Dave Gross - Lord of Stormweather

Silently, Chaney applauded the unhallowed choir. Anything that disturbed Radu Malveen was a delight to his heart.

The witch bowed her head as the remaining two diamonds appeared in her open hand. An instant later, Chaney felt the tug of his mortal anchor as Radu left the shop.

From the docks, Radu had run north across Sarn Street, where the moon shadows mingled with those cast by the flickering street lamps. Selune's reflection and those of her trailing tears rippled on Selgaunt Bay, where the black silhouette of the boaters formed a tiny, ragged village between the docks. There the city's cutthroats, thieves, and smugglers made their deals in vessels lashed together to form a community each night. At dawn, they would cast off again, only to join with different neighbors the next night.

After they scaled the outer wall of the Hunting Garden, Radu dropped into the rough brush of the Hulorn's Hunting Garden. Ostensibly private, the place was constantly invaded by teenagers dared by their peers to crawl through the sewers and return with a rare flower as proof of their trespass.

Chaney himself had slipped inside once, with his best friend, Talbot Uskevren. Once within the walls of the gloomy place, Chaney tried spooking Talbot with the story of a girl who'd slipped into the Hunting Garden a few years past, never to be seen again. He succeeded only in frightening himself, and in the end he was the one who bolted first, cutting his chin in the rough sewer grate as he fled a sudden hooting, certain it was the girl's spirit luring him to his doom.

He touched the scar on his chin and imagined he could still feel it. Ten years later, he was the only ghost who haunted the tangled woods-he and his eight inarticulate fellows, who'd fallen back into their customary silence.

At least, he hoped they were the only inhabitants of the garden. Something rustled at the edge of the wood, and all the fireflies hid their glowing bellies as the assassin and his ghosts approached.

Radu kept to the deep shadows until he came to the western barrier of the Palace of Beauty. Chaney could hear the faint strains of a zulkoon from beyond the wall. The eerie sound grew louder as Radu ascended the wall, his bare hands and feet clinging to the stone.

At the top of the wall, they looked down upon the ill-named Palace of Beauty. It was a grotesque edifice of spiraling towers and arches, ranks of balconies, a parliament of gargoyles, and garishly glowing windows. Unlike the similarly eclectic Stormweather Towers, Chaney thought the palace looked like a feverish child's vision of a fairy castle.

It was to this monument to the Hulorn's poor taste that Radu had followed Drakkar for the past two nights. For a wizard of some power, Drakkar was surprisingly oblivious to being followed.

He was also a creature of habit. In just two nights, he'd demonstrated a banal routine beginning with a visit to the Hulorn's palace and ending in one of the city's less savory festhalls.

"There he is," said Chaney.

He slapped his forehead when he realized he was helping Radu. With no other company in his long months of phantom existence, Chaney felt his chatter slipping from the spiteful annoyance he intended to the friendly banter to which he'd grown accustomed in life. He wasn't beginning to like Radu Malveen, for there was nothing remotely likeable about the cold and silent man. The truth was he was lonely, and there was simply no one else to whom Chaney could talk.

Chaney consoled himself with the thought that Radu could see him no better than he could see the invisible assassin. Nevertheless, Radu must have spied Drakkar's dark blue cloak as it crossed the courtyard. Rather than join the audience at the amphitheater, he went directly to the main building. The guards nodded respectfully as he passed.

Radu moved toward the palace, carrying the ghosts in his wake. Chaney hurried to keep up and avoid being dragged through a wall or a guard tower. Even while invisible, Radu radiated a cold, dark presence that guided Chaney across the walls and rooftops, past the unwitting guards.

Chaney held his breath as Radu sneaked past a pair of sentries wearing the Hulorn's red-and-black livery. Fortunately for them, they didn't hear the faint padding of Radu's naked feet, and Chaney was spared another horrid rush of death. A moldy taste still lingered in his mouth from the most recent murders.

While the killings made Chaney feel sick, they filled Radu with vigor. For days after a killing, he enjoyed inhuman strength and speed. Since the recent double-murder of Thuribal Baerodreemer and his hated rival, Chaney could see a faint white aura around Radu. At first it was more brilliant than the corona of an eclipse, but gradually it would fade to a milky halo then to nothing.

Radu visited each of the lighted windows on the north face of the palace in turn, clinging like a beetle to the wall. At last, he came to an open balcony through which Chaney saw what could only be the Hulorn's private gallery. As a twig on one of the least prominent branches of the Foxmantle tree, Chaney had never been invited to tour the private wings of the palace. From what he'd heard from those who had seen it, he'd never regretted missing the experience.

Beyond the balcony, the gallery spread out in the shape of an amputee starfish. The floor was a vast chessboard of crimson and green tiles. Near the center its squares were perfect, but they turned trapezoidal and finally shapeless near the ends of the five short arms of the chamber. One arm housed the balcony, while the others ended in huge doors of various shapes.

Two dozen statues in as many different materials stood among the room like pawns in an unfinished game. They ranged from classical nudes painted in bright hues to abstract collisions of glass, bronze, and driftwood.

The paintings for which the gallery was infamous floated above their own illuminated tiles. Some hovered still, while others drifted slowly on their own, uncertain axes. Most were strange portraits, the most pedestrian of which resembled famous and infamous lords and ladies caricatured with the features of one or more animals. Chaney recognized Presker Talendar's head on the body of an elegant white cat lapping blood from the street. Others were so abstract as to bear little resemblance to anything human. These were the ones that made Chaney feel as though centipedes were crawling in his stomach.

Chaney heard a hiss and thought it came from Radu.

"What is the matter?" he said.

Radu didn't reply, but Chaney felt the killer's presence like a winter shadow.

"What?"

Chaney realized he would have no answer then, so he decided to ask later. In the meantime, he moved into the gallery, where he discovered that even the worst of the paintings was less obscene than the gallery's sole occupant.

The man lay on the floor, gazing up at a slowly spinning painting. He wore the familiar purple doublet and black hose of Andeth Ilchammar, the Hulorn, but otherwise he bore only the roughest resemblance to the man the public knew as the Lord Mayor of Selgaunt. His skull appeared to have been crushed and remolded by a blind and palsied sculptor. While the right side of his face seemed human-if one could overlook the fang jutting up over his mustache-the left was black and as scaly as a constrictor's hide. His sinister eye bulged with a slitted pupil.

The man drummed his fingers on the floor as he regarded the painting. Chaney flinched to see that one of the man's hands was a birdlike talon except for its soft, wormy fingers. The other hand looked more human but for its patchwork skin. Upon his furry forefinger he wore a massive gold ring, while his feathered ring finger bore a brilliant green emerald.

A bell rang outside one of the doors. Andeth rocked back onto his shoulders and rolled forward to stand. A moment later, a servant opened the pentagonal door.