Twice, she tried to ask them something and twice they signalled for silence.
The second warning was punctuated by a short cry. The younger of her two companions suddenly clutched at his side where an arrow protruded. Stealth had required that neither of her rescuers wear much in the way of protection and that requirement was proving costly now.
Something thin and sharp appeared in the hand of her remaining guardian. He threw it at the archer who had seemed to materialize down the corridor. Though Erini could not see where it struck its target, the weapon did its work. The archer fell, his hands clutching at his chest.
More soldiers appeared, too many for any one of them to get off a safe shot at the escaping duo, but more than enough so that the odds against the two fugitives were overwhelming. Seeing that, Iston’s man tore off the cloak of his dead companion and shoved it into his mistress’s hands. Pushing her down the corridor, he whispered, “The stables! Head toward the stables! Down this corridor and then turn right at the third one you see! Keep running! It’s the only way, my lady!”
“But you-”
“I do my duty! Run!”
Erini did, but there were more soldiers coming down the other way, cutting her off. As she slowed, trying to find another route, her lone defender went down. Another death on her hands.
Thinking of her hands, Erini suddenly noticed the subtle, familiar tingle in her fingers. How long since that feeling had returned, she could not say. Perhaps if she had kept her wits about her she would have noticed in time to save the others. Perhaps not. In a fatalistic move, Erini turned so that one outstretched hand pointed down each end of the corridor. If the results killed her as well, so be it. These men she felt no pity for. These men must pay.
She might have been influenced by the cloaks that had allowed her two rescuers to fade into their surroundings. The concept struck her as perversely appropriate for those who would play at loyalty and betray their good lords at first chance. They were not men; they were only the shadows of men, less than nothing-and Erini would make them so.
When the first screams rose, she tried to force her eyes shut and keep them shut, but failed, drawn somehow to the hideous tableau playing itself out on each side of her. From her fingers, glittering tendrils slithered forth, like serpents of the purest light, hungry avengers of her pain. As each broke free of her fingertips, they shot unerringly toward the nearest of her enemies. Nothing stopped them. One man put a shield up, but the tendril went through it like a ghost, continuing on unimpeded until it pierced the unfortunate in the chest and buried itself completely within his torso, leaving not the slightest trace of its passing.
As the man scratched desperately at his chest, a light seemed to come from within him, filling his eyes and his mouth with the same glittering illumination of Erini’s creation. While Erini stared, unable to believe in what she herself had released, the light within intensified, becoming so brilliant that its glow shone through the soldier.
The man tried to take a step forward, but his body only rippled, as if lacking substance. For the space of a breath, a walking skeleton was outlined within the thinning frame of his body, then the struggling guard’s legs collapsed underneath him, perhaps because those bones had finally melted away. He fell forward, arms outstretched in an instinctive effort to save himself, but, in a final sequence that would return in Erini’s nightmares, first the hands and then the arms crumbled like ash against the hard surface and blew away. Unhindered, what remained of his torso struck the floor-and scattered into tiny particles that dwindled to nothing.
Not one man escaped that fate. The tendrils moved with the speed and tenacity of a plague, catching them even as they turned to run. By the time the first man had perished, the rest were infected. Even had she wanted to, Erini would not have been able to save them. The young princess, her face a sickly white by the glow of her instruments of vengeance, could only stand where she was, both fascinated and revolted by the results of her spell.
She had wanted something else, something cleaner. Only now did the princess know that there was nothing clean about death, especially death bought about by hatred and anger. They had killed two of her own and possibly the man she loved, but this-this was not what she had wanted. As the last man faded, still trying to remove his executioner from within his body, the last of her anger faded as well.
Erini slumped against the wall and slid down to a sitting position, her gaze focused on, but not seeing, the now-empty corridor where only a few loose weapons and an odd item or two were all that remained of probably a dozen men. Had anyone come now, she would not have fought them. It was as likely the princess would not even have noticed them. Now, she only saw darkness-a darkness she quickly welcomed as the one friend she could trust.
Her head tipped to one side as exhaustion and remorse finally carried her off to the only place she could now find peace.
XV
Fully restored, Darkhorse nonetheless moved cautiously investigating the tent of the sorcerer Drayfitt. He could not feel the presence of Shade, but if there were anyone with the talent to muddle his senses to the point of uselessness, it was that one being who knew him best.
A careful probing of the areas surrounding the tent revealed nothing. There was a trace of strong, violent magic in the air, but such was to be expected when two spellcasters met. It said something for Shade’s abilities that the two men had battled freely, yet no one knew even now that the king’s sorcerer lay dead among them.
An interesting and devastating surprise awaits you all on the morrow, Darkhorse thought, wondering what the loss would mean to the crusade. If Shade was indeed working with the Silver Dragon, a killing as potentially demoralizing as this might send the entire military expedition back to Talak, the last place the drakes would want them, if the eternal had read the situation correctly.
Fairly certain he was not about to enter into a trap but unwilling to put his complete faith in such a belief, the shadow steed trotted quietly down toward the encampment. A portal would have been quicker and probably made discovery less likely, but materializing in an area that his adversary had just departed from was something he did not want to take a chance with this time. Besides, with Drayfitt dead, he faced only human soldiers, men whose weapons were nothing to him.
The tent was not quite on the edge of the camp and Darkhorse slowed as he entered the region. Whole at last, it proved little trouble for him to make a guard’s eyes avert or cause a passing soldier to turn in another direction. A young recruit peeling an apple suddenly dropped his knife and, while he searched the dark ground for it, failed to notice the ebony form that flitted silently past. The shadow steed reminded himself what he had been through already so that the ease with which he now succeeded in his tasks did not create deadly overconfidence. It was at times like that when disaster struck-and Shade was a master of disaster.
Around the tent, the grounds were noticeably deserted. Though a sorcerer was generally invaluable in terms of combat, most of the soldiers, up to and including their officers, preferred, whenever possible, to keep a safe distance from those such as Drayfitt. One never knew what might crawl out of a spellcaster’s confines.
Hmmph! Ice-blue eyes blinked as Darkhorse stared disbelievingly at the display only Shade could have wrought. The hypocrisy of his longtime friend/foe astounded him. I grow less and less enchanted with the true you the more time that passes, dear Shade!
There was no doubt that the warlock had honestly meant this as an honor of sorts, else he would not have taken the care with both the body and the bier that he had wrought. Darkhorse doubted that there had been much remorse; it hardly seemed the way of the new-that is, the old and original-Shade. Still, the stallion wondered how even his adversary could have not seen what he had created. Not a monument, but a mockery.
Drayfitt lay peacefully-the first time the shadow steed could recall seeing him so-with his arms crossed and his worn robes replaced by a fascinating, multicolored garment that the sorcerer would have never worn in life. A false smile graced his lips, obviously the warlock’s doing, as Drayfitt had, in the shadow steed’s limited experience, never been a man to smile freely. This was not the elderly sorcerer but some cruel parody.
The funeral bier was worse. As had been his people’s way, Shade had created what might have been called a typical Vraad monument to opulence. Gilded and decorated freely with what were likely actual gemstones, it seemed more like an attraction in a city bazaar than the resting place of the unfortunate spellcaster. The base, in
