Dawnbringer

Chapter Nine

NONTHAL, TURMISH

1585 DR-THE YEAR OF THE BLOODIED MANACLES

Is this a time to be doing the accounting?”

Vorsha’s voice broke into Kestrel’s concentration. She checked her last column of figures, drew a line under the sum, and blew on the ink to dry it before she looked up at her mother in the doorway of her chamber.

“All done now. I didn’t want to leave it incomplete for Ciari.”

“Not the saffron prices still?”

“Even so. But I think I’ve given her enough information to go by. And I need to stay in practice. Niema Vral Jadaren sent me a letter, welcoming me in advance to the family, and at the same time making it clear that I’m expected to help with the records.”

Vorsha ventured into the room. “Good thing you like that kind of work.”

“I’m also supposed to keep custody of something. I forgot the name of it. Some artifact that keeps the spells surrounding that big rock of theirs intact.”

Kestrel looked up at her mother with a rueful expression.

“Don’t look at me like that! It’s something to do, at any rate.”

“I don’t blame you. I spent the night before my wedding picking apart the needlework vest that was my gift to your father, and stitching it, and picking it apart again.”

A clouded look passed across her face, but she forced a smile and changed the subject.

“Have you seen your sister? I checked her rooms, and she hasn’t packed a thing! I know she’s not taking her earthly goods and dowry to Jadaren Hold, but she must take something for the road and the ceremony. Why the smile?”

“Ciari was closeted with Vidor Druit all afternoon,” said Kestrel, stifling a giggle. “They’re negotiating each House’s percentage in investment and expected profit for the cantrip venture. I’m sure she’ll be ready by the time we must leave.”

She didn’t mention that she suspected that Ciari and Vidor were negotiating more than a trading agreement. That day Ciari had greeted the emissary of Clan Druit at the door, scolded him up and down for trying to cheat her House, cataloged a number of ambitious trade ventures that had been the ruination of local business, and scoffed at his ability to keep accounts straight. She’d then marched the bewildered but delighted Vidor Druit off to a private chamber and locked the door. Kestrel, restless with the prospect of tomorrow’s journey, paced past the barred room more than once and heard noises of a curious nature, together with snatches of what she suspected to be poetry.

“I see,” said her mother. She seemed about to say something else, then smiled.

“Shall I brush your hair one last time, before you are a married woman?”

Kestrel laid down her quill. “Please do. It will help me sleep tonight.”

Vorsha took up the hairbrush and lifted Kestrel’s tresses back over her shoulders, gathering them together and smoothing them down until the girl’s shoulders started to relax.

“You’re tangled again.”

“You should come and live with us, so you can take care of that.”

“I wish I could.”

For a few minutes there was no other sound but the soft whisper of the brush through Kestrel’s hair and the crackle of the embers in the fireplace.

“Kestrel,” said Vorsha, pausing in her work so that the bristles of the hairbrush were entangled in the mass of her daughter’s thick hair. “Kestrel, I want you to promise me something.”

Kestrel opened her eyes, alert. “What is it, Mother?” she asked.

She couldn’t help but notice that Vorsha had seemed distracted all day. Although she had busied herself in helping Kestrel pack for the journey, and making final repairs to the dresses Kestrel had decided she couldn’t leave behind, Kestrel thought her eyes were darkened by some inner shadow, her smiles veiled with a secret fear. Perhaps it was merely her concern at sending her daughter so far away to live in what had been enemy territory.

Vorsha laid down the brush and drew something from a pouch that dangled on her belt. “You know how concerned your uncle is about your safety. How distrustful he still is of House Jadaren and their motives in this alliance.”

Kestrel sighed. “Yes, I know. He’s made it perfectly clear.”

Vorsha put her hand on Kestrel’s shoulder and held out her hand. On the upraised palm was what looked like a glass bead, looped on a delicate gold chain.

Curious, Kestrel took it between her fingers. The bead was smoother to the touch than it seemed glass could be, as if there were no friction between its surface and her fingertips. The middle was thicker than either end, and inside were swirled tiny ribbons of color-green and blue, and an intense purple so dark it looked black.

She held it up before the embers of the fire. Embedded in the glass between the colored ribbons were what looked like strands of metal wire: gold, bronze, and copper, all thin as hairs.

“It’s a protective charm-an amulet,” said Vorsha. “Your uncle Sanwar has spent a long time making it. It’s to shield you from magical attack.”

Vorsha’s hand tightened. “I want you to promise me-and your uncle-that you will wear it at all times. On the journey to Jadaren Hold, and while you live there.”

Kestrel’s thumb rubbed the curve of the bead reflexively. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother. You don’t seriously think Arna’s family-or Arna-wish me harm.”

“Honestly? I don’t suspect that boy of anything but loyalty to his family. And it’s clear he’s fond of you. I think you have as good a chance for happiness as anybody. But this feud has lived longer than any of us, and there might be those in that fortress they call home who still believe in it.”

Like your uncle, she thought, and she knew Kestrel thought it as well.

“Please, Kestrel. Sanwar’s very fond of you. He was most insistent that you should wear it.”

Kestrel sighed and put the charm carefully on the desk beside her ledger book.

“Very well. At the least, it’s very pretty.”

She closed her eyes and let her head dip back. “Brush my hair some more, Mother. It’s the last time you’ll be able to do it for a while, and I don’t want to shock my future in-laws with my hellion appearance. They might back out of the deal.”

“I doubt that,” said Vorsha, picking up the hairbrush, while thinking it might not be a bad thing, after all, if they did.

Early the next morning, the traveling party assembled in the courtyard outside the stables. The new brick paving protected their shoes and the hems of their cloaks from the dust that, no matter how often the area was swept, wisped across the packed dirt where the wagons passed. Ansel Chuit stood near Kestrel, his blue uniform newly pressed and every button shining. His eyes were in constant motion, surveying every corner of the yard as if brigands were likely to be lurking there, and his hand was near the hilt of his sword, as if he would fight every one of them.

“I think I’m safe enough here,” whispered Kestrel, amused.

“We thought that on the road to Shadrun,” replied the young guard, without looking at her. “And I don’t intend to make that mistake again.”

Ciari was directing the servants in their loading of bundles and trunks onto the wagon with her accustomed vigor, but Kestrel couldn’t help but notice she had a satisfied, satiated expression on her face, not unlike a cat’s. Vidor Druit was not in evidence, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Ciari announced her own intention to marry within the next season or so.

Nicole Beguine spoke to Sanwar, with Vorsha standing a little apart. Kestrel’s parents, along with Ciari, were to accompany her to Jadaren Hold for the wedding, while Sanwar would stay in Nonthal to supervise the thousands of minutiae intrinsic to a merchant’s business. It was a relief to Kestrel and, she supposed, to her uncle that he would not attend the wedding, openly hostile and distrustful as he was toward the Jadarens.

Kestrel watched her father and her uncle speak, and it suddenly struck her how worn and gray Nicol looked next to Sanwar. The brothers were only two years apart, but Nicol looked twenty years older at least, his complexion muddy and his face gaunt, whereas Sanwar had kept the ruddy olive Beguine coloring, and his shoulders beneath his cloak were wide and muscular. Kestrel felt stricken that she hadn’t noticed her father’s ill health before. He’d seemed well enough when she left to journey to Shadrun-of-the-Snows. When she returned, he was under the weather, claiming to have only a slight cold. She thought he’d recovered, but perhaps he never quite got over it, losing a little more strength every day.

She saw her mother glance from Nicol to Sanwar, and a frown creased her forehead. She must have noticed the difference as well. Perhaps a journey in the open air, away from the cares of business, would be good for him.

The brothers clasped hands, and Sanwar came to Kestrel.

“I wish you the best, Niece,” he said as kindly as he had when she was a little girl and he brought her and Ciari little trinkets from his travels abroad. He hadn’t spoken to her like that for a long time, she thought as she embraced him. He held her by the shoulders, and Kestrel realized what he was looking for beneath the ties of her new traveling robe.

With a laugh she loosed the ties and showed him where the charm lay on her breast, the gold and copper wires inside glinting in the sun that was breaking through the morning clouds.

“Not to worry, Uncle, I have it,” she told him. “And I’ve promised Mother I’ll wear it always.”

He breathed a sigh of relief and touched the glass bead with the tip of his finger, pressing it slightly so it indented her skin. She felt a vague prickling sensation, just short of a sting, at the close contact. Perhaps it was the magic.

“This eases my mind, Kestrel,” he said. “Even if your husband’s motives are pure, there are still those who might seek advantage in harming you. My little charm won’t turn a blade aside, and it won’t neutralize poison-you must still watch against those-but it will ward off a curse or a malicious spell. Thank you for listening to an old man’s request.”

Kestrel smiled in return. Over his shoulder she saw her mother, now beside Nicol, staring at Sanwar’s back. Of late Kestrel had wondered if her mother and Sanwar had argued. The odd tension that always seemed between them had intensified. Still, Vorsha had brought her the charm at Sanwar’s behest. She hoped that whatever disagreement they had had, they could resolve it. Family ought to get along.

Sanwar felt the magic from the amulet tingle through his finger and his hand and up his arm, painful yet pleasurable at the same time. It had taken a day of concentrated work to craft the object-weaving three of Kestrel’s hairs and one of his own into the correct configuration, adding the proper elements, making his will and desire a tangible thing, and melting it along with the glass. All the time that strange geometrical figure that he’d copied from the wall of the sanctuary cell glowed dark purple on parchment, pulsing before him like a steady flicker.

He had begun constructing the charm with knowledge gleaned from his books, but as he progressed, words formed in his head, droning with a steady rhythm like that on the parchment and stringing themselves like beads on a thread until they made coherent instructions of how to bend a strand of melted glass so; how to pull a grain of pigment through the charm’s substance; how to make such a small object brim with unrealized Power.

He hadn’t lied. The charm would protect his daughter from magical attack until the time was right, and all his pieces were in place.…

Patience, whispered the voice from the sanctuary. Sanwar had patience and briefly cupped Kestrel’s cheek in his hand.

“Come, Kestrel,” called Vorsha. “Ciari says the horses are ready.”

“Your mother calls,” said Sanwar, winking, and Kestrel winked back.

SHADRUN-OF-THE-SNOWS

1587 DR-THE YEAR OF THE LONG SILENCE

The seasons passed, as they always had, at the sanctuary in the mountains. The Jadaren-Beguine marriage was accomplished with no more disruptions other than the fluctuations in the market values of certain goods, adjusted to account for the new friendships, enmities, contracts, and opportunities taking place in the mysterious alchemy of the merchant trade. Even Sanwar Beguine, it seemed, had bowed his head to the inevitable and not opposed his niece’s wedding. Rich gifts and plentiful supplies were sent to Shadrun-of-the-Snows from House Jadaren and House Beguine in token of gratitude for the sanctuary’s help.

The Vashtun died, and his Second, Diamar, took his place, by custom losing his name in the process. He designated a new Second, who took in his turn the name Diamar, strengthening the rumors that the Vashtun of Shadrun and his Second were immortal and eternal.

It seemed to Lakini that the new Vashtun, through his Second, took more of an interest in the doings and machinations of the outside world than the guardians of the sanctuary had done before. Emissaries from the ruling families and councils of the surrounding lands often visited now, following the example of the Beguines and the Jadarens, and were closeted with Diamar in a chamber, the walls of which were almost completely covered in strange and elaborate mathematical figures. Merchant families other than Houses Jadaren and Beguine came to the safe and neutral space Shadrun provided. Travelers arrived from all over Faerun, as they had in the past, but now they seemed to come more to gawk at the sanctuary’s increasing treasures and to listen to the stories itinerant bards told in the Great Hall than to meditate in the presence of the holy.

Time after time, Lakini almost brought herself to ask Lusk to take to the road with her again, to tread the dust of Faerun, to seek evil where it laired, to come to the aid of those who prayed for help, to become the earthly embodiment of the will of the gods. But Lusk seemed to relish the increased prominence of Shadrun-of-the-Snow, and he spoke whenever he could with the councilors to faraway kings, queens, protectors, regents, thrones, and dominions. Lakini considered pressing the point, or taking to the road herself, but whenever she steeled herself to it, some voice in her innermost mind would object, telling her to stay, telling her that her duty lay in remaining the sanctuary’s protector, and that this was the will of the gods that she sought.

That changed the day she and Lusk were patrolling the wooded slopes below Rophile’s Crevasse, and her sensitive deva’s nose caught an ominous, coppery smell in the air. Lusk caught it as well, and after they cast about and sniffed at the small breezes that danced about the mountain, Lakini pointed out a clearing a half mile away that pilgrims sometimes used as a camp spot.

The dull, heavy smell of blood grew stronger as they approached the clearing, and Lakini twitched her nose and shifted her shoulder into the position she took in battle stance, so she could more quickly grasp the hilt of the greatsword slung over her back. Lusk walked behind her and slightly to one side, glancing left and right into the darkness between the trees with a distracted frown.

Almost to the clearing, an unpleasant tang undercut the oppressive copper smell of blood. Lakini laid her right hand on the hilt of the sword, its familiar, worn, warm feel a comfort. Without thinking about it, Lusk shifted to the left behind her, out of the reach of the backswing the blade would make if she drew it. It was a move that grew naturally from years of experience fighting together, where knowing each move one’s partner was likely to make was as important to survival as predicting one’s enemy’s tactics.

At the lip of the clearing Lakini stopped.

“Ah, Sweet Mother,” she swore, taking in the scene before her.

Only one of the halflings had had time to draw his weapon. The short dagger lay loose in his fist. Rigor had worn off several hours before. In death he must have clutched it tightly. He sprawled near the edge of the clearing, his eyes still wide and surprised. Lakini kneeled beside him and shuddered to see ants crawling across the dull-filmed surface of his eyeball. Carefully she shifted his head, and it lolled back loosely, half-severed from the neck by a deep slice. The killer-or killers-must have taken out the lookout first. He was lucky. He had died quickly, unlike his companions.

In the center of the clearing, beside the ashy remains of a dead campfire, another diminutive figure lay crumpled. Lakini’s gaze was drawn, however, to the dreadful sight splayed across the trunk of a large tree that stood, bare of branches ten feet up, at the opposite end of the campsite.

Cautiously she rose, forcing herself closer to the blood-soaked nightmare, listening always for the rustling of leaves that might betray the return of the creatures that did this deed, aware of Lusk on the alert behind her.

The halfling’s arms had been bound at an unnatural angle tight around the tree, so tight the rough bark had torn the sleeves of his homespun shirt. His feet were tied together with many loops of rope and also anchored around the trunk. His head dangled limply between his wrenched shoulder blades.

A sheet of hundreds of blackflies clustered like a moving sheet of black armor on his torso, buzzing loudly, and there was an unbearable reek of blood and feces this close to the body. Lakini waved away the flies, which lifted a bare few seconds before returning to their ghastly feast. It was enough to see what lay beneath: the halfling had been gutted from neck to crotch, and his intestines pulled out in untidy loops to dangle at his knees.

Lakini reached out to cup his chin and lifted his head. A dirty rag had been stuffed into his mouth, and his eyes were glazed open in the extremity of pain and fear. A few black drops of dried blood spattered the pale face. Unable to look closer, Lakini let the head loll back on the chest and stood back, trying to keep her gorge from rising.

“This one was hamstrung,” said Lusk from behind her, and she turned to see her companion crouched next to the figure lying beside the ashes. Keeping an eye on the perimeter of the clearing, Lakini backed away from the disemboweled horror tied to the tree.

Lusk examined the third victim dispassionately.

“His hands are bound behind him, and he’s gagged as well. And look at this.”

Beside him, Lakini glanced down, taking in the deep vermilion slashes at the back of the halfling’s knees that sliced through cloth and flesh and sinew, and the deep gash in the throat that cut right through to the bone. She noted something else about the way he’d been bound. The halfling had long braided hair, and it had been knotted cunningly into a rope that went from the hair to the hands secured in the small of the back.

“He was forced to watch. Couldn’t get away, and the killer-or killers-secured his head so he’d have to watch … that”-she indicated the gutted halfling on the tree, unwilling to look directly at it as this pathetic corpse had been compelled to do-“and then, I’ll wager, killed afterward.” She stole another look at the body at her feet, her mind temporarily unable to process what had happened to these people, incongruously noting the decorative beads woven into the wheat-colored hair. An image came to her, sudden and vivid, of the three little people, gathered around a cheery fire, caution forgotten in the comfort of fellowship, singing a song from their native land. Oblivious to the evil that stalked them, waiting for its chance to strike. Her eyes prickled, and she blinked the tears away.

Lusk nodded. “Only one or probably two, or else the clearing would be more torn up than it is. They must have acted quickly. Killed the lookout, immobilizing one so they could have their fun with the other.”

He rose, wiping his hand on his trousers.

Lakini swallowed the sharp-edged lump in her throat. “Who would do such a thing? We haven’t heard of bandits in this vicinity, and besides, they haven’t been robbed. It’s something a demon would do, or an acolyte of Orcus.”

“A quarrel between thieves, I’d say,” said Lusk. “Perhaps these stole from their clan, or cheated their partners or employer. Perhaps someone wanted to make an example of them.”

“No,” said Lakini. “Look. He’s not been robbed.” She pointed, and Lusk nudged the bulging pouch at the halfling’s belt with the tip of his boot. “Any thief worth his salt might kill, but quickly, without all this fuss,”

she said. “And certainly a thief would not have left coin behind.”

“Not fellow thieves, then,” Lusk conceded. He gestured at the shambles in the clearing. Sunlight slanted golden through the tops of the trees, and birds twittered and warbled in the growth above. It would have been a peaceful scene if not for the butchered bodies and the incessant buzz of the flies.

“Rangers would be stealthy enough. Or”-he pointed at the fire-“they cut wood. Druids, perhaps?”

“We have to alert the Vashtun and warn the travelers to be alert. Tell them to make sure they have double lookouts and not let them get distracted.” Lakini set her jaw. In her many lifetimes she had seen many tragedies, and brutality beyond imagination. This was not the worst thing one person had done to another, and it wouldn’t be the last in the great weave of time. “And we have to tend to the bodies. The sooner they have a decent burial, the better.”

She drew her dagger and bent to cut the rope that bound hair and hands together. To her relief, Lusk went to free the gutted halfling from his crucifixion. She didn’t think she could bear to touch that rope, thick with clotted blood.

They laid out the bodies as best they could and started back to the sanctuary. In the morning, acolytes from Shadrun-of-the-Snows would return, bury the bodies, and perform the proper rites, assuming the scavengers of night left anything to bury.

Halfway home, something occurred to Lakini, something Lusk had said before, that at the time had only just registered.

“Thieves,” she said. “You mentioned fellow thieves. How do you know they were thieves, and not simply pilgrims, or friends in search of adventure?”

The deva shrugged. “It’s a logical assumption. Halflings incline toward thievery, whether as a profession or a hobby. Or so I’ve always found.”

Lakini didn’t reply. Halflings made clever thieves, certainly, but it seemed to her a sweeping statement to make about an entire people.

When had Lusk become capable of thinking such things about an entire race? There was a time when he would have wept at the sight of such injustice.

Lusk was similarly silent until they reached the stones and pounded the earth of the established road.

“Nasty little creatures,” he said, glancing up over his shoulder at the green impassivity of the forest behind him.

Startled by the venom in his words, Lakini stifled a reply. The sight of the butchery in the clearing above them, in woods that were supposed to be sacred, must have upset him more than she thought.

Lusk glanced at her, concern as well as amusement roiling over his striped features.

“I shock you,” he said, baldly.

“A little,” she replied.

“Lakini,” he said, “do you regret destroying the barghest?”

She concentrated on the path and didn’t reply.

“And the werewolves of Wolfhelm, so many years ago,” he continued. “Should we have allowed them to live?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.

“Those lying dead beyond,” he said, pointing at the path behind him, “were thieves. Few halflings aren’t. Why else would they camp so close to the sanctuary without making themselves known? They intended to prey on the pilgrims. They chose their path, and met the consequences of their actions. Like the werewolves. Like the pirates on the Orcsblood.”

Lakini had a sudden, vivid memory of the baffled look of the barghest she’d killed a year ago, staring down at its dead, half-lupine mate, with Lusk’s arrow in her throat. She still felt a primal revulsion at the nature of the goblinoid’s lycanthropy and their need not only to rend their prey but to destroy all hope and joy within them. But now she felt a disconcerting, almost illogical pity.

Pity. The only hope of mortals in a world where divine forces held sway was the pity of the supremely powerful for those who could not oppose them. Pity made the gods protect the mortals who bound themselves to them, and compassion had caused them to create the deva race, souls of angels in fleshly form, sent to protect the innocent and pursue justice.

“Where is the justice in killing them, even if they are thieves?” she whispered.

Lusk’s sharp ears caught her question, and he laughed bitterly. “Tell the good folk of Wolfhelm about justice,” he said. “Those that died before we got there, those whose fathers and sisters and children were eaten. Should we have had mercy on their killers?”

She stopped, and he turned to face her, a mocking look on his face. Shocked at herself, she had to stifle an impulse to slap it off.

This wasn’t what she was supposed to be, or what they were supposed to be.

“That’s not the same thing,” she managed.

“No?” he said. “Explain that to Jonhan Smith. Explain it to his donkey.”

Suddenly she couldn’t look at him. She walked on, faster and faster until she was running, her breathing heavy in her ears as she left Lusk behind her on the path.

That night while she meditated in her rooms, she remembered Wolfhelm, a village in one of the remote Erlkazar baronies, nestled in the foothills between the Thornwood and the Cloven Mountains. Built on the ruins of some ancient town more prominent in its time, it was a pleasant place, trading the lavender from the sun-warmed fields around it to the bigger baronies.

But Wolfhelm, as its name suggested, was founded where lycanthropes once claimed their territory and bayed beneath the moon. And one season, while the lavender ripened and children were sent into the fields to harvest it, the werewolves came back.

Jonhan Smith and his donkey.

She and Lusk had mustered out the inhabitants of the village, arming them with any weapon that could be found and sharpened with Jonhan Smith’s skill. They knew the community’s only hope lay in driving the lycanthropes back, mercilessly, until they had killed them all.

Lakini and Lusk, needing little sleep, were on patrol. For the last two nights the weres had howled unrelentingly, from sunset to dawn, at the very gates of Wolfhelm, and the villagers had huddled awake, unable to rest and without anything tangible to attack. The devas knew the lycanthropes were softening up their victims for the kill.

Lusk held his bow at the ready, an arrow to the string. The village had three gates: north, south, and west, and a tall wall that was unreliably warded by old spells that the local priest of Chauntea did his best to maintain. As they approached the west gate, they spotted a figure, still and pale in the moonlight. Lusk had raised his bow and Lakini had her knife in her hand before they heard the chanting and realized it was the priest, trying to weave the wards back together.

He turned when he saw them and lowered his hands, looking abashed.

“It’s dangerous out here,” said Lusk, gesturing past the gate to the hills visible beyond. “If you’re alone, a were could take you and we would never know.”

“The wards used to be so strong,” said the priest. “But now I haven’t the strength-”

His words were drowned by another howl and the sharp tearing sound of an animal screaming.

The cold silver moonlight bathed the village, making everything light and shadow. Here and there lights flickered on behind shuttered windows. The screaming was coming from the north gate, and Lakini tore the sword from its sheath as she ran, sensing Lusk close at her heels.

Jonhan the blacksmith was there in his nightshirt and bare feet. He clutched the neck of a donkey, trying with all his might to pull it from the grasp of an enormous wolf that had its claws buried deep in the animal’s sides.

The donkey was the one screaming.

The wolf was unnatural, its forelegs like muscular human arms; its head huge. It tugged once, twice, and the donkey brayed desperately as it was pulled half out of the gate. Blood, black in the moonlight, ran in glistening rivulets down its heaving sides. Jonhan lost his grip and fell on his knees in the dirt. The lycanthrope opened its maw and lunged at the animal’s back, about to tear the flesh from its spine.

Lakini moved in fast, taking her sword in an instinctive two-handed grip and swinging it underhand and up. It skimmed the top of the unfortunate donkey’s back, passing under the werewolf’s gaping jaw and through the sinewy neck. The creature’s head arced through the air and landed with a wet thunk between the gateposts-not far, Lakini thought, from the place where its many-times great-granddam’s skull had been staked for all to see. The body remained for a second, poised over the animal’s haunches, claws still flexing in and out of its hide. A gout of blood pulsed from the severed neck, mingling with the donkey’s blood that trickled down its sides. Then the beheaded were slowly slid to the ground. The donkey kicked it as it went down, and it flew like a giant rag doll to lie next to its own head.

Lakini turned to Jonhan, still on his knees before the donkey. He was staring over her shoulder, and his eyes widened in alarm.

The feathers of the shaft of Lusk’s arrow almost brushed her face as it sang past her, over Jonhan’s head and into the chest of the were that had loomed out of the darkness behind the blacksmith. The creature arched backward with a cry somewhere between a growl and a human scream. Jonhan rose and stared at the werewolf as it twitched on the ground behind him.

Blindly, he grasped a halter around the donkey’s neck and pulled it away from the gates and the dismembered werewolf.

“Rosebud gets out sometimes,” he muttered, half to himself and half to Lakini, examining the wounds on the donkey’s sides. Lakini had seen the animal tethered behind the smithy, snatching at some flower boxes. “I woke up and thought she might have wandered, and then I heard that … howling. And she screamed.”

“Were you bitten?” Lakini asked the smith, as he patted Rosebud’s trembling neck.

“No,” he said.

“Think very carefully,” she said. “Are you sure?”

“That one only touched Rosebud,” he said, nodding at the body between the gates. “And then your friend killed the other before it could touch me.”

“Good,” she said, and meant it. She didn’t like the idea of killing the smith, but she and Lusk would have little choice if he’d been infected with lycanthropy.

“But what about Rosebud?” he said, looking at her in concern. “It clawed her. I don’t know if it bit her. Can donkeys become werewolves? Or … or weredonkeys?”

Rosebud whickered at him, and he scratched her ears reassuringly.

“No,” said the priest, his voice shaking as he looked at the dead werewolves. “Only the human-shaped can catch the curse.”

Lusk was circling the area, bow at the ready, making sure no more werewolves lurked in the darkness. Once he looked at Lakini, then shot an inquiring look at Jonhan, lifting a ready arrow. She shook her head at him.

Jonhan ascertained that Rosebud’s wounds were more scratches than gouges, and led her home. Lakini stood guard at the gate all night after the moon had set, beneath the cold starlight.

In the morning they burned the bodies of the werewolves, and the thick, greasy smoke of the burning rose straight in the air like a beacon and a warning. The priest who tended the small chapel of Chauntea, after hastily consulting books and scrolls he hadn’t touched in years, began to reconstruct the north gate wards.

In her room at Shadrun, Lakini blew out her meditation candle impatiently and leaned against the rough wall, the plaster surface pulling at the thick, slick fabric of her robe. She didn’t like to remember Wolfhelm. What had possessed Lusk to remind her of it, so many years later?

Should she have shown mercy to Jonhan Smith, later, when the time came?

Or was her crime in even considering it?

She tried to sleep, although devas rarely slept. It was a way of forgetting the despairing cry of the barghest, the glazed eyes of the murdered halfling, the mournful bleat of a donkey.

Lakini had no sleep that night. She wondered if Lusk had even bothered to try.

And when she closed her eyes, she saw geometric forms glowing purple on the walls, although none were scrawled within her chamber.

The next morning, Lakini packed her gear in a worn leather pack and sought out Lusk.

“I’m going away for a time, Cserhelm,” she told him when he opened the door. “Will you come with me?”

He opened his mouth, and for a second she thought he would assent, take a few minutes to grab the bare necessities, and measure his stride against hers on the road into the wide world. But he paused, and the gray eyes looking down at her had a clouded look.

He closed his lips and shook his head.

“No, my dagger-mate,” he said. “One of us must stay to protect this place. One day you will see the truth of that and return.”

She knew him too well to argue. She left Shadrun without a word, although as she passed the stables, she almost turned aside to bid farewell to Bithesi. But as she paused, she felt that tickle in her mind of that voice telling she should stay, must stay, must not leave Lusk alone. Any longer here and she wouldn’t be able to ignore it, so she struck out on the road, passing a cluster of grimy, white-clad pilgrims and a saffron-robed, prosperous-looking woman on a donkey. As she turned the corner at the sentry rock, the voice faded and she walked faster and faster, Faerun spread like a map before her.