Shadowbane tap-4

by Eric Scott De Bie

  “Oh yes, sweetling,” she murmured. “That game ends soon.”

  Her other attendants looked at her quizzically-talking to herself was not something Eden did often. She dismissed them with a look.

  After they were gone, she refilled her brandy-made it a double-and chuckled.

  Since that first night she’d seen Kalen sneaking into the city, she’d wondered why he’d come back. It all made its own sort of sense, now that she’d seen the answers written across Kalen’s face with her own eye. The girl had called him and he would protect her with his very life if need be. How better to get him out of the city than suggesting that inescapable danger came toward her-a plague he could neither prevent nor cure?

  Good-bye, brother, she thought.

  “Now,” she said. “If only I could find the Horned One …”

  “Sweetling, you’ve but to ask.”

  The voice came so suddenly that she lost her balance on the edge of the divan. She caught at the sideboard, missed, and fell haphazardly to the floor. Her twisted leg roared in protest, but the pain vanished into the frenzied beat of her heart.

  “Y-you,” she said.

  “Me.”

  The Horned One was a tanned sun elf, tall and slim of stature, with eyes like burnished gold coins. He dressed head to foot in the garb of a dandy. Bright colors stole her eyes away from the comparative drabness of Luskan. From his brow curled a graceful rack of antlers-a sign of favor from the Lady of Misfortune.

  “Interesting that you have that,” he said, gesturing to the platinum coin in her eye socket. “Quite the device. But do you have any power of your own, I wonder?”

  “I–I know who you are,” she said.

  “So do I,” he replied, his voice smooth as silk.

  She could not rise above one knee-his majesty compelled her. He was, after all, the high priest of her faith.

  “Chosen of the Lady,” she said, touching the false eye that was her holy symbol.

  “Stay a moment-Chosen? Oh nay, nay, that reaches much too far.” He cleared his throat. “Besides, the bowing and scraping would just be tiresome. Rise, lass, or you’ll set me all aflutter.”

  He reached down and took her by the shoulders. Though his body did not show it, his arms held great strength and he lifted her to her feet easily.

  “There now,” he said. “As to why I’m here, I’ve come before you, unglamored and undisguised, because you wanted to talk. So talk.” When she could not form words, he added: “For instance, you might tell me why you seek me.”

  “I wish to know what business of the Lady brings you to Luskan.”

  “My own,” he said.

  Eden swallowed. It was hard to think in his presence. “Might I aid you somehow?”

  “No,” he said. “What you can do is not cross my path. In particular, leave the girl Myrin Darkdance be. The others-feel free to dispose of them as you see fit.”

  “The girl?” She had plans for that one, for which her wealthy outlander patron was paying her quite well. “But why, my lord?”

  “I know all about your business with her and I know all about your employer,” he said. “You’ll leave her be or unpleasant consequences will follow.”

  He was beautiful and he was terrible, but no one threatened Eden of the Clearlight, favored servant of the ladies luck, in her own chambers. A wave of anger rose and washed away her fascination with the Horned One, only to replace it with cold scheming.

  “What will you give me, then, to ensure my loyalty?” She reached out and laid her hand on his chest. A moment ago, that had seemed like the height of blasphemy. Now, he was just a man, and she knew how to handle men. Her eyes dipped along his body. “Or perhaps I can give you something?”

  His smile radiated cold. “Your mockery of a church is a disappointment to the Lady,” he said. “Count it a blessing I don’t murder you right here and now.”

  “Do it, if you wish,” she said. “I like it rough.”

  “No doubt.” He drew from his coast sleeve a bound and sealed scroll, one that appeared too big to fit there. “Here is your bribe, Eden One-Eye.”

  “A scroll?” Eden sneered. “And here I offer myself to you, Chosen of the Lady.”

  He stared at her a long, long moment. She felt, suddenly, the weight of his will arrayed against her-he had attempted some sort of magic. It drained away into her two-faced coin, however, leaving her untouched.

  “I had forgotten,” he said, acknowledging the coin. “A clever artifice.”

  He glanced down at her braced leg, which chose just that moment to seize up. She cried out in pain and fell back onto her divan. In falling, her brace snapped neatly in two, the metal biting into her flesh.

  It hurt-gods how it hurt-and yet she found it exhilarating. She had seen him work no magic and yet somehow, misfortune obeyed his whim. What a blessing!

  The Horned One spoke. “I have lived far longer than you, child,” he said. “And in all my centuries, I have loved only one woman. And you are not she.”

  Then he was gone, as though he’d never been.

  Eden fell prone on her divan, stunned. The Horned One himself, in her private chambers! It didn’t seem real, that such a minor servant of the Lady should be so honored. His presence filled her with a pleasure she could not explain.

  Yet, he had offended her grievously-rejecting her and making demands on her. For this, she would have revenge on him, favorite of the Lady or no.

  With trembling fingers, Eden opened the scroll and scanned its contents. At first, the dark runes startled her. Then her excitement grew. And grew.

  So the Horned One didn’t want her to impede the girl-Eden could cope with that instruction. But gold was gold, and the outlander who wanted her had promised much of that. She simply had to keep her hands clean of the business: time for Toytere to do it all himself. If she’d been right about the Fury inside of him, she knew just how to do it. This scroll would help.

  But first-

  “Come,” she called.

  A secret door opened, admitting her favorite sentry. Compared to the Horned One, he was a mere brute, but at least he was hers. “Me lady?”

  “I’ve just had a brush with death and it has left me … unfulfilled.” Eden clapped her hands sharply. “Take off your breeches.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  26 KYTHORN (HIGHSUN)

  When Kalen returned to the Drowned Rat, the sun was high. The gang ruffians were mostly there, bragging of conquests that night or keeping a low cloak to hide their failures. Toytere took his leave to take care of one thiefly matter or another. Any other day, Kalen might have considered watching him, but at the moment, he had another goal.

  Eden. Manipulative, scheming, dangerous Eden.

  Eden, who had let slip no opportunity to frame him for stealing food, to add rotted rats to his stew, or to put live spiders in his bed.

  Eden, who had ever hated him for reasons he could not name.

  Despite all this, he’d loved her after a fashion-really, he’d had little choice. Their mother had scarcely known his name most of the time.

  Kalen had been very young at the point their mother drank and drugged herself to death. Rather than stay to care for a brother she’d never loved, Eden had charmed and slept her way into an adventuring party and turned her back on Luskan. Kalen, then only a lad of six, had fallen in with a harsh crowd, including Toytere with his filed teeth. If he hadn’t met Cellica-Toytere’s compassionate and sensible sister-he might have become just as bad as Eden.

  That Eden had returned and now ran the greatest of Luskan’s Five troubled him to no end. The fact that her gang held a semblance of respectability about it made resisting them all the harder. The Eden he’d seen today, with her protestations of reverence in “the Lady,” crossed his earliest memories of her. Perhaps she’d truly changed.

  Perhaps.

  “Her Majesty said what?” one of the Rats shouted.

  Kalen turned his attention to the bar. There, Flick engaged on
e of the Dead Rats in a battle of will.

  “You’re to take these here turnips and things down to Old Shim’s at the dock,” Flick said. “Them youngins is low on food, what with the plague and all.”

  “But-but them’s our rations!”

  Rations. Kalen’s stomach growled even if he didn’t feel hunger. He welcomed the reminder to eat. Flick had taken charge of the larder-a better quartermaster Kalen had never met outside the Guard.

  What caught his attention, however, was what Flick said next.

  “Orders of Her Majesty,” Flick said. “You take this food and you share it, understand? And you don’t demand no payment, neither.”

  The Dead Rat stared at her as though she’d grown a second and third head. Kalen couldn’t blame him. Generosity? From the gang?

  “Now get.” Flick shoved the crate into his arms. “Before I gets me cudgel!”

  The man ran, crate bouncing against his chest. Flick gave a contented smile, which evaporated as soon as she saw Kalen watching. “Bah!” she said.

  “I’ll be godsburned,” Kalen said. “She really did it.”

  Myrin had spoken of taking a stand-of teaching the Rats to do the right thing-but he’d never dreamed she could actually do it. He felt a lightness in his chest, stirred by Myrin’s own perseverance. Was it truly possible?

  Then he remembered Eden.

  He had to get Myrin out of the city soon.

  Rhett lay slumped against the wall outside Myrin’s door, snoring deeply. He must have been watching her for hours to be so tired.

  This Kalen admired. Few men willingly stood guard until they dropped from exhaustion. What would Gedrin Shadowbane, the first of the line, say of this one?

  Likely that the boy talked entirely too much.

  At his belt, Vindicator felt warm, as though reacting to Rhett’s proximity.

  “I’m glad you like him,” Kalen said, both to the sword and the sword’s old wielder.

  Myrin sat in the room, surrounded by floating images. Cross-legged, she floated several hands off the bed. She moved images back and forth, mumbling to herself.

  “This,” she said. “No, like this. No, I seem younger here …”

  She sounded bone-weary, her voice crackling as though she’d had nothing to drink in days. She looked thinner than usual-ragged.

  “Myrin,” Kalen said. “Do you-?” No, that wasn’t the right question. Not yet. He would begin gently. “What are you about?”

  “Well met, Kalen,” Myrin said. “Just a little world-rending magic. Nothing serious.”

  “I see.” He couldn’t tell if that was meant for a jest, but decided not to press. Kalen pointed at the tiny Myrins sculpted of her magic. “And those?”

  “Umbra’s memories … and others. I just can’t decide where to place them.”

  “Memories?” Kalen asked.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Umbra had many memories of me. We were lovers, I think.”

  “Lovers?” At his side, his hand made a fist so tight that blood trickled. When Kalen noticed, he loosened his fingers. “Is that what you saw? Love-making?”

  “Yes, or perhaps we were interrupted before we could, I don’t really know,” she said. “But the point is, he knew me over a period of time-he saw me grow and age.”

  “Right.” Kalen looked at a plate of hard cheese and black bread left untouched on the bed. “Have you eaten anything today?”

  “What a completely irrelevant question,” Myrin said. “The best one is this-look.” She pointed toward a central image: Myrin, blushing, looking darling as ever, her eyes sparkling. Her lips moved, but the images conveyed no sound. “He told me my age-I was twenty in that moment. Twenty! Only”-she frowned-“I don’t know how long ago that was. And I look the same age in all these other memories.”

  “But you were twenty,” Kalen said. “For certain?”

  “I said it myself, in the memory,” she said, her voice wavering. “It had to have been years ago, however-before whatever happened to Umbra to break him. The Umbra who remembered her-I mean, me-was young. Handsome, or at least not mad. I might be older than I thought.” She gave him a devious smile, one that betrayed a certain madness that came with exhaustion. “Maybe I’m older than you, fancy that?”

  It was time. “Myrin, do you want to talk about it?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “It?”

  “What happened to Umbra.”

  “Oh.” She looked away. “No.”

  He thought he smelled wine on her breath. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yes.” A half-empty wine bottle sat on the sideboard.

  “And you haven’t eaten?” Kalen frowned. “You need to rest.”

  “Pah!” Myrin turned back to her images, looking over them again. “Rest is for those who know themselves,” she said. “I’ve discovered something very important and I’ll not rest until I-damn!” One of the miniature Myrins wavered and faded. “I can’t concentrate to maintain so many images at once. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Listen to your body.” Kalen glanced at his numb hands. “And be glad it speaks.”

  “My body tells me less than the memories do.”

  “Then I’ll tell you,” Kalen said. “You’re worn out. You need to eat, drink, and rest.”

  “No I don’t.” She veritably trembled. “I need to do this! I need-”

  “Myrin, you’re allowed to be upset,” Kalen said. “You just killed a man.”

  “That’s debatable,” she said. “Whether I killed him, I mean.”

  “Myrin.” Kalen took her shoulders in his hands, seizing her attention. “Rest.”

  Myrin twisted away. “Did you know you wouldn’t turn to dust when you touched me?”

  Kalen shrugged. He hadn’t even thought about it.

  “Well.” Myrin broke their linked gaze. “Fine-I’ll drink something. Here.”

  She put out her hand and a half-drunk bottle of wine floated to her. She caught it and tipped it over her mouth.

  “Easy!” Kalen took the bottle away after she drained two big gulps. “Know your body and its limits.”

  “I know my body,” Myrin said. “I just-I want to know me!” Myrin’s images swirled. She had to assert her will to pull them back into order. A vein bulged at her temple. “These memories are who I am, don’t you see? Look at this one … and this!”

  She waved two images forward-the blue-gleaming girl she’d been in the alley in Waterdeep, wreathed in flame, and another Myrin, crouching and struggling to hold a magical shield against a necromantic assault.

  “I hardly recognize those women,” Myrin said. “I mean, that’s me, but look how powerful I am. Can you imagine, Kalen, if I could unlock that power? How much good I could accomplish!” Her words slurred as she spoke. “Kalen, I feel dizzy.”

  Her images vanished. She reeled and might have fallen onto the bed if he hadn’t caught her in his arms. She murmured, and he lowered her to the blankets.

  “It hurts, Kalen,” she said. “Why does it hurt so much?”

  “Killing should never be easy,” Kalen said.

  “That’s just it,” Myrin said. “I didn’t kill him. He … he was carrying something inside him, and … I just wish I could remember!”

  “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Kalen said.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “Perhaps I’m being a fool. This city, Toytere … Gods, you must think I’m a fool.” She sagged back and covered her face with one hand.

  “I don’t,” Kalen said. “I don’t understand why you’d trust Toytere, who’d sell you for a few silvers, but neither do I doubt you. You must have a reason.” He thought of Flick instructing food to be sent to the needy. “You’ve made me believe.”

  Myrin offered a wan smile. “I have to believe people can change,” she said. “It’s like Rhett said: you cannot expect a man to become better than he is, if you do not trust him. And I have to trust you or …”

  “You mean Toytere,”
Kalen said.

  Myrin furrowed her brow. “What?”

  “When you say ‘you,’ you mean Toytere.”

  Myrin gave him a faraway look. “I’ve-I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “You need rest.” He pulled the light blanket over her.

  “Aye, that might help.” She put out her hands. “My grimoire, please.”

  Kalen noted her spellbook, bound in leather dyed bright pink. He smiled at her resolve, even if he was not about to give her that book. “You need rest, not spells.”

  “Ooh!” She stuck out her tongue. “Just a little reading before sleepies.” She clasped her forehead. “Gods, did I really just say that? Out loud?”

  “Friends do not let friends weave world-destroying magic from their cups.”

  “Heh!” Myrin hiccupped loudly. She covered her mouth. “Sorry.”

  Kalen stood but Myrin caught his wrist. Power tingled in her fingers. Even he, with his layers of dead flesh, could feel the warmth of her touch.

  “Is that what we are, Kalen?” she asked. “Friends?”

  “What else?” Kalen pulled the blankets up to her chin.

  “Well …” Myrin pursed her lips. “Do friends lie next to friends who’ve had too much to drink while they go to sleep? And hold them very tightly?”

  He stared at her a long, long moment, fighting to find the right words.

  Finally, he brushed an errant blue hair out of her eyes. “No,” he said.

  “No?” She gazed at him, saddened. “Are you sure?”

  He sat beside her and put out his arm. “They do, however, sit next to friends who’ve had too much to drink. Just until they fall asleep.”

  “Oh.” Myrin smiled wanly. “Well then, some of that, if you will.”

  She settled into the crook of his arm, her head resting comfortably on his stomach. He couldn’t feel her exactly-not physically-but his spellscar eased as though content, making him more comfortable. She radiated a warmth and ease that made him sleepy as time passed. His worries about Toytere, Eden, and this wretched city drifted, seeming to lose importance as he listened to her steady breathing. He trailed his fingers along her back. She murmured something, then snuggled into him and relaxed further.