Марк Энтони - Crypt of the Shadowking

For a moment Mari felt as if she were flying. She heard the noise of the crumbling bridge behind her, but their leap had carried her and Caledan clear. They landed, hand-in-hand, in a cloud of dust and chaff.

“You couldn’t have picked a wagon with clean straw, could you, scoundrel?” Mari said in disgust, spitting out an unpleasant mouthful. Her sore shoulder throbbed painfully. The two quickly slid off the back of the wagon that had been passing under the bridge.

“I wouldn’t complain,” Caledan countered, eyeing the rubble of the stone bridge and the bodies buried beneath it.

They started off swiftly through the city’s shadowed streets and were nearly back to the inn before they remembered to argue about whose fault this had all been.

The priceless statuette shattered into a thousand pieces as it struck the dark marble wall of the tower’s topmost chamber.

“I want them strung up by their necks!” Ravendas, Zhentarim lord and ruler of Iriaebor, demanded through clenched teeth. She was pale and lovely despite her rage, or perhaps because of it. “No, I want them run through, left to the rats, then strung up!”

A young boy sat in a chair before the fireplace, a dulcimer lying in his small hands. Ravendas’s son. His green eyes were focused on the fireplace, watching the flames, as if he were oblivious to his mother’s fury. The lord steward, Snake, stood serenely by the door, watching his mistress’s tantrum. “You’re being unreasonable, my Lord Ravendas,” he said in his low, almost droning voice.

“ I’m being unreasonable?” she thundered, turning upon Snake, her deep blue eyes flashing like lightning. “First two intruders raid my countinghouse and make off with a fortune in jewels, not to mention managing to kill a half-dozen of my guards. Then one of my best warships catches fire and burns to the water. Now I learn that—despite my orders against drinking—someone has been selling cheap casks of tainted wine to my guards and poisoning them sick in the bargain. More ships and caravans are passing through the city every day as the weather warms, and a quarter of my soldiers are flat on their backs puking their guts up.”

Ravendas’s golden hair glimmered in the torchlight. Her beautiful face was as hard as marble. “Did you not tell me that a sorcerer had been sent to deal with the Harper in my city, my lord steward?” The honorific was twisted into a sneering insult. “Did you not tell me that Caldorien was run out of Iriaebor by some underworld filth he had made an enemy of? Tell me, Snake, am I imagining these reports?”

“No, my lord, you are not,” Snake replied deferentially.

This time it was a crystal vase that succumbed to Ravendas’s wrath. “Then who is to blame for these outrages against me?” Snake started to speak, but Ravendas lifted a hand, silencing him. “No, I will hear no more excuses. Inform my captains that I want the perpetrators of these offenses found. Otherwise, it will be my captains’ heads I will have. Is this perfectly clear, Snake?”

“Of course, my lord,” Snake said, bowing deeply.

Ravendas lowered herself onto a silk-draped lounge and lifted a glass of wine. She drank deeply, and gradually the livid rage melted away. “Come, Kellen,” she crooned to the boy. “Come play for your mother.”

Without a word the boy slipped from the chair and sat at Ravendas’s feet. His small fingers plucked at the dulcimer, and a sweet, sorrowful music filled the air. Ravendas closed her eyes for a moment, drifting with the music.

It would be a pity if Caldorien truly has fled Iriaebor, she thought. I would like to give him a taste of my power. He spurned me once. But no one, not the Harpers, not even those fools in Zhentil Keep, can stand against me now.

Her eyes opened and she regarded Snake, still standing subserviently near the ornately carved door. “How fare the excavations?” she asked him, her voice languid now.

“Very well, my lord. Soon you shall have what you desire. Every soul in Iriaebor will belong to you, and even those beyond.”

“Excellent.” A small black kitten crawled into Ravendas’s lap, and she stroked its soft fur absently. Her cheeks were flushed with the wine, with thoughts of power. And of Caldorien.

The boy’s music had stopped. The chamber was silent. Ravendas ran a hand over his dark, glossy hair—hair as dark as shadows, such a striking contrast to her own golden tresses. “Go with the lord steward, my son,” she said to him. “It is late.”

The boy nodded silently and stood, kissing her once upon each cheek. Snake turned to leave, and the small boy padded after him. They left Ravendas alone in her chamber, petting the black kitten, a smile curled about the corners of her deep red lips.

“Do you require anything, Kellen?” Snake asked when they reached the boy’s room. The boy shook his head, clutching his dulcimer tightly.

“Do you think she will keep me when she is done with me?” Kellen asked then, with the utter seriousness of which only a child is capable. “Or will she break me when she is through?”

Snake regarded the child for a long moment. The boy was just eight years old, but he always struck Snake as being older than his years. There was a wisdom about him that was odd in one so young. But then, with a mother such as Ravendas, there were many sights this child had witnessed which other children never dreamed of, not in their most terrible nightmares.

“Go to sleep, Kellen,” he said finally. The boy shrugged and stepped into his room, shutting the door behind him.

Snake turned and descended the tower’s central stairwell. He had orders to give.

Caledan and Mari sat at a table in the Dreaming Dragon’s private dining chamber. A map of the city lay unrolled before them, its corners weighted down by mugs of ale. The two of them were arguing, as usual, this time about a possible raid on a weapons warehouse in the New City.

“Either you’re feebleminded or you’re mad, Harper,” Caledan barked, thrusting a finger at the map. Disagreeing with Mari was getting to be a habit. “There’s no route of escape. Ravendas’s guards would have our backs to the wall and their swords at our throats in a second.”

Mari opened her mouth to say something, but suddenly Estah hurried into the room, slamming the door behind her. Her brown eyes were wide with fear.

“Estah, what is it?” Mari asked in concern.

“City guards!” the halfling healer managed to gasp. “They’re searching every house and business on the lane. And they’re headed this way.”

Mari shot a worried look at Caledan. “Do you think we can slip out the garden and into the alley without being seen?”

Caledan laughed grimly. The Harper’s inexperience was showing again. “You don’t have a clue how the Zhentarim work, do you, Harper? They’ll have someone keeping watch on the back door of every place they search.”

He stood and pushed the heavy oaken table aside. “It’s still here, isn’t it, Estah?” He stuck a finger through a knothole and pulled. A small panel opened up in the floor. This part of the inn jutted precariously out over the edge of the Tor. Through the trapdoor Caledan could see the mazework of beams that supported the structure and beneath them nothing but air and space until the jagged bottom of the Tor three hundred feet below.

Jolle hurried into the room. “You’d better hurry. They’re nearly here.”

“Let’s go, Harper,” Caledan said. He didn’t wait for a reply but lowered himself quickly through the trapdoor, clambering onto one of the beams below the inn. Mari’s eyes widened as she stared at the dizzying drop. She started to protest

“Surely there must be another—”