The werebat swooped at her. She sidestepped the gnashing fangs and punched at the creature's chest, seeking to smash right through the ribs and into the vital organs beneath.
The blow slammed home, shattered bone, and the shapechanger shrieked, the cry pitched so high that it was more a stabbing pain in her ears than an actual sound. Its outstretched wing swatted her.
She yielded to the impact, permitting it to fling her to the ground, and instantly somersaulted to her feet. The werebat flew upward, but in a jerking, labored manner that revealed she'd hurt it badly. Perhaps it would flee without delaying her any further. Despite the pleasure she would take in its demise, she supposed that would be for the best.
It didn't flee. It wheeled high above, likely out of range of any of her spells, until a couple more vague black shadows joined it. Sefris couldn't tell precisely how many there were, but evidently an entire flock-if that was what one called a family of werebats-had gone hunting across the hills that night, and the wounded one had called them all in to deal with her.
Good. If she killed them all there and then, she wouldn't have to worry about another ambuscade later.
The werebats dived at her. It took long enough to give her time for another bit of sorcery. She rattled off a sibilant couplet, flung out her arm in a cabalistic gesture, and a jagged shaft of darkness leaped from her fingertips. It struck the creature in the lead. The lycanthrope's wings flailed crazily, out of time with one another, and it veered off course.
Then its fellows were right over her head, or nearly so. Fortunately, their size precluded their attacking all at exactly the same time, lest they foul each other's wings. She blocked with her forearm, bashing a set of foaming jaws out of line, then whipped the blade of her hand against the werebat's neck. She grabbed hold of its loose hide, yanked it out of the air, and smashed it down on the ground.
She nearly followed up with a stamp kick before remembering that her sandal-clad foot likely wouldn't hit hard enough to overwhelm a lycanthrope's mystical defenses. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to drop to one knee and continue bashing the brute with her hands. The next shapechanger was already hurtling at her.
She killed that one cleanly with a spear-hand strike to the chest, then leaped clear before its body could flop down on top of her. Another plummeted at her, saw that she was ready for it, and swooped high again.
Something rustled in the grass. She glanced down. Apparently when she'd hit the one werebat in the throat, she'd injured it in a way that prevented its taking to the air again. But it was still game; it was scuttling at her.
She sprang back from it and swept her hand through a mystic pass. The shadow of a nearby sapling reared from the ground and lashed itself around the lycanthrope. The creature flailed helplessly inside the inky coils.
Sefris knew that when she'd focused on the grounded brute, its fellow had surely dived, and by then was nearly in striking range. Peering upward, she whirled, and there it was, its glistening fangs mere inches from piercing her flesh. One such bite, assuming it didn't kill her outright, could change her into a creature like itself. The prospect didn't horrify her as it might have many another person, but neither was it anything to be desired. She was already the instrument the Dark Goddess intended her to be.
She grabbed the werebat by the neck to hold its teeth at bay. Her weight dragged it out of the air, and locked together, they tumbled over the grass. She kept hold of its throat and squeezed, the cesti lending the choke hold an efficacy it might otherwise have lacked.
The werebat struggled frantically, but only for a few heartbeats. Then its spine snapped.
Sefris sprang to her feet. Nothing else was wheeling against the stars or streaking down at her. If any shapechangers remained aloft, they'd evidently decided to leave their comrades unavenged and seek easier prey.
That just left the bodies on the ground, some of which had reverted almost entirely to human, and the shapeshifter still tangled in the shadow tentacle.
When it saw her looking at it, it stopped squirming and abased itself. Despite its bestial features, the enormous, pointed ears and wrinkled snout, she could tell it was begging for mercy. Perhaps offering itself as her slave if only she would spare its life.
Maybe it truly imagined that she might. Maybe it hoped she'd recognize some degree of kinship between them-both killers, both haunters of the dark.
If so, it had mistaken her nature. Sefris had never been particularly prone to sympathy, and her training had purged every trace of it from her soul. Insofar as her limited mortal mind permitted, she strove to emulate her goddess's hatred of all things, whether good or evil, fair or foul, human or monstrous. Killing gave her joy, but she labored not to seek or wallow in the pleasure, but rather to slaughter as an expression of a pure, cold will to destroy.
Such being the case, she wouldn't play with the werebat, wouldn't torture it or savor its desperation. She lunged forward and drove her fist into the center of its low forehead, shattering its skull.
She took a deep breath, and without a backward glance, she trotted on, carrying retribution and ruin to Oeble as her Dark Father had commanded.
CHAPTER 3
Miri found the stairs at the end of a short, strangely quiet passage off the busy Sixturrets intersection, where her contact, the plump man, had said they would be. As she regarded the steps twisting down into the ground, she felt an uncharacteristic pang of doubt. Maybe Hostegym was right; perhaps it was a bad idea. If she was out of her element in the streets and alleys of Oeble, it could only be worse in the city's Underways, supposedly a labyrinth of tunnels where the Gray Blades never ventured, and rogues of every stripe did precisely as they pleased.
But for that very reason, it seemed the best place to seek news of the green-eyed thief and the stolen treasure. Mielikki knew, Miri certainly hadn't had any luck above ground. So she scowled her misgiving away, loosened her sword and dagger in their sheaths, and adjusted the small steel buckler strapped to her wrist. She didn't much like the latter. The weight didn't bother her, but the armor made her feel awkward when shooting. Still, she thought that in the cramped confines of a subterranean warren, she might find a shield more useful than the bow she nonetheless carried strung and ready in her hand.
She crept down the steps, disturbing a rat that squealed and scuttled on ahead of her. She passed beyond the light leaking down from above into total darkness. Her pulse ticked a little faster.
Then, to her relief, a dim glow blossomed ahead. She stepped off the stairs into an arched tunnel which was neither as wet nor as malodorous as she'd expected. She'd imagined that 'Underways' was a fancy way of saying 'sewers,' and in fact, a faint stench of noisome waste wafted in from somewhere, but there was no stream of muck flowing sluggishly down the center of the passage. Evidently the two systems were separate, at least to some degree.
The tunnel was essentially dark, no hindrance to orcs, goblins, and other creatures that could see in such conditions. Patches of pale sheen smeared the earthen walls in a couple of places, evidently to accommodate those who could not. Miri couldn't tell if they were some species of luminous mold or splashes of a man-made pigment.
Trying to look as if she truly knew where she was headed, as if she belonged down there, she marched away from the stairs. Around the first bend, she came upon two men huddled together, who eyed her speculatively and left off their whispering until she passed by. Not far beyond them, the corpse of a chubby halfling lay facedown. The victim, no bigger than a half-grown human child, bore more than a dozen wounds and had left a trail of blood like a snail. Evidently he'd crawled several yards on his belly while his assailants hacked and stabbed him.
The passage twisted repeatedly, and branching tunnels snaked away into blackness. Miri's sense of direction never failed her in the wild, but she had the unpleasant feeling that, even so, she could lose herself down there. She was glad her first destination was only supposed to be a short walk from the stairs she'd descended, and gladder still when the lamp-lit doorway came into view.
According to the information she'd received, Melder's Door was the only true inn in the Underways, and marginally safer than either of the taverns found 'below.' It seemed a reasonable place to continue her inquiries.
She pulled open the heavy door and stepped into a surprisingly spacious common room whose walls were lined with stone. The air was damp and chilly, and the glows of the few hanging lanterns, half occluded behind their
