FOR THE SECOND TIME IN AS MANY HOURS, KALEN AWOKE, but because of Myrin’s magic, this time it was his body—not his mind—that stirred first. The world was pain, as every limb awoke with its own grumbles and complaints before he could do anything about it.
When his thoughts finally came to him, he found his limbs quivering against their bonds. He tried to touch his face, but his hand couldn’t stretch more than a thumb’s breadth from the bed board. He really didn’t remember falling asleep tied to a bed. He and Myrin had been speaking, and then she had touched him and … nothing more.
He’d been under a sleep spell before and recognized its effects. Damn.
They were in a rented room in Tidetown—that, Kalen knew by the sounds of seabirds and the smell of new timber stained with fresh pitch. Built since the Sea of Fallen Stars had drained substantially lower, this part of Westgate was quite a bit younger than the rest of the city. Also, he did not know it as well, since new buildings went up every tenday or so.
“Good—you’re awake,” Brace said from near his bedside.
Kalen focused on the gnome perched on a chair near the window, where he’d been scribing words on a scrap of parchment. “Where is she?”
“The ladies left us gentlesirs—probably off to get roaring drunk.” Brace paused in his scribbling. “If you don’t mind, I’m trying to find a rhyme for ‘shadow.’ Thoughts?”
“What?” Kalen’s voice sounded dry as a desert.
“It’s a poem I’m writing for Lady Nathalan,” he said. “ ‘Shadow’ is a difficult word.”
“No,” Kalen said. “Get roaring drunk? What happened?”
The gnome shrugged. “They appeared out of one of those doors Lady Darkdance carves with magic, tied you up, and asked me to watch over you while they adjourned for some ‘lass talk’—whatever that means. It looked and sounded serious, so I said I’d ‘guard the bullheaded prisoner and dream.’ Hence, writing.” Brace tapped his parchment. “I’ve never tried writing a song of my own, and it’s surprisingly difficult. The best I can do for shadow is ‘credo,’ which isn’t quite right and sends the wrong message, anyway. Perhaps ‘drow’ like ‘snow’?”
Kalen’s head hurt. “I thought it was ‘drow’ … like ‘cow.’ ”
“Maybe you’re right. Hmm. But ‘drow’ has nothing to do with anything. I’d have to think of a word that … Ah!” His eyes lit up. “ ‘Plough’! That’s it.”
“That doesn’t rhyme with any of it,” Kalen said.
“It’s a soft rhyme. It’ll make sense in context. Yes yes.” Brace wrote feverishly.
Kalen tested his bonds, which strained but held firm.
“Strong, aren’t they?” Brace smiled wryly. “Feywild underlinens—stronger than rope, softer than silk. Methinks our lovely Lady Ilira’s tied up a man or two in her day.” He sighed, and a vacant look of fantasy seized his face. “She’s just wonderful.”
Kalen exercised his will and gray flames coursed around his hand. He released the power, however. What good would summoning the sword do him now? The fading flames illumined a hulking shadow lurking on the wall across from the bed. Ilira had left her shadow to guard over him as well. Even if he could escape, he’d have to defeat not only Brace but the shadow.
Kalen slumped back against the pillows on the bed, defeated.
“Myrin,” he murmured. “I hope you’re right about this.”
“Let me get one thing straight,” Myrin said over bowls of wine. “Between us, I mean.”
Ilira’s gold eyes gleamed. “By all means.”
Myrin thought if she held back any longer, she might explode. “I’m sick to death of the lies and manipulations,” she said. “Right here, right now, I want no more. Do you hear me?”
Ilira nodded slowly. “I hear and understand.”
“You’ll answer all my questions?” Myrin asked. “As completely as you can?”
“I will.”
“That’s a relief.” Myrin opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. Now that she finally had the chance to ask, the words failed her. There was just too much.
“We have time.” Ilira sipped her wine.
After securing Kalen at the Blue Banner, they’d exchanged a significant look, and Ilira had suggested they go elsewhere. So they sat outside the Lurking Wyrm in the Shou District, drinking mulled rice wine and eating meatless dumplings. The night was unseasonably cold, but the Wyrm lit braziers among the tables to keep guests warm. Clouds above threatened rain, and for this purpose the Shou wait staff set out parasols for guests who insisted on eating outdoors.
Questions flitted around each other in Myrin’s mind, but one rose to the forefront. It was only the most recent mystery. “So. What’s this about your husband?”
“Ah, Lilten.” Ilira’s eyes glinted like burnished gold in the candlelight. She looked bemused. “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Among many things, but a good place to start. I’m curious why you call him ‘uncle.’ ”
“The word in Elvish means ‘far relative’—not one’s immediate family, and not entirely trustworthy. I called him so before we were handfasted, and it became a jest between us afterward.” Ilira sighed. “It was a long time ago, and I was very young. Foolish.”
Myrin waited, then cleared her throat. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say? After all I said about lies and manipulations?”
“I’ve thought little of him in a century.”
“Is he a threat?”
Ilira shrugged. “If he becomes so, he is mine to deal with.”
“Fair enough.” Myrin switched tracks. Rooting out this mystery had freed her to ask the questions she really wanted to voice. “Tell me more about myself, then. When Shalis—my mother—sent you after me, you seemed not to know who I was, either.”
“I knew only that you went missing,” Ilira said. “Over the years, I discovered you had apprenticed to various wizards all over Faerûn, studying all sorts of magic. In your letters, you said you were training to be an ‘incantatrix.’ ”
Myrin recognized the word Orbakh had used in the memory she’d absorbed from the crystal in the lair of Night Masters. Also, because of what Ilira had just said, Myrin was beginning to suspect exactly why she had been interacting with the vampire in the first place: she’d been his apprentice. She must have been doing the same thing Ilira had done with Darklady Vhammos—luring Orbakh into believing her an ally, only to betray him. Apparently, not only had she been a powerful wizard, but she’d been brilliant as well. And manipulative.
Something Ilira had said floated back into focus. “You said I wrote letters? What sort of letters? Do they survive?”
“I wish I’d saved them, but alas, that was a hundred years ago,” Ilira said. “No doubt you’d have given your mother heartstop if you hadn’t written to let her know where you were, that you were safe, and the like. Then, one day in 1379, the letters stopped. Shalis begged my companions and I to search for you—I owed her a favor, after all.”
“Companions?” Myrin asked.
“I had two companions then. Gargan Vathkelke”—she traced the letters inked on her chest—“a goliath, and the best friend I have ever had. He is with me still, in some small way.”
Myrin’s eyes widened. “He’s your shadow, right? Just as he was in the flesh?”
She nodded. “My other companion was Yldar Nathalan. And no.” Ilira held up her hand to stay Myrin’s speculative look. “Before you give words to those thoughts, I am more sister to him than lover. There are … reasons.” She looked at her gloved hand, then put it in her lap. “I call myself ‘Nathalan’ today out of respect.”
Myrin understood that quite well, actually. Names had power. “You say ‘am,’ not ‘was.’ Does he live still?”
“I know not, but hope ever abides.” Ilira sighed.
“You said you had two companions then—did you gather more?”
“Just one,” Ilira said. “Gedrin Shadowbane.”
“The founder of the Eye of Justice?”
She nodded. “Some years later, after the business with the Night Masters, Gedrin joined with us. He had sworn to find you, and gods-be-burned if he would fail in his quest. Apparently, he decided that he could not find you alone, and that we would need his aid. He would not allow us to refuse his companionship—even when I begged him.”
“Well that’s not nice.” It made Myrin laugh anyway, particularly when she thought of Kalen insisting on repaying a debt with service.
“Nay, he was a good man, and he’d sworn an oath—though he never told me to whom. I daresay he never gave up the search. Bastard probably kept looking for you until his last day.” She laughed wryly. “Gods, but he was a pain in our collective backside. Always nettling us about ‘don’t take this coin that doesn’t belong to you’ or ‘don’t torture yon mage for information’ and the like. Have you ever traveled with a paladin before? Oh, but of course you have.”
“Kalen’s not a pain, he’s just—” Myrin trailed off as hot tears welled in her eyes.
Instantly, Ilira reached out as though to touch Myrin’s hand and comfort her, but she withdrew. She’d lost her glove in Castle Thalavar, and Myrin could see the old fear of touching take over. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset—I’m angry.” Myrin bit her lip. “Kalen made his choice, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I’m mad as all Nine Hells at him.”
Ilira nodded in approval. “Good for you.”
“But I still—” Myrin grasped her elbow behind her back. “I mean—”
“Yes.” Ilira looked away. “Yes, I really do. Understand, that is.”
They were silent a moment. Another round of rice wine came, and Ilira thanked the server in the flowery Shou language. Myrin listened to children laughing as they ran, carefree, through the streets of the east end.
“Are you still angry at me?” Myrin asked.
Ilira looked confused. “Why would I be?”
“Because I took away your touch without telling you,” Myrin said. “I—at first I didn’t think it had worked, and by the time I realized I’d taken it … How could I just bring it up?”
“What of ‘bless you, Ilira, now you have a whole day of touching folk after a century without. Don’t spend it all in one festhall.’ How about that?”
Myrin hung her head. “I’m sorry.”
Ilira smiled. “Truth be told, I’ve no idea what I would have done. I meant what I said to Lilten: the woman I was before the blue fire … she seems so far away, I hardly know her anymore.” She fingered the starburst hilt of the rapier leaning against her chair. “I left that life behind me a long time ago.”
“And yet you took the sword,” Myrin said.
“I did,” she said. “Betrayal, it’s called. It was a gift from your father—after a fashion.”
“My father.” Myrin felt decidedly uncomfortable, although she couldn’t say exactly why. “How did you know him? Where did you meet?”
Ilira made no reply.
“You’ll tell me all about me, but when I ask a simple question about you, you grow silent.” A shadow flickered across Myrin’s skin, and she focused upon it, using the trick Ilira had taught her. “You don’t talk about yourself much, do you?”
“Why would I?” Ilira sipped her wine.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Myrin sighed. “If I knew myself—my past, my family, my anything—I would talk about it all the time! But you, you have centuries—”
Ilira gave her a sour look. “Only two centuries, thank you.”
“Two centuries to talk about, and yet you don’t. It doesn’t make sense.” Myrin grasped Ilira’s wrist on the table. “What are you so afraid of remembering?”
Ilira sucked in a sharp breath, surprised as much by the question as by the hand on her bare wrist. Myrin’s skin was touching hers and there was no fire.
“Oh.” Myrin hadn’t meant to touch her—hadn’t even been sure she could—but there it was, and Ilira’s spellscar had not come between them.
She started to pull away, but Ilira caught her wrist and held her hand in place. “How is this possible?” the elf demanded. “Have you taken my scar again?”
Myrin shook her head. “It’s from Hessar,” she said. “When he was healing you, I … I thought perhaps I could take away whatever it was about him that let him touch you. I didn’t take all of it—just enough.”
“Hessar could touch me because of the shadow in our souls. He is blessed of the power of Shar, and the ritual that made me what I am also protects the heirs of Netheril.” She looked at Myrin’s hand, across which shadows passed. “Do you have the least idea what you’ve done?”
“No?”
“You’ve bound darkness to yourself, corrupted your inner light into something horrible. Something like me. Did”—her grim expression wavered—“did you do this for me?”
“I—yes?”
Not breaking their gaze, Ilira grasped Myrin’s hand and brought it to her face. She laid the wizard’s fingers against her cheek and, when there was no burning, finally closed her eyes and sighed. Her whole body relaxed, as though she had laid down a century’s burden.
“I thought”—Myrin’s tongue felt thick in her mouth—“I thought this way I could touch you again and take your scar for a time. Let you touch whomever you wanted. Perhaps Brace—”
“No. You can’t do that.”
“I only had that curse for a day—I couldn’t imagine having it for a century. You—”
“No.” Ilira opened her eyes, awash in tears. Myrin had never seen such emotion on her face, and it silenced all her thoughts. “As much as I would want to be free, I cannot wish the same curse I bear upon anyone—not even you. Especially not you.”
“Especially not me?” Myrin managed. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been so kind to me, and I’ve given you no reason, other than my own dark memories about your parents. And now you even offer to relieve me of a burden that will hurt you to the core? No.”
She took Myrin’s cheeks between her hands, cradling her face.
“You have a good heart, Myrin Darkdance,” Ilira said. “And I swear to you now that I will never willingly harm you, nor suffer you to come to any harm.”
“But—but it won’t hurt me,” Myrin said. “And you’ll have a day when you can touch anyone you want!”
“This,” Ilira said. “This, right now, is enough.”
She leaned across the table and pressed her face against Myrin’s forehead. Tears fell on Myrin’s cheeks.
“You feel so warm,” Ilira whispered. “I have touched the cold flesh of shades in the last century, but never a warmblooded, living creature, man or woman—not without bringing death. The shadow cools you somewhat, but you feel …” She shivered. “You feel so good.”
Myrin trembled. “Thanks?”
Ilira’s face dipped and their lips came close. Their eyes met and they exchanged an understanding few ever know. Myrin licked her lips, making ready.
Abruptly, Ilira’s lips moved in words. “Can you see anything else? Any memories?”
“Oh.” Of course. In that moment, Myrin had forgotten about the memories. “Nothing. I can only see those memories that relate directly to me. And if you have none, then that means—”
“I never met you,” Ilira said. “I was there at your birth, and Shalis spoke of you that once, but in all those years of searching, I never even saw your face. I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Myrin said. “You met my parents—loved them, even. Can you … can you tell me about them?” She cursed herself for the sudden and impulsive question, particularly if it meant driving Ilira even the tiniest bit away. “I mean, if you want.”
“I’d love to.” Ilira smiled wryly. “How much time do you have?”
“All night, I suppose,” Myrin said. “I mean, if you’re sure—you’re sure you don’t want someone else. Brace, for instance, or …”
Ilira closed her hands tightly around Myrin’s own.
“Oh, Brace is going to be so disappointed,” Myrin murmured.
“Let him,” Ilira said. “There are plenty of things two people might do that don’t involve touching.” She leaned closer and added in a whisper: “And a few that require it.”
Myrin’s eyes slid closed.
“Watching Lost Gods damn it!”
The outburst drew Kalen’s attention from working on his bonds. The gnome sighed and set aside the parchment he’d been working on.
“What troubles?” Kalen relaxed to allow blood back into his hands, which had turned an unsettling shade of purple. He’d come close to freeing himself, but it would do him no good if he could work free, only for his hands to prove unable to clutch a weapon.
“Alas, I’m a terrible poet,” Brace said. “I should crumple this up and toss it aside as in some melodrama, but alas, a working footman such as myself has but a limited coin supply, and the canvas of my art doesn’t come cheap. I just hope I have enough remaining to finish before I have to take this to the scribner’s for cleaning. I tell you”—he waved his quill at the shadow on the wall—“your mistress is proving harder than I thought to properly honor with flowery words.”
Ilira’s shadow made no reply, but kept its gaze on Kalen tied to the bed. There was a rustle outside the window, as of leaves disturbed by the wind.
“A question, friend gnome,” Kalen said.
Brace turned in his chair and regarded him. “I’ll pause, certainly.”
“You seem to admire yon Lady Shadow very much,” he said. “Does it bother you—she an elf, you a gnome, and neither of you able to touch?”
The gnome smiled absently. “Methinks you know little of love, Saer Shadow, if you limit it to such tawdry concerns as race or stature. Even magical curses can be overcome—”
The shutters of the window exploded inward, followed by a man who kicked Brace off the chair and out into the room. Shadowbane perched on the desk like a panther. As Kalen watched, black flames spread to shroud him in a full suit of plate armor.
His own armor of faith—black as death.
The shadow on the wall exploded into motion, rushing toward Shadowbane, but Kalen saw gray flames surge as Vindicator materialized in the man’s grasp, and its flame turned black.
“Wait—” Kalen struggled against his bonds. He could not free himself in time.
The shadow lunged, and Shadowbane sent a blast of searing black radiance straight into it, shattering the beast into a thousand motes of darkness that rained around the room.
The gnome, blood leaking from a cut high on his forehead, managed to crawl a pace, and his form started to waver into invisibility.
“Not this time, gnome,” Shadowbane said, his voice like that of a man hideously burned.
He plunged Vindicator through Brace and into the carpet. The gnome cried out and struggled against the blade pinning him to the floor. Blood surged down the blade.
“Stop,” Kalen said. “Let him go.”
“As you wish.” Shadowbane twisted Vindicator viciously. Brace shrieked and collapsed.
Until now, Shadowbane had kept silent by habit, and now Kalen knew why. As much as the man tried to hide his voice in an affected rasp, he sounded terribly familiar. And what Kalen heard turned his bowels to water. “You,” he said. “But that cannot be. Not you.”
“Not the boy you knew, and not Shadowbane, either. I am Vengeance.” He raised Vindicator, point downward. “And you are nothing.”
Ilira recoiled from Myrin with a gasp. She clutched the edge of the table for balance.
“What is it?” Myrin felt her heart suddenly racing. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, it’s—” Ilira clutched at her chest, where Myrin could see her line of black runic tattoos burning and evaporating like smoke. “Gargan, he—they’ve destroyed him. My shadow.” Her tear-filled gold eyes turned black with rage. “We’re under attack.”
Myrin grasped Ilira’s hand tight. “I’m going with you.”
The elf nodded, then her eyes went wide. “Away!” She shoved Myrin back from the table. The wizard was at first shocked, but then she saw fire bloom in Ilira’s metallic eyes: a blade wrapped in eldritch flames was hurtling toward them. The blade struck the table, blasting it—and their half-eaten meal—into blackened cinders and a cloud of smoke.
The force threw Myrin sprawling into another table and deafened her. She saw the world as a bleary dream. Rain fell on her face as she lay blinking, but she forced herself up. Suddenly, the night rushed back in, filling her damaged ears with choked screams of terror.
Ears ringing, Myrin glimpsed their attacker through the smoke and rain, standing tall at the edge of the Lurking Wyrm’s patio. “Rujia?” she asked. “What—?”
As patrons panicked and fled around her, the deva strode toward the elf and the wizard, majestic of stature but deprived of the serene façade she had once worn. Her white-and-purple face was a storm of rage, anguish, and—above all—undying hatred.
“No more running,” she said. The blackened ruin of her sword rose from the cinders and reformed in her hand, shining and pure. “My vengeance will wait no longer, Ilira Nathalan!”
As Rujia spoke, an aura of threshing, spectral blades appeared around her.
“Go.” Ilira touched Myrin on the shoulder, making her skin tingle at the heat. The shadow she’d stolen from Hessar was burning away. “I will face her.”
“But—?” Myrin could hardly think as Rujia stalked toward them.
“Go.” Ilira gave her a gentle smile. “I trust you. Trust me.”
Myrin’s heart beat faster.
She summoned the spell of flight and soared back toward the Blue Banner.
The Trickster watched Myrin go with equal parts trepidation and satisfaction—Kirenkirsalai would be displeased, but Myrin just might find a way to defeat the vampire. The wizard was a resourceful woman. Also, the Trickster felt a hint of relief that she would not have to face Myrin, and—unexpectedly—a tiny surge of hope that Myrin would survive the night. Even though they could never be friends after this, the Trickster still cared about her.
The Trickster had made her choice, and she would face its consequences.
“I’m sorry, Myrin,” she murmured as she faced Ilira. “I just can’t leave it in the past.”
The two women gazed upon one another over the emptied battlefield. Ilira had come dressed the part in something similar to the adventuring outfit she had worn when she had broken the Trickster’s heart. She even wore a sword now, as she had not in some years.
“A blade—good,” the Trickster said. “This would not satisfy me if there was no duel.”
How she had prepared for this moment! It was time to use the skills and magic she had honed in the year since her last attempt at vengeance on the woman she hated more than anything else in the world. She tightened her grasp on her sword, through which she’d painstakingly learned to channel her magic. She no longer had any need for a wand.
Drops of water fell on her face and she glanced up. The clouds had finally decided to burst. Perfect—not only for the tone it lent this deadly business but also because a storm would block the moon and there would be fewer shadows for the Nathalan woman to use.
“You have the advantage of me, lady,” Ilira said. “You know much of me, but, except that I have done you wrong, I know naught of you.”
“You should!” The Trickster suppressed the angry tears that threatened to choke her. “You took everything from me—you and that slave of yours, Yldar! The two of you murdered my mother before my eyes, and you didn’t have the decency to die for it.”
Ilira looked at her with an oblivious expression.
As the Trickster spoke, she wove a subtle spell that would bind Ilira to her. It was meant for protection, this aegis, but she had perverted its purpose to her own ends. Her magic would remain upon Ilira even if she tried to flee. As she cast the spell, she felt another tracing spell upon the elf, but she found they would not conflict.
The clouds chose that moment to open fully. The torrential deluge plastered Ilira’s hair to her head and soaked her garb. The Trickster felt her own leathers clinging to her false body.
“I will never, never forgive you for what you’ve done,” the Trickster said. “I have spent decades striving to bring you nothing but sorrow, but it is not enough. Nor will it ever be enough—not until you lie dead at my feet with your blood on my hands.”
“Oh, child.” Ilira’s face grew sad, but no doubt that was artifice. She would feel true pain soon enough. “Who have I wronged so grievously?”
With a flicker of will, the Trickster shed her guise. She was no longer Rujia, the woman she had spent a year building for just this moment. She shrank and slimmed in stature until she matched the lithe elf shape of her nemesis. Her skin lost its odd pattern of colors and became pale with hints of silver to match her pupil-less, silver eyes. A forked tail sprouted from her tailbone and a pair of graceful antlers curled from the tangled shock of her red-pink hair.
“I am Ellyne, named for sorrow,” she said. “But you will call me the name I have chosen for myself—the name of your doom.”
The Trickster sneered through her fey’ri fangs.
“And that name is Fayne.”
Vindicator plunged down, but even as it fell, gray flames swirled around the blade and it vanished just before the point could pierce Kalen’s chest.
Overbalanced, Shadowbane—Vengeance—staggered and caught himself on the bed, his face a hand’s breadth from Kalen’s own.
This was Kalen’s moment: he twisted his left hand against the bedpost to break his thumb with an audible crack. Then he slipped his hand from the bond and dealt his reeling attacker a vicious left hook to the jaw. The armor deflected the blow, but Vengeance still fell back. Immediately, Kalen reached across to untie his other hand … but what he saw made him stop short, hardly able to breathe.
Standing in the doorway, clad in dark leathers with a helm to hide his face, Vindicator burning in his hands, was another Shadowbane.
“If you are Vengeance, then I am Mercy.” The second Shadowbane raised the blade high, revealing the rune of Tyr burning in white on the back of his hand. “Now stand away, and maybe I’ll show you some.”