Troy Denning: The Sentinel

“Then deliver them … all.”

As Malik spoke, he threw his head back, arching his neck up so quickly that Arietta barely had time to pull her sword away. Even so, he managed to open a bloody gash along the side of his throat. Had it been a finger’s width to one side, it would have severed an artery.

Kleef quieted him by slamming the flat of Watcher’s blade into the side of his head. Then he looked up at Arietta.

“Your call, my lady,” he said. “But I think we’ve learned as much as we’re going to-at least without hauling him all the way back to Cormyr for a proper interrogation.”

Arietta was quick to shake her head. “Please, no,” she said. “I couldn’t stand his company that long.”

Kleef nodded, then looked down into Malik’s eyes. “That just leaves the question of justice,” he said. “For what he’s done, we’d be within the Law to kill him.”

“Which he obviously doesn’t fear.” Arietta studied the gash he had opened in the side of his neck, then said, “At least not as much as he fears having failed Cyric.”

Beads of sweat rolled down Malik’s brow. “Leave me alive, and you will never be safe,” he said. “I will hunt you down and-”

Kleef’s boot crashed into the side of Malik’s head, bringing the threat to an abrupt end as the little man’s eyes rolled back in their sockets.

Kleef kneeled down and moved Malik’s head back and forth to make sure he was truly unconscious, then looked up and asked, “You still want to leave him alive?”

Arietta nodded. “Serving Cyric brings its own justice, I suspect,” she said. “And killing him would do no honor to Joelle. Better to leave him to meet his fate with Gingrid and her unliving friends.”

Kleef nodded his agreement. “Well said.” He unbuckled Malik’s sword belt. “But there’s no reason to make it easy for him to come after us, either.”

Arietta retrieved the black dagger that had almost killed her earlier. Despite a lopsided hilt and a notch at the base of the blade, the dagger was a fine weapon, light and slender and surprisingly well-balanced. She tucked it into her belt, then turned toward Kleef.

“I think the time has come to look to our future,” Arietta said. She started across the anteroom. “Will you see me home, Sir Kenric?”

Kleef smiled and bowed. “As you command, my lady.”

He opened the door, and they stepped cautiously out onto the drawbridge.

Sadrach Castle lay in ruins. Much of its stonework had been eaten to the ground by the spell Yder had released into the barracks wall. The inner bailey was filled with orc corpses and the undead who were feasting upon them. Meanwhile, dozens of dazed-looking humans-wallbound released by the destruction of their stony prison-wandered about, searching for their lost friends and relatives.

Beyond the castle stretched an endless plain of raw brown earth, still churning and billowing upward as it filled the vast void that had once been the Underchasm. As Arietta followed Kleef across the drawbridge, she heard a sound coming from a window high behind her. Somewhere in the keep, an old man was weeping with joy, at once cackling and sobbing, thanking the gods that his long nightmare had come to an end.