Cale sensed its pain and shock. He chased after it on foot for a few paces, waving the dagger and shouting challenges.
When it left his sight, he came back to himself.
Except for some soft crying and pained moans, the feasthall was silent. Cale looked around.
The ghouls had ceased attacking and now stood idle, as though the defeat of the demon had left them stunned. Their faces hung slack. Their expressions were vacant.
Jander Orvist needed no better opportunity. His voice boomed from across the feasthall. 'Now!' he ordered, and the house guard charged, blades held high.
The ghouls did not even move to defend themselves. The surviving Uskevren house guards brandished then* long swords and began to chop them down tike farmers harvesting wheat. ‹3ale dropped the ice-cold dagger and rushed to Thazienne's side.
As though freed to return by the absence of the demon, the white vapor that clung in wisps around her body-her soul, Gale now knew-flowed back into the slash in her chest. Immediately, the wound knitted itself shut to leave only an ugly pink scar. He knelt beside her and brushed the hair from her forehead. She looked so pale. Her body felt as cold as Oeepwinter snow.
Ignoring the pain of his own wounds, Gale pulled her limp body close and cradled her to his chest. She still breathed, he realized, but only barely. His eyes welled as he rocked her back and forth. Please, gods, not her, please.
Thazienne,' he murmured. 'Please come back, Thazienne.' He buried his face in her dark hair and tried to warm her cold body with the heat of his own.
Moments later-it seemed an eternity to him- Meena Foxmantle's sobs brought Gale back to himself. She lay on the floor near him, curled into a fetal position, trembling so badly that she looked as if she were convulsing. Her terrified eyes stared vacantly at him. He reached out and gently placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She grabbed at his arm like a drowning person clutching a lifeline and held so tight that he lost all feeling in his hand within moments.
'It's all right,' he said. 'It's going to be all right.' He wasn't sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.
While Captain Orvist and the house guard finished with the remainder of the ghouls, Thamalon and Shamur charged across the feasthall, the Foxmantles close behind.
Gale saw them coming and lifted Thazienne from the floor.
Tazi!' they shouted in shared alarm. They rushed forward and touched her hands and face. Upon feeling the coldness of her flesh, Thamalon recoiled in shock. Shamur's already tear-streaked face went white. She clutched her husband's wrist with one hand, raised the other to her mouth, and looked; upon the limp form of her daughter.
'Gods,' Thamalon oathed, and tears formed in his eyes.
Gale's knees trembled. Tears welled in his eyes. A house guard tried to relieve him of Thazienne but he refused to let her go.
'Send for a priest, Lord,' he said to Thamalon, his voice quavering with emotion. 'Send for a priest now.'
Riven glared at the gate guard of the manor house and stormed past without a word, violence on his mind. The sleepy, bearded house guard took one look at Riven's scowl and apparently thought better of challenging his entrance to Whitebirch.
Fortunate for you, Riven thought. He would have welcomed an excuse to vent his anger by gutting one of Verdrinal's lackeys.
His foul mood only worsened as he strode through the neatly landscaped, illumined grounds and approached Whitebirch Manor itself Verdrinal's manse exuded decadence, which of course fit the man perfectly. The front was bedecked with winter shrubs, perfectly hedged, statues of nude women frolicking with leering satyrs, snow dusted benches, and a wooden veranda. Riven found the whole sight vaguely offensive, as though the very air here somehow soiled him. Not for the first time, he marveled that a fool such as Verdrinal could have risen so far within the Zhentarim. The bastard actually equaled him in rank!
You get born to the right family and anything's possible, he supposed with a scowl. The only heir of the Isterin family fortune, Verdrinal Isterin provided a
W.tnocc legitimate face for many otherwise illicit Zhentarim operations. Apart from his wealth and family name, Riven thought Verdrinal a useless, incompetent man. Equal in rank or not, Riven held him in contempt.
Not bothering to use the bronze doorknocker, he kicked open the main doors and walked into the foyer. Not a guard in sight.
'Verdrinal!' he shouted up the main stairway. 'Get out of bed and get down here!' He deliberately had come in the small hours, just to inconvenience Verdrinal the more. He must have caught the house guard unawares as well-Hov usually did better work.
Muffled voices and a shuffling from upstairs told him that he had been heard. In a few moments, a dark- haired young man in the purple uniform of an Isterin house guard emerged from the hallway and leaned over the banister. He scowled when he saw Riven.
'What do you want?'
'Get out of my sight,' Riven retorted. 'And tell Verdrinal to get down here, now.'
The house guard's eyes narrowed. Riven assumed he was trying to be intimidating. 'Hell be along soon enough';
Riven said nothing. Verdrinal was no doubt upstairs with a woman. The nobleman went through women the way other men went through clothes. The man's insatiable tastes made him weak-he lacked focus, lacked discipline.
'Why don't you fetch Hov, boy. Keeping an eye on me is no job for a little puke like you.'
The house guard snarled and stepped back from the landing. He stomped down the stairs, a white-knuckled grip on his sword hilt. He walked up to Riven, face to face.
'Don't ever burst in here again or I'll put you down. I don't need Hov for the likes of you.'
Before the guard could move, Riven whipped free a dagger and stabbed him through the gut.
The surprised house guard grunted in pain, tried to draw his own blade, but doubled over instead. Warm blood coursed over Riven's hand and stained the house guard's purple uniform black. Riven jerked the dagger free and kicked the guard to the floor.
'Never say don't to me, boy.' He knelt and wiped his blade clean on the dying house guard's uniform.
'Drasek!'
Verdrinal's voice from atop the stairs pulled his gaze upward and wiped the satisfied smile from his face. The tall, brown-haired Zhentarim nobleman had taken the time to don a shirt and blue pantaloons. He pointed a long finger at the groaning house guard.
'What have you done? Do you have any idea how hard it is to find good men?'
Riven ignored both the question and the house guard's dying spasms. He stared into Verdrinal's eyes.
'If he was a good man, he wouldn't be dying on the floor. And if you ever call me Drasek again, Verdrinal, I'll leave you bleeding beside him.'
Verdrinal smiled distantly at the threat and descended the stairs. 'But Riven sounds so formal,' he said with a phony smile. 'And the two of us such old friends.'
Riven spat on the foyer floor, sheathed his dagger, and said nothing.
The house guard gasped and finally expired. Verdrinal looked down at the expanding pool of blood on the hardwood floor. His smooth, handsome face creased with a flash of anger. 'What a blasted mess.' He stared ice at Riven. 'Varra,' he shouted over his shoulder. 'Varra!'
After a moment, a pretty brunette maid in a white nightdress scurried into the foyer through an adjacent doorway. Upon seeing the corpse, she gasped.
'Clean this up please, Varra dear.' He shot Riven an ingenuous smile. 'Mister…Riven and I will be in the study.'
The girl gave a frightened nod, whirled in a cloud of white nightdress, and ran from the foyer. Riven watched her go, aroused by the way the thin cotton hugged her slim hips as she ran. Verdrinal's voice stopped her at the doorway.
