Downshadow

FIFTEEN

Ralen woke with the kind of splitting headache that comes after one has slept only moments in the space of several hours. He felt as though he'd never bedded down at all. His nose was stuffy and he coughed and sneezed to clear it.

Worse, he was numb all over. He allowed himself one horrified breath before he tried to move his senseless hands. With some hesitation, they rose, and he pressed them to his cheeks. "Thank the gods," Kalen whispered.

Cellica srood in the room, a bucket of water in her hands. She looked a touch disappointed, and moved the water behind her back. "Well!" she said. "About time."

Kalen groaned.

"Get up, Sir Slug, and come have aught to eat. Our guest has been at the stew all morning, and if you don't make haste, it might be gone." As he started to sit up, she glanced down, then back up at his face, unashamed. "And put those on." She pointed at a pair of black hose, crumpled at the foot of his bed.

Kalen realized he was naked, which made sense. He hadn't donned aught last night.

"Try and be presentable for our guest."

"Guest?" he managed as he plucked up the hose, but the halfling was already gone.

The highsun light filtered through his shuttered window, and deep shadows undercut his eyes in the mirror. His wiry chest, with its familiar scars, gleamed back at him. Stubble gone to an early gray studded his chin and neck. Generally, he looked and felt terrible. Pushing himself too hard, he decided.

"Gods," he murmured.

He paused at the door to his bedchamber and fought down a wave of dizziness. His legs felt beyond exhausted. He still hadn't recovered from his flight from Talanna and Araezra.

"Fair morn, Risen Sun," said Cellica when Kalen staggered out to morningfeast-or highsunfeast. She turned to the table with a brilliant smile. "Myrin? This is Kalen."

Kalen realized someone else was in the room-a tawny-skinned young woman who couldn't have seen more than twenty winters, with shoulder-length hair of a hue like cut sapphire, who seemed more bone than flesh. He remembered her now-the woman in the alley from the night before.

"Oh!" She blushed, casting her eyes away from his bare chest.

Kalen grunted something like "well met"-which sounded more like "wuhlmt."

Myrin wore a ratty, sweat-stained tunic and a pair of loose breeches-his, Kalen realized. Being far too big, they made her look even more frail than when he had carried her home.

"I hope you don't mind," Cellica said to Kalen. "None of my things would fit her."

"Huh." Words didn't come easily to Kalen in the morning.

The halfling, however, was at her most garrulous just after sleep. "Nothing fashionable, but at least they're clothes." Cellica winked. "Not like you provided any lasr night."

Kalen grunted and looked to the cook pot, in which the remainder of the morning simmer stew bubbled warmly. He fished a roundloaf out of the box by the hearth, hollowed it out, and spooned in a healthy dollop. The stew had a sharp, pungent aroma from the many spices Cellica had added-she knew his illness stole his sense of taste as well as touch, so she took pride in making food that he could taste. He limped back to the table, sat on the stool Cellica had vacated, and stared across at Myrin.

Heedless of the tears rolling down her cheeks at the heat of the spices, Myrin was eating like she hadn't eaten in years, and seeing how skinny she was, maybe she hadn't. She licked up Cellica's stew with wild abandon, and Cellica brought her another roundloaf while Kalen sat there, picking at his stew. The halfling was smiling grandly, and Kalen imagined she was thrilled to practice her adoptive mother's recipes on someone who appreciated their full taste.

Kalen nodded at Myrin. "So… who is she?" he asked Cellica.

Myrin paused in her eating and looked to Kalen. Cellica sniffed.

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Cellica's manner was sweet, so her suggestion didn't strike him as a command.

Kalen looked at Myrin sidelong. "You can talk?" He winced at Cellica's glare.

"I…" she said. "I can talk."

Cellica beamed. "Go on, peach," the halfling said. "Tell him what you told me!"

Myrin looked shyly at the table.

Cellica clapped her hands. "She's a mys-ter-y!" she exclaimed, pronouncing the word in excited syllables, like this was a great adventure. "She doesn't know who she is or where she came from-only her name and a few things from her childhood."

Kalen looked at Myrin, who was staring at her bread. "Aye?"

Myrin nodded.

"Naught else?" Like how I found you naked in an alley, he thought, speaking gibberish?

"Kalen!" Cellica snapped at his tone. "Manners!"

Myrin only shook her head. "I remember a little… a little about when I was small." Her voice was thin, and her words were oddly accented-old, like something out of a bardic tale.

"My mother-her name was Shalis-she raised me alone. I never knew my father. I was apprenticed to a wizard-his name was… I don't remember." She sniffed. "I can see these things, but they seem far away-like dreams. Like I slept years and never woke."

Kalen eyed her tanned coloration. Her complexion was exoticCalishite, perhaps, though mixed with something else entirely. A whisper of elf heritage was about her as well-not a parent, but perhaps a grandparent. It was clear she would be quite beautiful when she grew to womanhood, but she was yet on the verge.

"Aught else?" he asked. "Homeland?"

Myrin shrugged.

"Was it city or countryside?" Cellica glared and Kalen added: "If you remember."

"City," Myrin said slowly. Her eyes glazed. "It was always cold… cold off the sea. Gray stone buildings, sand on the streets. Nights spent locked inside while terrors waited without. They waited, you see-the crearures in the night. Masks of shadows."

Cellica looked anxiously at Kalen, who only shook his head. "What city?" he asked.

"West, it was called," she said. "West… aught else, but I don't remember."

"Westgate?" Cellica suggested.

Myrin shook her head. "Mayhap."

Kalen shrugged. "Could be," he said. "I don't know what 'terrors'. you would mean-there haven't been anything but men in the shadows of that city for a century, almost. Not since Gedrin and his knights drove the vampires out…"

He trailed off as Myrin looked down, her shoulders shaking as though she would cry. Cellica cast Kalen a sharp look, and he sighed.

They sat in silence for many breaths-perhaps a hundred countsaying nothing. Kalen ate a few spoonfuls of his stew, but it was tasteless to him. He drank his mulled cider and tried not to feel so awful.

As he did so, he gazed at Myrin, exploring the contours of her exotic face, trying to figure out where she had come from. She wasn't exactly beautiful without that crown of flames she'd been wearing in the alley, Kalen thought, but there remained a certain girlish appeal to her delicate features. Wearing Kalen's old shirt made her look like a child, too-in a dress or even a real gown…

Cellica caught him staring. "You've another question, Sir Longing-Gaze?"

Myrin's head shot up and her eyes went wide in expectation. "Mind your stew," Kalen said to Cellica, harsher than he intended.

Myrin looked back down, blushing. Cellica's wry smile became a chiding frown.

Kalen ignored them both and turned back to his mostly untouched roundloaf, only to find nothing but his spoon on the table. He looked across to where Myrin was contentedly eating his morningfeast with her hands. Curious-he hadn't thought her reach so long.

"Do you need a spoon, peach?" asked Cellica.

"Sorry," the girl said. "I don't mean to be rude-I'm just so hungry." She looked at Kalen's spoon and murmured something under her breath that Kalen didn't understand.

Cellica reached for the spoon as though to give it to Myrin, but it skittered away, rose into the air, and floated to Myrin's hand. She caught it and set immediately to spooning stew to her mouth. Kalen and Cellica looked at one another, then at her.

Myrin, looking nervous in the silence, blinked at them. "What?"

"Lass," the halfling said. "Was that a spell?" "Of course," Myrin said. "Can't-" She blushed. "Can't everyone do that?"

Kalen and Cellica exchanged another glance. Myrin went back to eating.

Before anyone could say more, there came a loud knock at the door, and Cellica fell off her stool with a startled gasp. Myrin didn't seem to notice and went right on eating. Kalen reached for Vindicator by instinct, and only then remembered he didn't have the blade any more-or his watchsword, for that matter. Bane's breath, where had he left that?

"Hark," he said. "Who calls?"

No answer came.

He seized a long knife from the table and reversed it, the better to conceal the blade against his forearm. Cellica grasped the crossbow amulet around her throat and Kalen nodded. He rose, a finger to his lips, and crossed to the door.

He put his left hand on the latch and lifted it as silently as he could, keeping his body shielded by the wall. Then he threw open the door and raised the knife…

A familiar red-haired half-elf, clad in a plain leather skirt and vest over a white shirt, leaped over the threshold into his arms. "Shadow, dearest!" she exclaimed.

Her lips found his and he could see only the stunned expressions on Cellica's and Myrin's faces.