Eric De Bie - Shadowbane

“Now where’d you get an idea like that?”

“Flick might have mentioned it.”

“Bitch.” Ebbius managed a little smile-his confidence was coming back. “Work for meself, Kalen-you know that.”

Kalen shrugged. “Well, whoever’s filling your pocket, you’ll trouble Flick no more. If I hear about retribution, I will find you.”

“Oh, I’d not worry about that.” Ebbius bared all his teeth. “You’d best watch your own back. You leave me sore like this, there’ll be mirth for all, I promise you that.”

“Best not leave you sore then.”

Kalen seized the tail anew. Ebbius wailed, but Kalen clapped a hand over his mouth. He focused his will, forcing power to gather. His hand glowed with the healing touch given to a paladin and the bones knit back together. The blessing even soothed the breaks in his hand.

“Damn,” the tiefling said. “Say, you all right?”

It was getting harder, healing at a touch. This time, it was a miracle he managed it without a blinding headache. Not that he could show Ebbius any weakness.

“Did any of this really happen?” Kalen leaned close and sniffed. “Or did you take a bath in rum and piss yourself as you imagined it?”

The tiefling glared. “They’ve truth-speakers, you son of an orc’s whore!”

“And you’ll be quick to tell them all about the information you divulged.”

The tiefling’s glare was positively murderous. “What happened to you, Kalen?” Ebbius asked. “Thirteen years back, we’d have shared this rum and bickered over that bitch’s coin. Found a god or two?” He sneered. “Or perhaps it be this blue-haired girl, aye?”

Kalen punched Ebbius across the face. The tiefling’s horns cracked against the alley wall and he fell, senseless.

Flexing his fist, Kalen considered. Ebbius had given him only a little to go on, but Kalen suspected one of those names he’d dropped was dead on for who had Myrin. He had to assume the Master of the Throat didn’t have her, or she was dead already. That left the Dustclaws, the Dragon and his Shou, the Spinners, the Dead Rats with their dark enforcer, Sithe. The name resonated in his mind for some reason.

“Time to light some fires,” he said.

He left the alley.

The red one wakes slowly, clenching his head. His skin is tough and the color of burned meat. He props himself up on the alley wall, inspecting the blood on his hand .

Red blood .

Hot blood .

It smells like the sweetest of sweetmeats .

“Son of a-” He flicks his fingers, sending blood speckling across the stone. “Sodding Little Dren. Soon as I tell …”

He looks this way. We hide in the shadows .

We wait .

We hunger .

The door opens and two other ones appear. A big one with big teeth. Another one. They are weak. They shed blood. We chitter. We hiss with hunger .

The tusked one speaks. “Ebbs. You up?”

“Dammit, Little Dren.” The red one shakes his head. “We’ll get that tluiner!”

The words mean nothing. A name. Names have no taste .

We hunger. We cannot wait .

We surge forth .

The puny metal-studded one cries out as we take him .

The other ones cry out. They call for help. Help will not come .

The red one escapes, many of us clinging and biting. He will be ours .

We have the big one. He struggles. We feast. His screamsbecome gurgles formed deep in his throat .

We leave his bones .

The red one backs against the wall. He searches for a way out .

There is none .

We swallow him .

22 KYTHORN (JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT)

Midnight in Luskan was the best and worst time of night-best for the thieves and murderers, worst for their victims. Kalen stalked down the street, his cloak obscuring his face. He’d taken off his helm and stowed it in his pack, but wore the rest of his armor. Hood low, shoulders slightly hunched, he could be any other resident of the city.

Dawn lay hours off and only a few lamps lasted this long into the night. The gangs always treated the lamps as more of a game than a civic service. As the night wore on and Selune saw more dastardly deeds done in the street, the lamplights would die slowly of attrition, extinguished by muggers, thieves, and murderers in preparation for their crimes. It was a marvel the lamps were lit at all, a phenomenon due largely to their fading hold on the old Arcane Brotherhood’s power, which drove them to, light on their own. Otherwise, no one would have bothered to light them in the first place.

Kalen tried hard not to let the night take him back fifteen years, to a time when he had been just another merciless wretch on these miserable streets. A beggar boy-a street thief, mugger, occasionally a murderer. He wore the mantle of paladin now, but even that seemed far away. Where was his god-blessed sword, if he was still a paladin?

And why did the healing touch come so hard to him these days? He would gladly heal more of his injuries, but he’d used it all up on Ebbius. What a waste that had been.

A pair of figures in rough-spun robes-a man and a woman-strode down the street, crying out a call and response. Painted gold coins hung around their necks. A few folk lingered under awnings or folded-over refuse to lend them an ear.

“The man saw his enemy, all clad in steel,” the woman sang, in something like verse but not quite. “A chief of Many-Arrows, crushing men under heel.”

“How could he fight such a dangerous foe?” The man’s words carried a hint of meter, but nothing remotely musical. “Without his fine sword, with mere shards of a bow?”

“To luck he prayed and by luck was he spared,” sang the woman, whose voice was better. “Orc steel broke ’gainst sword, and he tackled his foe.”

“Then kicked the fell orc in back o’ th’ head,” said the man, “then stomped twice and thrice, ’til the orc he was dead.”

Kalen waited until they were gone. Their shared ballad-a paean to Tymora-faded. The Coin-Spinners were by all appearances true believers, though they really couldn’t sing. They were bold to venture through Dustclaw territory, where every other building bore the gang’s symbol: a dripping claw inside a rough circle. Was it faith or power?

He looked in the direction they had gone and saw Clearlight, the old temple to Lady Luck, standing on the hill. Beacon fires burned inside a high wall bare of adornment. Perhaps the Tymoran gang had removed the statuary that once studded its balconies.

“Plagues and priests,” Kalen murmured. “Strange things are happening in Luskan.”

He lingered at the threshold of an alley that stank of piss and watched the Dustclaw tavern. Meant to cow rivals and dissuade attacks, the Dustclaws’ repurposed tavern was a solid, heavily reinforced structure, its door strewn with claws torn from dozens of fearsome beasts.

Breaking into the place, he thought, would make navigating the seedy streets of Dock Ward back in Waterdeep seem like a casual stroll through a meadow full of flowers. Attempting to steal from a gang promised a gruesome death by torture. Invading their home invited worse reprisals. But for Kalen-who had spent the last year living in the dangerous tunnels of Downshadow-the Dustclaw tavern held no fear. It was a building like any other, so he bided his time and observed its weaknesses.

Reprisals didn’t matter. If the gods were kind, he’d find Myrin and be out of this accursed city by the following dawn. That is, if she even still lived. He had to believe she did. If not …