Shadowbane

CHAPTER THIRTY

7 FLAMERULE (NIGHT)

In that moment-just before Scour burst like a raging hurricane through the tunnel and they began fighting for their lives-everything became clear to Kalen. Seeing the sword-knowing how he had failed Rhett, just like he had failed Vaelis-had undone him. His desperate patina of control was swept away in a flow of anger such as he had not known since his days as a thief on the streets of Luskan. Anger at being scarred and doomed. Anger at letting folk he cared about die. Anger at being fooled. Anger at being hopelessly outmatched.

Now, with Myrin’s kiss, all that anger collected into one hot point and became purpose. This creature was going to fall. He swore it.

As if in response, power filled him-power such as he had never known. Myrin’s kiss lingering on his lips, he drew his daggers and ran toward the oncoming death.

With the crashing roar of a thousand voices, Scour flowed up the tunnel and into the dimly lit demon temple. It shattered open a withered door like a fleck of driftwood. The braces of the portal cracked then splinted with the force of its passage. Thousands upon thousands of nightmare beasts came at them. They only vaguely resembled what they had once been-spiders, locusts, gnashing beetles, scorpions, rats, and all things that crept through the shadows and stung or bit in the dark. They had swelled to ten times the size of their mortal kin, sprouted dozens of limbs and stingers, and burned red and black like the demon that drove them. This horrifying army surged forth, laying waste to everything in its path.

Every one of its voices screamed a single word: “FEED!”

Kalen screamed right back, a sound without words.

Blazing with divine fire, Kalen leaped before the first ones could touch him, kicked off the wall, and came down in an explosion of holy force that sent the creatures sailing in every direction. It broke the wave of the swarm like an exploding stone thrown into the water.

Before more could take their place, he sprang again, his boots sparking with magic, and somersaulted free of the swarm. Two demonbeasts flew after him, their stingers flailing. He slashed one out of the air and kicked the second back as he twisted down to land on his feet.

Sithe covered his retreat. She spun her axe and whirled forth a halo of flame that sent destruction scything through the swarm. Any of the beasts that dared to bite at her, claw at her, or even approach her were consumed in her reaving flame. Not, of course, that the swarm could avoid her-more creatures kept flowing from below, pushing their brethren into the flames.

The swarm kept coming.

Kalen landed beside Sithe and immediately lashed out with his knives, cutting down a spider that leaped at the genasi as she lashed at six of its fellows. Blood spattered them, but it was demon blood, not his or Sithe’s.

“Myrin!” Kalen shouted. “Spells!”

Brilliant light flashed, as of the rising sun. A cloud of spiraling, glittering sparks showered among the swarm, sending hundreds of creatures shrieking wildly into burning oblivion. Those who survived turned on their fellows dazedly, scrabbling at one another with fang and claw.

The creatures gushed from the tunnel, filling the chamber with gnashing, roaring bodies. The pestilence flowed around Sithe, even as she lashed out at it. She stood among an enormous circle of dead, growling in challenge.

The swarm kept coming.

“Fight on!” Kalen cut a demon spider down with a swipe of his blades.

“Down!” came a cry.

Sithe thrust out an arm and hauled Kalen to the floor, just as a scything blade of flame shot over them and tore into the horde. Creatures died by the scores as the fire slashed through them, then bounced off the far wall with a roaring clang and spun another rending path through Scour. Kalen saw it spinning toward them and kicked Sithe aside just as it cut through where they had lain together.

“Gods!” Kalen shouted to Myrin. “Look where you aim-” He trailed off. “Gods.”

Myrin hadn’t been hesitating in those first moments. Rather, she’d spent that time layering spells on herself. Now she floated a hand’s length off the ground, blue flame flowing around her rune-covered limbs. Bolts of magical force flashed from her seemingly without direction to strike at lunging beasts. Her hands worked independently, sending blasts of thunder or flame to strike as many as possibly at once. With every spell she cast, a new blue rune appeared on her skin. Her orb floated on its own in front of her face-the cloud within had erupted into a great storm.

He was able to steal only a glance at Myrin before he was slashing and thrusting and stomping with all the force he could muster.

“Do you see it?” Sithe asked as she cut a swath through the horde with a burst of dark force. “Do you see what I have seen in her?”

Kalen let a smile slip across his mouth. “I think I always did,” he said.

The swarm squealed in anger and-Kalen thought-fear. It withdrew, leaving them hacking already wounded stragglers, or else at the empty air. The swarm dispersed into a hundred smaller packs of creatures and backed up against the walls, as though considering whether to press the attack.

“So it fears,” Sithe said.

“If it fears,” Kalen said, “then it can die.”

The swarm drew in on itself, the composite creatures scrambling on one another and climbing onto the wall. Some clung to the ceiling, folding their wings on themselves; others spread acid-bedewed wings as though testing them for the first time. Stingers and claws clicked and made ready.

“What is it doing?” Myrin called from the center of her magical storm.

“Down!” Kalen shouted.

The swarm burst toward them like a great hammering hand. Kalen threw himself wide enough that it struck him only a glancing blow. Still, it sent him flying. Sithe was not so fortunate. The fist of Scour struck the genasi full force, burying her under a thousand biting, tearing creatures. He heard her screaming, a sound that filled him with dread.

“Sithe!” Myrin unleashed flame in a vast arc like dragon’s breath. Hundreds died, but the swarm as a whole merely turned its attention on her. An arm of creatures swept her aside like a doll. Only her shield of fire kept them from devouring her in that instant.

With a roar of helpless anger, Kalen rolled away from the swarm, but a huge crimson spider-thing lunged on him like a pouncing cat. Mandibles clicked at his face, tearing his cheek, and he buried one of his daggers in the soft spot between its head and body. The blade struck in the spider’s carapace, however. When he kicked the corpse away, he lost one of his weapons.

No matter.

He rolled to a halt against a pile of the charred beasts and pushed himself to one knee. His cloak flowed over him, casting him in shadow. Blood dripping from his cut-open face, he surveyed the battle with a quick glance, back and forth.

The swarm coalesced in the center of the chamber, a seething hive of black bodies with crimson talons and stingers. Nearby, Sithe flailed among the biting, rending hordes, screaming as they scrabbled at her. Her armor-her dark faith-had vanished from around her. Kalen realized he was not seeing Sithe, but rather the woman she was underneath-a real woman, beneath the armor of hate and loss. Her axe lay fallen at her side and she beat at the creatures with her hands and feet.

“Sithe!” he shouted, drawing the swarm’s attention. “Flee!”

She looked up at him, her black eyes swimming.

“Get out of there, Sithe!” Kalen said.

The genasi nodded sharply and shut her eyes. A scream wrenched itself from her lips, then abruptly-with a great suction of air-she vanished, taking dozens of the creatures with her. Gone.

Kalen looked desperately around. “Myrin!”

“Kalen!” A cry issued from-he realized with a chill-the middle of the swarm.

He could see her now, a flicker of blue at the heart of the horde of demon creatures. Her fiery shield was holding, but it no longer consumed the creatures. They had adapted, however that was possible. Now it was simply a matter of cracking her shell. To that end they piled on one another like bees, stinging with their barbs and hammering with their talons. Kalen could barely glimpse Myrin at the center of the flaming shield-she was screaming.

“No more,” he said. “No more!”

He looked down at the dagger in his hand. Such a little thing, that shard of steel, though it had killed scores of these accursed things. It was not the weapon of a proper warrior, but then, he was no such man either. He was the hand of vengeance.

Gray flames sprung from the dagger and he ran at the swarm.

The beasts, preoccupied with their magically warded quarry, began to turn. He kicked off the floor, his boots glowing with blue fire, and with a roar, he plunged his dagger into the heart of the swarm.

Fire exploded from his blade, coating the monsters in liquid flame. Caught in his own blast, Kalen tumbled back, disarmed and burning. The fire spread to nearby demon-spawn, dancing like a voracious thing that lived only to eat.

“The fire exists to consume,” Sithe had said. “It has no other purpose.”

Much of the swarm fell away from Myrin, retreating back toward the deeper tunnel. Kalen could see her through the teeming cloud of death, kneeling in the middle of her sphere of flame and he caught his breath. Runes coated her from fingers to shoulder, from shoulder to hip, from hip to toe. Her face was alive with a blue glow, and her eyes pulsed with darkness.

“Away!” Myrin cried in a voice not quite her own. “Away!”

The orb floating before her turned jet black.

“Myr-” Kalen started.

Darkness roared outward, sending demonic beasts flying. Kalen was thrown away as the chamber went absolutely black.

After a heartbeat, Kalen realized the blackness must not be death. He determined this because, if it was death, then death hurt more than he had expected and he had expected pain.

First, he was on fire, but he put that out without much difficulty.

Also, he heard the scuttling of fiendish creatures, so he knew Scour yet lived. How hurt it was, he could not say, but he knew that lying there offered an invitation to strip him to bones. He had to move. Where, though?

“Feed,” he thought he heard a voice whisper. But perhaps he had imagined it.

“Myrin,” he whispered. He reached out with his spellscar to sense her, but he found nothing. “Are you-?”

A blue circle appeared in the air, half a dozen paces from him-Myrin’s orb, floating of its own accord. It shed a soft light, more like a guiding beacon than a torch. He managed one knee but not the other-his left leg wasn’t obeying his commands. Using his other limbs, he crawled through the darkened chamber toward the orb.

Myrin lay below the orb, so still Kalen feared for a moment that whatever she had done had drained the last of her strength. Her blue runes seemed to shimmer dimly. She stirred as he came close and when he put his fingers to her cheek, her eyes opened. She looked so weary, her eyes shot through with blood and her lids lined with deep wrinkles in black hollows.

“What-what happened?” she asked.

“You did.” Kalen pointed to the orb. “Your spell … that summoned …”

“Oh.” Myrin looked at him dazedly. “But I don’t know a spell like that. At least …” She touched at her throat, and there, just below her right jawline, he saw a shimmering black circle illuminated in ink on her skin. “I didn’t.”

He shivered, though he couldn’t say exactly why.

A familiar stir in the air presaged the reappearance of Sithe. The genasi panted and wheezed, falling immediately to her knees beside them.

“Sithe,” Kalen said, reaching for her. “Are you-?”

She swatted away his hand. “Very well indeed,” she said.

“You sound awful,” Kalen observed.

“Spoken in a voice free of hurt.”

“True.” Kalen wiped blood from his chin. If not for his toughening spellscar, he suspected he would lie twitching on the floor. “Can you dispel this darkness, Myrin?”

“My orb is maintaining it,” Myrin said.

“Lilten’s orb,” Kalen said.

The woman gave a noncommittal shrug. “Let’s see-” She focused on the orb, raising her hand toward it. After a moment, as though it struggled with her, the orb dimmed and dropped like a stone to her hand.

The oppressive darkness lifted as the torch on the floor-miraculously unscathed by the battle-flickered back into existence. At first, the chamber looked empty and Kalen had the briefest moment of elation.

Then he saw it and his heart knew fear.

The mass of buzzing, hissing monstrosities rose up like a mountain before them. Even as he watched, bulges of the demonic beasts emerged to represent limbs. Finally-and perhaps worst-the swarm flowed to form something like facial features.

“Scour … Murmur …,” the swarm said in their minds. “We have dreamed. A world afire.”

The three hardly understood, but the creature’s majesty forced them to silence.

“We are your prince,” it said in a hundred echoing voices. “We are the harbinger.” The swarm made a cacophony of clicking noises that might have been laughter. “This world will feed us. You will feed us … Shadowbane.”

It wasn’t fair, but Kalen didn’t think about that. They were all going to die, but he didn’t think about that either. He did not think about Scour, or Myrin, or Sithe-not even himself. The chamber, Luskan, all of Faerun-all of it vanished.

He was the thief and the paladin both. He was Shadowbane.

A single voice spoke in his heart, telling him what it needed. What it demanded.

He answered.

Gray flames surrounded him, forming the suit of armor that was the manifestation of his faith. The steel that was his steel-the helm that was his helm.

Slowly, Kalen raised his hand high over his head as though saluting the swarm demon. He reached toward the heavens and opened himself wholly to the Threefold God.

There was no blade in his hand. He was the blade.

He was the destroyer.

A god’s instrument to destroy a demon prince.

He was the protector.

The drive to destroy was also the need to defend.

He was the guardian.

Silver fire lit in the air above him and he felt the familiar weight of a familiar bastard sword in his hand. One that, at last, did not burn him as he touched it.

He knew without looking that his prayer had been answered.