Jaleigh Johnson - Unbroken Chain - The Darker Road

Skagi saw him looking and explained. “Cree blocked its escape.” He pointed to a gap between the ceiling and wall stones that admitted patchy light from the torches outside. “This one was smaller than the other, but it still laid into him like a demon. I thought it would take his head off.” He swallowed. “Once he went down, the thing got out, but we’d hurt it enough, it flopped around, didn’t know which way to go. More Guardians came and finished it off.”

Ashok wasn’t really listening. He kneeled in the cleric’s place beside the unconscious Cree. They’d cleaned the blood off his face, and Ashok saw that the fang marks spread diagonally across Cree’s face. One had punctured his cheek, the other his eyebrow. Between them, Cree’s left eye was missing, torn from its socket.

“They couldn’t save it,” Skagi said, and for the first time Ashok heard a catch in his voice. Still Ashok said nothing, and eventually he heard Skagi’s footsteps as the warrior left the hut.

Alone, Ashok continued to stare down at Cree. The hot rage finally passed, and he thought he felt nothing, not relief or sadness. He simply stared at the place where Cree’s left eye had been and tried to conjure an emotion.

This is what you’ve wrought, he told himself. Two battles-you may as well have fought in neither of them. Why had he sent the other blacksmith outside? To protect him? He could have helped them, provided another distraction at least. If Ashok had fought with a sword instead of a chain, he could have lopped the thing’s heads off one by one. There’d been a table full of weapons, and he hadn’t thought to grab anything but a paltry dagger.

Ashok’s thoughts continued to ramble. He searched for a reason, he had to find an explanation for how it all went wrong. Why had he tried to grab the snake with his bare hands? Was there something wrong with his chain that had made him discard it? He reached for the weapon to see, but it wasn’t there. He realized he’d left it in the hut with Olra.

Olra would be dead by now-Olra, who had been his teacher. She was dead, and he had no weapon. No matter. His chain hadn’t been able to aid either her or Cree. If only he’d fought with a sword. He’d killed the she-panther, but he may as well have let it devour him. He waited for Cree to wake and tell him that, that he wished the panther had killed Ashok.

“Wake up,” he said, and then, savagely, “ Wake up and say it.”

He waited, staring at that empty socket, but Cree slept on, unheeding.

When the clerics returned, Ashok left the hut and went to find Skagi. He found the big man and a pair of Guardians examining the body of the second snake, which was lying a short distance from the hut. It was smaller than the other serpent and had only one head.

Ashok’s Camborr training took over, supplanting his grief for the moment. He reached down and turned the snake’s open mouth toward him to examine its fangs. “Almost no venom in this one,” he said. “It wasn’t nearly as worked up as the other.”

“Not from where I stood,” Skagi said harshly.

Ashok nodded. “But it was trying to escape, which is what both snakes should have done when they got out of their cages. Something drove them crazy, made them seek out prey when they should have hidden from us.”

There was no dust storm to blame this time. Some other force was at work here. He needed to find out what.

“I’m going to the training grounds,” Ashok told Skagi. “I need to see how the snakes got out of their cages. Uwan will demand answers once he hears of this.”

Skagi nodded. He took the snake’s head from Ashok and peeled back its mouth to touch its fangs. Ashok thought he was looking for venom, but then Skagi clenched the snake’s head in his fist. Fangs punctured his flesh. Streams of blood sluiced between his fingers and ran down Skagi’s arm. The snake’s eyes burst. Its skull crumpled into an unrecognizable lump in Skagi’s grip.

Tossing the savaged corpse aside, Skagi said calmly, “I’ll come with you.”

He didn’t wipe the blood from his hands.

Deep within the caves, most of the shadow beast cages sat empty. Olra had expected to fill them with the spoils from the caravan run-they were clean and ready with strong locks and new enchantments. One of the Camborrs-Ashok recognized him as Olra’s assistant-hurried up from the back of the cave to meet them.

“I heard,” he said tersely before Ashok could speak. “Ikemmu lost a fierce warrior today.”

Ashok nodded brusquely. “Take us to the snake cages,” he said, “now.”

The assistant led them over to the south corner, where a set of smaller cages had been crammed in one on top of another at waist height. The bars were evenly spaced, no more than three inches apart. “We had them both in the lower cage,” he said.

Skagi flicked the cage door with the back of his hand. Metal clanged, and the door swung back on its hinges. “Cage’s unlocked,” he said disgustedly. “Who opened it?”

The assistant faced them squarely, his head up. “I opened the door,” he said.

Skagi took a step forward, but Ashok put his body between the two of them. “Why?” he asked calmly.

“The snakes attacked each other,” the assistant said. “We thought at first they were fighting for territory in the small space. When they wouldn’t stop, Olra ordered me to put them in separate cages.”

“And that’s when they escaped,” Ashok finished for him. “They’d already gone mad. You couldn’t have stopped them.”

“I could have died trying,” the man said.

Skagi grunted. “So could the rest of us.”

“I’m sure Uwan will want to speak to you,” Ashok said. “As Olra’s assistant, you’re the best choice to replace her.” He said nothing about Olra’s final wishes. He would never be able to take the Camborr’s place, no matter how long he trained.

Skagi paused by the row of cages. “Footprints here, small ones,” he said. “Olra’s?”

The assistant shook his head. “The Lady Ilvani’s,” he said. “She came earlier, before the snakes escaped.”

“Ilvani was here?” A strange feeling crept over Ashok, a dread awareness. He remembered how Ilvani looked after the caravan attack, the terror in her face. The dust on her clothes.

She’d been out on the plain when the panthers went mad.

“Did she say anything?” Ashok asked.

“Nothing,” the assistant said. “She just walked among the cages.”

“And right after that the snakes went crazy,” Skagi said. He looked at Ashok, and Ashok knew they were thinking the same thing.

“We have to find her,” Ashok said, “before something else happens.”

They hurried out of the caves and returned to the huts, where a group of Guardians lingered to help put the forges back in order. Skagi asked them if they’d seen Ilvani, but none of them had.

“I’ll check her chamber,” Ashok said. “You go to the wall-tell Neimal to spread the word among the Guardians to be on the lookout for Ilvani, and tell her to seal off the caves. No one goes near the beasts until we find out what’s going on.”

“You really think she’s the cause of all this?” Skagi said grimly.

“I don’t know,” Ashok said. “As long as we keep her away from the beasts, we should be safe.”

“I’ll tell Neimal,” Skagi said.

Ashok ran to Tower Athanon. He found Ilvani’s chamber empty. A search of the tower turned up nothing, and none of the shadar-kai he encountered had seen the witch. Ashok checked the training yard and even ventured into the trade district where the markets were busiest.

He ran up and down the streets, dodging vendors hawking goods from all across the mirror world of Faerun. The scents of the market-exotic spices, meats, and thick perfumes-mingled with his blood and sweat. The humans, halflings, and dwarves shot him curious or alarmed glances as he ran past and were quick to clear out of his way. He stopped several of them to ask about Ilvani, but none of them had seen a shadar-kai that looked like her anywhere in the market.