Shadow's Witness (3 page)

Idiots! he sneered. This place was becoming more priesthood than thieves’ guild with every passing day. I did you all a favor tonight. Riven had made a point never to set foot in the shrine. He despised gods, even Cyric, the patron of many of his fellow Zhentarim. Reliance on the gods made men weak, overconfident, and willing to rely on miracles rather than their own abilities. He figured that the fate of the Righteous Man was the ultimate fate of all priests, for priests kept their eyes on a god and not on the world around them. Riven had spied on the Knives for the Zhentarim for years, all the while holding the implicit trust of the Righteous Man. The old fool’s faith had made him stupid and blind.

Weeks before, when the Righteous Man had told him about the Shadowtome, Riven had sent word of it to Malix, his Zhentarim superior. Then, upon retrieving the book and returning to Selgaunt, he had not taken it directly to the Righteous Man. Instead, he had

taken it to Malix for study. Based on the book’s contents, Zhentarim mages had easily determined that the old man planned to summon a dread. Riven was told how to sabotage the delicate binding. At the time, he had thought he would have to create an excuse to be present for the summoning, or that he would have to break in during the casting of the spell, but the old fool had actually required him to be present! Witness this, lieutenant! Riven had almost laughed aloud. The arrogant ass!

Though Riven knew little of magic—he disdained spellcasters almost as much as priests, trusting his steel over spells any day—even he had seen the potential danger of turning a demon loose from its binding, possibly turning it loose on Selgaunt. Malix had laid that fear to rest, though. The Zhentarim did not fear the dread running amok in the eity because, according to the Shadowtome, it could not long endure existence on this plane. Since negative energy made up so much of a dread’s being, existence on this plane—a plane full of positive energy—caused it immense pain.

Or some such. Riven had ignored most of Malix’s explanation. It was enough for him that the dread would kill the Righteous Man and then leave. He smiled viciously. Kill and then leave. He liked that. He had done the same countless times himself, was doing so again now. Killing and then leaving.

After he walked out of the guildhouse tonight, his time as a Night Knife was over. The Night Knives were over. When Riven informed Malix of the Righteous Man’s death, the Zhentarim would pounce on the leaderless guild. Without someone to organize a defense, the Night Knives would be easy prey. The Zhentarim would hunt them down, recruit those who would turn, and kill the rest.

The rest will be a lot, Riven figured, with a backward look at the shrine. Too many of the Knives had become religious fanatics. Far too many. They would not be open to recruitment. Zealots didn’t change sides, they were martyred.

This guild is already a cooling corpse, he thought. Other than he and Cale, everyone else in the guild had the mind of a lackey, which was why they had been led to religion in the first place. None of them could lead the guild in a fight against the Zhentarim. They all would be easy fodder. Of course, Riven was prepared to acknowledge—reluctantly—that Cale could lead them, were he so inclined. But he was not so inclined. In fact, Riven suspected that Cale wanted out of the guild, not leadership of it. The leaderless Night Knives would soon be no more, another casualty in Selgaunt’s ongoing gang wars.

Still, for the next few days Riven would have to lay low and watch his back. At least until after the Zhentarim hit the guildhouse. If anyone with a grudge survived the coming purge, they might notice his absence, put the puzzle together, and come looking for him. He wasn’t afraid for his safety, but he didn’t want the bother of fanatics trying to hunt him down.

He smiled, appreciating the irony. The rabid fanaticism of the Knives had been the very reason the Zhentarim had decided to move against them so forcefully in the first place. While Selgaunt’s underworld was a viper’s pit of competing organizations, none of them had been fanatical prior to the radicalization of the Night Knives. Thieves’ guilds acted predictably; religious movements did not. Selgaunt’s underworld could not long tolerate an unpredictable actor—unpredictability drew the attention of the city’s otherwise disinterested authorities. The Zhentarim could not allow that.

One more reason to spurn religion, Riven supposed with a contemptuous sneer. Where was your god tonight, old man? Holed up in the shrine, maybe? He chuckled aloud. Riven restricted his worship to only three things—sharp steel, cold coin, and warm women, in that order. Anything else was weakness.

Still chuckling, he turned his back to the shrine and strode down the hallway until he reached the oak door that opened into the storage room. Low voices from within carried through the wood. He spared one last glance over his shoulder—his last sight of this den of idiots—wiped the satisfied grin off his face, and pushed the door open.

Two men, Fek and Norwyl, decent thugs, not so decent sentries—hastily stood from their game of dice. Two small piles of silver lay at their feet, and a pair of ivory knucklebones rested on the floor between them. Asp eyes, Riven saw, and smiled coldly. Crates lined the walls. For light, Fek and Norwyl had stuffed a tallow candle into the tap of an empty keg. A filthy rug covered the floor.

“Riven,” Fek said in nervous surprise. The taller of the two, Fek wore a short sword at his belt and looked as though he hadn’t shaved his spotty beard in days. A wooden disc painted black and ringed with red at the edge hung from a leather thong around his neck—the makeshift symbol of Mask that many of the guild’s members had taken to wearing. Riven managed not to strangle him with it. Barely.

“Fek,” Riven replied with a nod. “Norwyl.”

Norwyl too wore the black disc about his neck. A nervous little man even shorter than Riven. Norwyl gestured at the knucklebones on the floor.

“Join us?” he asked halfheartedly. “Fek could use a change in his luck.”

“Piss off,” Fek said.

“No,” Riven briskly replied and pushed past them. He thought about killing them both, a sort of going-away present for the guild, but decided against it. They’d be dead soon enough. “I’m leaving for-a few days,” he announced. “Business for the Man.”

Without waiting for a reply, he pulled up the dirty

carpet — scattering the coins and dice — to expose a trapdoor with an iron pull ring. Norwyl and Fek merely watched, shifted from foot to foot, and said nothing further — they knew better than to ask him about bis business or complain about the spilled coins. He had killed many men for much less.

He jerked the trapdoor open and wrinkled his nose at the stink of old sewage that raced up his nostrils. Without a glance at the two guards, he lowered himself over the side and slid down the rusty iron ladder. Halfway down, Norwyl’s head appeared above him, framed in the candlelight. The guildsman’s wooden holy symbol dangled from his neck, slowly twisted in the air. “Mask’s favor,” he called.

“Luck to you too,” Riven grunted insincerely. You’ll need it, he silently added.

With that, Norwyl slammed the trapdoor shut.

Riven, familiar with this exit, descended the rest of the ladder in darkness. When he reached the muck-covered floor, he took out his tinderbox, struck a flame, and lit a candle taken from his belt pouch. Surprised by the sudden light, rats squeaked and scurried for the comforting dark.

Riven pulled his crimson cloak close against the chill, shielded the small flame with one hand, and headed westward for the well exit onto Winding Way. As he walked, he replayed the events of the night in his head. It is regrettable that Cale is not here to share this triumph, the Righteous Man had said. Riven frowned thoughtfully. Regrettable indeed. Hearing

Cale scream as the dread devoured him would have been the sweetest triumph of all.

Yrsillar pushed the squealing soul of the Righteous

Man into a dark corner of the mind they now shared. He smiled in satisfaction. The feel of pliable, fleshy lips — his lips — peeling back over spit-wet teeth exhilarated him. He disdainfully wiped the snot and spittle from his new face and held his hand before his eyes for examination. He frowned when he saw that the spotted, wrinkled flesh of this body covered muscles and bones weakened with age.

Testing their limits, he repeatedly clenched and unclenched the fists of his new body, clawed the air, bent at the knees, twisted at the torso, and finally hopped up and down. Afterward, he hissed in satisfaction.

Though old, the body remained fit. Indeed, fit enough to contain Yrsillar’s being and still provide a living shell that protected his emptiness from this plane. He felt no pain! None!

He reached his hands toward the ceiling and laughed, deep and long, a sound so full of power and malice that the true occupant of the body could never have produced it. The soul of the Righteous Man squirmed helplessly in its dark corner and Yrsillar laughed the more.

He had waited long for this day, centuries. Once before he had been summoned here. Over six hundred years ago as mortals measured time, a drow mage named Avarix had called his true name and drawn him here, had bound him and required for his freedom that he slay every member of a rival household. Yrsillar had done so without compunction, reveled in the

massacre, fed greedily on drow souls, but screamed in pain all the while. The energy of this plane ate away like acid at his being, burning, searing.

He had felt the scars of that first summoning for years, even after he had won his freedom from accursed Avarix. Throughout the long healing process, he had brooded, plotted. The lure of this place had pulled at him. A plane so full of life, so full of food. He had longed to return and gorge himself, but the unavoidable pain that accompanied his existence here had made such a return inconceivable. Inconceivable that was, until he had struck upon the simplest of solutions—possess a living mortal body and use its flesh to shield him from the poison that flooded this plane. With that plan in mind, he had nursed his hate, and waited patiently for another summons.

At last the call had come. This fool called the Righteous Man had cast a summoning and pronounced his true name. The powerful word had sped instantly through the intervening planes and resounded in Yrsillar’s ears as though spoken beside him. Gleefully, he had leaped upon the power thread and traced it back to this plane, his hunger for living souls lending him speed. Again however, he had found himself properly bound! His ingenious plan to possess his mortal summoner and remain here to feed caved in around him. Or nearly so. The other human had broken the binding and freed him.

He laughed and danced a gleeful little jig. As he did, his eyes fell on the Shadowtome, the hated book that held within its pages not only his true name, but also the proper way to bind him. What mortal had dared scribe such a thing? Avarix? Wretched book! Wretched drow!

“Rrrar!” He kicked over the lectern and knocked the book to the floor. Enraged, he stomped on it again and

again, jumping up and down in a paroxysm of rage. A tendon in his calf snapped, but he ignored the twinge.

“Never! Never again!”

He ground the book into the floor with his heel until its torn, crumpled pages lay strewn about the room like blown leaves. “Never again,” he said, gasping. Fatigue was new to him. He rather disliked the sensation.

To assuage the feeling, he drank a small part of the Righteous Man’s soul for the first time. The tiny, fearful thing squirmed and tried to back away when it sensed Yrsillar turn inward and come for it, but its terror only whetted his appetite. He sipped from the top of the soul as a human would a fine liquor, savoring, taking delight in the horrified squeals of the Righteous Man’s being. As he drank, the memories, thoughts, and experiences of the human—the events that had shaped the soul—played out in his mind’s eye. The short, irrelevant life of the Righteous Man flashed through Yrsillar’s mind hi the space of three heartbeats. He mocked its insignificance, enjoyed the failure of its lofty aspirations.

“A priest of Mask the Shodowlord,” he softly said to the walls, thinking aloud. “How very ironic. And with a loyal guild at your command. At my command,” he corrected.

The beginnings of a plan took shape in his mind. The soul of the Righteous Man sensed his scheme and squealed in protest. As discipline, Yrsillar drew off still more of the human’s life-force, sucked a writhing, twisting portion of it into his being. “Mind now,” he said with a vicious grin. “Mind, or I’ll have the rest.”

The soul retreated, weakened, defeated.

“Take heart,” Yrsillar mocked. “Though you’ll not become the Champion of Mask, neither will the two you had thought your rivals for the honor.” He laughed

aloud, a deep sinister sound that bounced off the walls. The Righteous Man’s soul curled in on itself, horrified. Yrsillar thought of Mask’s discomfiture in Hades and smiled. “So much too for your lofty aspirations, Shadowlord,” he mocked.

To execute his plan, he would need more of his kind, lesser dreads that could exist on this plane without pain. Together, they would lead these shadow mongering Mask worshipers in an orgy of slaughter. He gleefully pictured the bloodletting to come and laughed still more.

With an exercise of will, he brought a gate to Belistor into existence. An empty hole formed in the air above the toppled lectern. Hisses and moans sounded through the gate, music to Yrsillar’s ears, a reminder of his home plane.

“Araniskeel and Greeve,” he softly hissed. “Come forth.”

Instantly, four yellow pinpoints of light took shape within the emptiness and drew closer. Shadows coalesced around the gate, solidified into clawed, winged shapes similar to, but smaller than, Yrsillar’s natural form. The two shadows streaked from the gate and screamed their malice into the air of the chamber.

“Welcome, little brethren,” hissed Yrsillar.

Despite his human shell, they recognized him immediately. Obsequious as always, they bowed and fawned, flitted about bis person like moths. With only slight ties to the plane of unlife, these lesser dreads felt no pain from this plane. Perfect tools to bring him power and food.