Shadowbane

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

27 KYTHORN (HIGHSUN)

"Oi!” the nympher said, clasping the blanket to her otherwise bare body. “Ya gives that back now, ya hear!”

The mark-Vel Lightfinger, a lowly member of the Bloodboots-clutched his gang-issued footware to his chest and ran down the creaky steps from her window. The damned nympher had lured him in like a first-day fool. And while he’d managed to stab her backup thug for good and all, the crazy woman had plucked up a morningstar from out of nowhere with the express purpose of bashing out his brains.

He jumped the last eight feet, then shoved on his boots with a hopping gait. Getting nails, splinters, or glass in his bare feet where they could fester would be just as bad as having his brains bashed out.

“Tluin you, little blade!” the woman cried from above. She seized a brick and sent it sailing at his head. He barely dodged.

“Tluin you right back, an’ twice bloody!” he shouted.

Four of his fellow Bloodboots sat waiting in the alley below. They laughed as he limped up, still securing his breeches.

Luskan was sour today. The market stood mostly empty as folk hid from the plague. To Vel and his lads, the Fury was a myth and nothing to fear. They’d gone out that night, looking for fun and they’d found it: a mugging here, some senseless violence there, and a whole bottle of wine some poor sot had “misplaced” that evening. Drunk, Vel had spent his copper on the damned nympher, despite his friends’ protests. Now he’d got what was due.

“We’ll get that hrasting nympher,” he said. “Jab me blade so far up her-” He trailed off when he saw their eyes look past his shoulder. “What?”

A man stood before them, wrapped in a tattered gray cloak and stitched leather armor. Gleaming from his behind the faceplate of his reinforced helm, his cold white eyes-seemingly without color of their own-offered the grim promise of pain to come.

“Go back to your tavern,” he said. “Shadowbane’s streets are closed.”

“Shadowbane?” Vel spat. “Hrast that! Get him, boyos!”

The five Bloodboots drew their various blades and clubs.

Shadowbane swept his arms wide and two long daggers bristled from his fists. Had they seen his lips behind the helm, they might have seen him smile.

Corr, one of Vel’s friends, stepped past. “Don’t know who you’re pushin’, you-!”

Shadowbane took him down in three quick moves. One side step to dodge Corr’s lunge, a knee to the groin, and a dagger pommel to the chin. Corr was on his back.

“Kill that crazy tluiner!” shouted the half-elf Callused Nai. “Kill him!”

He’d taken down one easily enough-now it was three: quickblade Devis, the half-elf Nai, and the extremely stupid half-orc they called Duns the Dull. Vel hung back, still tying his belt. This proved fortuitous for Vel.

Shadowbane lunged to one side and let Devis stumble past. He dived into Nai, who came second, and sent him staggering. Duns raised his weapon, but a fast kick caved in the side of the half-orc’s knee and the spiked club swung wide. Shadowbane rose and clapped his dagger pommels over Duns’s ears. Head crushed between Shadowbane’s weapons, the half-orc toppled senseless to the ground.

Nai and Devis came at him again. Shadowbane kicked Devis in the chest, knocking him back, then lunged at Nai, his daggers scything. The half-elf cursed and parried awkwardly. His short sword spun away into the shadows of the alley. As though with a sixth sense, Shadowbane gathered both knives in one hand and ducked Devis’s blade, which was stabbing for his back. He caught Devis’s arm as it thrust over his shoulder and hurled the man into Nai. Both of them tumbled to the ground, groaning.

That left Vel staring at Shadowbane, who stood before him, his cloak swirling, and his two daggers in one hand. Shadowbane dropped the second of his daggers back into his primary hand and stalked forward.

Vel was aware of a wetness in his trousers and thought he shouldn’t have bothered putting them on. He dropped his jagged knife and raised his hands.

Shadowbane saw that a small crowd had gathered in the market to watch the melee. “Your lucky day,” he said to Vel.

He turned back toward the stairs to the nympher’s building. His boots flashed with blue light and he leaped up to scale the side of the building like a hunting cat. The woman with the morningstar gasped and took cover in her room as he approached.

Once Shadowbane had gained the top, he peered down into the market, his cloak billowing on the wind. “Now hear this,” he called. “I am Shadowbane, king of the Dead Rats, and here and now, I tell you that Luskan is under my protection.”

That provoked a few startled gasps and gaping mouths. It was not easy to elicit a rise from the jaded folk of this city.

“You have heard of Luskan’s plague,” he said. “I come to tell you, there is no plague.” Guarded cheers met that, but Shadowbane held up a hand. “It is far worse.”

The people stared at him, shocked and rapt.

“A darkness haunts these streets,” he said. “It preys upon those who venture out alone-it strikes the weak and isolated. Until it is defeated, you will no longer be food for it. You will stay in your homes and taverns-in your holes and hovels. Armed bands of my Rats will bring you rations. No one else is to appear on the street.”

Those words-an enforced quarantine-rippled through the square.

“There will be a kingmaking ten days from now,” Shadowbane went on. “On the seventh day of Flamerule, you will choose a king to protect this city. Until a tenday hence, however, no man or woman shall walk these streets without my express permission and none shall raise a hand to another. I shall repay any violence done with greater violence.” He raised his chin. “You will abide by these rules.”

“Ah, Bane boil an’ belch ya up, madman!” cried one man.

A chorus joined the protest. The people of Luskan cried out in confusion and anger against Shadowbane and his claims. They decried his authority, brandished weapons, and shouted expletives.

“Very well,” he called. “I fully expected to do this by force.”

Shadowbane leaped down into the crowd, his cloak billowing, and the battle was joined.

29 KYTHORN (EVENING)

The candles burned low in Krot’s butcher shop. Dark-skinned and big, Krot wore his stoic Chultan heritage well, but today he veritably shook with excitement. He couldn’t sleep tonight-not with the stories of the mad king of Luskan filtering through the streets.

“You hear?” Krot said. “Is madman, you know? Fights hundred men, so they say, and he wins. Is king of Luskan by deed if not word, they say.”

Ansie, his wife of convenience and coin, stuck out her tongue at that. “Must be a bloody legend, Krot-now give us something to eat, dear? You be saving, no?”

“Isn’t nothing,” he said with a shrug. “The Dogtooths, they take the rest.”

“Not yet, we haven’t.”

The door to Krot’s shop pushed open, admitting three filthy men in jerkins of matted fur. Their leader-a many-times scarred man with a spiked collar around his neck-leered at Krot and Ansie. “You been holding out, Chultan,” the Dogtooth said. “You gives it here or we take what we like.”

Krot reached slowly for the war pick that hung on a hook, but one of the Dogtooths threw a knife that thunked into the wall an inch from his fingers.

“Ah-ah,” said the leader. “None of that now.”

A gloved hand appeared around the handle of the still trembling knife and wrenched it from the wall. A man in gray stood among them, naked steel in his hands. None had seen him coming and his sudden appearance evoked loud gasps.

“It’s him!” said Krot. “Shadowbane!”

Ansie gaped.

“Go back to your tavern,” he said to the Dogtooths. “You get one chance.”

The scarred leader of the Dogtooths stepped forward, eager to prove himself. He puffed out his chest. “Tluin you-”

The air rippled and a woman appeared in the chamber, her axe spinning. The haft slammed into the lead Dogtooth’s face. He flipped over in the air to land on the floor, clutching at his shattered jaw.

The other gang members drew back as the woman stepped toward them. Her eyes and skin were black as coal. Lines of darkness curled along her skin like veins. Her face bore no expression, but she stepped toward them hungrily, her ugly axe turning in her hands. She bent, curled and ready, like a poised snake.

“Sithe,” Shadowbane said. “Remember what I said of mercy.”

The woman hesitated. “Very well.” She straightened and drew back toward the wall.

“Return to your tavern with this message,” Shadowbane said. “Luskan is my city, but I plan give it to over to a king on the seventh day of Flamerule. Until then, violence will be met with violence, pain with pain, death with death.” He hurled the blade back at the leader of the gang. It sank into the floorboards next to his hand. “Understand?”

The Dogtooths did not need to be told again. They hurried out of Krot’s butcher shop without a glance backward.

The big butcher turned toward Shadowbane. “Eldath’s blessing upon-you? Saer?”

Shadowbane had bent over, supporting himself with a hand on the wall. His other hand grasped his chest. “Heh,” he said, blood in his teeth. “The big one at our last stop hit hard, eh?”

“You should have dodged,” Sithe said.

“No argument.” He spat blood on the floor. “You ready for what’s next?”

The dark woman stared at him as though he had asked a ridiculous question.

Krot looked at Ansie, then at the two visitors to his shop. “You-?”

“Stay inside,” Shadowbane said. “Rats will come with food. Wait.”

“Rats?” Krot blinked at him, perplexed.

“Wait,” Shadowbane said again.

They pushed out the door into the night, leaving Krot and Ansie staring blankly after them. “What did he mean, you think?” he asked. “He couldn’t mean-”

Within moments, the door opened again, admitting three weasel-faced men with the red sashes of Dead Rats. One of them twitched his nose, then stalked forward. “You be Krot, aye?”

“Aye,” the big man said.

“Compliments of Shadowbane.” The man gave him a glower, then plopped a sack on the counter. They left.

Tentatively, Krot opened the sack and gasped at its contents: half a loaf of bread, dried meat, and a hunk of cheese. The Dead Rats had given it, free of payment or favor. Ansie stared at the generous prize without comprehension. Krot started weeping.

“King of Luskan!” he said. “King of Luskan!”

2 FLAMERULE (NIGHT)

Shanyi had experienced worse days in Luskan. Though, as she lay huddled under a heap of blood-stained clothes in the wardrobe-one eye blackened, an arm broken, bleeding from a gash across her cheek, and hiding as best she could as people screamed all around her-none of those days came readily to mind.

Duulgrin’s consort certainly had it better than some of the Dustclaws. She trembled to think about the screams outside the wardrobe and … and the other sounds. She trembled also at the bellows that roared through the corridors and at the heavy clashes of a maul against the walls. Swish and crack-swish and crack.

Duulgrin was angry again.

The last tenday or so at the Dustclaws tavern had been worse than any in the previous year. Shanyi had come to Luskan like many others: not because she’d wanted to, but because she’d had no choice. Neverwinter held only vague, tentacled nightmares for her, and she could not go back there. Trying to get to Waterdeep had ended with her beaten and left for dead in a ditch by the road. Coming here had been just another instance of the same pattern in her life: find the nearest, biggest, scariest man she could, slip into his bed, and hang on for protection. With Duulgrin, she thought it had worked.

Until he went mad.

Ten days ago, he had beaten one of his own men to death with his face, and after that, it only got worse. Being a Dustclaw used to mean protection from the mad half-orc. Now, it meant lining up with his other victims. He’d started taking out his rage on the gang yestereve and she’d been hiding ever since she eluded his initial attack.

Shanyi heard a noise and it took all her considerable will and skill at mummery to compose herself. She closed her eyes, flinching away as the closet door swung open. Someone had found her, but she didn’t want to see death as it fell.

A leather-gloved hand closed over her mouth and she sprang nearly out of her skin. She flailed at the hand, trying her best to drive it away. She’d never learned to fight but, given the choice between death in battle and the one Duulgrin offered, her body apparently preferred to fight. At least there was some chance she could get away-

“Shh,” said a voice.

The man crouching before her wore black leathers and carried two long daggers sheathed at his belt. He wore a helm but it was open to reveal his weathered, handsome face. He had a thick badland of stubble, pale eyes, and a look of aching weariness.

She could not speak, only whimper, and she hated herself for that.

“There is no shame in fear,” he said, as though he heard her thoughts.

The door across Duulgrin’s chambers shattered open and a dark silhouette filled the smoky portal. The half-orc stood hulking and snarling in the doorway, his great spiked maul dripping blood at his side. He slammed it into the door jamb, sending cracks skittering up the wall of the already ruined room. The chamber was a battered, scorched realm over which the mad half-orc king held sway.

“Kur guhl kthra,” he said in words that came from no language Kalen could name. It might have been Dwarvish or Giant or just madness.

Shanyi’s savior rose, hands on his dagger hilts. “I am Shadowbane and Luskan is under my protection,” he said. “You will remain here, in your tavern, until the seventh day of Flamerule.”

Duulgrin stepped farther into the light, sending reflected radiance off the crystallized flesh growing on his ankle where a madman had bitten him. The infection has spread all across his flesh. His muscular body had become a morass of sores, lesions, and blisters, pocked with crystal growths.

“He has the Fury!” Shanyi said. “Run! Run while you-”

“Hragh!” Duulgrin lashed out and sent splinters of a table flying at Shadowbane.

The man in black swayed out of way, letting the debris shatter against the wall. The half-orc was on him, his maul arcing from on high as though to drive Shadowbane into the ground, but he ducked aside and chopped one arm down onto Duulgrin’s wrist. That coupled with Duulgrin’s own strength knocked the maul free. It banged off the floorboards and crashed into the wall next to Shanyi’s head.

Blearily, Duulgrin looked at his empty hands, then dealt Shadowbane a backhand that sent him staggering. The half-orc leaped after him, his fingers twisted into talons. The man in black ducked aside and his daggers slid into his hands.

“Yield,” Shadowbane said.

Duulgrin, his eyes bloody and oozing, snarled incoherently and reached for him.

Shadowbane stepped aside and slashed one of his daggers across the half-orc’s ribs. Duulgrin staggered into the spot where the man had stood and lashed out with a spinning, rending claw that struck Shadowbane’s raised dagger with an audible clang. The knife shot from Shadowbane’s hand to spin end over end, trailing blood as it went, until it clattered against the far wall.

“No!” Shanyi said. “He can’t feel it. He can’t-”

Hardly seeming to notice his cut hand, Duulgrin caught Shadowbane’s next attack, twisted the man’s arm with an audible pop, and pulled the man in close. The half-orc roared in Shadowbane’s face, his breath fetid and full of rotting flesh. Shanyi could smell it from where she crouched. Duulgrin pulled back and slammed his head into Shadowbane’s face, knocking him sprawling in the half-orc’s grasp.

“Anytime,” Shadowbane muttered, “you want … to help …”

Was he talking to her? No chance. She-

A strange thing happened, then. Shanyi found herself on her feet, straining to lift Duulgrin’s massive hammer. Surprisingly, she could. “Let him go!” she cried and staggered toward the half-orc and his captive.

Duulgrin roared in glee and madness and smashed his face into Shadowbane’s again. A third time, Shanyi knew, and his brains would be leaking out his ears.

The maul hung low to the ground-she could not lift it above her waist. Still, she swung the maul with all the force she could muster at the one spot she knew a man would feel, even in the grip of insanity. She hit him so hard the hammer jarred from her fingers and skittered across the floor.

Duulgrin yelped and curled downward around himself. His grasp on Shadowbane loosened, but only in as much as he let the man dangle from one hand while the other groped for Shanyi. She flailed back.

“You-you-blarrgh!” The half-orc’s roar had become a whine, but one of pure rage. He caught up Shadowbane in both hands and slammed him into the ceiling. With a dismissive wave, he sent the stunned man tumbling and lurched instead for Shanyi. “Rip you,” he said. “Feast on you! Feed!”

Shanyi backed into the wall, spattered with blood and spit as it was. She edged to her right, trying to get past Duulgrin, but the half-orc was like a mountain. He was death-horrible and inescapable. Terror gripped her, but she would not show it.

Then Shadowbane was behind Duulgrin, his nose and mouth freely streaming blood. He patted the half-orc on the back of the head, prompting the chieftain to turn. When he did, Shadowbane punched so hard with the pommel of his dagger that the crazed chieftain’s turned-up nose splattered.

Stunned, Duulgrin flailed madly. Shadowbane ducked easily and came up with a rising thrust to the side. Shimmering gray flames surrounded him as he struck. The dagger thrust into Duulgrin and both men vanished in a burst of light that dazzled Shanyi for an instant. When her eyes cleared, they were clear across the chamber, locked in combat as before.

Movement in the hall announced the arrival of more Dustclaws. Bleeding and bruised from Duulgrin’s assaults, the rough men and women of the gang stood staring blankly into the chamber, regarding the whole duel with wonder.

No one could face Duulgrin alone-no one was foolish enough.

In that moment, Shanyi came to terms with the sheer proximity of her own demise. She had escaped death-at least for the moment-and the fear rushed back. Her heart raced and her hands shook. She saw the open door and made to flee, but a hand grasped her shoulder. A woman of darkness stood beside her, with skin like black leather traced with lines of pure nothingness. Shanyi had heard of this woman.

“Stay,” Sithe said. “Bear witness.”

She cast her eye toward the assembled gang members, who took an unsettled step back. They had heard of her as well.

In the corner, Shadowbane ducked Duulgrin’s lumbering blows and flashed quickly both ways, sending streaks of blood through the air. Though he bled from a dozen wounds, the half-orc seemed tireless. Shadowbane panted heavily, his breath rattling through his throat, as he dodged and slashed, side stepped and countered. As he fought, flames coursed along his limbs and his eyes burned.

“Here is the moment,” Sithe said. “Here-the void between life and death.”

Duulgrin punched Shadowbane in the chest. He fell back, gasping. When he raised his eyes, his face was wrought in an expression of both rage and utter focus.

The half-orc struck him again, but this time his fist slammed into gray radiance that suddenly surrounded Shadowbane. To Shanyi, it looked almost like … like armor.

The flames blazing around his dagger turned bright red and with a roar to match Duulgrin’s, Shadowbane leaped forward to bury the blade in the half-orc’s chest. Fire surged forth to immolate the chieftain in hungry, dancing flames.

Duulgrin reeled back and the flames menaced what remained of the furniture in the chamber. The half-orc stumbled to the door and flames leaped from his burning body toward the other Dustclaws. One of them swatted Duulgrin back with a club. Stunned, the half-orc fell to his knees, and thence to the floor.

In his wake, silence reigned for what seemed like an hour. Then Shadowbane spoke.

“Hear me,” he said. “Until the kingmaking, Luskan is my city-and in my city, there will be no fighting in the streets, no thieving, and no villainy. You will remain in your taverns, gathering your strength. But even there, you will do no violence. We will not fight amongst ourselves. Those who violate my order-”

Shanyi saw a burning shadow rise behind Shadowbane and terror seized her throat. She could not even scream a warning.

There was no need.

Sithe stepped through the girl, the length of the chamber, and Shadowbane as through mist and slashed through Duulgrin. The half-orc’s head flew across the room. His body, hands yet raised to grasp Shadowbane’s throat, lurched forward a step, then fell.

Shadowbane stood stunned a moment, then grasped the haft of Sithe’s axe in one hand and her throat in the other. The genasi’s eyes widened dangerously.

“I said mercy,” he hissed.

“Death is a mercy,” Sithe said. “Do you see?”

Duulgrin’s corpse quivered and shook, his soiled robes bulging outward around his midsection. Blood stained the silk, seeping through to slide down his distended belly. In a matter of heartbeats, the silk tore under the fangs of a hundred-nay, a thousand-spiders, beetles, and chittering, awful things. The swarm skittered down through the waterfall of gore and fell twitching and dying on the floor.

“Sithe,” Shadowbane said.

The genasi raised her axe and drew a wreath of flame over the corpse. The vermin burned with a sickly, putrid stench that filled the room.

“Sithe!” said one of the men in the hall. “Sithe! Sithe!”

Shanyi shivered. For better or worse, she was a Dustclaw, so she bowed. “Hail Sithe, queen of the Dustclaws,” she said.

The two warriors looked at one another, Shadowbane’s expression dubious and Sithe’s unreadable. The genasi’s black eyes flickered with stars.

5 FLAMERULE (NIGHT)

When he strode into her chamber-kicking one of her guards through the doors, in fact-Eden was hardly surprised. He must have bled from half a hundred wounds and borne twice as many bruises, but one would never know it from his implacable carriage. Her brother came before her as an invincible, conquering champion.

“Lord Shadowbane,” she said. “So kind of you to pay me the honor of a visit.”

She lay on her divan, toying with her platinum coin. She was a queen, after all, and it would not do to seem fearful-even if she did share the room with thirteen of her best bodyguards. Just in case.

Hardly seeming to notice the assembled toughs, Shadowbane raised his helm and fixed his pale eyes on her. “Two days,” he said, his voice tinged with weariness. “In two days, there will be-”

“A kingmaking,” she supplied. “So I’ve heard. How’s the shoulder, by the way?”

Kalen looked at his arm, which twisted oddly from his shoulder. He seemed not to have noticed. “Dislocated.”

“Shall I tend that for you? The Lady pro-”

Kalen crossed to the wall and slammed his body against the stone. His arm popped back into place. He turned back to her, his face blank.

“-vides,” Eden finished. “Well, I hear you’ve been quite busy today, making your wishes known in ‘your’ city. My fellow servants of the Lady-”

“Hired trash,” Kalen spoke in anger. “Moldering refuse too pitiful to matter.”

Her men grumbled and reached for their steel, but she waved them to silence. “My brothers in Luck,” she said, “tell me you’ll protect the city until this kingmaking of yours, and that any violence done will be returned tenfold. Is this so?”

Kalen nodded.

“Impressive, Shadowbane,” she said, careful not to name him brother. “Have you been fighting every single rogue who disobeys your edict? Killing a few, I imagine.”

Kalen said nothing, only smiled slightly and laid his hand on the hilt of a dagger. Inspired by just that small threat, the shudder that passed through the room touched even Eden.

She started to believe he could truly do it.

“Me lady,” said one of her men-picked by the toss of her coin to replace one of her advisors. “Let’s kill this pissant now. Let’s-”

“No.” Eden raised her hand to stay her men. “I haven’t and won’t cross your reign, King Shadowbane, and then we’ll have our kingmaking. Luskan has been too long divided.” She sat back and flipped her platinum coin from one hand to the other. “But after a new king is chosen, you will no longer be welcome in Luskan. Your reign will end with blood.”

Kalen shrugged. “Two more days,” he said. Then he turned and walked away.

Eden’s men drew steel, but she waved again, stopping them.

The day would come-very soon-where steel would be the answer. Steel … and the scroll she kept rolled up and tucked into her bodice near her heart.

She could feel the plague’s hunger. It was so much more than a disease-so much more than a mere weapon. It held the keys to power in the city, perhaps in all Faerun. Keeping it restrained was like balancing a coin on edge: it took constant vigilance. But Eden was born for such a struggle. She wondered when misfortune would strike and her control would slip. The risk thrilled her.

“We wait,” she said to the faithful. “We follow Shadowbane’s edict of nonviolence and on the seventh day of Flamerule, the goddess will grant us a great blessing.”

The men looked dubious, but they knew better than to contradict her. They feared Eden more than any goddess.

Let him have his days of hard-fought peace-let him think his plan working. She controlled the plague and she would keep it quiet. Then, when it came time for the kingmaking, she would use it to destroy him and put herself on the throne of Luskan.

We hunger.

When we try to rise, the call defeats us and we cannot eat.

Murmur whispers to us-a voice not our own, yet part of us. Murmur says wait. Be patient. If we attack now, we will reveal ourselves. We will be slain.

We hunger.

We build our strength, eager to consume. We are ripper-tearer-destroyer. We are doom, for this world and a thousand others.

Murmur says wait. Murmur says we will feast soon.

We hunger.