Realms of War a-12 Page 3

  "Quiet," said a voice, and she recognized it as that of the dark man from the caravan. He removed his hand from her mouth.

  She could not understand his presence, but fear caused her mind to work slowly.

  "What are you doing here?" she whispered at last.

  "Fiddling around the edges."

  He grinned, the smile of a madman, and touched his hand to her belly. A stabbing pain wracked her abdomen. She screamed, doubled over. The shadows heard and answered her scream with moans.

  "Who is she speaking to?" one of Brennus's homunculi said and cocked its head.

  The other homunculus leaned forward and peered into the face of the scrying cube. "I thought I saw someone."

  Brennus cast several divinations in rapid succession to determine if Erevis Cale, perhaps invisible and warded, had come to Varra's aid. He had not. But for the shadows, she was alone.

  "She speaks to herself," Brennus answered. "She is terrified.

  And she may have just lost her child to the strain."

  Rivalen waited for moonset, then pulled the shadows around him and flew into the cool night air high above Selgaunt. The city stretched out below him, its torchlit thoroughfares like glowing snakes. The Elzimmer River looked like a black gash in the plain, a jagged, open wound. A few ships floated in the harbor.

  Rivalen looked northeast, toward Ordulin, toward the Shadowstorm. He could not see it but knew it was there, summoned by Volumvax the Mad.

  Shar had not chosen him, and his dreams had died in the darkness of her secrets. He looked into the moonless sky and shouted his rage into the void.

  Varra, still gasping from the memory of pain, said, "What did you do?"

  The man nodded at her belly. "Mind that child."

  Varra stared, dumbfounded. "Child?"

  "Yes, child. Worry over it later. Go now. They are coming."

  But Varra was too stunned to move. She was with child? How could she not have known? How could he, a stranger to her, have known? She stared into his handsome face.

  "Who are you?"

  The moment she asked the question, she felt a nervous flutter in her stomach, fear that he might answer her truthfully.

  He looked down, smiling, and poked a finger through a hole in his leather jerkin. "Interesting question." He sighed and looked up. "I am an actor. And we have a mutual acquain shy;tance. Let us leave it there."

  The shadows moaned, and she felt the cold of their coming.

  "Come with me," she said. "We can hide."

  He shook his head. "I must leave this place. But you cannot come with me." He pointed over her shoulder. "There is safety there. Trust me. Do you?"

  From his expression, she thought much depended on her answer. She nodded, and he smiled. There was sadness in it.

  "Then run. Now."

  She looked around the tree, and the shadows saw her. Their red eyes flared, and a dozen black forms streaked at her. She looked back at the man, and he wasn't there. She had no time to think about where he'd gone. She turned and pelted through the underbrush, cracking tree limbs, stum shy;bling, cursing, but never stopping. The thought of her child, Erevis's child, pushed her. She felt the shadows on her heels, moaning, reaching with cold fingers to drain the life from her flesh and that of her child. They were right behind her, closing, haunting her steps.

  She burst through the trees and into a meadow of flowers. She did not slow. The shadows moaned, the sound right behind her. She heard the tinkling of distant bells and thought herself going mad.

  "Where? Where?"

  Tears mixed with sweat on her face. She had trusted the dark man, but he was a liar. There was no safety, only flowers and death. Her legs gave out and she fell amid the blooms. A shower of silvery pollen floated into the night air.

  The shadows swarmed over her. Menace and cold chilled her. She screamed at their touch, felt it pulling the life from her flesh, turning her cold. She curled up, placed her hands over her stomach, over her child, and wished that she were somewhere safe, anywhere where she could raise her child in peace and light.

  Brennus stared into his scrying lens. Shadows leaked from his flesh.

  "Where did she go?" one of his homunculi asked, peering into the scrying lens.

  The other sagged with disappointment. "They were going to kill her."

  "What happened to the flowers?" said the first.

  Brennus shook his head and watched the meadow for a few moments more. Every flower in the glade was black, wilted, dead, and the woman was gone.

  The shadows wheeled about in frustration, then darted off.

  Puzzled, Brennus cast a series of divinations through his scrying lens, thinking that perhaps the woman had turned invisible or otherwise masked her presence. But no, she was gone. He tried to refocus the eye of his lens on Varra, wherever she'd gone, but the lens showed only gray.

  "How?" he said.

  Both homunculi shrugged.

  Brennus turned the scrying lens back on the meadow and studied it for a moment. He pulled the darkness around him, let his mind feel the correspondence with the darkness in the meadow, and transported himself there.

  He materialized at the edge of the meadow. The dead flowers crunched under his boots. Were the flowers somehow involved in the woman's escape, or were they killed as a side effect of whatever magic the woman had used? A divination revealed the residuum of powerful magic, but he could not determine its nature. He attempted a magical trace to deter shy;mine where she might have fled, but the spell showed him nothing.

  "Where are you, woman?"

  He could not leave the question unanswered. He spent the next hour scouring the surrounding forest, the meadow, casting one divination after another. He found nothing until one of his minor spells showed the faint glow of-

  "There is something buried there. Retrieve it."

  His homunculi squealed, leaped from his shoulders, and fell over each in their effort to please him. Both tore through the dead flowers, the soft dirt, until they pulled something from the ground.

  "Mine!"

  "Mine!"

  They pulled at the small, dirt-covered item-a chain perhaps, or a necklace.

  "Enough," Brennus said, and took it from them.

  The homunculi stuck their tongues out at each other.

  Brennus saw that they had indeed unearthed a necklace, coated in the sediment of years, probably something dropped accidentally by some elf or traveler. He whispered the words to a minor cantrip to clean the piece, and when it lay exposed in his hand-a platinum necklace with a large jacinth charm-it chased from his mind all thoughts of Cale's woman.

  "Pretty," one of his homunculi said, as it climbed back to its perch on his shoulder.

  Shadows swirled around Brennus, his own personal Shadowstorm. He could hardly breathe. "It was my mother's."

  He turned over the charm and saw there the inscription: For Alashar, my love.

  "How did it get here?" the homunculi asked in unison. He closed his hand over the necklace. "I do not know." But discovering things was his gift.

  WEASEL'S RUN

  Lisa Smedman

  The Year of Monstrous Appetites (-65 DR)

  Weasel was going to die. And he was going to die sniffling.

  He hated that.

  He stared his hatred at the yellow pollen that drifted in lazy circles below him as he hung, face down, a quick-pace above the ground. The stinktrees were in bloom again, filling the air with a stench sharp as cat urine. He wished he had a hand free to grind into his itchy, weeping eyes. The pollen dusted his beardlocks and tickled his nose like flung pepper, clogging it with a constant, snuffling drip.

  At least he couldn't smell the blood.

  A hand grabbed his forelock and wrenched his head up. The Ghostwise cleric known only as "The Beast," his face blotched white with skull paint, inspected the magic-negating symbol painted on Weasel's forehead. The pelt of a dire wolf draped the cleric's head and shoulders; empty paws dangled against his scar-gnarled chest.
Sweat trickled lines through the splashed blood that had congealed on his body.

  The Beast gestured at the line of six trophy heads, impaled on stakes. "Your warriors have been winnowed. Malar has taken them."

  Weasel almost laughed. His warriors? Weasel was a mere scout-the army's favorite boot-out boy. Barely a sword-slogger; nowhere near being a sergeant.

  "'Taken' them, has he?" A dribble escaped one nostril; Weasel snuffled it back in, priming his nose for a shot. "Then he'd better give 'em back. The Stronghearts don't like thieves; if they catch Malar, they'll strip him and dip him."

  He trumpeted air out his nostrils, sending a wad of snot flying at The Beast's blood-caked feet. It missed by more than a quick-step. Flies stirred lazily, then settled again.

  The Beast's eyes narrowed. "Do not mock the Beastlord."

  "Or what?" Weasel sneezed. Snuffled. He twisted to get a look at the thongs that stretched from his wrists and ankles. They held him suspended at the center of a ring of human-high, claw-shaped stones. His hands and feet felt hot and numb; the raw leather thongs had dried tight. "No, wait. Don't tell me. I'll be strung up in the jungle and left to dry, right?" He rolled his eyes. "No, silly me-you've already done that."

  He snorted out another wad of snot; this time, it landed next to The Beast's broken-nailed toes.

  The Beast shifted his foot aside. He squatted down, one hand still tight around Weasel's forelock. His fingertips bulged, nails turning to claws. His breath was rank, like a dog's. "Take a good long look at your warriors," he breathed. "Tonight, you'll join them. This is the evening of the High Hunt-the only reason you are still alive. Tonight, we hunt."

  "'We?'" Weasel sneezed. "Why, I'm flattered. But if it's just the same to you, I won't stick around for supper."

  The Beast bared file-point teeth in a snarl. He stood, releasing Weasel's forelock. "Try to please Malar; give us a good chase."

  Weasel flipped the forelock out of his eyes. "How much of a head start should I give you?"

  The Beast roared with laughter. Leaves quivered; a bird screeched and flew away with a burst of orange wings. "Well spoken! A jest worthy of the Trickster!"

  "Cut me down, and I'll dig up a sapling for you."

  The Beast laughed again-even he, it seemed, knew the tale of Kaldair and the Toppled Tree.

  It was Weasel's favorite tale, the one that had always earned him a seat at the Stronghearts' ale tables. Kaldair the Trickster, disguised as a halfling, had challenged Vaprak, god of ogres, to remove a tree from the ground without tearing its roots. Vaprak had torn out one mighty ebon tree after another, damaging them all; Kaldair had dug the tiniest of saplings out of the ground. As a result of Kaldair's victory, the ogres had been banished to the Toadsquat Mountains ever after.

  The Beast drew one of his bone-handled daggers from a wrist sheath. "You're strong, for a spriggan." Serrated steel winked red in the ruddy sunlight as dusk settled deeper upon the jungle. "Let's see how strong." The Beast stepped over a taut-stretched thong and walked to Weasel's feet. He teased the tip of the blade along the rough sole.

  Weasel braced himself for the slice and the aching rush of blood that would follow. Steel flashed. Weasel involuntarily bucked..

  The thong holding his left ankle parted with a snap, and his foot thudded against the ground. Tingling fire streaked into his toes as sensation returned.

  The Beast moved to his other leg. "Survive the night. ." slice, twang, thud "and I'll spare your life-I swear it, by Malar's blood." He moved to Weasel's right hand. "But if my Hunt runs you to ground before the sun has risen…"

  Steel flashed, parted leather. Weasel fell.

  "… you're meat."

  Weasel lay on the ground, one hand in the air. He twisted and fumble-grabbed the thong an arm's span away from where it was tied to his left wrist. He'd been taught the strangle-snap as a boy, he'd used the trick on the Ghostwise, the time or two he'd been circled-round during a range-ahead and been forced to fight his way out, quietlike. But against The Beast, high cleric of Malar? Weasel might as well try to take down the Beastlord himself.

  He drew the cord taut between wrist and numb hand, and offered it up to The Beast.

  The Beast rested his blade against it. "A wise choice."

  The leather thong parted.

  The Beast stepped back and growled a word. The pelt he wore melded with his body, hairs shivering erect along his arms and legs. Magic crackled like a raging fire across his chest. A snarl burst from his elongating muzzle, and ears perked erect atop his head. His eyes grew yellow-red. Panting, he ran his tongue along jagged canine teeth. The dire wolf he'd become held Weasel's eye with a glare fierce and hungry. "Until the sun has risen," he snarled. "Or meat."

  The dire wolf bounded away, up the trail leading to the clearing where the Ghostwise trap had been sprung. To the Ghostwise village where Puffpipe and Swaggerstep, Flashblade and Stomper, Chucklebelly and Headsuplads the sergeant had been run to ground, slaughtered, and eaten. The Beast himself had taken the first bites, ceremonially tearing open their bellies and bolting down great chunks of flesh from each soldier, one after the other, while Weasel had watched in horror from his hiding place, immobilized by the magical trap that had caught him.

  Weasel glanced at the heads staked in the blood-soaked soil and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He glanced at the darkening jungle, wondering which way to run. Wondering if he could run. His feet were blocks of fire, as if he'd just stomped through a numberry bush. He clomped his instep against his leg, trying to bang sensation back into it. And sneezed.

  He glanced again at what remained of his squad, and shook his head, thinking of all the close scrapes they'd been through together since he'd joined their army. He almost wished there was a seventh stake, with his head on it. Almost.

  "Pray me some of Tymora's luck, fellas. I'm gonna need it."

  The Year of Discordant Destinies (-68 DR)

  Weasel yawned as the Stronghearts' warchief made his way slowly up and down the rows of pole-stiff soldiers. The halflings all looked the same, to Weasel's eyes, in their identical wax-stiffened leather vests and helms, wooden shields slung across their backs. Each had a sling tucked into his belt, next to his stone pouch and waterskin, and stood with short sword thrust out ahead of him.

  Warchief Chand padded up and down the rows, peering intently at this and that. The sergeant-Weasel could tell he was a sergeant by the green bracers on his forearms-trotted along at Chand's side like a dog, nodding earnestly at each thing the warchief said.

  "There's a spot of rust on that sword, soldier," Chand would comment. Or, "That vest is laced crosswise." Or, "Comb that foot, soldier."

  Weasel hoped the inspection would end soon. It had begun with a long and boring speech by the warchief about how the halflings would put an end to the bloodletting of the Ghostwise. How the assembled soldiers "Strongheart and Lightfoot, shoulder to shoulder," would purge Malar's worship from the Luiren. How they'd make their villages safe again. How proud Chand was of "this hin's army." And on and on and on…

  Weasel snorted. Proud? Chand seemed to find something wrong with every other soldier he inspected. The halfling found more faults on his soldiers than a herder found fleas on his dogs.

  Chand finally made his way to the last row-and halted like he'd been cudgel smacked when he came to Weasel.

  "Sergeant Hewn!" the warchief snapped. "What is. . this?"

  The sergeant quivered to stiffer attention. "A spriggan, Warchief Chand."

  "I can see what he is, Sergeant," Chand said. "I want to know why he is where he is."

  Sweat trickled from the sergeant's temples. "He's the new scout for Wildroot Squad, Sir."

  "New scout?" Chand echoed in a strained voice.

  Weasel smiled. "Yup." He nodded down at the sword he was leaning on. "Even brought my own sticker."

  Weasel could practically hear the eyes of the halflings next to him creaking as they strained to watch what was happening-while still pretendin
g to stare straight ahead.

  The sergeant cleared his throat nervously. "The lads caught the spriggan trying to lightfinger a jug from the mess. They had him stripped and upside down in a vat of ale by the time I got there."

  Weasel grinned, remembering that. The ale had been tasty.

  "The spriggan shoved the lads off with magical fear," the sergeant continued. "I was of a mind to just run him off, until he told me he'd just come from the Gloomthicket. He passed right through it while The Beast's Hunt were wilding there, and somehow lived to tell the tale. I convinced him that fighting held more honor than fleeing. That he could make a worthwhile contribution to our forces as a…"

  The sergeant faltered to a halt under the warchief's stern glare.

  Chand turned his attention back to Weasel but spoke to the sergeant. "I'm disappointed in your lack of judgment, Sergeant Hewn." Chand's nose flared. "A spriggan, in this hin's army? Just look at him. That sword-filthy with rust! No shield. Trousers, spotted with. . something nasty, I'm sure. Non-regulation vest, unlaced. And that hair and beard! All those ridiculous tufts and ribbons-and greasy. Why, the very smell of the creature is enough to make my eyes water. I'm sure he hasn't washed in…"

  Weasel didn't hear the rest. He was beyond listening. The warchief might say what he liked about his silk vest and sword, but insulting a spriggan's beardlocks warranted a swift fist in the face. Weasel glared back at the warchief, who stood no taller than he did. Weasel's eye fixed on the ridiculous collection of feathers pinned to the warchief's leather vest.

  "Listen up, you beardless little Cockelfeather," Weasel growled. "You apologize right now for sayin' that about my locks, or I'll-"

  The sergeant's hand shot backward and clapped over Weasel's mouth. "My apologies, Warchief Chand, for this man speaking out of turn. It won't happen again."

  "No. It won't." Chand spat the words out from behind clenched teeth. He leaned forward until his face was a blade's thickness away from Hewn's. "Get. . rid of him," he hissed.