unvoiced scream of pain. It would have been nice to set aside one of the weapons in her hand and check for broken bones, but such indulgences killed more warriors than they saved. She rolled to her knees and came up facing the interior of Escanor's large anteroom, where half a dozen clerks sat attending to the prince's private business.
Vala started across the chamber on her hands and knees, angling for the dark corridor that led deeper into the prince's inner sanctum. There, she had to slip under the crossed glaives of another set of guards.
Once inside the murky passage, she rose and put some weight on her foot. The pain was dull and general, more like a bad bruise than a break. She took a few steps. Finding the foot would support her, she continued through Escanor's private study into his dressing room, and passing another pair of guards and a small clique of servants at each stage, from his dressing room into his large and opulent bedchamber.
Escanor lay alone in his bed, little more than a man-shaped shadow cleaving to a cage of black ribs. His beating heart was visible inside, still glowing faintly with the light of the Weave flames that had nearly consumed him. He was attended on one side of the bed by a servant and on the other by a black-robed priestess wearing the purple mask of Shar. Two of Escanor's battle lords were standing at the foot of the bed. Vala's darksword was on display in a rack above the prince's headboard, locked behind a pair of crystal doors.
Vala! Khelben's voice came to her inside her head. In the name of the Weave, what are you doing?
Vala did not answer. She had not told the Chosen about this part of her plan, but it was as necessary to their success as finding the mythallar. She stepped over to the foot of the bed, and in a single spinning stroke, slashed the throats of both guards.
The men had barely fallen before the priestess raised her hands and began a wispy prayer to her hidden goddess. Vala cut this short by lashing out with the whip in her other hand. The cord wrapped itself tightly around the woman's throat, and the prayer ended in a strangled gasp as Vala jerked the priestess off her feet. The servant started for the door, his jaw working in shock, but emitting only strangled gasps. She spun past the end of the bed, bringing her sore foot up in a hook kick that caught him square in the nose with the hardest part of her heel. He flew off his feet so hard that the back of his head hit first and made a sickening crack on the stone floor.
Giving up on her spell, the priestess charged blindly forward, using one hand to pull against the whip around her throat and the other to slash her dagger blindly through the air. Vala waited for the next stroke to sweep past then she stepped forward and snapped the outside of her hand into the hinge of the woman's jaw. The priestess went instantly limp, her eyes rolling back in her head and the dagger slipping from her hand.
Vala dropped the whip and turned back to the bed. In Escanor's shadowy eye sockets were a pair of copper flames, faint and flickering as he struggled back to consciousness.
Vala! If you're counting on us to help you kill-
'Quiet.'
Though Vala spoke the word aloud, she heard the word only in her mind. She started forward toward the display case. The flames in Escanor's eyes brightened, and she knew the prince was returning to his senses. She hurled her sword, reached for her dagger, and leaped onto the bed.
A wisp of shadowy arm rose through the covers. Her tumbling sword ricocheted upward and smashed a crystal door, and something hit her in the chest like one of Aris's hammers. She fell off the bed backward and landed facedown on the floor.
'Guards!' Escanor's voice was barely a croak, but a croak loud enough to cause a stir out in the dressing room. 'Help!'
Vala raised her hand and called silently to her darksword. She heard the tinkling of shattered crystal, and the weapon came sailing over the foot of the bed. The hilt slipped into her palm like the hand of an old friend. The blade was trailing a wisp of shadow where it had brushed Escanor's body.
You have your sword-time to go! Storm urged. Out onto the balcony.
Vala rolled sideways to her knees and came up with her arm cocked to throw. When she saw Escanor swinging out of the opposite side of the bed, she did just that. The blade caught him between the shoulder blades, slicing through two ribs and the faintly pulsing heart.
The prince died without a scream. His ribcage simply dropped to the floor in two pieces. The guards from the dressing room rushed into the chamber to find the cleaved heart dissolving into a cloud of shadow.
'Now if s time to go.'
Again, Vala heard her words only in her own mind. As the guards rushed to their dying prince, she called the dark-sword back to her hand. She would have liked to stay and find the magic ring given to her by Corineus Drannaeken in the catacombs beneath Myth Drannor, but a search of that magnitude was out of the question. She raced toward the double doors and leaped into the air-then barreled into two more guards as they came rushing in.
Vala planted one foot on each of their shoulders-she was aiming for their throats, but had not jumped high enough- and she managed to drive enough of a seam between the startled Shadovar for the rest of her body to pass through. She thumped down on her side with her head barely a sword's length from either one, then she gathered her feet beneath her and dived forward, rolling across the balcony in a series of somersaults. The guards shouted the alarm and blindly clinked their swords on the stone only inches behind her.
At last, Vala came to the end of the balcony and found the balustrade blocking her path. She finished one more somersault, gathered her feet beneath her, and sprang over headlong.
Vala was within a dozen feet of the street before a magic hand finally reached out to stop her fall.
Next time, young lady, we won't catch you, Khelben warned. That was nothing but a vengeance killing.
'So it was,' she said, 'and if I hadn't done it, no one would have believed my escape was my own. Not after the things that devil did to me.'
Vala's feet touched the street, and she started toward Shade's lower warrens at a sprint.
The Vaasans sat together on one side of the table, laughing and dribbling and whacking each other on the back mightily as they ate and drank and described the day's combat to their jealous comrade, Dexon. To listen to the men talk, battling phaerimm was no more dangerous than stalking forest roth? save that the phaerimm made it all much more exciting by hunting back. Had Takari not been along and seen for herself the humans' deadly effectiveness that day-and many others-she would have believed the wine was stretching their tongues.
But it had all happened just as they described, and they had indeed added three tails apiece to their belts. Armed with Dexon's darksword, Keya Nihmedu had claimed two for her own growing collection. Takari had taken only one, but that was with nothing but her own elven steel. Had she been wielding a darksword of her own, she would have killed more phaerimm than anyone.
Takari took the ewer and refilled it from the wine cask in the scullery, then stopped in the doorway and eyed the two healthy Vaasans from behind. With their massive shoulders and braided black hair, they looked more like thkaerths to her than humans, but she had spent enough time fighting at their sides to know that neither man was entirely the brute he seemed. She had seen Burlen risk his life several times to protect Keya without ever allowing her to notice, while Kuhl had returned from one patrol with a litter of orphaned raccoons tucked inside his cloak.
After a moment of deliberation, Takari settled on Kuhl and came up behind him with the ewer. They always stopped to wash the blood and soot off in Dawnsglory Pond before returning home to Treetop, so she knew that Kuhl was both a little leaner and less woolly than Burlen. It was still going to be like wrestling a bear, but she saw no reason to make it any more distasteful than it had to be.
'More wine, Kuhl?'
Without waiting for an answer, Takari pressed herself to Kuhl's burly back and reached around his shoulder to refill his goblet.
She was wearing only the thinnest of shifts, so she knew he could feel her as well as she could feel him, but he only nodded and voiced his thanks without so much as a glance in her direction. Seeing that Dexon's goblet was almost empty, Takari took the opportunity to make her point more clearly by plastering herself to Kuhl's shoulder as she stretched forward to refill it Lingering there rather longer than was necessary, she turned and smiled.
Kuhl looked away, a crimson flush rising up his cheeks.
Burlen pushed his goblet toward the ewer and said, 'I'll take another swallow myself, if you don't mind.'
