Erik de Bie - Downshadow

Fayne giggled. "You wouldn't think it, to look at her."

"Tough little wench," said Kalen, and Fayne shared his smile.

Then he paused, not wanting to tell her the story of Gedrin or of obtaining Vindicator, and in truth it did not matter. That would instill a touch of nobility to his story, and he did not feel noble. He was awash in his brutal past.

"When I was eight years of age, I… I made a mistake. I did something terrible, and my spellscar returned in full force. I couldn't move at all."

He tried to turn, but she held his hand tighter and didn't look away. Kalen set his jaw.

"I was frozen, locked in a dead body that felt nothing, but saw and heard everything. It was like my childhood sickness, but returned a hundredfold. A man grown would have gone mad, and perhaps I did-not knowing when or if I would ever move again. I couldn't even kill myself-only lie there and wait to die."

His hands clenched hard enough for him to feel his fingernails, which meant they would be drawing blood. Fayne watched him closely, consuming every word.

"I prayed-to anyone or anything rhat might hear," he said. "I prayed every moment for true death, but the gods did not hear me. They had abandoned Luskan and everyone in it."

"You were a man of faith? "asked Fayne. Her voice was respectfully soft-almost reverent. "An odd choice for a beggar boy."

He shrugged. "Cellica didn't follow the gods either-her healing was in needle, thread, and salve. But she believed in right, and she definitely believed in wrong. And though letting me die might have been kinder, as I thought, she told me every day that she would help me, no question. She loved me, I came to realize, though I had no understanding of it then.

"She kept me from starving. She cared for me when anyone else would have left me for dead. I hated her for that-for not letting me die-but I loved her all the same. She would feed me and clean me and read to me-but other times, she would just sit with me, talking or silent. Just be with me, when I had nothing else.

"And eventually-finally-I began to pray for life. Just a little bit of life-just enough to touch her cheek, hold her, thank her. Then I could rest." Kalen brushed a hand down Fayne's cheek. "Do you understand?"

Fayne nodded solemnly. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Kalen said. "No god came to save me-no begging brought life back into my dead body. I was alone but for Cellica, and she could not fight for me. I had to fight for myself."

Fayne said nothing.

"I stopped praying," Kalen said. "I stopped begging. Once…" He trailed off.

He breathed deeply and began again.

"After I escaped my master but before my mistake-when I was a boy of eight winters, begging on the streets. Someone once told me not to beg. A great knight, called Gedrin Shadowbane."

Something like recognition flickered across Fayne's face-the name, he thought.

Kalen continued. "He didn't ask me why I begged-nothing about my past, or who I was. He didn't care. He just told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never to beg. again. Then he struck me-cuffed me on the ear so I would remember."

"Whar a beast!" Fayne covered a grin with her hand and her eyes gleamed with mirth.

Kalen chuckled. "It was the last thing anyone said to me before I fell paralyzed," he said. "And as I lay unmoving, hardly able to breathe or live, I realized he was right. I stopped praying for someone else to save me, and fought only to save myself. Not to let myself die. Not yet-I would die, I knew, but not yet." Kalen clenched his fists. "Then, slowly-gods, so slowly-it came back. Feeling. Movement;* Life. I could speak to Cellica again. I told her what I wanted-to die-and she cried. If I had begged her, she would have done it, but

I would not ask that of her. She pleaded with me to wait-to give it a tenday, to see if it got better." t He closed his eyes and breathed out.

¦ "It did. Slowly, with Cellica behind me every moment, I recovered," Kalen said. "But I knew it was only temporary. When we had the coin to hire a priest, he told us I still bore the spellplague within me-a spellscar fesrering at my core. Perhaps I'd had it from birth." He flexed his fingers.

"Some bear an affliction of the spirit, mind, or heart-mine is in my body. The numbness will return-is returning-gradually, over time. And with it, my body dies, little by little." He shrugged. "I feel less pain-less of everything. And though it makes me stronger, faster, able to endure more than most men, ultimately, it will kill me."

Kalen looked toward the window at the rain hammering the city.

"I had a choice," he said. "I could waste my life dreading it, or I could accept it. I followed the path that lay before me. I accepted Helm's legacy, and followed the Eye of Justice."

As though his voice had lulled her into a trance from which she was just waking, Fayne blinked and pursed her lips. "Helm? As in, the god of guardians? The dead god of guardians?"

Kalen said nothing.

"I don't know if you know your history, but Helm died almost a hundred years ago," Fayne said. "Your powers can't come from a dead god-so what deity grants them?"

Kalen had asked himself the same question so many times. "Does it really matter?"

Fayne smiled. "No," she said, as she leaned closer to him. "No, it doesn't."

She caressed his ear with her lips, and her teeth. Kalen could just feel it-enough to know what she was doing-which meant she was probably hurting him. He didn't care.

She dipped a little and bit at the soft spot at the end of his jaw. She pressed her cheek to his, letting her warm breath excite the hairs on his neck.

Erik Scott de Bie

Downshadow

Through it all, Kalen stayed still as a statue.

"I know you can feel this." Fayne's eyes were sly. "I wonder what else I can make you feel. Things that little girl couldn't dream ofthings your mistress Araezra doesn't know."

Kalen smiled thinly. "Only," he said, "only if you give me something."

"And what," she asked, kissing his numb lips, "is that?" "Tell me your name," Kalen said.

Fayne stepped back and regarded him coolly. "You don't trust me, even now?" He shrugged.

"Very well. Can't blame you, really," Fayne said. "Rien. That's my real-"

Kalen shook his head. "No. It isn't."

"Gods!" Fayne laid her head on his shoulder and pressed herself hard against him, kissing his neck once more. He felt her sharp teeth, which meant they must have drawn blood. She wiped her lips before she drew away to speak to him, so he could not know for certain. "Rien is my true name, given me by my mother before she died."

"And it means 'trick' in Elvish," Kalen said. "No need to trick me."

She swore mildly, still smiling. Then she nibbled his earlobe and breathed into his ear. He knew his senseless skin awakened and went red, but he could not feel it.

Kalen sighed. "You can stop lying," he said.

"Eh?" Fayne clutched his lips hard enough for him to feel-hard enough to draw blood.

"You don't have to pretend to love me," Kalen said.

With a last, lingering kiss on the corner of his lip, Fayne pulled away and faced him squarely. His eyes glittered in the candlelight.

"How dare you," she said, half-jesting and half-serious.

"All this," Kalen said. "This is just an act. Isn't it?"

Her face went cold and angry, shedding all pretense of jest. "How dare you." %

Fayne snapped up her hand to strike him, but he caught it and held her arm in place. nan

"That time," Kalen said, "your anger told the truth."

Fayne said nothing for a long time. Kalen put his hand on her ejbow and though he held it only lightly, he might as well have bound her in iron.

"It's still that girl, isn't it?" Fayne accused. She raised one finger to point at him. "It's that little blue-headed waif with her tattoos you fancy, isn't it?"