KALEN DREN AWOKE SLOWLY, THE LAST VESTIGES OF HIS dream slipping languidly away. As ever, his body slept longer than his mind. It was the nature of his illness—even as it made him stronger and more durable day by day, so, too, did it slow sensation. As he waited, eyes closed, he relished the feeling of disconnection before the needles of his numb flesh creeped back in to stab him.
I will make of myself a darkness, he thought. A darkness where there is only me.
The words let him focus.
A moment before, he’d dreamed about his first arrival in Westgate, ten years before, as a shaking boy of fifteen winters. On that night, he had sought out the Eye of Justice, but this time, Threefold God willing, he would not see any of them. Levia might prove an exception; he would not mind seeing her again, although considering the manner of their last leave-taking, he suspected matters would be far from simple between them. An important task brought him to the city of Shadowbane’s birth, and he would see it through and leave as quickly as possible.
When sensation finally filled him once more, he realized a certain pressure weighed upon his midsection, as if something—or someone—was poised there. When he opened his eyes, it was to a feminine face not a hand’s span away from his own. Iridescent sapphire eyes studied him in exacting detail, and deeper blue lips provided a sharp contrast to her gold-tan skin. Her vibrant blue hair in the morning sunlight seemed to glow against the gray sky.
“Myrin,” he said to the woman straddling him.
“Kalen.” His name was kitten’s purr. The intensity of her gaze—as though he were a new spell she wanted to learn—vaguely unsettled him.
The dagger in her hand was also disturbing, in a more immediate sense.
She raised the blade, and he rolled to the side, throwing off her aim so that she cut only dirt. A year before, when Myrin had been starved and frail, his move might have sent her flying. However, she’d since filled out into increasingly distracting curves, and rolling over merely spoiled her attack and put her beneath him. The knife skittered loose.
They struggled together in the grass for a pair of breaths, each going for the knife and each managing to pull the other back into the grapple. Ultimately, Kalen caught her wrists and straddled her. Myrin’s chest heaved with exertion.
“Very well!” Myrin said, sounding disappointed. “I yield—I yield!”
Kalen, breathing heavily, loosened his grip, although not enough to let her go. “What are you about? Why did you attack me?”
“You said ‘always attack by surprise.’ So …” She grinned awkwardly. “Surprise?”
“A pleasant morn to you as well.”
“I just wanted you to see that I take your lessons seriously.” She looked forlornly at her lost dagger. “It seems, however, that I still have a good deal to learn.”
“Ah.” With the fog of sleep lifted, Kalen remembered their ongoing bladework lessons. “But why did you attack me when I was asleep? I’m teaching you to fight, not to murder.”
“I waited until you woke up,” Myrin said.
“Hmm.” He couldn’t argue with that logic, even if it missed the spirit of his question. The wizard could be very literal in her thought processes, and he could never say for certain whether she actually or purposefully misunderstood. At least until she smiled, and he knew this time it was a jest. She was an odd one, but Kalen found her eccentricity refreshing. “Very funny.”
“I thought so.” She gave him a curious look, then nodded to where he yet lay atop her. “Were you, er, going to get off—?”
Kalen climbed to his feet, then helped her up. They turned their backs to each other and adjusted their rumpled clothing in silence. Kalen sneaked a look over his shoulder and saw Myrin fussing at her hair, which had grown long in the year since they had met. Gone was the girlish waif he had rescued from the machinations of confidence artists and assassins in Waterdeep, and in her place stood a woman who grew lovelier by the day.
Lovelier and more powerful.
“Speaking of murder, I’m afraid I tried cooking our morningfeast.” Myrin nodded to a blackened pot whose sides boasted impressive floes of burned sludge. “It was just the rabbits and bits from yestereve as a simmerstew. I can’t imagine where I went wrong.”
Kalen could. He imagined Myrin spreading her fingers wide with her thumbs touching and summoning fire magic to expedite matters. And knowing her, the comparatively small flame of that spell would hardly serve when she could create an entire ball of flame that would quickly turn their morningfeast to gray rubbish. Hence, murder.
“I’m not hungry,” he said. “Perhaps a little blade practice?”
“Perfect.” Myrin smiled, retrieved her knife from the grass where it had fallen, and took up the position of the apprentice before the master.
They sparred until the sun cleared the mountains of Aglarond far to the east. He’d promised a year ago to teach her daggerwork, and their trek to Westgate provided the first opportunity. An excellent student, Myrin absorbed instruction with rapt attention and demonstrated great potential. Half of bladework was in the mind, and although Myrin could be scattered, she had quick wits. Kalen suspected they would need all of them in Westgate.
In Luskan, someone had sent them a blood-soaked challenge, and he knew their unknown opponent would be waiting and watching. To this end, he’d acquired new, nondescript clothes in Neverwinter and had taken passage with a variety of caravans and barges to get them to this point. They would hike the last few leagues into the city and enter as refugees, offering the best chance of avoiding identification. So long as she avoided using magic, they might pass freely.
“Be observant,” Kalen said. “See where I will move before I do.”
“Right,” Myrin said.
They circled like wolves, testing each other’s defenses. Myrin fought like a novice—her moves obvious and easily blocked—but she was learning. In truth, it wasn’t a fair fight at all, even if she’d been fighting as long as he had. Kalen simply had a knack for seeing through deception, and bluff as she might, Myrin could not strike unless he let her.
“Look beyond my face,” he said. “Eyes tell you much, but a trained liar will keep them blank. Look to my throat and ears—see my blood pulsing. Feel my body.”
“Feel your body,” Myrin said. “Definitely.”
Kalen frustrated her for a full thirty count, then left an opening under his right arm, inviting her practice blade. He could tell she knew it for a trap, but her emotions got the better of her. When she thrust, he brought his arm down, pinned her wrist against his side, and caught her throat lightly with his free hand. She looked up at him with both shock and defiance.
“You rely too much on the blade,” he said. “A duel demands your hands, feet …”
“I’m just doing what you said.” Myrin pressed closer against him. “Feeling your body.”
“There is no mirth when you are fighting for your life.”
“It’s not fair, Kalen!” She disengaged from him, her shoulders heaving from the exertion of their fight. “You’re a far better grappler than I. If I could use a little magic …”
“We talked about this. You’re distinctive enough without drawing attention the way magic will. Not many in Westgate wield your powers, and many will try to exploit you.”
“But what if no one’s here to see?” Myrin asked. “No one’s watching us now. We could exploit my powers right now. Do anything we want.”
Kalen pushed away a possibility or two that flashed through his mind. He saw the way her eyes lingered on her pack by the fire, where she kept the orb of glass Lilten had given her. The orb that pulsed with an inner blue mist. Kalen didn’t trust the elf, and he trusted his gifts even less.
Kalen stepped between Myrin and the pack. “You need to be able to get along without it,” he said. “Magic is a tool too easily relied upon. If it breaks, you break with it.”
Myrin’s attention shot back to him. “If you’d let us walk the shadow paths the whole way, then maybe you’d see its value.” My value, her eyes added.
He sighed. Myrin had wanted to use shadowalking magic to speed their trek, but Kalen hadn’t relished a forced march through a nightmare reflection of the land he knew, even if it would have reduced their journey to a fraction of the time they’d spent on the road. And ever since Myrin had wielded dark magic against the swarm demon in Luskan, he’d been loathe to push her. Haste was of the essence, though, and he’d agreed to a compromise: sparing use of the magic to cut their journey to a tenday and a half.
Also, her magic had proved useful in keeping Vindicator hidden from prying eyes. Over the past year, Myrin had developed a spell for expanding the confines of a belt pouch without changing its size as seen from without. She’d carried Vindicator, wrapped up and safe, since Luskan, though he had other plans for the blade going into Westgate. He needed it closer at hand.
He touched the sword-shaped amulet at his throat and considered. “Myrin …”
“Kalen.” Myrin stood defiant, her arms crossed and her practice dagger tapping against her elbow. It was one of Myrin’s flaws that she felt the constant need to prove herself. Had Kalen not already demonstrated how much he relied upon her? After what had happened in Luskan, he could hardly think of anyone he’d rather have beside him in battle.
He put his free hand on her shoulder. “I value your magic, Myrin, and I trust you,” he said. “I haven’t trusted many people in my life, but you’re one of them.”
She seemed at least somewhat satisfied with that, returning an ambiguous smile. She swatted his dagger with her own. “Maybe you’ll let me win one of these days, eh?”
“Unlikely.” Kalen chuckled. “Although you’re getting better. In a month or two, I won’t be letting you do anything.”
Myrin murmured something that sounded like “such a shame.” When she saw him looking, she flushed a bit and cleared her throat. “If I’m making such progress,” Myrin said. “Maybe we should forget the blades and you can teach me to use that.”
She pointed at the weapon Kalen had been wielding while he kept Vindicator hidden away: an ugly black axe that leaned against a nearby tree. Its blade was jagged and warped, a thing meant for inflicting pain rather than engaging in honorable battle.
Sithe’s axe.
“Let’s start with the dagger. Slow steps.” Kalen turned to their packs by the ruined morningfeast. “Maybe we should get moving …”
He sensed her attack before he could properly see it. He felt it in the displacement of air and the tiniest crunch of her leather shoe against the dirt. Without the time to turn, he trusted to faith to dodge. He went one way, and Myrin’s dull blade skipped off a mantle of gray force that surrounded his hip like a plate of steel. The Threefold God’s power.
He turned to face her, and Myrin stabbed at his arm. He caught her dagger with his own, but she twisted her attack and threw herself inside his guard to land a solid slash on his torso. A plate of gray energy appeared, softening the impact of the knife, but she’d caught him off his guard and he staggered. Startled anger rose in him.
“Ha!” Myrin exclaimed in triumph. Her mirth went away when she saw his expression. “Kalen? Are you—Gods!”
Enraged, Kalen lashed out at her, and his knife sent hers ringing from her hand. Runes gleamed to life across her golden skin as she raised one hand to parry aside his next strike with a shield of shimmering golden magic.
It no longer mattered that she shouldn’t use her spells. She had loosed his fury, and he saw only how best to defeat her.
He struck wide to lure her shield aside, then grasped her arm and twisted it behind her back. He pulled the wizard tight against him and his blade went to her throat.
They stood that way, panting in the morning air. Myrin trembled in his martial embrace but did not struggle against it. Indeed, she pressed herself back against him a little, drawn to his warmth and support in such a taut pose.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed—a light chuckle that built into full-throated mirth.
“I did it,” she said. “I hit you, Kalen—not once, but twice.”
Kalen’s anger faded, and he felt a smile pull at the edges of his mouth. Even if her accomplishment came at his expense, he took pride in her progress, and her guileless joy pleased him. Nevetheless, he tapped his practice dagger against her chin as a reminder. “In a real fight, you’d still be dead.”
“In a real fight, my foe wouldn’t have had a dead god’s magic to shield him, so he would be on the ground bleeding.” Myrin gave him a sly look over her shoulder. “Or are you saying magic is good for something after all?”
Kalen nodded in concession. He started to let go of Myrin, but she groaned and relaxed. He had to grasp her tighter to keep her from falling. “Are you well?” he asked. “Dreams again?”
She nodded sleepily. Ever since she had absorbed a hoard of memories from the doppelganger Umbra, visions had kept her awake more often than she could sleep. Kalen couldn’t explain how she had come to lose her memories, much less how she absorbed visions from others. He accepted it as he did many other incomprehensible things about Myrin.
“My mind’s working so hard to make sense of it all,” she said. “I keep reliving things from another life—another world. Just yestereve, Umbra and I were together, fighting off a dozen creatures with squids for heads.”
“Mind flayers?” Kalen asked dubiously.
She shrugged, which felt rather good as he held her. “I summoned a stone monolith to crush them,” she said. “Could I have been so powerful, Kalen? And how …”
She trailed off, but Kalen knew her thought: “How can I wield that power again?”
He had no good answer for her. The Myrin of her visions—if that was even her name—wove spells of incredible power. The Myrin of today bore echoes of that skill, and on occasion invoked some terrible spell she’d wielded in her forgotten past. Considering how to awaken the old Myrin once more made Kalen uneasy. Would she see the world the same way? Would she even be the same woman?
Myrin sighed. “One lesson at a time, I suppose,” she said. “You’re a great teacher, Kalen. I can see why Rhett admires you.”
That name took all the warmth Kalen felt and dashed it into icy bitterness. At the same instant, Myrin also seemed to realize what she had said and her body stiffened. They pulled apart, and neither could meet the other’s gaze. The reminder of why they had come to Westgate always seemed to put a stop to any intimacy.
Kalen thought of Rhetegast Hawkwinter, his apprentice by deed if not by agreement—the handsome and charming lad who’d won him over in the end. He’d sent the youth away for safety and better training, only to plunge him into danger. Once again, Kalen saw a red-stained parcel—felt the cold, dried blood on his hands—and read the word scrawled in blood on shards of a broken sword: WESTGATE. He could not say for certain whether the gruesome missive had been written in Rhett’s lifeblood or that of another, but he knew he’d failed the lad as surely as he’d let down his former apprentice, Vaelis.
Now he returned to the city of his youth—where Shadowbane had been born—but to what end? Would Rhett be waiting here, or merely some terrible doom?
“We’ll find him, Kalen.” Myrin busied herself adjusting her pack for the last leg of their journey to Westgate. “It will be all right. You’ll see.”
All this time, Myrin had spoken of finding Rhett alive and well, training with the Eye of Justice in Westgate and oblivious to any nefarious plot. The blood on the sword, she’d said, was not his. Did she truly believe that, or was it merely hope?
“We’ll find him,” Kalen agreed.
In his gut, Kalen knew that when they did find the lad, it would answer no questions. Dead men, after all, rarely spoke but only stared with accusations he could hear all too well.
Regardless, if there was a chance he could keep what happened to Vaelis from happening to Rhett, he had to try.
As the moment came and passed, the spy in the shadows smiled wanly. How close the knight and the wizard had become in the last year and how quickly they had broken apart at the mere mention of another man’s name. If only they weren’t both such cowards … but alas.
It was doubly a shame, considering that the next tenday would shatter them completely. Of this, the woman many called “Trickster” was absolutely sure.
“Oh, Saer Shadow,” she murmured. “How I’ve waited for this.”
The two moved apart to don their packs for the final steps to Westgate. The Trickster took this opportunity to summon dark magic and trace a door between worlds. She stepped into the shadows and was gone.