Downshadow (7 page)

Araezra tapped her fingers on the desk, unhappy at being ignored.

“Getting slow in your old age?” asked Bors, gesturing at Talanna.

“Getting soggy in yours?” asked Talanna, gesturing at his midsection.

Araezra let loose a cough, more exasperation than throat clearing.

“Ah, yes,” Bors said. “What brings us to your fine abode this eve? First, I need to borrow Kalen for a late evenfeast and thereafter. In his place, you will take Talanna to visit the walls.”

“What?” Araezra asked. “But Kalen’s my assistant.”

“Second,” Bors said without pause, “it has come to my attention that you need some aid in asking Vigilant Dren a certain question, Valabrar Hondyl.”

Araezra’s iron will broke. “What?” She looked wide-eyed at Talanna, who giggled. This was some jest of hers, Araezra realized.

Bors turned his eyes to the ceiling and swept his hands wide. “Can it be that the fair Araezra might be doomed to disappointment and apt to weep herself to a sweet, tender, and no doubt lonely sleep this night?” he asked. “Might not I be of some assistance in this—”

Araezra threw back her hair—an impressive flurry—and glared at Bors. “For the last time, Commander, nay. All the poetic words in the fair Realms couldn’t get me into your bed.”

Bors dropped a hand to the pouch that hung at his belt. “Even if I brought diamonds?”

Araezra glared even harder.

Bors moved his hand. “Well, then, I simply must woo you, lovely Araezra, with prodigious adoring looks.” And he got right to it.

“Go on, Commander,” Talanna said to Bors. “Tell him, already!”

“Tell him what?” Araezra looked at Talanna and mouthed: You didn’t.

Talanna beamed innocently at her.

Araezra thought her face might explode. Kalen, gods burn his eyes, seemed nonplussed about the whole situation. He looked up calmly.

“Kalen, son,” Bors said, puffing up to his fullest height. “Commander?”

“I’ve been told Rayse will be on duty at the costume revel at the Temple of Beauty.”

Araezra glared at Talanna, who smirked.

“Regarding the instructions of these lovely ladies,” he said, “and knowing as I do that Rayse intends to ask you to go along as her escort, I’ve come to order you… don’t go.”

Araezra’s mouth fell into a perfect O. “What?”

Talanna laughed aloud and slapped her knee, her jest completed.

“Sir?” Kalen asked.

“Honestly, if you took Rayse to the ball, it would be disastrous for morale,” Bors said. “You can’t imagine the number of broken hearts and spoiled nighttime fantasies I’d have to deal with. And no one wants weepy guardsmen.” Bors shuddered. “So don’t take her, even if she asks. I’m ordering you.”

“Ah …” Kalen nodded. “Aye, sir.”

“Now wait just a breath—” Araezra started, but they ignored her.

“Now that that’s settled, Kalen,” Bors said, “if you’re finished up here, let’s go have a drink at the Smiling Siren—just the two of us.”

“It’s never ‘just two’ at a festhall,” Talanna quipped.

Araezra couldn’t manage to produce words. She felt that if she spoke, she might explode.

“Away, good Kalen!” said Bors. “Unless, of course, you lovely ladies care to join us?”

Araezra fumed—at Bors, at Kalen, at everyone. “Mind yourself, Commander.”

The commander winked at her. “Just us, Kalen. I’m sure the ladies can amuse themselves without us here. Though”—his voice lowered—”I’d love to watch that, wouldn’t you?”

Kalen shrugged.

Araezra plucked up Kalen’s discarded ledger to throw, but Bors was out the door—Kalen in tow—before she got the chance.

Night had fallen in the world above, but below—in the tunnels that ran rank with the creations of the mad wizard Halaster—darkness persisted regardless of the movement of sun or stars.

Shadowbane stalked from chamber to chamber in Downshadow. While he did not share any of the special visual acuity of elves or dwarves, his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, and in the presence of even the faintest torch down a corridor, he could see well enough. He could also, of course, create his own light by drawing his sword.

Hand on the worn hilt of Vindicator, he paused and listened. He heard footsteps, harsh breathing, and gentle words ahead, in a chamber that had once been some manner of living quarters. Who could have dwelt this far north in the Undermountain of the old world, he did not know—one of Halaster’s legendary mad apprentices, no doubt.

He peered in and saw a single moving figure—a woman in a gray cloak—among several sprawled, moaning bodies. When her attention turned away from the corridor, he ducked into the chamber and climbed to a better vantage point. There he crouched, balanced atop a moldering wardrobe, and watched.

He’d been following the cloaked woman for some time, since she had entered by one of the northern shafts into Downshadow. He’d glimpsed her several times before and knew how to anticipate her comings and goings. This was the night he had chosen to catalogue her doings.

Likely she was a crooked merchant, seeking to peddle stolen goods. But if so, where were her warders? She could be here for no other reason—why would a citizen of the world above come down to Downshadow, alone, if it were not for some vile purpose?

Anyone other than himself, of course.

He watched from the secure, unseen top of the wardrobe as she

went about her tasks. Here camped a band of delvers who had seen better days. Two men in armor wheezed pitifully, and a lad in leathers clutched at a torn belly and choked back sobs.

Only three. Shadowbane knew the ways of sellswords: they usually roved in packs of four or five. That meant they had left at least one of their number in the depths.

“Bull-back,” the boy murmured. “Back away, lest I… I…” His hand feebly raised a dagger, then dropped it clattering to the floor.

The two armored men beside him only groaned.

As the woman knelt beside the bleeding boy, Shadowbane tensed, ready to spring to his defense. Adventurers were jusr as likely criminals as anything else, and his vigil in Downshadow did not include saving those who had brought a harsh fate upon themselves. Still, he would not watch idly while anyone murdered those who were weak or helpless.

She was casting a spell, he realized, but he recognized the words as similar to those of a healing chant his old teacher, Levia, had used many times. He relaxed his grip on Vindicator, rhough he kept his legs tensed, ready to leap.

Sure enough, healing radiance suffused the woman’s body. Shadowbane watched, awed, as she pulled back her hood, revealing a fine-boned face of about forty winters and a forest of beautiful, red-gold curls. Such beauty could touch only a Sunite celebrant, he thought.

The priestess bent to kiss the injured lad on the lips, and healing radiance spilled from her and into his young body. The boy coughed and retched, and Shadowbane saw the wound in his belly close, to be replaced by smooth—albeit bloody—skin.

Jaded as he had become, Shadowbane still smiled at the beneficence of some folk.

The boy looked up in wonder at the priestess who had healed him. “My—my thanks, lady,” he said. “I thought for sure, once we lost Deblin…”

She shook her head and pressed the boy’s shaking hand to her cheek. “Sune watches over us all,” she said. “I am Lorien. While I see to your companions, speak: what befell you?”

“A roving spell,” the boy said. “It drains your strength away, so

you can barely carry your own bones.” As he spoke, the priestess healed the first man in armor, who hugged her around the knees, then promptly fell to a snoring slumber. “We escaped that, but then we ran afoul of a pair of those mad panthers with tentacles—the ones who aren’t where you think.”

Shadowbane knew such creatures: displacer beasts radiated magic that bent the light, making them dastards to strike. And with the lashing tentacles that grew from their shoulders, one needed to strike them quickly.

Lorien nodded as she bestowed a healing kiss on the second of the armored men, who coughed and stammered his thanks. “Are there more of you?” Lorien asked.

The boy’s face went pale. “Deblin, a priest of Amaunator—he died when the beasts attacked—and our wizard, a girl called—called…” He sniffled, and Shadowbane saw his eyes fill with tears. “I was holding her hand when one mauled me. She disappeared. Can’t be far!”

Lorien smiled and cupped his chin. “Never fear,” she said. “I shall look for your lady love, and where love shines, there Sune shall guide us.”

Shadowbane bit his lip. He’d found little enough of love—or Sune’s guidance—along his path. Beauty often surrounded him, he admitted, but he allowed it only so close. He’d made too many mistakes.

The priestess pulled down her cowl and hurried down the tunnel where the boy had pointed.

Shadowbane followed, smoothly and silently. The weary delvers could only blink and question whether they had really seen a figure pass.

The priestess hurried north along a tunnel, heedless of traps. Shadowbane shook his head. What if an accident befell her in these depths? If he weren’t following, how long would it be before someone found her?

Lorien paused abruptly, and Shadowbane had only an instant’s warning to press himself into a crevice before she looked back, searching.

Impressive, that she’d heard him—perhaps she’d once been an adventurer herself.

A blue light flashed in a chamber at the end of the corridor, and the priestess turned to follow it.

Shadowbane pursued—at a greater distance this time.

As they moved, he got the distinct sensation they weren’t alone in the tunnel. Something else was there—something hidden. Several times, he looked over his shoulder but saw no one. He kept his hand tight on Vindicator’s hilt.

Finally, Lorien passed into the chamber where they’d seen the blue light. Shadowbane saw her stiffen, then creep cautiously toward something he could not see.

He picked up his pace, heedless of making sounds.

The chamber was wide and roughly square, lit by luminous pink and blue mushrooms. It had partly collapsed some years ago, and great shards of rock stuck out of the formerly smooth floor like stalagmites. A second entrance gaped in the west wall. The chamber was otherwise plain, except for two bodies in the northeast corner. They looked whole, though he could not be certain from his distance.

Strange. Though the room smelled thickly of blood and animal spoor, he saw no beasts, displaced or otherwise, that might have attacked the wounded adventurers. That was odd—why would monsters leave two perfectly good bodies lying in the chamber? Why, if they’d been somehow warded off, had they not chased the wounded and weak adventurers south?

A crude jest around the ante table was that one only needed to run faster than one’s slowest delving companion.

He saw his answer, then: against the far wall were two bloody, ashen outlines of creatures like great cats. Shadowbane wondered what manner of magic had done that.

“All’s well,” Lorien was saying. “I’m here to help—not to hurt.”

Shadowbane turned, but he could see only that Lorien was approaching someone. He heard another voice—younger, also female—speaking words in a tongue he didn’t know. She sounded terrified and, he realized, familiar. He couldn’t place the voice.

“Wait!” Lorien said. “Let me help you!”

He saw a flash of blue light, and then the speaker—whatever it had been—was gone. Shadowbane peered closer and saw Lorien kneeling to examine a bloodstained woman, heavy in build and wide of face, who lay in a puddle of blood-spattered robes. Something was odd about her skin, too—it seemed puckered and red as though burned by fire.

Lorien gave her a kiss of healing, and the wizard murmured wordlessly.

Then the back of Shadowbane’s neck prickled, and he knew they were not alone.

Lorien looked up, though Shadowbane thought it impossible that she’d sensed him. She looked instead deeper into the cavern, where a short, wiry figure in a black robe perched atop a rock, conremplating her with his chin in his hands. The light of the mushrooms bathed his face in a cruel, fiendish light: Rath.

Shadowbane drew his sword halfway.

“Well,” said the dwarf. “Now that-was impressive. How did you hear me, I wonder?”

“I have a guardian, to serve me at need,” Lorien said with a defiant toss of her curls.

At first, Shadowbane thought she must be speaking of him, but then he saw it, finally, in the light shed by the mushrooms. A shadow, unattached to anything else, seemingly of a tall and broad man, flitted across the floor, moving fast toward Rath.

Rath calmly raised a hand and spoke a word in a tongue Shadowbane did not know. Light flared from a ring he wore, bathing the room in a white glow. Lorien shielded her eyes.

The shadow hesitated, then fled into the darkness, and Shadowbane saw it no more.

“Simple enough,” the dwarf said. “When one is prepared.”

Rath stepped toward Lorien, his hand on his slim sword.

The priestess backed away, spreading her arms in front of the wounded woman.

Shadowbane cursed. He knew revealing himself was unwise, yet he couldn’t just stand and watch. He stepped into the room, hand on his sword hilt. “Hold.”

Lorien looked up at his appearance and her eyes widened. She gaped.

Rath hardly looked surprised. “Ah,” he said. “Come to see if I shall fight you this time?”

Shadowbane drew Vindicator, whose length burst into silvery white flames. “Face me or leave this place,” he said. “This lady is under my protection.”

Rath eased his hand away from his sword hilt, but Shadowbane could see the violence in his eyes. “Very well,” said Rath. Unassumingly, he walked forward.

Shadowbane drew back into a high guard, ready to slash down hard enough to cut Rath in two, but the dwarf just ambled toward him as though unaware of the danger. Shadowbane couldn’t help feeling a little unnerved, but instinct seized him and he struck.

Rath stepped aside, fluid as water, seized Shadowbane’s grasp on the sword, and elbowed him in the face. The blow would have been hard enough to shatter Shadowbane’s nose and cheekbones, if not for his helm.

Stunned, Shadowbane staggered back, empty-handed, and the dwarf admired Vindicator in his hands. The sword’s silvery glow diminished but did not go out.