Shadowbane

soft spot between its head and body. The blade struck in the spider’s carapace, however. When he kicked the corpse away, he lost one of his weapons.

No matter.

He rolled to a halt against a pile of the charred beasts and pushed himself to one knee. His cloak flowed over him, casting him in shadow. Blood dripping from his cut-open face, he surveyed the battle with a quick glance, back and forth.

The swarm coalesced in the center of the chamber, a seething hive of black bodies with crimson talons and stingers. Nearby, Sithe flailed among the biting, rending hordes, screaming as they scrabbled at her. Her armor- her dark faith-had vanished from around her. Kalen realized he was not seeing Sithe, but rather the woman she was underneath-a real woman, beneath the armor of hate and loss. Her axe lay fallen at her side and she beat at the creatures with her hands and feet.

“Sithe!” he shouted, drawing the swarm’s attention. “Flee!”

She looked up at him, her black eyes swimming.

“Get out of there, Sithe!” Kalen said.

The genasi nodded sharply and shut her eyes. A scream wrenched itself from her lips, then abruptly-with a great suction of air-she vanished, taking dozens of the creatures with her. Gone.

Kalen looked desperately around. “Myrin!”

“Kalen!” A cry issued from-he realized with a chill-the middle of the swarm.

He could see her now, a flicker of blue at the heart of the horde of demon creatures. Her fiery shield was holding, but it no longer consumed the creatures. They had adapted, however that was possible. Now it was simply a matter of cracking her shell. To that end they piled on one another like bees, stinging with their barbs and hammering with their talons. Kalen could barely glimpse Myrin at the center of the flaming shield-she was screaming.

“No more,” he said. “No more!”

He looked down at the dagger in his hand. Such a little thing, that shard of steel, though it had killed scores of these accursed things. It was not the weapon of a proper warrior, but then, he was no such man either. He was the hand of vengeance.

Gray flames sprung from the dagger and he ran at the swarm.

The beasts, preoccupied with their magically warded quarry, began to turn. He kicked off the floor, his boots glowing with blue fire, and with a roar, he plunged his dagger into the heart of the swarm.

Fire exploded from his blade, coating the monsters in liquid flame. Caught in his own blast, Kalen tumbled back, disarmed and burning. The fire spread to nearby demon-spawn, dancing like a voracious thing that lived only to eat.

“The fire exists to consume,” Sithe had said. “It has no other purpose.”

Much of the swarm fell away from Myrin, retreating back toward the deeper tunnel. Kalen could see her through the teeming cloud of death, kneeling in the middle of her sphere of flame and he caught his breath. Runes coated her from fingers to shoulder, from shoulder to hip, from hip to toe. Her face was alive with a blue glow, and her eyes pulsed with darkness.

“Away!” Myrin cried in a voice not quite her own. “Away!”

The orb floating before her turned jet black.

“Myr-” Kalen started.

Darkness roared outward, sending demonic beasts flying. Kalen was thrown away as the chamber went absolutely black.

After a heartbeat, Kalen realized the blackness must not be death. He determined this because, if it was death, then death hurt more than he had expected and he had expected pain.

First, he was on fire, but he put that out without much difficulty.

Also, he heard the scuttling of fiendish creatures, so he knew Scour yet lived. How hurt it was, he could not say, but he knew that lying there offered an invitation to strip him to bones. He had to move. Where, though?

“Feed,” he thought he heard a voice whisper. But perhaps he had imagined it.

“Myrin,” he whispered. He reached out with his spellscar to sense her, but he found nothing. “Are you-?”

A blue circle appeared in the air, half a dozen paces from him-Myrin’s orb, floating of its own accord. It shed a soft light, more like a guiding beacon than a torch. He managed one knee but not the other-his left leg wasn’t obeying his commands. Using his other limbs, he crawled through the darkened chamber toward the orb.

Myrin lay below the orb, so still Kalen feared for a moment that whatever she had done had drained the last of her strength. Her blue runes seemed to shimmer dimly. She stirred as he came close and when he put his fingers to her cheek, her eyes opened. She looked so weary, her eyes shot through with blood and her lids lined with deep wrinkles in black hollows.

“What-what happened?” she asked.

“You did.” Kalen pointed to the orb. “Your spell … that summoned …”

“Oh.” Myrin looked at him dazedly. “But I don’t know a spell like that. At least …” She touched at her throat, and there, just below her right jawline, he saw a shimmering black circle illuminated in ink on her skin. “I didn’t.”

He shivered, though he couldn’t say exactly why.

A familiar stir in the air presaged the reappearance of Sithe. The genasi panted and wheezed, falling immediately to her knees beside them.

“Sithe,” Kalen said, reaching for her. “Are you-?”

She swatted away his hand. “Very well indeed,” she said.

“You sound awful,” Kalen observed.

“Spoken in a voice free of hurt.”

“True.” Kalen wiped blood from his chin. If not for his toughening spellscar, he suspected he would lie twitching on the floor. “Can you dispel this darkness, Myrin?”

“My orb is maintaining it,” Myrin said.

“Lilten’s orb,” Kalen said.

The woman gave a noncommittal shrug. “Let’s see-” She focused on the orb, raising her hand toward it. After a moment, as though it struggled with her, the orb dimmed and dropped like a stone to her hand.

The oppressive darkness lifted as the torch on the floor-miraculously unscathed by the battle-flickered back into existence. At first, the chamber looked empty and Kalen had the briefest moment of elation.

Then he saw it and his heart knew fear.

The mass of buzzing, hissing monstrosities rose up like a mountain before them. Even as he watched, bulges of the demonic beasts emerged to represent limbs. Finally-and perhaps worst-the swarm flowed to form something like facial features.

“Scour … Murmur …,” the swarm said in their minds. “We have dreamed. A world afire.”

The three hardly understood, but the creature’s majesty forced them to silence.

“We are your prince,” it said in a hundred echoing voices. “We are the harbinger.” The swarm made a cacophony of clicking noises that might have been laughter. “This world will feed us. You will feed us … Shadowbane.”

It wasn’t fair, but Kalen didn’t think about that. They were all going to die, but he didn’t think about that either. He did not think about Scour, or Myrin, or Sithe-not even himself. The chamber, Luskan, all of Faerun-all of it vanished.

He was the thief and the paladin both. He was Shadowbane.

A single voice spoke in his heart, telling him what it needed. What it demanded.

He answered.

Gray flames surrounded him, forming the suit of armor that was the manifestation of his faith. The steel that