Shadowbane

centipedes-all manner of horrors that crawled and devoured. Another of the hills burst, and another-each into a swarm of black, biting death.

“Flee!” Kalen cried, limping toward the nearest building. “Flee-!”

These eruptions contained no mere half-formed, stillborn pests, such as had been birthed from victims of the plague. Rather, the spiders were the size of dogs, the locusts like falcons, and the millipedes the length of a man’s arm. They looked like nothing born of this world-glowing with red and purple veins of fire, bristling with spines and fangs. The swarm was huge and it grew every greater by the heartbeat.

The vermin of Luskan came to play at the kingmaking, as though the city herself had decided to fight for her throne.

Folk screamed and ran, but the swarm fell on them, enveloping them in rivers of vermin that stung, bit, and feasted. Hornets and locusts scattered the warring gang members, stinging madly. A Dead Rat was subsumed and vanished into the dirt, his screams dying away to wet gurgles, then nothing. When the swarm passed on, only bones remained where the man had fought, seconds past.

Gang members died by the score, hacking vainly but ultimately overrun and reduced to mere bones within terrified heartbeats. Hundreds more fled, screaming.

Kalen, who had managed to climb onto a low windowsill, watched it all in horror and dawning realization: this was the plague. He had expected a single man or woman who controlled the swarms. But if the plague was a thousand ravening creatures, how could he hope to fight it?

A loud buzz sent Kalen dodging aside as a wasp the size of his head stabbed at him with a stinger the length of a belt dagger. He caught the creature by its wings and its slimy body thrashed, its abdomen working to thrust its stinger into him. Angry fire burned in its murderous, faceted eyes.

The wasp exploded away from his face, bloody chunks of carapace splattering the bricks. Her axe streaked with gore, Sithe stepped onto the windowsill at Kalen’s side.

“This is no mere swarm but a demon,” Sithe said. “What do we do?”

“Save as many as you can,” Kalen said, and he leaped down toward the swarm.

He fell among the ravening beasts, blades slashing madly this way and that. He kicked a beetle away and cut a spider that lunged at his face into two pieces. Creatures fell away with hisses, angry or dying, but more flowed to take their place. He stabbed and ripped, kicked and flailed, but he might as well have tried to hold back the ocean with his hands. It was like the swarm of rats on the floating derelict: thousands of beasts acting with one mind-one awful will.

He thought he heard a word in the endless cacophony of the creatures’ voices. That single word chilled him more than any battle cry: “Feed.”

“Be aware,” Sithe said at his back. She swept her axe around, ringing them in flame that consumed the rushing beasts. It bought them a moment of respite.

“Lady Luck protect us!” Eden shouted.

Through the blood and dust, Kalen shot a glance to where Eden stood, glowing with divine power. Of all those assembled, she was the only one not startled by the swarm’s appearance. Was that merely her faith?

Regardless, a shimmering golden aura surrounded her, swelling outward to encompass her followers. The swarm shied away, crawling all over itself to escape the gold radiance. The ragged folk in the square-both Coin- Spinners and those of the other gangs-flocked to the protection her magic offered.

“The goddess shows her favor!” Eden cried. She pointed to Kalen. “See the man who would be king and yet leads you only unto death!” She spread her arms. The coin in her eye socket gleamed. “Only through the Lady will you be saved!”

Those words-their offer of hope-and her magic brought scores, if not hundreds of panicked Luskar rushing toward her. Dogtooth or Dragonblood, Dustclaw or Bloodboot, and even a good number of Dead Rats flocked to the miracle of Tymora … or was it Beshaba?

“Can you get to her?” Kalen asked. “To Eden?”

Sithe nodded coolly, her axe gleaming with dark fire. “I shall be with her straightaway.”

“Bring her back unharmed,” Kalen said. “We need her.”

Sithe looked at him curiously. “She is your enemy,” she said. “She manipulated this to secure her own power. For all you know, she summoned the demon.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Kalen said. “Whatever she’s doing, it’s keeping the swarm at bay. We need her to save the others.” He gestured to the hundreds of Luskar trapped by the waves of the swarm, fighting frantically to keep the beasts from their flesh. Scores or even hundreds of skeletons lay bleached and sparkling on the ruined field.

“We are not saviors,” Sithe said.

“Are you afraid?”

The genasi gave him a cold glower, turned, and ran toward the Coin-Spinners. As she went, she slashed back and forth with her axe, sending blood and pieces of vermin flying. Kalen breathed easier.

Then the swarm rose up before Sithe like a wall. The genasi paused and Kalen watched, horrified, as the wall became a hand that lunged to grasp at her. Sithe hacked at it, but the hand broke over her like a wave, coating her body in a hundred stinging, rending beasts. Sithe screamed in shock and agony-a sound Kalen never thought he would hear from her lips. With a sharp suction in the air, she abruptly vanished into the void, taking a score of the fiendish creatures with her.

A shadow blotted out the sun and Kalen turned toward the main swarm. He watched, with awe and terror, as the swarm before him rose up in a mountain-a mountain that split into a vaguely humanoid shape with arms, torso, and even a head.

“Feed,” the creature said, in a thousand hissing, chattering voices. “Feed!”

Kalen saw his death rising before him and he had no escape like Sithe did. He looked down at the dagger in his hand, coursing with gray fire, then back up at the creature. He reversed the knife in his hand and pointed it at the swarm’s face.

“Come then, demon,” he said. “Shadowbane calls.”

A thousand thousand voices answered the challenge with a cry. The swarm crashed toward him like a wave. He whispered a prayer to the Threefold God, ready to meet his end.

Abruptly, a circle of shadow appeared before him like a door in the air. From it came a crack of thunder that sent the swarm rippling back.

He felt her before he saw her, the blue fire inside him singing. “Myrin?” he asked.

“Well met, Kalen!” The blue-haired woman stepped from the shadow door, her cheeks and collarbone gleaming with blue runes. She fanned her fingers and an arc of fire engulfed the swarm. The creatures fell back, screeching and burning.

Myrin beamed. “Don’t tell me you thought I wouldn’t come back to save the day? Not to mention your tight little-”

“ ’Ware!” Kalen reached for her as the gathered swarm lunged forward.

Myrin raised her hand and a shield of flames scorched into place around them. The swarm rebounded from her magic, flames consuming those creatures who struck first.

“You can do this?” Kalen asked.

Myrin nodded. “The shield is a simple spell I learned over the last year,” she said. “The fire is something I saw in Umbra’s memory. I just combined the two-ughn!”

The swarm hammered at her shield again. This time, Myrin fell to one knee, shaken at the effort of holding off the horde. Black veins laced her spell like cracks and blood trickled down from her nose. Again the demon struck. Myrin moaned louder.

“I can’t teleport us if I can’t … focus …,” she managed. “Kalen, I can’t hold …”

“Feed,” he thought he heard. “Feed … Shadow … Bane …”

The words chilled him, but he pushed the fear aside. He stepped between Myrin and the swarm, resolved to give his life to save her.

Abruptly the swarm gave a discordant jangle of cries and stayed its assault. Dimly through the chittering, Kalen heard Elvish syllables declaimed in a loud, sibilant voice-a song and a firm command. The demon reached