'I'm not nearly through with you, Thazienne Uskevren,' he warned darkly. 'We are bound, you and I, and the end has not yet been written.' With that, he tossed her dagger aside, and summoned the last bit of his remaining magic. A bright glow filled the dark room. When it finally faded and the dancing stars had left Tazi's eyes, Ciredor was no where to be seen. Tazi was alone with Steorf and a crumbled pile of dust that had been the boy's body.
For a time, there was no sound in the room. Tazi simply knelt over the dead boy's ashes and gently rocked back and forth, hands on her knees. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
She knocked it away and leaped to her feet. 'Don't you touch me,' she warned Steorf through gritted teeth. He looked shocked and weary at the same time. 'You don't have the right to, and I'm sure'-she added a bitter laugh-'my father isn't paying for that.'
'Tazi-' he began feebly, but she didn't give him the chance.
'Just how much is he paying you?' she demanded. 'How much to ensure your loyalty?'
Steorf looked torn. Despite herself, Tazi could see that what he said next cut him to the bone.
'Please don't make it sound so horrible, Tazi. Everyone has a price. You should know that. This is a city for buying and selling. Don't act so shocked. Even you have one.' After a moment, he added, 'I have always been loyal.'
'And how many 'suns' would it take for you to be loyal to someone else?' Tazi turned sharply from him. She would not let him see her like this. It would be the bitterest of defeats, and she refused to lose anything else tonight. Looking down at what was left of the boy, she abruptly changed the subject. 'This must be taken care of.'
Seizing the chance to help, Steorf hastily said, 'Don't worry, I'll see to it that the remains are put to rest.' He moved a step closer to Tazi, but she would have none of it.
'Well, that's what you're paid for, isn't it? To take care of things, and clean up after me?' Not waiting for a response, she absently collected her dagger and stuffed most of the scrolls that seemed so important to Ciredor into her vest. Dimly, she knew she would need whatever information she could gather about him in the days to come. She strode to the door.
'Wait,' Steorf shouted after her. 'Let me accompany you home.'
'Don't bother,' she snarled, without turning around. 'The only thing you'd need to protect me from now is my rage against you.' With that, she left.
Once out in the street, Tazi leaned against a wall, raising her hand to her mouth. The tears were so close, as were a collage of memories: times she and Steorf had spent together, near captures, jaunts, and larks. All of it seemed far away now, as if they were someone else's memories. Everything she had held true was thrown back in her face. She was more alone than ever now.
Somehow she managed to stumble the short way down Sarn Street to Stormweather Towers without being seen by anyone. It would have been hard, if not impossible, to explain her appearance now, looking both like a noblewoman and thief. She moved automatically. When she entered her family home, the party finished long hours past, she dropped into the first chair she found in the darkened parlor on the main floor. It was while she was in this near comatose state that Cale, still cleaning up after the departed guests, discovered her. The sight she presented shocked him mightily.
'Thazienne,' he blurted out, 'what has happened to you?' The sight she presented-torn and bloody, her hair restored to its former length-shocked him into calling her by her first name.
Tazi turned glazed eyes up to his pale visage. 'Oh, Erevis,' she choked out. His pale, gaunt face had never seemed so dear as it did now. But a seed of doubt had taken root, as well. She caught herself before she said anything, and after a moment, she asked, 'Do you have a price, Cale? Aside from what my father pays you for your loyalty and your service, do you have a price?'
Cale was silent. Something had changed the normally laughing girl into something else tonight. He was unsure of how to proceed.
'Never mind, Cale,' Thazienne continued wearily. 'I know you are loyal to us. But I suppose, I must be careful. You could also be loyal to someone else one day.'
She turned from the stunned Cale to carefully climb the grand staircase to her rooms above. Her whole body and soul ached tonight. She wouldn't have cared if anyone had discovered her as she was this evening, but no one did. It was too late in the evening for the rest of the family and servants. She arrived at her rooms unrevealed.
Once inside, she walked to her dressing table and sank onto the cushioned chair beside it. Some part of her mind knew she would have to clean herself up, rid herself of the blood and soil, cut the long tresses that hung in her way. But she was exhausted. She found herself staring at her face in the mirror and not recognizing the woman who stared back at her. The change was more than just the blood and hair; it ran deeper than that. She found herself remembering the boy and how she had ended his life.
Moving slowly, as if underwater, she reached out with her bloody hand to touch the face in the mirror. At what cost, she asked herself quietly, is this life of mine?
The woman in the mirror remained silent.
THE SECOND SON
Dave Gross
Through the dark boughs of the Arch Wood, Talbot Uskevren fled for his life.
Black branches slashed at his face as brambles clutched at his cloak. A hideous force snagged it from behind, snapping his head back painfully. The clasp cut into his throat before tearing away with the cloak. Tal twisted and nearly fell, but his boots dug into the slippery ground, and again he ran. He dared not look back.
The creature was almost upon him. Tal heard its labored breath, felt its massive heat radiating through the darkness. He imagined the vice of its jaws on his neck, then thrust the thought from his mind and poured all his strength into his pumping legs.
He ran toward the only beacon he could see, a bright patch of moonlit clouds at the edge of the wood. If he remembered correctly, the moonlight marked the edge of a clearing. He hoped some of the others had escaped and waited there with spears.
Just as his hopes rose, Tal smashed into a solid branch. The blow slammed him flat onto the ground, blasting the breath from his lungs. His pursuer flew overhead, narrowly missing Tal as it briefly eclipsed the moonlit clouds. The branch that clobbered Tal snapped crisply under the creature's bulk, and the thing crashed to the ground, blocking Tal's path.
Tal couldn't discern the thing's shape, but he felt its coiled energy as it tensed for the attack. Fear gripped his body, but Tal rolled away just as the creature pounced. Too slow, he cried out as claws raked his back.
Tal tried throwing himself to the right, but snarling jaws clamped his arm and shook. Tal flopped as helplessly as a rag doll in the teeth of a vicious dog. He hurtled through the darkness to smash painfully back on the cold winter ground.
As he scrabbled to his knees, another blow buffeted his head. Sparks burst in his skull, and he felt a cool wetness on his scalp. The image of his exposed brain flashed briefly through his mind, and his mouth opened wide to scream, but then he was running again, saving the breath for flight.
Tal could no longer feel his legs, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side. He ran by force of will, by force of terror. He knew the thing was inches behind him, but it was death to glance backward. Not while he was still in the grip of the deadly Arch Wood, where the owlbears were clearly not hibernating after all.
Tymora, the goddess known as Lady Luck, must have heard one of his half-formed prayers, for Tal struck no more trees before exploding out of the choking forest.
He leaped into the clearing in a rapture of hope, only to realize that Beshaba, the Maid of Misfortune, must also have heard one of those prayers, for it wasn't a clearing that lay beyond the darkness.
It was a cliff.
Tal's body turned as he plummeted, and the brief instant of his fall stretched into one long moment of perfect
