Shadowrealm (3 page)

But in the privacy of his own thoughts, he felt himself smaller than the task, a halfling in a giant's boots. He did not have Forrin's nose for strategy. The weight of authority felt heavy on his shoulders. He'd have to rely on his commanders.

He found a bottle of Forrin's wine and two tin chalices in a small chest. Spurning the chalices, he pulled the cork with his teeth and took a long swallow directly from the bottle. It'd be the last he had for a time.

A commotion from outside the tent rose above the sound of the rain. Reht set down the bottle and started out but before he did Strend burst into the tent, dripping rain, breathless, his face red from exertion.

"Speak, boy," Reht said.

"They killed Vors, too," Strend blurted. "And the Corrinthal boy is gone."

"Damn it." Reht strode past Strend and out of the tent. The weight of two dozen gazes settled on him as he emerged. He stopped and looked his men in the eye. He kept his tone even but authoritative.

"Stand your posts, stay alert, and do your jobs. We will avenge all that has happened."

Nods and grudging acknowledgements from all around.

Reht saluted, was answered in kind by all the men in sight, and walked through the camp. As he passed, men saluted, hailed him as commander. Word had spread.

On the way to Vors's tent, he met Gavist, a skilled junior commander who could not yet grow a full beard. Gavist, too, saluted him.

"I am tired of that already," Reht said.

Gavist smiled.

Reht said, "The general is taken and Vors is dead." Gavist's young face showed no emotion. "I heard as much." "Anyone else?" Reht asked. "Not that I've heard," Gavist said. "Precise strike," Reht said.

They fell in together and marched through the camp. By the time they reached Vors's tent, they trailed two score soldiers in their wake.

Othel stood at the entrance to Vors's tent and greeted Reht and Gavist with a nod. Reht was thankful Othel didn't salute. "Ugly in there, Commander," Othel said. Reht stepped through the tent's flap and looked inside. "Tempus's blade," he swore.

Vors lay on the ground in the center of the tent, his breastplate at his side. A spear impaled his guts, stuck out of his body like an oriflamme. His open eyes, glassy and swollen from a beating, stared upward at nothing. His mouth hung open in an unfinished scream of pain. Blood caked his lips, his beard. The pungent, sour stink of blood and worse hung thick in the tent.

Vors had died in pain, prolonged and deliberately inflicted. He would have taken a quarter hour or more to die with the spear in his belly.

Gavist chewed his upper lip, as if feeling for the nonexistent moustache with his teeth. "Looks personal. And why take the boy?"

"The Shadovar are allied with Selgaunt and Selgaunt is allied with Saerb," Reht said. "The Corrinthals are important among the Saerbians. Rescuing the boy makes sense, either to earn goodwill or use as leverage." He nodded at the slaughter. "Not sure why the assassin would do it this way, though."

"Vengeance for the boy?" Othel said.

Reht thought it might be possible. "No one heard anything?"

Othel shook his head.

"What is it?" some of the soldiers shouted from outside the tent. "What happened in there?"

Reht made his expression neutral, stepped out of the tent to face them. They blinked in the rain. "Vors is dead. A spear through the gut."

Expressions turned angry, fists shook. No one had liked Vors except his fellow priests, but he had been one of their company.

"Someone pays for this in blood," boomed a voice from the crowd, and the four other Talassans in the army, their unkempt hair flattened against their heads by the rain, wild eyes glaring, elbowed their way through the press.

Reht stepped forward to meet them, cut them off from entering Vors's tent. The big warpriest almost bumped him. Almost.

"Agreed, Kelgar. But it happens my way, and only on my orders."

The tall warpriest's wild eyes fixed on Reht. Spit flew when he spoke. "And who are you to me?"

Reht eased forward into Kelgar's space, nose to nose. The men watching fell silent. The priest stood a hand taller than Reht, and a stone heavier.

"Your commander, which means you follow my orders. Understood?"

"A Stormlord is dead, murdered." More spit.

"He is. But in this army, you answer to me first, to your god second. Otherwise, you ride off now. Find the slaughter you seek somewhere else."

"You disliked Vors. We know what happened on the last raid."

"I hated him passionately," Reht said, eliciting a growl from Kelgar. "But he was a soldier in this army. My army. That is all that matters."

The Talassan stared into Reht's eyes, measuring him. Reht gave no ground.

Finally the priest smirked, stepped back, and nodded. No spit.

"Well enough... Commander."

Reht stepped aside and let them through. "We'll have a council with all the junior commanders in one hour. You are to be there."

Kelgar grunted agreement and entered the tent with his fellows. The moment they saw the carnage they shouted curses and blood oaths.

Gavist and Othel cleared out of the way and Reht stood in the tent's doorway as the warpriests honored their dead by howling over his body and destroying his possessions, overturning tables, shattering glass, slashing carpets and bedding. Reht had seen it before. Talos reveled in destruction and battle. So did his priests. The Talassans would pile up the wreckage and set it all aflame with a summoned lightning strike before dawn.

As if in answer to the funereal rage of the Talassan war-priests, the sky rumbled with thunder, a lasting peal that reached a booming crescendo.

"Double the men on guard duty," Reht said to Gavist, and the young junior commander nodded.

"You think the assassins might return?"

"I don't. Vors, at least, looks to have been personal. But we may as well take precautions. Taking Forrin could be a precursor to an attack."

Mennick, the army's most powerful wizard, strode through the men as the Talassans within the tent unleashed their own storm. Magic kept Mennick's dark robes and gray-streaked hair shielded from the rain.

"You've heard?" Reht asked.

Mennick's eyes clouded over. He'd known Forrin for many years. "Yes."

"Mages are at work in this," Reht said. "Shadovar mages. Do what you can to prevent this from happening again."

"I can raise some wards," Mennick said. "I should start with you."

"Fine. Inform the overmistress via sending, then find out who did this and where they are."

Mennick nodded and looked over and past Reht in thought, his brow grooved.

Lightning flashed and his eyes widened. He pointed at the horizon.

"Look at that."

Reht turned to see pitch devour the eastern sky, swallowing stars. Not storm clouds, but a churning fog of impenetrable night. Streaks of green lightning sliced through it at intervals. An uneasy murmur went through the gathered men as the darkness expanded.

"Not natural," Mennick said.

"Shadovar?" Reht asked.

Mennick shrugged. "Seems likely."

"Shadovar troops could be moving under cover of that storm," Gavist said.

"Possible," Mennick said. "They take Forrin, thinking to disrupt our command, then attack under cover of darkness."

Reht nodded, thoughtful. The storm was moving west

If. toward them, bracketing Reht's army between it and the f: Saerbian forces. He liked it little.

• He decided he would not sit idle while his enemies deter-j mined the field of battle. He had thought to march against the ! Saerbians, but now he had a different target, one whose agents fc had attacked his camp.
  

  "Sound the muster," Reht said to Gavist. "Get the men geared t up. We're moving into that storm. We take the fight to them." I Gavist saluted, and headed off.
  

f "Scouts forward with half hour reporting," Reht shouted to I Gavist's back. "And double the scouts to the rear. I don't want j the Saerbians taking us unawares. And get some scouts in the I field looking for Lorgan."

" A raised hand acknowledged the orders and the camp soon I erupted in activity.

Reht walked among his men, watching the approaching ;, storm. It was still hours away, given its slow advance. In his mind's eye, he imagined the Saerbian forces marching from I Lake Veladon, thinking to catch Reht in a vise.

"No, no,," he said. He would engage the Shadovar as soon as possible. After defeating them, he'd turn and finish the I approaching Saerbians. He had the forces to do it.

Behind him, the Talassans ignited Vors's body, possessions, and tent. Their roars of rage chased the smoke into the dark sky.

The next day would bring battle.

Once, the prospect would have lit a fire in his belly. Now, it kindled only a spark. A long life of soldiering had shaped Reht into a certain kind of man, and sometimes he tired of himself. He'd almost been apprenticed in his adolescence to • a cartographer but the man had taken on another instead, a ' nephew. Reht had always loved maps, still did. He wondered what his life would have been like had he spent it as a map-l maker. Would he have married? Had children? Certainly he'd have had fewer scars.

He shook his head, rebuking himself for being sentimental. He had made his choice, had put aside maps for steel.

Donning his helmet, he put cartography and regrets out of his mind and saw to the preparation of his army.

CHAPTER TWO

1 Nightal, The Year of Lightning Storms

Cale and Riven materialized in darkness as thick and black as a pool of ink. A cutting wind gusted from the east, and knifed through their clothes. Rain pelted them, and carried down from the black sky the musty smell of old decay. Tangible swirls of shadow turned the cool air thick, gauzy.

"Where is this place, Cale?" Riven asked over the wind.

"Home," Cale shouted in answer. "For a time."

It was also in the center of the storm. They stood in the meadow not far from the small cottage where Cale had lived with Varra. The sentinel elm, towering over them, whispered and creaked in the wind, sizzled in the rain. The furniture Cale had made from deadwood lay overturned in the grass. The wildflowers Varra

had planted were browned and dead on the stalks. The window shutters and door of the cottage flapped in the gusts, all of them beating as if in anger against the cottage's walls. "Varra!" Cale shouted. "Varra!"

His voice barely penetrated the howl of wind and rain. Lightning lit the meadow. The downpour and wind hissed against the trees in the surrounding forest.

"You feel that air?" Riven shouted, and drew his blades. "Same as in the Calyx."

Cale nodded, and drew Weaveshear. "Same as in Elgrin Fau." He rode the darkness into the cottage. "Varra!"

He found their old home empty, their bed unmade. The wind shrieked through the open windows and doors. Blankets, utensils, pails, and broken pieces of clay lamps lay strewn about the floor, dislodged by the wind. He tore open cabinets, trunks, piles of linens, looking for any sign of what might have happened.

"Varra!"

He cursed himself for bringing her out of Skullport, cursed himself for leaving her alone in an unfamiliar place. He had not merely left her alone; he had abandoned her. She could be wandering in the woods, lost in the storm, anywhere.

He tossed their room, found one of the smocks she sometimes wore in the summer, and decided to use it as the focus for a divination. He held his mask in one hand, the smock in his shadowborn hand, and intoned over the wind the words to a spell that would locate her.

The magic manifested and the shadows darkened before his face, forming a lens in the air. But he felt no connection to Varra. He poured power into the spell, willed it to show her, but the lens remained black, dead.

Cursing, he ended it.

He stood in the center of the ruins of their life together, wondering if she was dead. He hesitated for only a moment before making up his mind. He cast another spell that allowed him to

commune with his god. The wind-driven beat of the shutters and door on the walls kept time with his heart.

"Is she alive?" Cale asked, his voice a monotone in the wind's wail.

The darkness swirled around him and the voice of his god whispered in his btain, She lives and is safe, far from you, but not in distance.

He exhaled with relief, tried to process the rest of the reply, but Riven's shout from outside carried over the shriek of the wind.

"Cale! Get out here!"

Cale cloaked himself in shadows and rode them back out to the meadow. He emerged from the darkness beside Riven, in Varra's garden. Lightning ripped the sky, cast the meadow in sickening green. The wind picked up, took on an odd keening that stood the hairs on his arms on end. It bent the trees of the forest, sent a barrage of leaves and loose sticks into the meadow.

"Up there," Riven said, and pointed skyward with one of his sabers.

Astride his mount, Reht crested a rise and looked at the edge of the crawling darkness. His commanders crowded around him. All squinted against the wind and rain. All cursed.

His army stood arrayed a spear cast behind them, cloaks drawn, shields held over heads to shelter them from the pounding of the rain. Dawn would break in a few hours, but Reht thought it unlikely they would notice once they entered the storm. It looked like ink.

"Gods," said Norsim, a towering junior commander with a reputation for good luck.

A wall of black fog lay before them, extending from the ground to the sky. Tendrils and spirals of pitch reached out of

it, seemed to pull it along in dark billows. The fog cloaked the ground, sank into the hollows, and shrouded everything in its path. Its edge seemed to demarcate more than the border between light and shadow. The earth looked different under its shroud, foreign, deformed. They could not see more than a stone's throw within in.

Lightning flashed from time to time, turning the thick haze the greenish black of a bruise. Reht's horse neighed nervously, pawed the ground, tossed its head. Shifts in the saddle betrayed the concern of his commanders, though none spoke their fears aloud.