Shadowbane

CHAPTER ONE

17 KYTHORN (NIGHT)

Hereyes shot open and she caught her breath, stifling a scream in the wake of a half-remembered nightmare.

She lay still in her awkward sleeping position, as though paralyzed on the rough ground. She concentrated on keeping the fragments of the dream alive in her mind.

Most folk tried desperately to forget their nightmares. Unlike them, Myrin Darkdance tried very hard to remember.

A cave. She had been in an empty place of humid darkness that set every pore in her skin to weeping. Creatures stalked the blackness-creatures that surrounded her and reached for her with gnarled talons. There were words that she’d understood but couldn’t remember. And through it all, an awful, beating heart that was not her own …

Her mental effort came to little in the end. The dream faded, and with it, any hope of more answers that night. She reassured herself that the dream may have been just a dream, rather than a true memory. Myrin had no way of knowing-she had awakened a year ago in Waterdeep with only a vague idea of her name. Being an amnesiac could be frustrating.

“Mother Mystra.” The wizard sat up and brushed an errant lock of blue hair out of her eyes and rubbed her head. “That’s the last time I drink myself to sleep with dwarves.”

Myrin was no longer tired, but it was still the middle of the night and her head hurt from the ale. The drink had been very good, and it made the dour dwarves a bit more amusing-both points in its favor. She was in the camp of the Ironhands-a clan of dwarves caravanning from Silverymoon to Waterdeep and eventually on to Westgate. They’d been kind enough to take her along and the least she could do was imbibe what they offered.

Slight mistake.

Not wanting to rise and make her head ache more, Myrin lay back on her bedroll and watched the dwarves by the fire. A musical clan, the deep timbre of their voices carried through the camp every night. They ate to refrains of historical epics like “The Red Knight’s Charge” and “Jain and Elloe.” They drank to the rowdy “Pwent and the Ragers.”

Tonight, the bard Boren-whom the other dwarves inevitably called “Boring,” even though he was anything but-wiled away the dark hours softly singing “Ghost and the Maiden.” It had sounded better when she’d heard it in Silverymoon, but the dwarves’ version lost none of the glory and passion of the tale. The tragic ghostwalker, caught in a web of violence forged of his own thirst for vengeance; the beautiful Nightingale, who fought so hard to save him from himself. Every time Myrin heard it, she prayed that the story would somehow end in joy, and every time it trailed off with the task complete but the lovers forever separated.

The ballad was usually Myrin’s favorite, and it rarely failed to instill in her a deep sadness mixed with hope. Perhaps-just perhaps-all would be well despite the inevitable sorrow.

Tonight, however, it only increased her headache. She didn’t want to hear about love, no matter how passionate or tragic. The Nightingale in the story was a fool to invest so much in a man whose quest was more important to him than she was. Myrin had met a man like that and he’d made the same choice.

Kalen Dren.

Memories of him never did her any favors. A year ago, she’d wanted to fall into his arms and abandon thought and responsibility. Ultimately, she’d realized he didn’t love her. She’d watched him kill a man in the street even as she begged him to come away with her. Just like the hero of the story, he hadn’t chosen her. He’d chosen his quest instead. Even a year later, she still felt rejected, after she’d thrown herself at him like a ninny. Now, she made every effort to forget him, with some success. Mostly, she only had to deal with the occasional dream or two. (Which were, unfortunately, very good dreams.)

Today she walked her own path. She didn’t need him anymore. She had found more memories, including her name-or at least part of it: Darkdance.

She had learned the name in Silverymoon-in an absorbed memory.

She wasn’t sure what had driven her to the city-a feeling, perhaps, that had come over her a year ago when she had gone to the spring masquerade at the temple dressed as Lady Alustriel, one of the legendary Seven Sisters and once ruler of Silverymoon. Myrin still kept the shimmering red dress she had worn, folded carefully in the pack beside her bedroll. She felt a little tingle of recognition every time she touched it. She usually put little stock in feelings, but she understood the power of intuition. And so she’d made her way there, hoping to find someone who recognized her and could tell her something-anything-about her past.

Alas, she’d found no one in Silverymoon who found even her name familiar. Her gold-brown skin and startling blue eyes were distinctive enough, even without the shock of azure blue hair. She checked the enrollment at the Lady’s College of Magic and had even gone to the libraries, all with no luck.

She had despaired of finding even a hint as to her lost identity until, after a tenday, she got stuck watching a parade for the Lord Methrammar. The elderly lord was shaking hands with folk on the street. A chance touch, and she was abruptly somewhere else-someone else.

This had happened before-a year ago, when she had touched a treacherous woman called Fayne. She’d seen a memory of herself through Fayne’s eyes, the way she must have appeared: powerful and frightening, blazing with magic.

It passed the same with Methrammar. She became him for all of three heartbeats, and saw another night, a fantastic one filled with magic and beauty. And then she found herself sitting dazed in the street, unable to think of anything else.

Myrin decided to examine that memory again. She adjusted into a more comfortable posture and focused on the memory. She spoke syllables of power-a simple cantrip she’d learned over the last year-and an image made of fire swirled before her. It boasted flames of various colors: silver and gold, red, and blue. She closed her eyes and remembered, all the while blindly tracing the memory into the fire with her fingertips.

The night expanded around them, sparkling with a sea of stars. Below, Silverymoon gleamed, alight with songs and dancing. Spell-wrought images of dragons and firebirds cavorted in the skies, spiraling and twisting in glory and terror.

The two of them stood alone at the peak of a bridge of moonlight that arched high over the river. He turned to her, a woman as radiant as the city, burning with life and power, her gown floating like gossamer. A shadowy door-a hole her magic had torn in the fabric of reality-crackled behind her, waiting. Gods, she was so beautiful.

“My lovely Lady Darkdance,” he said. “I wish thee a fine naming day, indeed.”

She looked up to him and smiled mysteriously, her eyes sparkling in the starlight. Her vivid blue lips parted …

The scene faded. She had absorbed no more than a brief flash of all the memory Methrammar had of her. She doubted his fixation with her lips had been entirely proper, but she focused on the image anyway, weaving magic with her free hand as though drawing. Her ale headache increased, but she ignored the pain.

She opened her eyes and saw the image reflected in her conjured flames. This Myrin looked so different-her blue hair glossy, her skin smooth as river-polished stone, her painted lips gleaming like sapphires. Her eyes, though, were the same iridescent blue, radiant in the moonlight. She touched her actual face, feeling her travel-roughened cheeks and her brow caked with dust.

“My lovely Lady Darkdance,” she murmured.

So she had a last name-and a naming day, apparently, though she could not tell which day. Nor did she know how old she had been when Methrammar saw her, or even if the memory was accurate. How long ago had that been?

A scream came out of the night, chasing off her thoughts.

By the fire, Boren the bard and another dwarf leaped to their feet, weapons raised. Boren fell in an instant, blood spurting from his shoulder into the midnight air.

“Attack!” bellowed a deep voice. “To arms!”

Myrin struggled to rise, but the memory and magic had drained her. “Oof,” she said. Her head ached something fierce.

A wizened dwarf kneeled at her side-Elder Naros Ironhand. “Are you well, lady?”

Her head pulsing in pain, Myrin barely understood what was going on. She remembered Naros, the ancient clan leader of the Ironhands, who’d taken her on board his caravan after he’d recognized the name “Darkdance.” He claimed to have met a half-elf by that name out of Westgate long ago-could he be her relative?

At the moment, however, his murky recollections of her potential ancestor mattered less to her than the warhammer in his hand.

“I can fight, I-Ah!” Abruptly, the ache in Myrin’s head grew into blinding agony and she fell to one knee, grasping her forehead. The world blinked in and out of awareness as a patch of hungry nothing drilled into her mind.

Myrin shook the pain away and looked toward the fire, forty feet away. Dwarves were surging up from their bedrolls and cloaks, steel reflecting the dancing flames. They formed a rough circle, casting about for a foe. Within, the crumpled Boren lay moaning.

Myrin started forward, only to have Naros grasp her by the arm. “Stay behind me, girl.” He had drawn forth his holy symbol of Moradin the All-Father.

“I recognize and appreciate your generous offer of protection,” Myrin said, “but Boren’s hurt. I have to help.”

Hardly knowing what she was doing, Myrin drew her wand and traced a circle in the air, leaving a shadowy trail of magic. As she watched, the trail expanded into a door perfectly sized for her-like the door she’d seen in Methrammar’s memory.

“Gods above and below,” Naros said. “Wait-”

Myrin slipped from his grasp, tumbled through darkness-

— and stepped out into the firelight next to the injured bard. Sharp pain bloomed on her chest, running across her skin like a live ember. A line of runes streamed down her chest under her tunic, and a new tattoo appeared right over her heart: a door of shadow. A remembered spell.

Dizziness gripped her for a moment-the aftereffects of the teleportation and the sudden recall of the magic-but Boren’s welling blood gave her focus. A deep gash ran between the dwarf’s shoulder and neck. With a flick of her fingers and a spark of will, Myrin formed a hand of magical force and pressed it onto the wound.

“All will be well,” she said in Boren’s ear. “Have no fear. All-”

“No fear.” A voice behind Myrin set her skin acrawl. She turned around.

There, in the firelight, stood a dark figure. Myrin realized why she had not seen it at first: the creature’s charcoal black skin seemed as dark as the night. Smoke rose from its head rather than hair and the flickering fire glinted off lines of deeper black energy that traced along its skin to a pair of infinitely deep eyes. In those eyes … was nothing, as though the world ceased to exist.

“You,” the creature said in a distinctly feminine voice. It-she-raised one finger to point at Myrin. Darkness flared around her hand. “You are the one.”

Myrin stiffened. Not another hunter-not now! Ever since she could remember, someone had been hunting for her. Worse, that meant this attack on Clan Ironhand was all her fault.

The dark woman rose, setting her cloak rustling in the smoky wind. Beneath the folds of the garment, the woman bore a long-handled axe. The black blade was pitted and jagged, pure murder in the crude form of a weapon.

“Please,” Myrin said. “Your quarrel is with me alone. Leave these others-no!”

The dwarves chose that moment to charge the dark woman from all sides, weapons leading. Seven stood against her.

Too few.

The woman stood unmoving until the first dwarf came within two paces. Then she swayed toward him, bringing her axe scything out from under her cloak. It whipped over her head and struck just below the dwarf’s raised maul. The serrated blade cut straight through the haft and slashed on, sending the weapon-along with the dwarf’s hands-flopping bloodily to the ground.

The dark woman stepped back, following the weapon’s momentum into the second brave-and foolish-dwarf. This one caught the dwarf full in the chest, but his brigandine deflected the potentially mortal blow. Still, the strike put him down, blood spurting from a deep gash in his chest. The axe whirred through the air, singing its own deadly song.

She parried one charging dwarf, who stumbled back cursing at the force of her blow. Fluidly, she lashed out with her rear foot to catch another dwarf full in the face with a crunch. His legs shot out from under him, and he flipped backward to land in the dust.

An unscathed dwarf managed a thrust with one of his two short swords, but the blade cut just wide of her flank. She slapped her arm down to catch the sword against her hip then turned sharply. The motion tore the blade from the dwarf’s hands and brought her deadly axe across to take the dwarf’s head off at the jawline. The brutal steel cleaved flesh like air.

The dwarf she’d parried-along with his two surviving companions, one of them bleeding profusely from the face, the other handless-staggered away. The woman wore a stony expression as her axe spun to a halt, the haft slapping against her free hand. She’d killed or maimed four hardened warriors in the span of two breaths, and her eyes had never left Myrin.

“Demon!” Naros charged forward, his holy symbol raised. “Begone from this place! Back to the Abyss with you!”

The woman glanced at him blankly.

Two dozen dwarves armed with swords, axes, and hammers encircled the central campfire. Elder Naros stepped forward.

“If Moradin does not frighten you, perhaps steel will.” He raised his warhammer. “You may be a fiend with that blade, but we will overwhelm you.”

The woman still had eyes only for Myrin. She raised her axe and the surviving dwarves shuddered. Idly, she set her weapon spinning like a whip over her head.

Myrin hadn’t the least idea what this creature was or who might have sent her. She didn’t know what the woman meant to do to her, but she had no choice.

“Stop,” Myrin said. “I surrender! Harm no more of my friends!”

“Ironhand!” Naros cried, ignoring Myrin’s attempt at bargaining. “Attack!”

These dwarves fared little better than the first group.

The woman moved among them like a threshing wind, her axe flailing about. The dwarves launched blow after blow against her, but none landed. She moved aside from some; others were turned aside by the haze of darkness that swelled around her. She was a zephyr of death in the smoky night air.

The dark woman strode through the horde of attackers like a wraith and raised her axe over Myrin. “Lady!” Naros shouted.

Magic flowed from Myrin without conscious thought. She thrust up her wand and the axe struck a shield of light that appeared between them.

The woman pulled the axe back, nodded in acknowledgment, then kicked Myrin in the belly. Myrin staggered back and collapsed, wheezing.

The woman strode forward but Naros stepped in her path. He struck the woman’s axe with his hammer and she fell back. “Flee!” he cried. “Flee, my lady!”

Myrin forced herself to one knee, gasping for the breath that had been knocked from her body. She had to do something-had to end the fight.

A spell came to her, then, rising unbidden from the depths of her mind. She didn’t recall ever having cast it herself, but she knew where she had seen it cast. A year past, in Fayne’s memory, Myrin had watched the spell conjure crippling terror in a foe’s mind. If Myrin could remember how to cast it, perhaps she could shock the dark woman into stillness. But the spell was so black and terrible. How could she-?

The dark woman knocked Naros’s hammer out of his hands and drew her axe up. The dwarf glared up at her, defiant to the end.

No choice. Myrin shaped the awful spell around her gray-white wand. “Your worst fear to unmake you!” she declaimed in the horrid Abyssal tongue.

A ray of blackness struck the dark woman and for an instant Myrin felt a surge of relief. But the woman wasn’t stunned-she wasn’t even slowed.

Then the niggling pain in Myrin’s head flared and she realized that she was seeing into the woman’s mind.

Inside was nothing.

Myrin stood on the precipice of a sheer, shattering vastness. No warmth-no life. Only herself and the void. She fell to her knees, blood trickling from her nose.

The dark woman looked back at her and her lip curled slightly. She kicked the clan leader away then spun her axe overhead as the rest of the dwarves rushed her. She brought the weapon down in a thunderous swipe upon the ground, and a black whirlwind sent the dwarves flying.

Black manacles appeared around Myrin’s arms and legs and an irresistible force drew the wizard forward. Myrin struggled as the woman grasped her by the throat.

“No fear in the darkness,” the woman said. “No pain in the void.”

The world shivered around them and Myrin could feel the woman drawing her in-over the precipice into emptiness.

A single thought intruded, like a faint ray of hope. Myrin couldn’t explain why her mind flowed this way, but flow it did, and she spoke even though no one could hear.

“Kalen,” Myrin choked out. “Kalen Shadowbane.”

Her voice vanished into nothingness.