Shadowbane

Kalen looked over his shoulder. The rats gnashed at him, looking to bite and savage and infect. He remembered his first day in Luskan and the Dustclaw who’d gone insane. He saw again the welts on the man’s back in the alley.

That was it. That was how the Fury spread.

“We have to warn-” Kalen winced when Toytere clasped his wrist hard. The halfling’s eyes were wild. Kalen understood. “No,” he said.

“Oh, aye,” Toytere said. “This be for Cellica.”

He pulled Kalen forward and planted his left fist-weighted with an iron knuckle duster-into Kalen’s face.

The world shattered into darkness.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

23 KYTHORN (MIDNIGHT)

Up on the deck, Rhett Hawkwinter again tried to speak to Sithe. The genasi seemed like a patch of deeper darkness against the night-a blur in his eye. He kept trying to break the silence, but words failed.

Finally, the eighth time, Sithe turned her face a fraction toward him. “Speak.”

“A question, Lady of Darkness,” he said. “Since we’re just sitting here.”

She nodded slightly.

“What are you doing with my master?” he asked. “In the duels, I mean. I can fake sleep as well as the next man. I know he takes Vindicator and meets you on the roof.”

Sithe stared out into the darkness, as though Rhett didn’t exist. Abruptly her lips parted. “He had an apprentice.”

Her voice came so suddenly that Rhett jumped up from where he’d been sitting and readied Vindicator. The significance of the words hit him then. “What do you mean?”

“I can see it in the way he treats you-the way he fights,” Sithe said. “He hesitates to take you for a squire, because he had one and failed him. Recently.”

“You must be mistaken,” Rhett said. “Saer Shadowbane would have told me.”

“You remind him of a past he tries to forget, as does she,” Sithe said, nodding toward the cargo hold. “He is drawn to you both-the woman especially-and yet he flees. He uses me as a means to escape.”

Perhaps it was anger at the implications, but Rhett spoke without thinking, his words sharp. “And in what way does he use you, lady?” he asked. His mind reasserted itself and he added: “I mean, why do you do it? Do you … enjoy him?”

Sithe turned her dark eyes on him and he thought for a heartbeat that her lips quirked toward a smile. “He has the potential to be somewhat greater than he is,” she said. Then her axe was in her hands and she spoke a single flat word: “Prepare.”

“Prepare for-?” he started.

A fiery scythe burst out the side of the ship, trailing ashen bodies of rats into the sea. War had broken out on the abandoned derelict.

Glancing behind her as she climbed the steps toward the deck, Myrin saw only Toytere. “Wait,” she said. “Where’s Kalen?”

“If he be falling behind, we can do naught.” The halfling seized her hand to draw her on. “Come, me lady. We-”

“Perhaps you don’t know this about me, Toy,” Myrin said. “But I’m stubborn.”

She reached into him through their touching flesh. For a heartbeat, she was Toytere-she went into his mind and pawed at his memories. She saw herself through a spyhole in her chambers at the Rat, saw Toytere scheming with Sithe. He was speaking to a woman with eyes of two colors, to whom Toytere meant to betray Myrin.

Blue runes erupted on Myrin’s face as she stole his magic Sight. Warmth flowed from Toytere into Myrin, like gushing blood of which her skin drank deeply. She was tempted to hum to activate the visions-as Toytere did- but realized she had no need. She could use the Sight freely, without the same crutch.

She saw, in an instant, how Kalen lay in the hold below, unconscious. The rats swept over him. She watched them cover him, as he reached vainly toward the stairs. Toward her.

That would come to pass if she did nothing.

Myrin shook her head and pushed Toytere away. “Run,” she said to him.

The halfling gaped at her. “Me Sight. You’ve taken-how dare you!”

Myrin grasped his wrist as he raised his swordcane. “I know what you did, Toy,” she said, her eyes burning with magic. “I know what you mean to do to me.”

Toytere’s eyes went wide as gold coins. “You-”

“I know, but I don’t care.” Myrin bent and kissed him on the forehead. “One day, you’ll see yourself the way I see you.”

The halfling blinked. “What?”

Without another word, Myrin turned back to the hold. The halfling lunged out to stop her, but Myrin had sapped his strength in taking his Sight and he couldn’t hold her. The wizard dodged rats and broken boards, guided by the halfling’s sixth sense. No wonder Toytere had been covered in beasts but hadn’t been bitten or even scratched.

In the hold, Kalen lay unmoving as rats piled atop each other beside him. The creatures had not yet fallen on him, but Myrin knew she had only a moment.

The rats were hideous. Their mangy fur barely hid scarred and mottled skin. Greenish ichor dripped from their fanged mouths. In their red eyes, Myrin saw reflected the impending murder of herself and all she knew and loved.

Worse still, the cacophony of squeaking voices seemed to utter a single, surprisingly coherent word. Perhaps she heard it in her head: “Feed.”

Toytere’s Sight flared in her mind. She saw-for a heartbeat-something huge and towering: a swarm of creatures not quite rats or spiders or bats, but a nightmare mixture. They wore skin of mottled crystal and their eyes held only darkness.

When the world returned and she stood again in the hold, the rats had begun swarming over Kalen. She was almost too late.

Almost.

Myrin cupped one hand and swirled her wand above it, as though mixing cream in a bowl. Fire flowed from the end of the wand into her hand, building around itself until she held a roiling ball of flame. She ran forward, hurled the fireball into the heart of the swarm and threw herself over Kalen, covering him with her body.

Fire exploded and a shock of force ran through the hold. Waves of heat rushed over Myrin. She gritted her teeth against the destructive force of her own spell. Pieces of rat sailed down in all directions and sizzling blood painted the walls and floor.

Myrin held Kalen tight as the flames rushed around them, staring into his grey eyes. He wrapped his arms around her and she sheltered in his embrace. Her spellscar spoke to his-just as his longed for hers-and in her mind’s eye, she saw wings of blue fire fold around them.

If this was death, it wasn’t so bad.

“Stand aside!” Rhett declared, Vindicator raised in two hands. “I need to get down there! They need me!”

Sithe stood impassive, her axe at the ready.

Smoke poured from the hold-the leavings of a massive fire in close quarters. A shadow emerged. Rhett rushed forward, only to find the halfling, who was limping.

“What happened?” he asked. “Where are-?”

“Away from me, boyo.” Toytere shoved past him toward Sithe. They exchanged a look and the halfling