Something dark lashed out at Kadian, and his thief's instinct took over. He dove for the ground, though not fast enough to entirely avoid the shadowbeast as it struck. A hot line of fire traced itself across his cheek. Rolling to a crouch, he pressed his back against the wall. The hand he touched to his burning cheek came away dark and sticky. His mind reeled. How could a shadow draw blood?
Kadian looked up. The two bestial shapes were circling around the paralyzed petty lord, moving with eerie silence. Swiftly they closed in. Kadian's eyes noticed the flickering torch in its iron sconce, and he was moving before the idea was fully formed in his head. Behind him, a piercing scream of agony shattered the air. Kadian could no longer see the petty lord for the dark bulk of the shadowbeasts. He lunged toward the iron sconce, grabbed the torch, and beat it against the stone wall. Sparks flew. As if realizing what he was doing, the shadowbeasts turned and flew toward him with terrifying speed. Kadian could see the crumpled form of the nobleman lying on the cobbles, the yellow doublet now dark and wet. He beat the torch more fiercely. Dark arms stretched outward; curved talons reached for his heart. The torchlight flickered, dimmed… and was snuffed out.
Darkness descended on the cul-de-sac like a shroud. Kadian braced himself, waiting to feel the claws of the shadowbeasts plunge into his chest and rip out his wildly beating heart. The death blow did not come. Gradually his thief's eyes adjusted to the faint starlight that filtered down from above. The small stone circle was empty save for the motionless heap that had been the petty lord. Kadian's hunch had proved right. The shadowbeasts had been extinguished along with the light source that had spawned them. Numbly, still clutching the knife in one hand, he shuffled toward the fallen lord. Kneeling, he placed a hand on the nobleman's chest. Quickly he snatched his hand back, dripping gore. The man's body had been ripped to shreds. Shuddering, Kadian stood. He had to flee this accursed place. Abruptly, brilliant light flared to life in the cul-de-sac, causing Kadian to blink against the searing brightness. When his vision cleared, a new fear stabbed at his guts. Three uniformed men stood in the archway, bearing torches. The city guards stared at him with hard eyes.
'Caught in the act, eh, thief?' one of the guards snarled in disgust.
Kadian looked down at his hand, still dripping with the dead lord's blood. Sick coldness filled his stomach. He looked up, slowly shaking his head. 'No,' he whispered. 'The shadows…' But the guards were already upon him. Gripping his arms brutally, they hauled Kadian roughly through the stone archway.
That was when he caught a glimpse of the man. For a fractured second, a flickering beam of torchlight pierced the darkness of a corner near the archway. The man stood within. His black attire blended seamlessly with the night, but his face hovered clearly in the dimness. Almost against his will, Kadian met the other's eyes. They were impossibly deep, and filled with a rage and a sorrow so vast they did not seem human. Kadian thought those eyes would rend his soul.
The torchlight wavered. Once more the corner fell dark. The man vanished. Kadian struggled against the hands that gripped him, shouting to the guards, trying to tell them about the man who lurked in the corner. But all his protests bought him was a sharp blow to the back of his head, and Kadian was lost in darkness.
One
It was the cold that woke the boy. Kellen Caldorien opened his eyes and found himself gazing up at the slanted ceiling of the attic room where he slept. Faint illumination filled the small chamber, the steely light that comes before the dawn and that casts no shadows. When he breathed out, his breath hung on the frigid air above him like the pale ghost of a bird. The inn was quiet at this hour, and the silence seemed heavy with portent. Kellen had the feeling that something was going to happen today. He didn't know what it would be, nor when exactly it would occur, nor whether it would be for good or ill-only that something would happen. Something important.
As quickly as it came, the odd feeling of prescience vanished, and the last vestiges of dreaminess with it. Wide awake now. Kellen slipped from his bed, shuddering with the cold, and realized at once the source of the fierce chill. The chamber's round window hung open, and a steady wind blew in. Even this early in the month of Uktar, when the days could still be fine and golden, the nights were sharp with the promise of winter. The window must have blown open during the night.
Kellen padded barefoot across the cold wooden floor and reached out to shut the window. Abruptly he paused, his eyes glowing with curiosity in the half-light. The surface of the glass bore a patch of pearly frost. Being autumn, this was not unusual. That the patch of frost was shaped exactly like a human hand was far more peculiar. It appeared as if some terribly cold being had pressed its fingers against the glass for a moment, leaving behind pale crystals of ice. Slowly, Kellen reached out his own hand and placed it over the frosty print. His hand was much smaller, but the heat of it melted the frost, and in moments the mysterious handprint was gone. He wondered if this was the something he had felt was going to happen today. After a moment he decided that this mysterious occurrence wasn't the awaited event, but that it might be related.
'I will simply have to wait and see,' he whispered. Unlike most children, Kellen knew how to be patient.
Turning from the window, he shrugged off his nightshirt and in its place pulled on woolen breeches, a wine-colored tunic, and soft deerskin boots. He combed his almost-black hair with a wooden comb. Fine boned and slight of build, Kellen was often mistaken for a child of seven or eight years rather than the eleven he was. Strangers often found this discrepancy unsettling, for he spoke with uncanny precision, and a wisdom in his gray- green eyes that no eleven-year-old boy should have possessed.
When he had finished dressing, Kellen knelt to open a battered trunk beside his bed. Gently he took out his greatest treasure, a bone flute that his father had carved for him. Kellen slipped the instrument into a leather pouch at his belt. He left his room-shutting the door quietly, as it was still early-and made his way down two winding flights of stairs to the inn's common room.
A halfling woman with nut-brown eyes looked up from the fieldstone hearth. She was stirring the coals that had been banked beneath the ashes for the night. 'You're up early, Kellen,' she said merrily.
'Yes, Estah,' he replied seriously. 'I am.' Estah was the proprietor of the Sign of the Dreaming Dragon, the inn where Kellen lived with his father, Caledan Caldorien. The halfling innkeeper stood, dusting her hands against her homespun apron. Grown woman though she was, she stood only as high as Kellen's shoulder. A curious look crossed her broad face.
'And may I ask what roused you from your bed before the sun has even climbed from his own?'
Kellen considered whether he should tell Estah about the frosty handprint he had seen on his bedchamber window. He knew that Estah, unlike many adults, would listen to a young boy's words. However, she tended to worry unduly, and he didn't want to distract her from her tasks about the inn, which were considerable. After a moment he decided against telling her. He could wait until his father was awake, if he must tell somebody.
'I thought I would help you knead the bread dough today,' he said instead.
Estah studied him for a moment. Then she laughed, eyes crinkling. 'Very well, then. To the kitchen with you.'
Kellen liked kneading dough. He leaned over a halfling-sized wooden table in the center of the warm kitchen, rolling up the sleeves of his tunic so he could stick his arms deep into the floury mass. Mountains, castles, and dragons all took shape under his deft hands ore he squashed them, laughing, like a careless giant.
When the dough and Kellen's arms needed a rest, Estah sat him down in front of the kitchen's massive stone fireplace with a breakfast of oat porridge, honey, and sausages. The first red-gold glow of dawn was gilding the kitchen's windows when Jolle, Estah's husband, tramped inside with a load of firewood. As the halfling man went back out to the courtyard for more, Kellen got up and neatly stacked the wood he had brought in.
'It looks as if someone's in a helpful mood today,' Jolle observed with a broad grin as he returned, setting down a second armful of wood. Like his wife, the halfling man was not even as tall as Kellen, but he was sturdily built.
'More so than usual, actually,' Estah commented with a sharp glance at Kellen.
Kellen just smiled mysteriously, returning to his breakfast. Sometimes it was fun to make adults wonder if you had done something wrong.
Soon Jolle had a summer-fattened piglet roasting over a steady fire in the gigantic fireplace. Kellen finished his breakfast and returned to the bread dough, this time shaping it into loaves instead of unicorns and wyverns.
