by David Gross
“That’s not a sword,” said Chaney. “It’s a plough with airs above its station.”
“Hmm,” grunted Tal. He hefted the blade in one hand, then extended it toward the heart of an imaginary foe. The point dipped, causing Tal to drop his shoulder to compensate.
“Imperfect!” quipped Chaney in a poor imitation of Master Ferrick, their sword instructor.
Tal grinned. “A little more weight in the pommel would do the trick.” He handed the big sword to Chaney, who wilted under its weight.
“Great gods!” said Chaney. “Why not just use a lamppost?”
“I like it,” said Tal, taking the blade back.
He turned to one of the practice dummies, its surface marred by thousands of cuts, and whirled backward to deal a mighty slash to the target. To his surprise, the blade cleaved through both the sturdy wicker exterior and the iron post that held it up. The mutilated dummy listed heavily to one side, its spine severed.
“Nine Hells!” cursed Chaney. “Remind me never to piss you off when you’ve got that thing.”
Tal gazed appreciatively at the sword and made a low whistle. “Must be enchanted after all,” he said.
“Or maybe the wolf has made you a lot stronger.” He seemed to like that thought and considered it further. “You have been looking rather buff lately, and your beard shows up by noon each day. That has to be something to do with the wolf. In fact, maybe it’s taking over your body a little bit every night, and eventually you’ll—”
“Chaney?” said Tal.
“Yes?”
“Remember never to piss me off when I have this thing.”
“Right, right. But think about it! When that lunatic comes back, you can lop off his other arm.”
“What makes you think he’ll come back?”
“I don’t know. Whatever made him come after you in the first place, I suppose.”
Tal grunted. “Well, you’re right, but I’m not going to wait until he comes looking for me. It’s about time we organized another hunting trip.”
He adjusted his grip and flipped the blade. It made a low whoosh as the blade whirled in a nearly perfect circle. Tal caught the grip neatly, bending at knee and elbow.
“Be careful with that thing!” protested Chaney. “You might be nigh invulnerable, but I might get cut in half.”
“Don’t worry,” said Tal. He wrapped Perivel’s sword in an old padded practice jacket and tied the sleeves to form a crude handle. “I’d never cut you by accident.”
“That’s reassuring,” said Chaney.
Tal clapped Chaney affectionately on the shoulder. He had never so much as slapped his smaller friend in jest. Since they met as boys, Tal had designated himself Chaney’s chief protector, defending him whenever the smaller man’s sharp tongue got them both into trouble.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Tal. “I’m ready for a nap.” He strode out of the dueling hall.
“You’ve been up only an hour or so …” said Chaney, following him. “Oh, I guess you didn’t sleep well, huh?”
Tal nodded. “It’s weird. It’s like I’m dreaming, but I wake up feeling like I’ve been running all night.”
“Maybe you have.”
“In that little cage? There’s no room.”
“I mean, maybe you’ve been pacing all night, trying to get out.”
“Not me, remember,” insisted Tal. “The wolf.”
“Right, the wolf.” Chaney’s tone revealed that he wasn’t as convinced as Tal was about the division between man and beast.
They turned onto the grand hall and saw the house guards posted at the main entrance. Tal gave Chaney a look that meant no more wolf talk. The guards gave Chaney an altogether different look, but they stood aside as Tal and Chaney donned their cloaks and stepped out into the cold winter air. They remained silent until they emerged from the courtyard of Stormweather Towers and stepped onto Sarn Street, heading west.
“You serious about going after Rusk?” asked Chaney, glancing back to make sure they were out of earshot from the Uskevren guards.
“Of course,” said Tal. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I was just thinking of the last hunting trip,” said Chaney glumly.
He was one of only a few of the young nobles who had escaped in time when Rusk and his pack attacked their camp. Tal had not been so fortunate, but at least he survived. Nearly a dozen other minor nobles and servants had never emerged from the Arch Wood after that night.
“This time I know what I’m facing,” said Tal. “Besides, I almost beat him last time.”
“You would have bled to death if Maleva hadn’t woken when she did. A few seconds longer, and no healing spell in the world would have saved you.”
“You could be more encouraging, you know,” complained Tal.
“I could, if I wanted you dead. Don’t forget that Rusk isn’t the only werewolf out there. He had a whole pack with him.”
“True,” said Tal reluctantly, “but he seemed to want me to join his pack, not just to kill me. I want to know more about that.”
“Maybe he changed his mind after you cut off his arm,” said Chaney. “I know I would.”
Tal frowned and nodded. “All right, so hunting for him in the woods might not be the best idea. I still want to know what he wanted with me. Maleva won’t tell me anything.”
“You really think she knows more than she’s telling?”
“I’d bet on it,” said Tal.
“Then why don’t you take her up on her offer?”
Tal squinted down at him. “Join her temple and become some sort of candle-lighting acolyte?”
“Just for a little while,” said Chaney. “Just until they give you the stuff that lets you control when you change.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy,” said Tal. “Besides, it’s one thing to refuse to join a following. It’s a different business to join one under false pretenses. I’ve already got one curse to deal with.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Maybe …” Tal stopped and looked back toward his family’s home. The tallest spires were just barely visible over the other manors they had passed since leaving Stormweather. For a moment he thought about going back, but he knew Thamalon would be looking for him. “Maybe I should learn a little more about Malar and Selûne before I do anything else.”
“Your father’s library?” guessed Chaney.
Tal nodded. “Of course, getting in there without a lecture is the trick. Want to help me slip in again in a few days? He’ll be out of town.”
“Can I be the one to climb through your sister’s window this time?” Chaney darted away, but Tal just sighed.
He made it a point never to beat Chaney, no matter how much his friend deserved it.
CHAPTER 5
THE WINE CELLAR
Tarsakh, 1371 DR
As Darrow’s leash grew longer, he spent more and more time outside of House Malveen. Aside from shopping at the market and listening for gossip at alehouses, Darrow sometimes attended plays to memorize and repeat to his inhuman master. At first Stannis had thought to send him to the opera, which the master preferred. While Darrow was an apt enough conversationalist, especially compared to his master’s other creatures, describing music was beyond his meager talents. The stories and even some speeches from the plays were much easier to learn. More importantly, the plays occurred during the day, making it much less likely that Radu would arrive to find Darrow roaming from House Malveen.
Even Stannis did not like the thought of Radu’s displeasure.
As an added benefit to his visits to the Wide Realms playhouse, Darrow was able to observe Talbot Uskevren. The young man was a far more imposing figure than Darrow had expected. All of the players seemed larger than life on the stage, but Talbot was deceptively tall. Seen alone, from a distance, he looked like any other muscular youth. When he stood beside another man, however, his true size became obvious.
Only one or two of th
e other players came close to his size, and one of them looked more like an ogre than a man. The other was the notorious head of the troupe, the playwright and chief owner of the playhouse. She was a vulgar, pipe-smoking woman whose name, Quickly, was the punch line for half the jokes among the working class. Darrow was not surprised to hear in his eavesdropping that Talbot’s parents did not approve of his involvement with the players.
Most surprising, Darrow discovered that Talbot Uskevren was an appealing fellow, at least on stage. Even when he played the unscrupulous moneylender in Favors and Fivestars, he pleased the audience with his character’s unintentional mockery of his own profession.
Darrow lingered after each performance, watching the players mingle with the audience. Talbot seemed popular among the groundlings, though Darrow noticed that he artfully avoided the overtures of his fellow nobles when they inquired about the health of his family or invited him to meet their eligible daughters. It wasn’t hard for Talbot to escape, for very few nobles attended the plays, and those who did paid extra to sit in the gentleman’s gallery, delaying them long enough for Talbot to see them coming. In any event, the young man seemed far more comfortable with the common folk, much more than could be affected by a noble who practiced slumming as a mildly dangerous diversion.
Sometimes Darrow followed Uskevren and his friends after they left the playhouse. Invariably they arrived not at some exclusive salon or festhall but the public alehouses. Darrow remembered the names and faces of Talbot’s most frequent companions, notably Chaney Foxmantle.
Stannis asked about all the gossip Darrow had overheard each night, even that which had nothing to do with Talbot Uskevren. Darrow tried to remember everything said near him in the playhouse itself and in the taverns afterward. He knew his master was much less interested in common clack than he was in any hint of scandal among the Old Chauncel. Unfortunately, relatively few of the upper class would stoop to being seen at the playhouse. Fortunately, most of their servants were frequent visitors.
The vampire had been absent from Selgauntan society for two decades, but he had an uncanny knack for identifying the children of his contemporaries by Darrow’s reports of the servant’s descriptions. Their scandals delighted Stannis to no end.
“Rilsa Soargyl,” he chortled, enjoying the sound of her voice on his tongue—or whatever it was he had beneath that golden veil. “Every bit the slut her mother was. What else did you hear?”
Darrow relayed the gossip as many times as Stannis commanded, pouring him goblet after goblet of deep red wine. When he was especially pleased with Darrow’s report, Stannis insisted his servant enjoy a drink for himself. The wine was old, dry, and sour, and Darrow did not much like it. He thought at first he lacked the refined tastes of a noble, but later he decided the Malveen cellars were simply long past their prime. Whatever dire magic had transformed Stannis’s dying body had, perhaps, altered or even dulled his once refined palate.
One night Darrow noted that the wire rack that held the bottles was nearly empty. When he informed Lord Malveen, Stannis said, “Fetch us some more from the cellar, beneath the pantry. You will need this.” He removed a tarnished key from his golden veil and laid it on the table. “But first tell me again what you heard about Tamlin Uskevren today. Did you say the girl was pregnant or indignant? I was laughing too hard to hear, I’m afraid.”
As Darrow finished repeating the most recent rumor about Talbot’s older brother, Stannis waved at his veil as his head tipped back in a yawn.
“It is nearly morning, my pet. Let us resume tomorrow.”
Darrow stood and bowed. He had been practicing the bow after observing gentlemen meeting on the street. The gesture still felt clumsy, but it seemed to please his master.
Stannis rose gracefully from the broad couch to glide over and into the grand pool. Once submerged, his dark body broke into a black cloud and sank down to the bottom of the pool. There it gradually faded, oozing through unseen vents and passages to the vampire’s hidden lair.
Darrow assumed that his master slept in the murky depths of Selgaunt Bay during the daylight, rising to feed off the boaters who lashed their vessels together and huddled against the darkness. He also assumed that the master’s spawn were taken from the same source. Should he displease Stannis, Darrow feared, his fate would be the same as the boaters. As he left the River Hall, Darrow touched the coin of Tymora where it lay beneath his livery and whispered a prayer for the goddess to spare him such a fate.
He briefly considered putting off the trip to the wine cellar, for he loathed the thought of entering the pantry. While he had restored the kitchen more or less to working condition soon after his arrival, he had taken one look inside the pantry and shut the door again.
Darrow lit a lamp and approached the door. Rats had gnawed ragged passages at the bottom, letting a faint and earthy stench of decay waft out. Darrow braced himself and opened the door.
He looked in, holding the lamp high. Twenty years ago, no one had taken the trouble to clear out the stores once House Malveen was abandoned. Rats scurried from the light to crouch in the black shadows. From the surrounding shelves, moldering lumps spilled over onto the floor, where rilled fungus grew on twisted furrows of accumulated dirt and gods only knew what else.
Wincing at the sight, Darrow moved the lantern this way and that, daring not step into the room until he had found his destination. The cellar door was all the way in the back. Darrow approached timidly, grimacing at the thought of stepping on a rat or something worse. He fumbled briefly with the lock, then pulled at the door. It moved grudgingly, opening only a foot or so before the scraped filth held it firm. Darrow tried to kick away the blockage, but his nerve broke as the rats scurried over to investigate the new avenue. Darrow retreated before them, pushing through the narrow opening.
His first step slipped away, and Darrow grabbed the door handle to keep from tumbling down the stone stairs. Dark slime had formed on the steps, and there was no railing to hold. For an instant Darrow considered fleeing, but one thought of his master’s burning eyes made him press on. He descended with painful caution, half-crouching over the precious light.
The sound of dripping water greeted him at the bottom, where the stairs ended in a long cellar. Beads of moisture crawled slowly down the walls. Those that did not vanish into the thousand ragged cracks in the stone pooled in the corners or in a great sagging depression near the middle of the room.
All along the left wall stood rusted iron racks. Those nearest the stairs were barren. Darrow raised the lamp to see beyond, but all he could see was the shifting shadows of a thousand empty sockets. He walked farther into the cellar, avoiding the pooling water where he could. Beyond the center racks, he glimpsed the shattered remains of wooden crates. He moved closer to examine them.
Something hissed above him. Darrow spun around, holding the lamp up like a warding talisman. An oily black shape oozed across the ceiling to merge once more with the shadows. Before his eyes could follow it, something else rushed across the floor toward him. It was far bigger than a rat.
Frantically, Darrow raised the lamp, but a heavy blow struck it from his hands. It crashed against the floor, oil spreading in a dark crescent beneath the broken glass as the fire fluttered on the wick. In the dying light, Darrow was nearly blind. Clammy hands clutched his arms and a cold tongue pressed against his cheek, searching. The smell of dead fish and seawater—
Darrow threw himself backward, knocking his head hard against the stone wall. He slid to the floor and felt shards of the broken lamp cut into his elbow. The same motion pushed the feeble wick into the escaping lamp oil.
Three horrid faces leered at Darrow, gradually moving closer after the surprising return of the flame. Their skin gleamed like black oil, reflecting colors where the light fled at its touch. Dull black tongues writhed between long yellow teeth in anticipation of the hot spurt of living blood. Their talons raked out to tear at Darrow’s tunic.
Darrow could not hear his own
scream. It was drowned in the thundering drumming of his pulse as he flailed uselessly against the attacks. He turned to get away on hands and knees, but an irresistible grip held his legs. One of the spawn flipped him onto his back. The third pinned him to the floor by straddling his chest. It reached out with long, half-webbed fingers and ripped away the last remnants of fabric to reach Darrow’s naked throat.
A shriek of agony joined Darrow’s terrified screams. Suddenly the weight was gone from his chest. Darrow opened his eyes and saw that the nearest spawn had vanished. The others still held his limbs, but their fishy eyes stared at his throat, where the coin of Tymora lay glimmering.
Darrow snatched the disk and held it forth. The spawn squealed and hissed, flinching from the sight of a holy icon.
Instantly, Darrow scrambled across the wet floor toward the steps. Heedless of the slime, he fled up the stairs, pushed through the slender opening at the top, and slammed the cellar door shut. Only after the key had turned twice in the lock did he realize he had never ceased screaming.
He stopped then and staggered out of the filthy pantry, where he slowly crumbled onto the floor. There he lay panting until sleep mercifully took him.
“Sometimes I feel …” said Darrow.
From her cot, Maelin looked up at Darrow. His conspiratorial attitude piqued her curiosity.
“What?” she said. “What do you sometimes feel?”
“Sometimes I feel as though I’m as much a prisoner as you are.”
Maelin snorted and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
“It’s true,” he said.
“Pardon me if I don’t weep openly,” she said. “Maybe if you took me to a tragedy at the playhouse, I could squeeze out a tear or two.”
“Look what they did to me,” said Darrow, pulling open the collar of his tunic to reveal the scratches on his neck.
“Then run away,” said Maelin. “Buy a pair of balls next time you go to the market. Maybe then you’ll have the courage to drop an anonymous note to the Scepters that there’s a miniature slave trade going on down here.”