Eric De Bie - Shadowbane

“Stop!” Myrin cried, tears streaking her face. “Sithe!”

The veins in his neck bulging, Kalen tried to rise, but he had no strength. His god’s power had left him a hollow shell.

Sithe kept walking as more and more vermin coated her. Five, six, ten, a dozen, two dozen-all the survivors of Scour leaped upon this fresh source of food, who’d so foolishly walked into their midst. They jabbed her with their stingers, over and over. They feasted: Kalen could hear the crunch and pop of pieces of Sithe’s ears, nose, and eyes. The dark genasi’s flesh crystallized as they watched, the corruption spreading from every bite. Panting, she walked on.

Finally, when Sithe had accumulated the rest of Scour to her, she fell to her knees. Her chest swelled rapidly and her breath wheezed.

Sithe’s face changed then-something Kalen had never thought possible. The slit of her mouth spread through the black leather of her face and she smiled.

“I have come, Brothers,” she said, her mouth half crystal. “Feast with me. ”

The air split with a great wrenching as all swept toward Sithe for a moment.

Then she and the demons were gone.

For a long time after, Kalen sat among the desiccated corpses and bloody stains in the center of the battlefield, drained of all strength and emotion.

Scour was finished. The last corpses of its merged demon-spawn began to rot away into dust. If any had escaped … He didn’t know-nor did he care. Still, he waited.

Myrin understood, but she wished she didn’t. She wished, for the first time she remembered, for ignorance. She didn’t want to remember this. “Kalen-”

“She’s coming back,” he said.

They breathed together in the empty chamber, broken and bloody.

Silence and death surrounded them.

“Kalen.” Myrin put her hand on his shoulder.

“Any moment now,” Kalen said.

Myrin put her arms around his neck.

8 FLAMERULE (DAWN)

Eden sat in her personal altar chamber, in the center of the floor. She had bashed the divan to shards, overturned the altar, and dashed her scrying bowl to pieces. Her platinum coin lay on the floor by the corner, where she had thrown it.

How? How could the goddess have chosen the girl ?

The goddess had abandoned her. Her goddess-her mother-had abandoned her all over again. All because of that damned Kalen.

Tears leaked down from her eyes, salty water from her good eye, blood from her empty socket. She’d only ever wanted her goddess-her mother-to love her. She …

She heard a snap from outside, followed by the sharp swish of a metal blade. Someone had tripped one of her snares. That gave her a small burst of pleasure. At least she still had the foolishness of men-that would never fail to amuse her.

A second trap went off-this a series of darts clicking off stone. So the intruder had brought a second, had he? How amusing.

A third trap went off, and a fourth, and a fifth-clicks, pops, and the occasional loud blast-with increasing frequency.

Someone was setting off all her traps, she realized. Gods .

She crossed to the door, where she kept a spyhole for just such an occasion. She peered out and gasped at the golden figure walking toward her. He chose a random path, his every step setting off a trap-each of which miraculously missed him.

“No,” she said. “No, no- goddess !”

She closed the spyhole and ran back to search desperately for her platinum coin. The goddess would save her-she must!

There! Eden put her trembling hands around the coin, but it slipped from her grasp and rolled under the broken table. She peered in, with her one good eye, and saw that Beshaba’s visage stared up at her.

The door swung open behind her and Eden froze.

“Left the door unlocked, did you? What terrible luck,” the Horned One said. “Almost as awful as misplacing your symbol. Tsk.”

She made a mad grab for her coin and got it.

Eden threw herself aside and cried out to the Lady. She held the coin forth at the Horned One where he stood not four paces away. She could not miss.

Light flared, but it burst not toward the golden man. Instead, it burst in the opposite direction: right into Eden’s face. As the goddess’s paralysis gripped her, she stared at the visage of Beshaba facing her on the coin. The wrong side-the goddess she had chosen.

“What rotten luck you have.” He stepped forward and plucked the two-faced coin from her fingers. It disappeared into his sleeve. “I asked for one simple thing-just one.”

“Why?” Eden managed to whisper through lips that fought against her.

“The Darkdance girl,” he said. “Not that I have any particular affection for her, but she’s terribly important to my present plans. If you’d left well enough alone, I wouldn’t have had to give her the orb before its time … ah, but you don’t want to hear all this.”

Eden wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her beg. “You’ll … pay …” she said. “I am … queen … of Luskan …”

“Oh, a new power is rising in Luskan, indeed,” he said. “It might have been you, but alas. I’d choose your enemies more carefully in the future you don’t have.”

Eden felt the paralysis fading-enough that she could move her lips. If she could just speak in the proper cadence … She murmured the first words on the scroll he had given her.

“Are you certain that’s a good idea?” he asked. “You might want to think this through.”

“Tluin you!” she shouted. She finished the chant.

At first, nothing happened. Then she heard the chittering and clicking that heralded its coming. “Let us see which of us is the stronger in this place of the Lady,” Eden said. “Her chosen priestess, or a turncloak like you!”

“Hmm,” he said. “This is awkward.”

Beetles and spiders crept up through the walls-not the fiends of Scour, just normal vermin. Rats flitted from holes, drawn toward her casting. Locusts, called from marauding in the fields, tapped against the clear skylight, cracking the glass.

“What is this?” The creatures scrabbled at Eden’s robes and she could not fight them off. “But I am warded! The demon cannot touch me!”

“These are not demons,” the Horned One said. “Scour is gone from this place-perhaps destroyed, perhaps not, but certainly slumbering once again. These are merely his creatures and they are, for lack of a better word, hungry. ” He bowed. “Good day.”

“My lord!” Eden cried. “My Lord Horned One! Save me!”

“Unlikely,” he said. “And please, call me Lilten.”

As they crawled up her body, burrowing through her imported robe, Eden shouted hysterically. “It won’t matter!” she cried. “You heard the halfling-his final prophecy!” Rats clung to her hair, spiders burrowed into her underclothes. “Dren will fall into darkness and destroy all he loves! Defend the little slut as you like, you will lose. You will lose !”

“My dear,” Lilten paused at the door and looked back at her, “whoever said he was talking about your brother ?”

Kalen perched at the edge of the Drowned Rat’s roof as the sun rose, chasing darkness from the world. He stared not at the sunrise, but rather to the west, where the darkness fled. Myrin didn’t understood what he was doing, but it seemed to comfort him and that was the important thing.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Myrin said. She had bundled up against the cold night, but as the sun hit Luskan, sweat emerged on her skin.

Kalen nodded.

“She was my friend, too, you know,” Myrin said. “Not that I knew her as well as you did.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you? I mean-?”