We squared off in the center of the hall, where only moments ago we had been dancing. As metal met metal, I felt the strength of Raven's minion. I could win the battle at any time. Instead, I fought down the urge to attack and moved stiffly, as if the very act of holding the sword pained me.
In his youth, Lord Romul had acquired a deadly reputation with a blade. He had not lost the skill. Were it not for my terrible inner speed and strength, he would have bested me easily. However, he continued to maintain the ruse of reluctant victim, parrying my more deadly thrusts, letting the others reach him. No doubt he hoped I would shed the first blood and, honor satisfied, call off the duel.
When I nicked his shoulder, I saw real fear in his eyes. His face was florid and sweat formed on his brow. Exertion could kill the old as easily as a knife. I counted on that excuse. I smiled. Yes, you fool. Yes, you perverter of my wife, coveter of my lands. Yes, old man, as soon as my skin is cut, you will die.
I forced him back to the dining table, then in a move no one could have expected, I deliberately fell against him. My arm sliced open on the edge of his blade.
The shell was cracked. The creature inside me departed with the first drop of my blood, taking all its strength with it. 'Have you had enough?' I heard Lord Romul whisper as I lay at his feet, too exhausted to move, barely able to breathe.
I looked up. I wanted to whisper that it would never be over, but words failed me as I saw the thing I had unleashed.
Black and formless as the clouds of a deadly storm, its only clear features were its huge red eyes, which smoldered with a predatory light. The creature examined Lord Romul, standing with his sword lowered, looking less like an enemy than a concerned father who had unwittingly wounded his son during training.
It looked at Atera, trembling as she stood at the head of the table, frightened of me, of Romul, of the strange impulses within her brought on by the potion.
It looked at Raven. I think perhaps Raven lied to me. I think he saw the spirit; its summoning was his doing, after all.
And finally it turned to me. Its expression became one of interest, of need. Raven had said it killed with its touch and the power of its gaze. I tried to look away and found I could not. I tried to move but was paralyzed. 'I'm not responsible!' I screamed. Though I knew I damned myself, I had to say the words, 'You were charged to protect me. Now, kill my enemy.'
It obeyed.
The blackness of its form rolled over me. A deadly weight pushed down on me. My heart fluttered, my body became cold.
'Sharven!' Atera shrieked. She tried to rush to my side, but Raven held her back. Her tears were genuine, and the grief tore at my soul. I would have apologized for all my wrongs had I not already been robbed of the power to speak.
And through the unblinking eyes of one already dead, I saw Raven move behind Atera and gently pull her away from my body, holding her as she sobbed uncontrollably. I saw his expression as he looked over her shoulder at me- one of triumph. He had won. And suddenly he appeared much younger than I'd believed him to be.
But then, there are spells for youth as well as strength.
I thought of his remarks to me, and understood their meaning for the first time. Yet, the creature he had conjured for me had done exactly what I had demanded-it had found my worst enemy and it had killed. Now my spirit remains.
Raven required no spells to make Atera love him, though he did give her one to soften her grief over my demise. I do not hate him for that; there are many more valid reasons for hate.
I stood in the hall with the other guests and watched him wed my wife. I went into the bridal chamber, and after, with fury to give me strength, I went into the little room where I had studied with Raven. Though it took tremendous effort, I have managed to put pen to parchment and finish this account.
Perhaps Atera will one day read it. More likely Raven will find it first and destroy it. If so, I will set the words down again, as often as I must.
Even petty revenge is sweet Raven will never rest easy in my house.
The Third Level
The young man's dark eyes shifted from side to side, always moving, always alert. He caught a movement to the left, between two ramshackle wood-and-clay huts.
Just a child at play, wisely taking to the shadows.
Back to the right, he noticed a woman deep in the recesses beyond a window that was just a hole in the wall, for no one in this section of Calimport was wealthy enough to afford glass. The woman stayed back, standing perfectly still, watching him and unaware that he, in turn, watched her.
He felt like a hunting cat crossing the plain, she just another of the many deer, hoping he would take no notice.
Young Artemis Entreri liked that feeling, that power. He had worked this street-if that's what it could be called, for it was little more than a haphazard cluster of unremarkable shacks dropped across a field of cart-torn mud-for more than five years, since he was but a boy of nine.
He stopped and slowly turned toward the window, and the woman shrank away at the merest hint of a threat.
Entreri smiled and resumed his surveying. This was his street, he told himself, a place he had staked out three months after his arrival in Calimport. The place had no formal name, but now, because of him, it had an identity. It was the area where Artemis Entreri was boss.
How far he had come in five years, hitching a ride all the way from the city of Memnon. Artemis chuckled at the term 'all the way.' In truth, Memnon was the closest city to Calimport, but in the barren desert land of Calimshan, even the closest city was a long and difficult ride.
Difficult to be sure, but Entreri had made it, had survived, despite the brutal duties the merchants of that caravan had given him, despite the determined advances of one lecherous old man, a smelly unshaven lout who seemed to think that a nine-year-old boy-
Artemis shook that memory from his head, refusing to follow its inevitable course. He had survived the caravan trek and had stolen away from the merchants on the second day in Calimport, soon after he had learned that they had taken him along ultimately to sell him into slavery.
There was no need to remember anything before that, the teenager told himself, neither the journey from Memnon, nor the horrors before the journey that had sent him running from home. Still, he could smell the breath of that lecherous old man, like the breath of his own father, and his uncle.
The pain pushed him back to his angry edge, made him steel his dark eyes and tighten the honed muscles along his arms. He had made it. That was all that counted. This was his street, a place of safety, where no one threatened him.
Artemis resumed his surveillance of his domain, his eyes scanning left to right, then back across the way. He saw every movement and every shadow-always the hunting cat, looking more for prey than for danger.
He couldn't help but chuckle self-deprecatingly at the grandeur of his 'kingdom.' His street? Only because no other thief would bother to claim it. Artemis could work six days rolling every one of the many drunks who fell down in the mud in this impoverished section and barely scrape enough coins together to eat a decent meal on the seventh.
Still, that was enough for the waif who had fled his home; it had sustained him and given him back his pride over the past five years. Now he was a young man, fourteen years old… or almost fourteen. Artemis didn't remember his exact birthdate, just that there had been a brief period right before the even briefer season of rain, when times in his house were not so terrible.
Again, the young man shook the unwanted memories from his head. He was fourteen, he decided; as if in confirmation, he looked down at his finely toned, lithe frame, barely a hundred and thirty pounds, but with tightened
