something important to share with her—and only her.

  Brace was there, too, Myrin saw. Somehow, the sneaky gnome had slipped out of Darkdance Manor and not only located Ilira but had come here with her. It filled Myrin with an irksome sort of jealousy, although she could not say precisely why.

  “I have to go,” Myrin said as she rose. “I—”

  Kalen caught her arm. “Leave her.”

  “What?”

  “She’s a danger to you and to everyone,” Kalen said. “She will take what she wants, then hurt or kill you in the end, just as she does everyone else.”

  Ilira stopped to talk to a well-dressed merchant. By his gestures and his earnest expression, he was praising her in some way, and she laughed politely and touched his arm.

  “She’s helping me, Kalen,” Myrin said. “And even if we find nothing, she’s my friend.”

  “Myrin.” His eyes burned in the dancing firelight. “She killed Neveren Darkdance.”

  “What?” Her thoughts flew apart. “How—how do you even know that name?”

  Kalen flipped open the file to the back, showing a picture of a man who could have been her father. He was a half-elf with dusky skin, just as Ilira had described—a half-drow, possibly. Beneath the image it gave a name—Neveren Darkdance—and beneath that …

  “Disappeared in 1358, the Year of Shadows,” she read. “Suspected foul play. Darkdance Manor damaged in duel. Missing: wife (Shalis), newborn daughter (unknown). Survivor: seneschal (Elevar), blinded and driven mad by event. Suspect: elf called the Fox-at-Twilight.”

  There was a sketch, and it was definitely Ilira. The eyes were different—unlike her all-gold orbs, these had pupils and irises—but there could be no mistake.

  “I don’t believe this,” Myrin said. “Where’s the proof? Where—?”

  “Myrin—she did this. Has she told you a different story? Has she told you anything?”

  “But—”

  Myrin looked over her shoulder, to where Ilira was inspecting a guest’s attire with a critical eye as a group of noble lads and lasses looked on. She was a dressmaker, after all, and Myrin recognized the distinctive cut of the emerald and silver gown the noble lass wore as one of Ilira’s own making. The elf smiled, as though reassuring them it was no trouble at all. The way her golden eyes shifted, however, Myrin thought the smile was really for her.

  “But she’s my friend.” Myrin’s head felt muddy. “There must be a mistake.”

  “Myrin, please listen to me.” Kalen drew her gaze. “Am I not also your friend?”

  “I—” Friend. The word felt like the thrust of a dagger to her stomach. “I don’t—”

  Terror gripped her—nay, something worse: heartache.

  Blue fire licked around the edges of Myrin’s world, and she saw runes appear around the hand on her wrist. Kalen, as owner of that hand, stiffened but could not pull away.

  Ilira detached herself from the nobles, leaving them smiling. She saw Myrin’s distress, and her blithe expression faltered.

  “Myrin,” Kalen said. “I’m your
friend. Don’t—”

  “I don’t—” She clenched her hand tightly to keep from speaking, but the words slipped from her lips regardless. “I don’t want to be your friend, Kalen! I want—”

  She realized everyone was looking at her, and for good reason. She stood in the midst of the common room, lit like a beacon of blue light. Runes covered her arm and reached up her shoulder. She touched her cheek, and it burned intensely hot with blue fire. Indeed, Myrin felt nothing else—not her fingers against her skin, nor the nails of her free hand in her palm. She had drawn blood without realizing it.

  By accident, she had drunk in Kalen’s spellscar.

  She nearly fell, abruptly barely able to feel her legs. She felt like a prisoner in her own thick limbs—a disconnected passenger watching the world wobble around her. With practice, she could learn to wield the reins of her body, but just then it was all she could do to stagger toward the door. She fumbled at her belt pouch for the crystal ball Lilten had given her.

  “Myrin—” Kalen got up to stop her, but a coughing fit seized him and he sank back. She’d seen him cough like that before, but not since before Luskan. Without his spellscar to stave off sickness, he was so weak. She could kill him if she took too much.

  Ilira pushed her way through the crowded common room, and her eyes darkened to black as she summoned her shadow powers. Myrin shook her head. She didn’t want Ilira to reveal herself for what she was—whatever she was. Not on her account.

  Myrin’s orb came out, and she traced a rough circle with her clumsy hand. It expanded rapidly into her shadow door, and she fell backward through darkness.

  Kalen watched helplessly as Myrin’s conflagration and sudden disappearance plunged the Purple Lady Festhall into chaos. Everywhere, patrons shrieked in terror. “Spellplague!” they cried, and “Gods preserve us!” They trampled one another to escape.

  Kalen wanted to do something about it, but he could not move for the pain.

  His spellscar had all but vanished in the wake of Myrin’s touch, filling him with roaring agony. Suddenly his legs and arms burned with soreness, and every wound he had taken in tendays raged back into his awareness. Years of punishment fell upon him all at once, leaving him a quivering mass of scars. He sat limply, nothing but bones coated in shredded flesh, barely stitched together with fraying sinews. His aching teeth ground on edge as the veins in his temples and throat thundered.

  He tried to reach for Myrin as she conjured her shadow door, but crippling pain rushed through his head at the movement. His vision swam, and it was all he could do to keep breathing.

  He saw Ilira standing over him, her gold eyes swirling with black. “I warned you, heir of Shadowbane.” She drew off one of her velvet gloves. “But you—” Then she leaped to the side, avoiding a blast of white light that carved apart a column next to her head.

  “Stand away and down arms!” Levia stepped from the crowd, her mace—emblazoned with the holy symbol of Torm—raised over her head.

  “The Eye of Justice sees much,” Ilira said. “I might have known.”

  Kalen saw past Levia to where Brace stood behind a smoke-stained column, his sword clasped tight against his chest. The gnome wasn’t shouting oaths and insults this time but meant to ambush Levia silently. Kalen tried to warn his teacher but could only cough.

  Abruptly, Ilira looked toward the rear of the festhall, like a hound searching for a scent. Without a word, her eyes turned jet black and she vanished into the shadows of passersby and was gone. Brace also disappeared, and Kalen could breathe a little easier.

  Levia appeared at Kalen’s side. “Let me heal you.”

  He wanted to object, but the pain wouldn’t let him speak. He needed to make an exception and accept magical healing, if he was to help Myrin. A monster had trapped her, and he needed to save her.

  Torm’s soothing warmth flowed through him, and the pain waned. It still hurt like all nine of the Hells, but his limbs were his own once more. The blue fire burned dully, demanding he rise and head toward the rear of the building. He knew it was pulling him toward Myrin.

  Was that what had drawn Ilira’s attention? Did Myrin’s spellscar call to her as well?

  Kalen struggled to his feet. He managed three steps before he stumbled, but Levia caught him. “Kalen, we need to get you back to the Eye—”

  “No.” He closed his free hand around an invisible handle, and gray flames announced the arrival of Vindicator in his grasp. “Let’s go.”

  Myrin plummeted into something damp and soft and was lost to the world for a time.

  A single thought echoed through her bleary mind as she lay stunned in the cold and dank. Perhaps she spoke it aloud—she was not sure. “Godsdamn it Kalen, can’t you trust me?”

  When her senses returned, Myrin found herself in a dampened stack of refuse out in the alley behind the festhall, where not a few days before she’d seen Ilira’s bodyguard bleeding to death. Indeed, there was still a dark stain on the cobblestones where he had died. In asking his mistress for a kiss, he’d chosen love over a peaceful death. And just at the moment, Myrin felt as though she’d done just the opposite.

  She lay limp, her breast heaving with rapid breath, and stared up through blurry eyes. Rain fell on her face, although she couldn’t feel it through Kalen’s spellscar. When she raised a hand glowing with blue runes to wipe the rain away, it felt like prodding herself with a rock.

  “How does he live like this?” Her voice slurred around a thick tongue.

  She’d absorbed some of Kalen’s spellscar before, although never so much.

  “You can do this,” she told herself. “Kalen can do it. Why not you?”

  Myrin focused on her hand, which lay draped over her face as though it had fallen asleep there. If she didn’t move it, she would smother herself without realizing it. In her mind’s eye, she imagined sending warmth and life back up her arm, and in response, the hand awoke once more. Her skin burned, but at least she felt something. She raised her hand in front of her face and marveled at the curl of her fingers—at every tiny pore and hair. Never in her life (not that she remembered, anyway) had she paid such close attention to her hand.

  She woke the rest of her body in a similar fashion, and the effort grew easier with every limb. In the process, she realized that she could control Kalen’s spellscar in a way he seemingly could not. The blue fire objected to her command, but she overpowered it at a thought. The scar hissed under her control like a captured serpent, stilled for the moment but deadly if ignored.

  Could she do the same with any spellscar? She wondered.

  The shadows moved before her, and abruptly Ilira was there. The elf fell to one knee and put trembling hands on Myrin’s shoulders. “What happened? Are you—?”

  Myrin pulled away. “Is it true?” she demanded. “Did you kill him? Neveren?”

  Ilira’s face betrayed no reaction. “I—”

  The door to the Purple Lady burst open, heralding a harried Brace who bore a rapier in either hand. “They’re coming this way,” the gnome said. “We have to move!”

  Myrin waited until Ilira’s gaze shifted to Brace, then reached for her. Startled at the suddenness of the movement, Ilira could not dodge aside as Myrin laid a hand on her bare cheek. Blue runes erupted again down Myrin’s arm, mingling with the runes already in place to make her arm a collage of azure and black ink. Smoke rose around her fingers, but she couldn’t feel any pain—Kalen’s spellscar saw to that.

  “I’ll see it,” Myrin said. “I’ll see …”

  In Ilira’s memory, Myrin found herself in a dark room that stank of blood and sweat. Dark swaths of blood festooned the walls like paint, and the tapestries hung ragged and tattered from the cracked rafters. Dust filled the air, punctuated by choked gags.

  “Shalis.” Ilira fell to her knees by the pool of blood and messy blankets. “Gods.”

  It was beyond bad. Shalis lay in a heap, breathing only shallowly. Blood oozed from a dozen piercing wounds, half congealed a
s it ran down her dark skin. Shalis seemed an old woman as she lay dying, pale and shivering, her skin like ice.

  Ilira reached out to touch her face, and Myrin winced inwardly in expectation. But when Ilira laid her fingers upon the woman’s brow, there was no burning and no death. Ilira had no spellscar in this memory, Myrin realized. How long ago had this been?

  “I’m so sorry, ’Light,” Shalis said. “After what happened with Neveren, I’ve hated you so long, and I—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Ilira took Shalis’s hand between both of hers and pressed it to her cheek. “You were the mother I never had, and I will remember you that way.”

  That made Shalis smile wistfully.

  Ilira’s companions moved in the darkness: one a lithe elf, the other a hulking giant of a man. Myrin knew the elf from another memory she had absorbed a year before: Yldar was his name, and she knew Ilira loved him after a fashion. The giant man seemed made of stone more than flesh, and was striped with red mottling like the rock at a volcano. Growths like precious gems stood out on his skin. He took one knee, inspected Shalis’s wounds, then shook his head.

  “Are you sure, Gargan?” Ilira asked. “You have to be sure.”

  The giant shook his head once more. Darkness fell across his face, and Myrin realized she had seen him before. His was the shadow Ilira now wore as her own.

  “Promise me,” Shalis said, drawing Myrin’s attention back to her. “Promise … that you’ll find her. That you’ll keep her safe.”

  Ilira trembled. “Who?”

  “My daughter. Nev … Neveren’s daughter.” She coughed, and the words disintegrated.

  “Of course I’ll find her. You have my word.”

  “She is lost to me. I think—” Shalis shook her head. “I think she blames me. For Neveren’s death.”

  “I will find her,” Ilira said. “However long it takes. Only tell me her name.”