aristocrats like Talbot, who desired a refuge away from their kin. Taverns, theaters, and street performers. Open-air marketplaces, shops, manufactories, warehouses, and strolling vendors. A host of wagons and pack animals that, when loading, unloading, or simply creeping along, often slowed traffic to a crawl.
Just before turning off Rauncel's Ride, Shamur glanced back for one last look at Stormweather Towers, her home and prison for more than two decades. She felt a twinge of jumbled emotion, but didn't bother trying to understand it. It didn't matter. Nothing did, nothing but hate and the cold weight resting against her leg.
As the Uskevren neared the north wall, the homes and shops became more modest. Once they passed through Klaroun Gate, however, they found themselves atop the most imposing structure in all Selgaunt: the High Bridge. Arching far above the wide blue waters of the River Elzimmer, lined with houses, taverns, and emporia, including its famous fish market, the stone span was an important precinct of the city in its own right, and, for commoners, one of the more desirable addresses. People liked to live there for the view.
At the other end of the bridge lay Overwater, where traders from other cities and lands stayed while conducting business with their counterparts in the city. It was a noisy confusion of inns, tents, and paddocks, of strange clothing, accents, smells, and customs. To most of the smug, sophisticated citizens of Selgaunt, Overwater was a pit of gaucherie if not outright barbarism. Shamur, however, had once wandered the Dalelands and the southern shores of the Moonsea, and she generally enjoyed the foreign sights and sounds to be found there. They reminded her of better times.
Yet that afternoon they didn't attract her in the slightest. She and Thamalon only had a little farther to ride, and that realization filled her with a feverish impatience. She touched her mount with her spurs, and the spirited black mare plunged forward, scattering a flock of squawking chickens that had wandered out into the road.
Thamalon cried, 'Ho!' and galloped after her. In a trice they left the confines of Overwater, and thus, Shamur reflected, Selgaunt as well. She'd departed the city of her birth once before, and, against all expectation, eventually returned. This time, however, she was certain she would never see the place again.
She led Thamalon off the broad artery of trade that was Rauthauvyr's Road, across snowy fields shining almost painfully bright in the light of the westering sun. At last they came to a patch of woods. Stirred by a breeze, the leafless branches of the oaks and maples scratched feebly at the sky.
Shamur took a deep breath, steadying herself. Making sure her rage wouldn't seep into her voice, for it was becoming harder and harder to maintain control.
'Why don't we leave the horses here? They'd have a difficult time trying to move through the trees.' In reality, she wanted to make sure Thamalon wouldn't have the opportunity to scramble onto the roan and flee.
'Whatever you say,' he replied. 'You're the guide on this expedition.'
They dismounted and tied the animals. Cautious as usual, her husband removed a horn lantern from his saddlebag, just on the off chance they might find themselves still in the woods when darkness fell. Shamur reflected that he was wiser than he knew. One of them would indeed remain there through the night and perhaps forever after.
She led Thamalon into the trees. The afternoon was colder and darker in their shadow. It seemed quieter as well, as if the snow crunching beneath their boots, the susurrus of their breath, and the occasional rustle or snap of a branch were the only sounds left in the world.
The sky was darkening by the time they entered the clearing she'd selected for her work. A hidden arena far removed from all his minions, where no one would see or interfere.
'We're here,' she said.
Thamalon peered about. Standing behind him, Shamur unfastened her cumbersome cloak and let it drop to lay on the snow like a pool of drying blood. The winter chill bit into her flesh, but she reckoned exertion would warm her soon enough. She lifted her skirt, removed the broadsword she'd concealed beneath it, unsheathed the blade, and discarded the scabbard. It would have been child's play to drive the sword between her husband's shoulders, but that had never been her way. Besides, she wanted to watch his face as he perished.
'All right,' he said, puzzlement in his voice, 'where is the pillar?'
'There is no pillar,' she replied, now making no attempt to keep her malice from sounding in her voice. What a joy to discard her mask at last. 'Turn around and face me.'
He turned, and his brows knit when he beheld the weapon. 'Is this a joke?' he asked.
'Far from it,' she replied. 'I recommend you draw and do your best to kill me, because I certainly intend to kill you.'
'I know you haven't loved me for a long while,' he said, 'if indeed you ever did. But still, why would you wish me dead?'
'Because I know,' she said.
He shook his head. 'I don't understand, and I don't believe you truly do either. Rather, you're ill and confused. Consider what you're doing. You have no idea how to wield a sword. Even if we did fight-'
She deftly cut him on the cheek. 'Draw, old serpent. Draw, or die like a sheep at the butcher's.'
For an instant he stared in amazement at her manifest skill with her weapon. Then he stepped back and reached for the hilt of his long sword.
Chapter 2
Bileworm passed one of his misty gray hands through the other, then inserted his long, gnarled fingers into the bulging brow of his wedge-shaped head. It was his way of fidgeting when he was bored.
Perhaps he ought not to be bored, for after all, he'd rarely visited the world of mortal men. The stars in the black sky were a wonder, and so was the air, which carried the scents of wood smoke, horse dung, and a hundred other novel aromas, but was entirely free of the tang of brimstone. Even the temperature was peculiarly mild. He'd been surprised to overhear humans complaining of the winter cold.
But Bileworm's was not a contemplative nature. He had a restless need for activity, and when the brown spaniel with the floppy ears came ambling down the street, stopping periodically to sniff at a gatepost or the base of a tree, the gaunt, shadowy creature with the slanted amber eyes couldn't resist the opportunity for a bit of sport.
The dog was handsomely groomed with a wavy, silken coat. It was well-nourished, and wore a black leather collar with a brass buckle. Evidently it had somehow gotten loose from one of the pleasant homes lining this quiet, horseshoe-shaped boulevard. Bileworm was glad that someone loved the animal. He hoped he could make the spaniel run so far away that its doting owner would | never see it again.
The spirit was crouching behind the alabaster statue of a trio of weeping maidens that some householder graced with more money than taste had seen fit to place at the arched entrance to his property. The lachrymose damsels currently dripped icicles, as if their tears had frozen. Abandoning this hiding place, Bile-worm crept stealthily along on his toes and fingertips, his belly a scant inch above the cobblestones. He wanted to see how close he could approach before the spaniel noticed him.
As it turned out, not very, even though he'd moved silently and was downwind of his quarry. Beasts could sometimes sense the presence of beings of his ilk, and the dog abruptly wheeled in his direction. The animal growled and bared its fangs.
Bileworm hissed, exposing his own black, needle-like teeth, and pounced six feet closer. The spaniel turned and fled.
When he gave chase, Bileworm discovered that a dog can run faster than a man. Or himself in his present shape, for that matter. He sprang upright and his legs stretched until he looked as if he were pacing along on the longest stilts ever fashioned.
Now a single stride carried him over the dog and set him down in front of it. Its nails clicking on the cobbles, the animal scrambled about and ran in the opposite direction. Bileworm stepped over it again and again, blocking its escape no matter which way it tried to run.
The trapped dog whimpered and piddled, tingeing the air with the sharp stink of urine. To further heighten the spaniel's terror, Bileworm stretched his arms long enough to reach the ground and pretended to try to snatch the animal up. His ethereal hands were incapable of trapping a creature composed of such coarse matter, but happily, the spaniel didn't know that, and in any case it would find his touch abominably unpleasant.
