Terry Brooks - Paladins of Shannara - The Weapons Master's Choice

She did so, easing ahead through the darkness, tracking their way with the crystal’s glow. In only moments a fresh brightness shone ahead, the flicker of torches burning through the dark. The voices rose and fell, interspersed with laughter and shouts. It sounded like a party, like men gathered in a tavern to share drinks and tales of the road. Garet Jax felt a surge of adrenaline as he anticipated what lay ahead.

But such was his conditioning that, for him, a sensation that would have made most men tense and even fearful instead had a strangely calming effect. He knew it well; it greeted him like an old, familiar friend.

When they reached a stairwell branching off the corridor and leading upward, Lyriana turned into it. They climbed twenty steps to an overlook encircling the chamber below, then moved forward to where they could peer downward through gaps in the stone balustrades.

The chamber floor was open and sprawling, and the torches generated more smoke than light, leaving the corners of the room layered in hazy darkness. A leather-wrapped settee sat atop a broad platform that dominated the center of the room, its brass-studded fastenings glimmering like cat’s eyes. Upon it reclined a large, corpulent figure wrapped in dark robes and laden with silver chains and pendants. The Het were gathered all about—some acting as guards, others simply watching the proceedings. They joked and laughed freely and seemed unconcerned if they were heard or not. The figure on the settee ignored them, round face flushed and sweating as he drained a tankard of ale and gestured for more.

To one side, bodies lay piled in a wooden bin, collapsed like discarded dolls, arms and legs akimbo. Some seemed badly mutilated, and all had a strangely deflated look to them. Garet Jax counted at least ten, but there were likely others concealed by those he could see. As he watched, six of the Het shouldered the bin and carried it out of the chamber. They were gone for several long minutes, and when they returned they brought the bin back with them, empty and ready for further use.

Garet Jax studied the figure reclining on the settee. The warlock, he assumed, but he took nothing for granted. Kronswiff? He mouthed the name to Lyriana, gesturing. She nodded back, her face rigid with fear. Watch , she mouthed back.

While he waited, he counted the number of Het within the chamber below. He quit at twenty. There would be more beyond his sight lines, but hopefully not too many more. He would have to frighten off some of them. If they all came at him at once, he was finished.

Or he could wait for the group to disperse, track the warlock until he found him alone—or at least with fewer Het surrounding him—and dispatch him more easily.

A door opened to one side, eliciting shouts and cheers, and a clanking of chains announced the arrival of a prisoner. It was a woman, stooped and ragged, her head lowered as she was led into the chamber to stand before the warlock. The room settled into an uncomfortable silence as the corpulent figure rose slightly from his reclining position to study the woman, then gestured for the release. The chains fell away, but the woman never moved. She just stood there in a posture of hopeless acceptance.

Kronswiff gestured again, this time with both hands, and the woman’s head snapped up so that their eyes met. She shivered violently, her body shaking as if from extreme cold, and she cried out in despair, her voice harsh against the sudden stillness. A strange line of darkness formed a link between the woman and the warlock, and the woman’s arms lifted in supplication, the tattered sleeves falling away to reveal flesh that already seemed desiccated and scabrous. She thrashed, her back arching and whipsawing, her cries becoming screams of horror.

Lyriana had not lied about what was being done to her people. Kronswiff drained the woman’s life through the link he had formed between them. He fed on her until her body folded in on itself, her flesh sagged, her bones collapsed, and she fell to the floor and did not move again.

Then two of the Het came forward, lifted the body by the arms and legs, and threw it into the empty wooden bin. Abruptly, conversation and laughter resumed, banishing the silence. Tankards of ale were hoisted and consumed. The woman was forgotten.

Lyriana was looking at him with those knowing eyes, dark and anguished. He leaned close, his words softer than a whisper as he mouthed them. How long will this continue?

She swallowed hard. All night. At dawn, Kronswiff will sleep .

Of course. Kronswiff was a dracul; he fed at night.

He is a monster , she mouthed.

And dawn was hours away. By then, dozens more of the city’s populace might join the woman lying in the wooden bin. He would be forced to witness the draining process multiple times when just once was more than enough to turn his stomach.

He looked down on the assembled enemy once more. So many. But sometimes you did what you had to do despite the odds. Sometimes you acted because doing anything else was unthinkable.

Turning from the scene below, he backed from the railing to the balcony wall, beckoning for Lyriana to follow. When they were huddled in the shadows, he leaned close.

“Wait here until I call for you,” he whispered. “If things go badly for me, go down the stairs and back out the way we came. Hide or flee, whichever seems best.”

Her face hardened. Her voice was an accusatory hiss. “You promised you would kill me rather than let me be captured!”

He shook his head. “I cannot do what you ask. I cannot harm you. I need you to release me from that promise and save yourself. I will give you time enough to do so no matter how this goes.”

“You are going down there right now ?” She sounded shocked.

“Would you have me do anything else?”

She stared at him, and there were tears in her eyes. Then she reached up with her fingers to stroke his cheek. “Do what you have to. I release you from your promise.”

He wanted to say something more. He wanted to tell her how she made him feel, how just her presence gave him pleasure, how much he wanted her to leave with him when this was over.

But the words would not come.

* * *

He crept back down the balcony stairs on cat’s paws, feeling his way through the darkness to the corridor below and then moving toward the torchlight burning in the central chamber. He went quickly and smoothly, without hesitation or regret. He still harbored doubts about the secrets he knew Lyriana was keeping from him, yet what difference did they make now? A man like himself made his choices and stood by them. He might die tonight—just as he might have died countless other times in countless other places—but he would not do so out of cowardice or lack of determination. He might be outnumbered, but he was more skilled and experienced than any adversary he would ever face. They were Het—but he was the Weapons Master.

He was at peace.

He brought out a brace of throwing knives from their sheaths, moved toward the door to the chamber ahead, and stepped inside.

They didn’t see him right away. Another victim was being led in, another food source for the warlock. This one, too, was bedraggled and marked by lesions and bruising. All eyes were turned in that direction, and he was through the door and lost in the shadows along the wall before even the closest of those who kept watch saw him coming. As the raucous shouts filled the air, he eased along the wall to where the gloom was deepest, placing himself directly across from the settee and the creature that reclined upon it.

On the way, he passed two of the Het who were close enough for him to reach. He killed them both before they could make a sound and left them where they had fallen.