ABOLETHIC SOVEREIGNTY

Book I
Plague of Spells

Book II
City of Torment

Book III
Key of Stars

ALSO BY BRUCE R. CORDELL

THE PRIESTS
Lady of Poison

THE WIZARDS
Darkvision

THE DUNGEONS
Stardeep

SWORD OF THE GODS
©2011 Wizards of the Coast LLC

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. FORGOTTEN REALMS, WIZARDS OF THE COAST, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.

All Wizards of the Coast characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Cover art by: Cos Koniotis
First Printing: April 2011

eISBN: 978-0-7869-5897-9

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v3.1

DEDICATION

For Hektor

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Dramatis Personae

Other Characters

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Welcome to Faerûn, a land of magic and intrigue, brutal violence and divine compassion, where gods have ascended and died, and mighty heroes have risen to fight terrifying monsters. Here, millennia of warfare and conquest have shaped dozens of unique cultures, raised and leveled shining kingdoms and tyrannical empires alike, and left long forgotten, horror-infested ruins in their wake.

A LAND OF MAGIC

When the goddess of magic was murdered, a magical plague of blue fire—the Spellplague—swept across the face of Faerûn, killing some, mutilating many, and imbuing a rare few with amazing supernatural abilities. The Spellplague forever changed the nature of magic itself, and seeded the land with hidden wonders and bloodcurdling monstrosities.

A LAND OF DARKNESS

The threats Faerûn faces are legion. Armies of undead mass in Thay under the brilliant but mad lich king Szass Tam. Treacherous dark elves plot in the Underdark in the service of their cruel and fickle goddess, Lolth. The Abolethic Sovereignty, a terrifying hive of inhuman slave masters, floats above the Sea of Fallen Stars, spreading chaos and destruction. And the Empire of Netheril, armed with magic of unimaginable power, prowls Faerûn in flying fortresses, sowing discord to their own incalculable ends.

A LAND OF HEROES

But Faerûn is not without hope. Heroes have emerged to fight the growing tide of darkness. Battle-scarred rangers bring their notched blades to bear against marauding hordes of orcs. Lowly street rats match wits with demons for the fate of cities. Inscrutable tiefling warlocks unite with fierce elf warriors to rain fire and steel upon monstrous enemies. And valiant servants of merciful gods forever struggle against the darkness.

A LAND OF UNTOLD ADVENTURE

PROLOGUE

SOMEWHERE IN FAERÛN
YEAR OF LIGHTNING STORMS (1374 DR)

THE CANDLES IN THE SECRET MAUSOLEUM FLICKERED, throwing monstrous shadows across the granite walls. Kalkan’s own wavering profile still surprised him. The silhouette of his head revealed an extended muzzle, rough fur, exaggerated catlike ears, and two curls of horn. If anything, the dreadful outline fell short of revealing the true horror of what he’d become.

But the shadow of his companion refused to resolve at all, except as a gloom of phantom skulls, swirling and mouthing lies. The fluctuating shape seemed to have little in common with the slim youth with dark eyes and pale skin. But Kalkan knew better.

“He’s in there?” asked the youth.

“His shell is,” answered Kalkan. “It’s moldering away to dust, as if he were mortal. But even as we speak, the nexus of his spirit drains toward its next incarnation.”

“Minus the memories of what he’s done,” said Kalkan’s companion, anger making his voice tight.

“Just so,” said Kalkan, and waited for his companion to get to the point. The youth knew perfectly well who lay in the stone grave. The epitaph chiseled on the sarcophagus spelled it out:

Agent of Fate, Emissary of Divine Judgment,

Cutter of Destiny’s Thread.

You died as you lived, and will live again.

Demascus, Sword of the Gods.

A prickle ran up Kalkan’s spine. The epitaph was no boast. Demascus was a terrifying force when operating at the height of his powers. Kalkan recalled all too well the first time he’d tracked down Demascus.

Kalkan had spent tendays lying low in a small cave near the ravine where the abomination laired.

Waiting, at turns bored beyond belief, then terrified that the abomination had sniffed him out.

One day, a lighting bolt shattered the sky, and the thunder that followed threatened to pummel Kalkan senseless. From the charred spot where the lightning had touched, Demascus stepped forth. The man had bone white hair, bloodless skin, black eyes like pits, and elaborate designs like ashen streaks tattooed down both arms, as if charred into his skin.

Demascus didn’t notice Kalkan; the man’s entire attention was reserved for the creature that rose from the ravine at his feet. The creature was the monstrous offspring of a god and demon that should never have been. Demascus was there to make certain no one ever learned of a god’s indiscretion.

The thing undulated like a dragon in flight. Its scabbed head was wreathed in flailing crystal knives and its clawed hands seemed large as houses. Mist poured from it, hiding its lower expanse in a bank of roiling fog lit with a ghoulish flickering.

When Demascus and the beast came together, the resulting blast bowled Kalkan over. He mewled into the renewed crash of thunder, wondering just what he’d gotten himself into—there was no way he could ever hope to “handle” Demascus, as he’d agreed to. The man was so far beyond his power it was laughable to even think …

Quiet reclaimed the clifltop. Kalkan pulled himself upright and peeked around the new rubble of boulders, still hot from the blast that had plucked them from the ground and thrown them about like marbles.

The demi-demon’s head lay dripping in gore on the rock. The lower portion of its body was gone, apparently having fallen away into the misted ravine.

Demascus’s massive sword was thrust through the creature’s head, entering at the left eye, punching through all the way back behind the skull, and down through the rock.

The creature’s slayer, however, had fared no better. The man must have charged straight into the skin-flaying crystal knives to cut the demi-demon’s head free of the body, then nail it to the earth. In so doing, he’d sacrificed his life in a particularly grisly fashion. All the man’s famous implements and abilities hadn’t been enough to save him. Even as Kalkan watched with eyes wide as saucers, Demascus’s sword released a pulse of golden radiance, sweet as the sunrise.

As the glow faded, so too did the sword, the man, and all his storied magic artifacts.

All that had remained behind was the body of the thing Demascus had slain, and Kalkan.

Kalkan blinked away the memory, and curled his lip into a silent snarl. Here was where Demascus’s body had come to rest, as it did every time his deeds surpassed his frame. If only finding Demascus’s latest living incarnation was as easy as locating the failed husks.

“He had a free hand before he came to this world,” mused Kalkan’s companion. “No one watched over him. He gained more power than a being of his station should ever have been allowed.”

“But not on Toril,” said Kalkan, and bared his fangs.

“No, not here,” the youth agreed. “Thanks to you, Kalkan Swordbreaker, and the oath you swore. But it galls, doesn’t it? Your new … hungers? Your acceptance of the gods’ appeal has transformed you into something bestial and fiendish.”

Kalkan growled, half in anger, but partly with desire that brought saliva to his mouth, even as that yearning sickened what remained of his former self. A self that diminished a little more each day. The reality of what the gods required of Kalkan still burned like acid. Unlike Demascus, Kalkan remembered each of his deaths. It was a side effect of his … change.

“The gods made me this,” he huffed, his voice like a hunting tiger’s growl.

“And they name me guilty of crimes I did not commit! Life’s not fair, Swordbreaker. But we don’t have to just accept it. We can strike back at the ones who’ve wronged us. I promise you this—turn Demascus to the dark, and our reward will be sweet vengeance against the gods, and more.”

Kalkan nodded. “Does this mean you’ve decided to stop leading me along and give me the aid you promised?” He was taking a chance in addressing the youth so impertinently. When he saw his companion’s eyes narrow, he figured he’d just crossed the line.

But instead of blasting him to nothingness, or worse, banishing him to a millennial prison in some forgotten cyst, the youth held out his hand palm up. On it lay a slender metallic disk attached to a leather strap.

“This,” said Kalkan’s companion, “is called a damos. Only a few remain from the time of their fashioning in ancient Imaskar. It produces a poison of uncommon virulence. Which is just a side effect. The residue that collects within the disk’s cavity is the condensation of the future, distilled by the mind of an entity or principle even I don’t fully comprehend. To taste of it is to see hours or days forward. To drink it is to hear the far future described to you by the Voice of Tomorrow—but taking that much is lethal poison to mortal and god alike. Nothing can survive it.”

Kalkan took the damos. It was cold against his finger pads, and rough. He met the youth’s eyes. Instead of irises, tiny black skulls stared out of each white orb. But he smiled at his patron. “Death is hardly a problem for someone like me. If the limits of this damos are as you describe—”

“It has no limits other than its user’s resistance to poison.”

Kalkan tapped the disk. It opened like a dilating eye, revealing a cavity filled with oily fluid. He dipped a claw into the reservoir, barely wetting it, then licked off the clinging beads. It tasted like blood.

His cheeks warmed and sweat broke through the fur on his brow. The mausoleum was blotted out by a roar of light and noise. His eyes fluttered, beyond his conscious control. He collapsed, his breath suddenly coming hard.

A whisper broke from the cacophony. It was a voice, just on the edge of incoherence. The voice spoke of the future.

And as his life dwindled to a cinder, Kalkan listened.

CHAPTER ONE

AKANÛL
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

INFINITIES CROUCHED ON HIS CHEST, STONE-HEAVY AND black as a tomb. Nothingness spiraling forever overhead like a burned-out galaxy reflected in murky water.

Something inexplicable shifted. A thread glimmered, beckoning him to follow its endless coils across the darkness …

He drew in a breath and opened his eyes.

Naked branches scratched jagged lines across a ceiling of clouds and drifting earthmotes. Mist gathered in shoals, dribbling chill gray across the sky.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them, counting: one, two, three …

He waited for the memory of his situation to occur to him like a bolt sliding home.

 … and nothing.

What the Hells? he thought. Why am I sleeping outside? Only an idiot would camp in the open this time of year. Plus my bedroll is too hard.

More importantly, where was he? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Burning dominions, had he been drinking?

He sat up. The light was pre-dawn dim, but bright enough to see he hadn’t been lying on a bedroll; it was a marble altar, thick with inscribed runes.

Uh-oh. Finding oneself spread out on an altar without the least memory of how one had arrived upon it rarely ended up being good news.

“Hey!” he yelped, pulling his leg toward his chest. Something had bitten him!

A squat, blubbery creature crouched alongside the stone platform, grinning at him with a nest of tiny fangs, its eyes solid masses of scarlet crystal. Its flesh was sickly, like unbaked dough, and red crystal scales and spikes crusted its upper shoulders.

He recoiled, rolling off the opposite side of the altar. He landed on hands and knees, jarring his wrists. A moment later he was on his feet with the altar between him and the creature.

He almost fell again; his legs were like deadweights. His vision narrowed, as if threatening to pinch off. He caught himself on the altar’s edge, saving himself from flopping face first back into the dirt. His legs were asleep; he could barely feel them.

His attacker held a severed human foot in one hand, gnawed bone clearly visible. His gaze jerked down to check the status of his own feet. Still attached … but why wasn’t he wearing boots? A more thorough and somewhat chilly realization shuddered through him.

“Where are my clothes?” he asked the thing weakly, fear and confusion fighting for dominance.

The thing grinned wider, its lips smeared red and its yellowed teeth crusted with gore. It tossed away the severed limb and looked at him speculatively.

He stamped experimentally, holding himself up with his arms on the cold altar. His legs went from numb to a fire of pins and needles.

The creature watched him a few moments more as if wondering what kind of dance he was doing. Then it launched itself, coming right up over the altar like a dog hurdling a low fence.

Muscle memory betrayed him; his smooth and unthinking motion to draw the great sword sheathed on his back was ruined by the fact he didn’t have a sword on his back. He was naked.

Then it was on him, and despite its small size, it bore him to the ground. In rapid succession it tried to bite out his throat, disembowel him, and sever the undefended femoral arteries that ran up his inner thigh. He jerked, shifted, and elbowed just enough each time to avoid each bite and slash, trading each attack for a lesser nip or gouge. But if he didn’t slow down its momentum, and give something back soon, it was going to overwhelm him—

With a desperate spasm, he gathered his legs to his chest, then released a tremendous straight kick.

His heels caught the creature across the jaw. It squealed as it flipped off and away.

At the apex of its trajectory, it almost seemed like time slowed. An illusion he supposed, but he took advantage of the interlude to scrabble to his feet, and steal a glance around.

Granite obelisks encircled the altar at a distance of about ten paces, forming a crude ring. People lay around the periphery of the ring, unmoving in a scatter of dropped weapons, silent and … dead.

Time snapped back to its regular breakneck pace. The creature traced the end of its arc, landed hard, then bounced onto its feet, apparently no worse for wear. It growled as it raised one hand to paw at its mouth, looking for all the world as if it were feeling for a sore tooth.

Good, he thought, I hurt it a little after all. It didn’t immediately rush him again anyway.

Which gave him enough time to snatch a long sword lying in the dirt near a corpse’s limp hand. The blade showed brownish streaks of corrosion and the hilt was mildewed, but the balance was acceptable. The damp weight of it in his hand was the first good thing that had happened to him since he’d opened his eyes.

He pointed it so that the tip lined up with the creature’s chest.

He said, “What’s going on here? In the name of Light and Shadow, what are you?”

The thing growled like a dog struck with foaming sickness, and charged.

He grinned despite the new surge of fear jackknifing through his bloodstream … or because of it. With the fear came a charge of elation that sang along every nerve. He lined up the blade to skewer his attacker on it.

The length of the blade seemed off. He tried to correct, but the creature swatted his sword out of the way. It lurched inside his guard and fastened its wide mouth on his unarmored forearm. He was momentarily distracted by the odd design running the length of his limb, ash gray like tattoos of ghosts—

The thing bit down hard. The pain was spectacular and he screamed.

Something hot ignited behind his eyes, and suddenly glimmers danced across the length of his borrowed sword, one line down each side. On one side they were white like the full moon, and along the other, red like the sun at day’s end. The glows flickered, gone one instant, back the next, suggesting some sort of half-remembered runes or glyphs that should have been clear …

The creature didn’t like the display, and its jaws relaxed. He wrenched his arm free from the thing’s mouth. It mewled when it lost its grip, and blood dribbled from between its teeth. His blood. He was lucky it hadn’t stripped any tendons.

He blinked when the creature shouted, “The Eye is watching! It always watches. It searches!”

“What eye?” he replied with a wit so sparkling he impressed even himself.

The nightmarish thing gazed at him like an avaricious peddler who’d just realized he’d come upon a village of idiots. Then it hurled itself forward again, lashing its clawed arms in mad frenzy. The light show with his sword hadn’t cowed the monster as much as he’d expected—

A claw clipped his temple. A spurt of blood turned everything red.

He slipped and nearly fell, and the beast screamed louder as its claws tore at him in earnest.

He desperately rubbed blood from his eye with his free hand. If I’m not careful, he thought, this minor dretch is going to kill me!

 … dretch? He suddenly realized it was a dretch, a demonic pest and among the very least of its kind. Why he hadn’t immediately recognized it, he didn’t know. Probably because of the odd crystalline encrustations across the thing’s upper torso, and a matching red glint in its eyes.

It didn’t matter. His fingers tightened into a surer grip on the sword hilt.

He angled his shoulders with a twitch and sidestepped a fraction out of the creature’s range. Then he feinted high, stomped on the thing’s foot as it tried to dance away from the blade, and struck its head from its shoulders in a spatter of ichor. The runes flashed with the death blow, then flickered out like lanterns in a windstorm.

The body collapsed. The head bounced a few times before lodging between two stones.

Quiet returned to the shrine. He stood for several heartbeats, marveling. It had felt so … good to dispatch the creature. Almost like drinking a draft of some alchemist’s elixir. Joy thrummed through him like lightning through the clouds.

He moved closer to inspect the body. The eyes on the decapitated head blinked at him.

“Dominions!” he cursed.

The head whispered, “The Elder Elemental Eye watches …”

His exultation billowed away like a cut sail.

The lopped-off thing said nothing else.

Get a hold of yourself, he thought, as his heart pounded in his ears. It’s just a dying beast, and you’ve got a sword.

He inched forward again, ready to plunge the blade straight through it at the first sign of anything suspicious.

But it was finally dead. Amazing it had been able to whisper at all, without any air to inflate its vocal cords. Or, maybe not. What did he know about demonic anatomy?

The head twitched. Before he could leap back or hew it, it slumped, as if transformed into running wax. A gelatinous, melting lump that bubbled and evaporated even as it lost all shape. Then nothing remained but a damp spot.

The headless body evaporated too. He was the only moving thing within the ring of stones.

Memory twitched, but maddeningly refused to come clear. That wasn’t how slain demons normally decayed. Right?

Why, he thought, does it seem like I’m trying to think through molasses?

He frowned and rubbed his head, wincing at the touch. The dretch had tagged him on the temple. That probably explained why everything seemed foggy. He needed to find some healing.

First things first, he thought. If I can remember how I got here, or even where here is, everything else should fall into place.

He went back to the altar and studied the marks chiseled all over its surface. The iconography was … some variety of divine runes? No, he realized; the glyphs represented spirits of the land.

Many of the carved sigils depicted animals: the predatory curve of a hawk wing, the inquisitive point of a fox nose, and the streaming mane of a galloping horse. All the figures were blurred by decades or even centuries of neglect. Dirt and time had nearly erased them.

He ran his fingers across the bend of the horse’s spine, racking his mind. But no. He’d never seen the altar before. He had no memory whatsoever of coming to the place.

Anxiety pressed a dagger-sharp point against his surface calm. Could he have been brought here against his will, unconscious? That seemed the answer that best fit the evidence. He swung his gaze around, trying to see everything at once. He ignored the whisper of dizziness that followed each motion.

The land beyond the ring fell away into the surrounding mist in a way that suggested he was on a hilltop or mountainside. Despite the cloud cover, something in the silence and texture of the air implied daybreak was nigh, not sunset.

He shivered, scanning the wide landscape. Nope, he thought. Never seen it before … He convulsively folded his arms across his chest, careful of his sword.

By all that was holy and sovereign, just what was going on here? Someone had laid him out on some kind of ancient altar, he was alone out in some godsforsaken wilderness, it was a miracle he wasn’t dead of exposure already, he didn’t have any clothes—

“Stop!” he said to the air.

Panic will get you nowhere. Everything will be fine.

“And now you’re talking to yourself. That means you’re probably crazy on top of being forgetful. And cold.”

At least he could remedy the last. Though they couldn’t answer his many questions, the dead wouldn’t be needing their garments anymore either. Besides, he should probably have a look through their pockets to see if anything rang a bell. He moved to the largest gathering of bodies and took stock.

Most of the fallen sported whorls tracing fine lines across skin the color of coffee, or sea foam, or dull silver. They weren’t exactly human, but …

“Genasi,” he said, suddenly recognizing that most of them shared a particular heritage. Genasi were people whose bloodline had long ago mixed with the elements. He’d known a woman once with eyes like distant storm-clouds … but had she been a genasi? No, maybe not …

The memory slipped away like fish in dark water. He returned to his task.

He couldn’t get an accurate count of the dead because several were heaped in a pile. More than ten, but probably less than twenty; to satisfy himself, he’d have to sort them out later to get a precise total.

He also found a few corpses that were definitely not genasi. More demons, apparently.

Multi-limbed, some with arms ending in pincers instead of hands or claws, and some with tentacles. They all sported red incrustations similar to the dretch’s. The comportment of the dead suggested the people and demons died fighting each other in some kind of fever of violence.

A sacrifice gone bad, probably. If so, he was incredibly lucky to have survived it, especially since evidence suggested he’d been the designated guest of honor.

He nudged one of the dead demons with his sword tip. That touch was all it took; the demon evaporated, as did the limp forms of all its fellows. A particularly foul wind ruffled his hair, and when it died down, only the genasi’s bodies remained.

He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about demons and evaporating bodies until he had put together an outfit.

Many of the genasi wore long leather coats, dyed various shades of red, with the insignia of a burning spike blazoned on one shoulder. He didn’t recognize the sign. Not that it mattered. He was so cold he’d wear anything. Luckily, at least in this one respect, he had a wide selection to choose from.

He sorted through the articles showing the least number of cuts and blood splatters. He bent to relieve a man of his boots, then paused. He was reluctant to disturb the deceased. It felt somehow disrespectful.

The breeze picked up, triggering a shivering bout.

He forced his qualms aside. His need outweighed their dignity.

He liberated boots, a long shirt, and a pack stuffed with clean articles, including smallclothes and pants. Everything fit well enough, though the pants were a little short. He didn’t care. He pulled on each piece of clothing in turn, until he was finally warm, and covered.

Maybe he couldn’t remember where he was or who hated him so much that they’d brought him to be sacrificed, but at least his privates were no longer waving in the wind, and that was worth something.

His immediate needs met, he planted his posterior on the edge of the altar as the day brightened. He took several deep breaths, and closed his eyes.

Just think. There has to be an explanation. Even if it’s not one you want to hear.

He cast his mind back, trying to summon up some sort of clue …

And remembered being in the crowded hold of a sailing vessel, lit by the open cargo hatch overhead. He was strangling someone! His hands clutched a long scarf that was looped twice around the neck of a man in priest’s garb. The priest struggled to get air, his mouth gaping like a fish pulled from the net.

The man made one last frantic effort, kicking, twisting, trying anything and everything to get free.

It didn’t make a bit of difference; he’d caught the priest by surprise, and it could only end with the man’s death. But just to be sure, he pulled harder on the free ends of the scarf, grunting with the effort.

The priest’s life whispered away. The man fell to the ground, eyes wide in surprise at finding so unexpected a death. They stared, empty, lifeless … dead.

The memory faded.

He gasped, taking in a huge breath of air as if in sympathy for the man in his memory. He looked at his hands. He could still feel the scarf’s parchment-smooth texture, the man’s panicked fingers as they brushed and clawed at his face, and finally, the way all the tension and volition eased out of the man in a flowing moment …

“Merciful gods,” he whispered. He had strangled a priest!

He struggled to control his accelerated breathing by counting each breath. One, two, three, four—What the Hells had possessed him to …

A new memory prowled forward.

He was in an entirely different place. He didn’t have the strangler’s wrap this time. Instead, he gripped a sword that sported glyphs white as snow on one side of the blade, and red as blood on the other, brighter and entirely more real than the ones that had flickered half formed during his battle with the dretch.

A creature stood before him. It was like a man in shape, save for its head, which bristled with fur striped with predator’s camouflage. Its ears were demonic flaps, and horns leaped askew from its head. It wore man’s clothing, and clutched a black dagger, like a piece of the sky between the stars, in one oddly jointed hand. The creature was laughing at him.

It said, “Demascus. Surprised? Don’t worry, you won’t remember seeing me. You never do. Though, even I have to admit, your sin is almost unforgivable this time. You’re getting so close …”

Demascus’s lips quirked to throw back a smart remark, and the creature moved, more quickly than he had expected by far, more swiftly than he could grasp the reins of time and pull them—

The creature slid its dagger into his stomach.

The memory tattered to nothing and he gasped. He slapped one hand to his belly. He pulled up the borrowed shirt and examined his flesh.

He saw nothing to indicate evidence of such a lethal wound in his ash-pale skin.

It must have happened so long ago that he’d recovered from the injury, though obviously with the aid of some powerful curative. Otherwise some tiny hint of a scar would remain.

And why had the thing called him Demascus …

“By all that’s holy and sovereign, who am I?”

CHAPTER TWO

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF THE SEA OF FALLEN STARS
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

DROPLETS OF SWEAT BROKE ON HIS BROW, AND FEAR COILED so tight in his belly that he gasped.

Burning dominions, how was it possible he didn’t know who he was?

It was like he … it was like … he didn’t know what it was like! A hollow echoed behind his eyes, giving him nothing to compare his situation to, nothing to measure his anxiety by.

He numbered ten full breaths. Each successive mental digit was marginally comforting. Good. More; another ten. And another … and his heart rate came under his control. That was better.

So, what did he know?

First, he was passing fair in a fight, even when caught off guard and pretty much defenseless. That was reassuring.

Second, the creature from his memory had called him Demascus.

“Demascus,” he said aloud, testing the sound. The hard consonants had a faint tug of familiarity to them … Or the familiarity was just a lie he was telling himself in order to smooth over a bad situation. If so, well … good enough for the moment.

“Demascus!” he repeated, this time yelling it so loud his voice cracked.

One of the corpses, a tall genasi with bluish skin, stirred and opened his eyes.

By the gods, a survivor!

The genasi fixed him with a glazed look. He whispered, “Who’re you?”

“Don’t you know me? You brought me here!”

The genasi blinked in confusion or pain, then groaned.

Demascus helped the genasi to sit, and said, “You hauled me here as some kind of sacrifice and in the process, you messed with my memory. Why? Who are you?”

The survivor said, his voice breathy, “I … have no idea who you are.”

“Don’t play games with me. I’ve had a hard morning and I’m on the edge.” Demascus resisted the urge to shake the genasi. A warning voice of conscience whispered something about attracting more flies with honey than vinegar. He settled for asking, “What happened up here?”

The genasi’s head lolled around to take in the carnage. His eyes widened. He screamed, “The Eye! The dreams, they find me even now!”

“Eye? What do you mean?”

“You …”

“Yes?”

The genasi went limp in his hands. It was horribly similar to how the priest he’d strangled had gone loose and heavy when he’d died.

“Oh, come on!”

Demascus felt for a pulse on the genasi’s neck to be sure. Nothing. The man’s body was already cooling. He’d been barely alive in the first place.

Grief, some for the the survivor, some for himself, bent his head until his chin rested on his chest.

He could do nothing. Time seemed to teeter on the edge of stopping. He’d found someone who might have been able to explain the situation, only to have that person die right in front of him, like a slap in the face from Fate. Leaving him with a name he wasn’t even sure was his, a cursed memory, and a dead man’s clothes.

On the other hand, unlike the corpse lying at his feet, he also had his life. That was something.

He raised his chin from his chest. Enough feeling sorry for himself. He closed the man’s lids with a brush of two fingers. The only thing that will accomplish is wasting time.

“I commend your soul to … Kelemvor the Judge,” he said. “May you find peace in what lies beyond …” He stumbled to a stop. He wasn’t really sure what he was saying. The words sounded right, but who exactly was Kelemvor?

He was obviously damaged in some fundamental fashion.

He shook his head. Old news.

Morning light poured like golden honey across the grisly scene, and despite everything, his spirits couldn’t help but rise. Finally, he could see what he was doing. He made a thorough search of the remaining corpses. No pocket was too small to escape his scrutiny.

Demascus muttered a few words of benediction over each body after he finished going through its possessions. Better not to assume anything; maybe these genasi had shown up to save him, rather than sacrifice him in some demonic deal. Though, if he were a betting man, he wouldn’t put coin on their saintly rescue plans.

While he couldn’t find any clues as to his identity, at least he was finally able to establish how many people had died: twelve genasi, plus two humans and one halfling. A total of fifteen, then. Fifteen question marks, plus himself: one brain-wiped enigma with a handful of potential clues and other goodies stolen from the dead.

Demascus laid out the fruits of his search on the stone altar.

His trove included some journeybread and leaf-wrapped cheese. Five wine skins, two almost full. Several generous handfuls of gold and silver coin, which he transferred to a single pouch. A couple satchels. A sheath for the sword he’d found. A lantern and a couple tindertwigs. Cunningly made leather armor that had escaped the conflict without a single cut or bloodstain. Several weapons, though none seemed any better than the sword he’d already claimed. And, the crowning achievement of his search: a bone scrollcase stuffed with a rolled parchment.

Demascus tapped the parchment tube from the case and spread it out on the stone: a map. The sides wanted to roll back into a tight cylinder, so he weighted them with stones.

The map’s most prominent feature was a great inland ocean filling the top of the page. It was labeled, “Sea of Fallen Stars.”

Assuming up was north, the ragged coastline of Akanûl bordered the sea to the south. Three cities were marked: New Breen, Brassune, and Airspur.

Demascus’s heart skipped a beat; he knew Airspur. It was a city of … genasi.

Only one other place was marked on the map, at the northeastern tip of a range of mountains called the Akanapeaks. It was a small circle, near Airspur, drawn in by a hand different than the original cartographer’s. A scrawl of text in the same style read, “Old Shrine,” and then, “Cult activity?”

That was all.

Demascus squinted at the parchment, hoping the names and shapes would jog some additional memory.

No. But it wasn’t too much a leap to guess that he was standing within the very “Old Shrine” noted.

Which would put Airspur—he glanced to the west—over the ridge and some miles that way.

The dead genasi either were the cult activity described on the map, or they had come out to investigate it.

He had a goal. Unless everyone was dead there too, he would find some answers in Airspur.

He rolled up the map, and packed away his trove in the satchels. He collected the armor in a bundle, and examined his borrowed sword. The demonic ichor that had stained it had evaporated just like the dretch. Too bad he couldn’t as easily clean himself. He was covered in mud and blood. Probably not the best appearance to present when he showed up at Airspur’s gates.

He looked around and spied standing water on the other side of the hollow that wasn’t choked in mud and bodies.

Demascus walked to the rain pool, removing his borrowed long coat and shirt. He kneeled at the water’s edge to wash, and froze.

His reflection in the water stared back at him.

He was tall and slender, and his skin was pale. His hair was a shock of white. Tattoos like ashes leftover from a fire traced a single connected, abstract pattern from his shoulders all the way down to his index and middle finger on each hand. It seemed like the design continued across his back, but he couldn’t angle himself properly to see.

He blinked. Did he know this face? Maybe. The stark coloration and designs on his skin were similar to a genasi’s only in vague terms. And genasi didn’t have hair, unless crystal spikes and crests counted.

He ran his hands through his own generous locks, and wondered at its hue. It wasn’t simply white. More like …

“The light that transfixes the hearts of betrayers,” he muttered. Another memory! From where or when, he couldn’t say, but he had a feeling it was something someone had once told him.

He studied his own image awhile longer, examining his profile from the left and then the right. It was a fine face, and graceful. It was possible he was biased.

Demascus snorted, and washed the mud and genasi blood from his skin and clothing. For someone who was apparently a swordsman, his skin was remarkably free of scars. He couldn’t find a single mark to commemorate past conflicts. Even the terrible stomach wound from his second vision had left not the tiniest line or pucker on his skin. It didn’t make any sense.

Unless … was he a supernaturally fast healer? He reached up and touched his temple where the dretch had raked him—Ouch! He sucked in a breath.

It wasn’t bleeding freely anymore, but it certainly wasn’t closing in any sort of hurry. He returned to washing.

When he was mostly clean, he dressed once more, in the clean smallclothes and the leather armor he’d liberated. He feared the armor would prove inadequate for his tall frame, but the material relaxed as he pulled it on, until it fit him just right. Some minor enchantment lay in its stitching. That explained why it had fared better than every other garment amidst the carnage.

Demascus shrugged back into his coat and slung his packed satchels of salvage over his shoulder. He sheathed the sword at his belt, referred to the map one final time, then packed it up with the rest of his new-claimed belongings.

Demascus departed the altar and stone ring. He hiked several paces up the slope, stepping around boulders, ducking under low-hanging branches, and getting his long coat briefly snagged in a stand of prickly bushes. Then he paused.

He turned to gaze back at where he’d awakened.

Sans most of his memory, the shrine and its surrounding stones inscribed with animals encompassed the entirety of his world. He didn’t want to leave it behind, corpse heap, vanished demons, and all. It was all he could claim with certainty. Departing might mean he’d never see it again. And, what if, once he topped the rise ahead of him, the shrine slipped entirely from his mind, just as his life before he’d woken there had done?

Another thought occurred to him. What if it all came back to him … but he discovered a host of memories akin to the one where he strangled the priest? What if he proved to be some kind of insane murderer?

“A tangled skein our fears weave,” he muttered. There was no way to know. Just as there was also no way to know if one of the floating earthmotes above might choose the next moment to hurtle out of the sky and crush him. Nothing was certain. Best just to nod, and see what came next.

He counted the pillars, three separate times, to fix them in his mind. By the time he verified their number was twelve, he found the resolve to continue on his way.

“Good-bye, old stones.”

CHAPTER THREE

CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANÛL
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

A HAND FELL ON DEMASCUS’S SHOULDER. HE LOOKED around into angry eyes the color of heated bronze. A flicker of flames seemed to dance on the man’s brow. A firesoul genasi.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” said the genasi. The odor of liquor stung his breath.

“Oh, wonderful,” Demascus muttered.

He hadn’t been in Airspur for an hour and already he’d managed to accidentally walk himself into the worst part of town. He’d hoped, upon entering the marvelous city built on the walls of facing cliffs, that his feet would know where to go, even if his mind didn’t consciously remember. Instead he’d wandered the inhabited cliff faces and flying bridges like someone stupid with sleep or drugs.

A handful of people stood behind the belligerent firesoul. They looked equally fortified with liquid courage and spoiling for a fight. They’d apparently spilled out of the tavern facing the plaza called the Lantern Inn.

“Did you hear what I said?” the genasi yelled in his face.

Demascus said, “Um, what do you mean, I shouldn’t be here? The streets are public—”

The genasi’s grip tightened and he said, “I know your kind, sellsword. Looking down at common folks, thinking you’re better than us. I want you gone from here! Those who wear the red ain’t welcome in this neighborhood. Scuttle back to your damn Motherhouse.”

Demascus shrugged out of the firesoul’s grip and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m no sellsword, and I don’t want trouble.”

Silence greeted his declaration, except for the sound of falling liquid in the fountain at the plaza’s center, which caught a torrent of water falling from the lip of an overhanging earthmote.

The genasi sneered. “Too bad. Because—”

“What’s going on out here, Garth?” a new voice interjected.

A man—a human, not a genasi—emerged from a curio shop opposite the Lantern. He was overweight, and his blue surcoat strained against a gold chain belt. His hair was black with a touch of silver at the ears, and ink stained his fingertips. A hand crossbow of peculiar design rode one hip.

The firesoul rounded on the shop owner and said, “None of your business, Chant. Get out of here, or you’ll get the same lesson as this dimskull!”

The man, evidently called Chant, approached until he was only a pace from the genasi. He said, “I’m not going anywhere, Garth. Especially not at the behest of morons in their cups like you. Why don’t you clear out of here before the peacemakers notice and send a detachment?”

The genasi spit from the corner of his mouth, made as if to turn away, but instead punched the shop owner across the chin. Chant’s head jerked. His eyes rolled up in his head as he collapsed.

The onlookers roared their surprise and approval.

“Burning dominions,” cursed Demascus as he retreated a step to draw his blade, fighting his atavistic urge to draw a much longer sword that didn’t exist. As he fumbled with his weapon, his toe caught a loose cobble in the street. He failed to draw, stumbled, and only managed to avoid pitching onto his face by grabbing Garth.

Garth elbowed him in the ribs. Demascus gasped and let go, backpedaling until his calves touched the wide fountain. The overweight human who’d tried to warn off Demascus’s assailants groaned from where he lay on the cobbles.

The handful of watching Lantern patrons were emboldened by the firesoul’s antics and shambled closer.

“I don’t want trouble,” Demascus said again, but only because it seemed the sort of thing to say. Part of him did want trouble …

Still, his odds of winning a fight with so many were poor. They believed he was part of some group that paraded around in red leather jackets, a group they obviously didn’t think too highly of. “I don’t know who you think I am, I just found this coat.”

Garth laughed, “Nice try, but who’d be shtuu …” He stopped, then continued, taking care to enunciate his words instead of drunkenly slur them, “Who’d be stupid enough to wear the red down here, if he wasn’t a member of the Firestorm Cabal?”

Apparently Demascus would be that stupid.

The rabble advanced. A couple picked up stones. His hand found the hilt of his sword, and the crowd howled like a beast in response.

It reminded him of …

A memory fell from nowhere, swamping his senses. He was standing on a gray field of barren rock. He was arrayed in a panoply of silver armor. Golden radiance leaked from a wide metallic band around one finger that contained a single twist. A gargantuan sword with divided red and white runes vibrated in his hands, eager to taste the flesh of the horde advancing upon him. A pale length of fabric was wrapped around the sword’s hilt—the scarf! Trinkets of some sort dangled from tight braids in his hair.

Shambling corpses, skeletons, and crawling, hopping, slithering bits of animated flesh surrounded him, advancing. He pointed the sword tip high and bellowed, “Look upon your end, foul creatures! Flee back to the shadows forever!”

The runes on his sword suddenly flashed with a fury brighter than the sun, a purifying light that washed across the advancing mass like a tsunami rolling over a coastal village.

He blinked, and found himself back in the plaza. He strove to hold onto the memory—

And lost it when a hurled tankard shattered on the curve of the catchment fountain next to his head.

Demascus’s borrowed sword was out of its scabbard in the next instant. It was a poor replacement for the rune-scribed artifact of his vision. But something of his memory remained with him. A feeling. A … knowing.

He swept the blade out in an arc as resonant syllables fell from his lips. The sword left a wake of swirling, golden light. The glow hung in the air like an unfurling curtain. The faint impression of runes flickered across the length of the blade, mere ghosts to those on the greatsword of the memory fragment.

The firesoul snarled, “A pretty twinkle ain’t going to save your pale hide.” He charged.

When Garth entered the lingering sword wake, a flash of lightning-bright energy stabbed him multiple times. Garth made an odd sort of “Unk!” noise, then fell to the ground. The light sparked and skittered across the firesoul’s body for several heartbeats. Smoke curled up from fresh burns in his clothing.

Garth groaned again, but stayed down. The glow in the air faded and the runes on his blade dissipated.

Demascus raised his eyes to the others. He felt as surprised as they looked.

No one moved. Demascus took advantage of the pause to move to Chant and help the man to his feet.

The shop owner touched his cheek where Garth had hit him, wincing.

Then Chant yelled, “All right, fun’s over. Leave, or maybe all you will find out what that’s like.” He pointed at the recumbent Garth.

The throng grumbled and and glared, but they dispersed. Demascus was partly relieved and partly … disappointed. Something in him silently urged the Lantern patrons to make the wrong choice and fight! Except that was crazy, he thought. He wasn’t entirely clear on the effect he’d called up, or if he could do it again. He took a deep breath and sheathed his sword.

“Thanks,” he said to the human.

“You’re welcome. I thought some of Raneger’s goons were out here stirring things up. Raneger didn’t send you, did he?”

“Uh. No, I don’t who that is. I was just wandering through …”

The man started to say something else, then his eyes widened. He said, “Hold on, I remember you!”

Sudden hope made Demascus’s heart beat faster. “You do?”

“Of course! You’re Denarus, right? No, that’s not it … You’re … Demascus! That’s it, isn’t it? Of course it is!”

“I think … yes, I’m Demascus. And you’re Chant? You know me?” His veil of anxiety parted. Finally, he would get some answers.

The man laughed. He said, “No need to be coy. When I give my word, I follow through. Usually.”

Demascus studied the human. But no—even with a name, the large frame didn’t seem the least familiar.

“Now that you’re here, even as amazingly late as you are, I can only assume it’s to take care of business. This way.” Chant motioned for Demascus to follow him into his shop.

The sign over the door read “Pawn & Curio.”

The shop’s display window revealed a gold-plated hunting horn, playing cards depicting dragons, several daggers and swords, a spyglass, and more oddments, all beneath a layer of dust years thick.

He followed Chant inside.

The smell of books and metal polish assaulted his nose. Shelves stuffed with musical instruments, weapons, cookware, and a hundred other things made the small space even closer. A single counter hugged the back wall, and stairs so steep they nearly constituted a ladder led up into a loft.

I’ve been here before …

A large cat popped up from behind the counter. Its fur was a ragged mix of white, orange, and gray. It glanced at Demascus disinterestedly, then meowed at the shop owner. The sound was loud and strident. Chant petted the cat’s head.

The animal leaned into the hand and loosed a rumbling purr.

The pawnbroker said, “I still have what you gave me. I kept it safe all this time, like we agreed.”

“Oh, that’s good. Good news …” Demascus was at a loss. He didn’t want to reveal the gaping hole in his memory, either purposefully or accidentally, at least not until he knew a little more about his situation, and about the pawnbroker. Though the way Chant had tried to break up the fight outside suggested he was a stand-up sort of fellow.

“You’re here to retrieve it?” asked Chant. “Waukeen’s empty purse, stupid even to ask, of course you are.” Then, “Get down, Fable; we have a guest!”

The man shooed the cat, but the feline sitting on the display case stubbornly refused to budge. His cheek twitched in a half smile, then he squatted down to rummage beneath the counter.

At length the pawnbroker straightened. He was holding a scarf. A long, pale scarf that resembled an unraveled scroll of exceptional length.

Damascus’s stomach dropped. The scarf was the murder weapon of his vision. It embodied the one memory he didn’t want back. He croaked, “Why do you have this?”

The cat, apparently called Fable, hunkered lower, as if preparing to jump at one end of the wrap.

Chant gave him an odd look, but decided to play along. He said, “You paid me to keep it for you; said you’d be back for it either in a couple days or in a year, two at the outside. That was four years ago. You’re lucky I didn’t sell it off.”

“Four years!” It felt like someone caught him with a punch to the stomach.

“Yeah, just about, give or take a few tendays.”

Demascus’s eyes were pinned on the pale length of fabric. Part of him wanted to snatch it from Chant. Another part wanted to run from the evidence of his crime. And what had he been doing during the last four years? His mind was like a snowy plain, hiding everything beneath a cold white blanket.

“Are you all right?”

Demascus realized he’d been standing slack-jawed. He closed his mouth with a click of teeth.

“Ah, yes. I didn’t think I’d ever see this again …”

“You paid me to hold it. Which means it was safe, just like … Wait, did someone say something? What did they say? Was it Raneger?” Chant emphasized his questions with expansive gestures, and the loose end of the scarf swayed back and forth, following the man’s hands. Fable finally made her move and leaped for one end, missing it only by a hairsbreadth.

“Careful!” Demascus said.

“Hmm?” The pawnbroker finally noticed the cat’s antics. He wrapped the loose ends up and said, “You didn’t answer me. Has someone been spreading rumors about me?”

“No, nothing like that. I told you before, I don’t know anyone named Raneger. I’m sorry, I’ve had a long day like you wouldn’t believe, and I’ve … been sick.”

Demascus debated coming clean with the pawnbroker, who obviously remembered him. The man could be the key to all his lost memory. He wanted to tell someone, to relieve the burden of his plight.

On the other hand, merely because the man knew him from a past business dealing didn’t make him an ideal confidant.

Chant said, “Well, do you want this thing or not?”

“I do! I just …” He didn’t say that the last time he remembered touching it, he was strangling someone with it. “Say, I’ve got an idea. Since you’re closing up, what do you say to heading over to that inn across the way, the Lantern, for dinner and ale? My way to say thanks for holding onto my property for so long.”

The man pursed his lips, considering.

Demascus said, “Not to mention that since I’ve been … sick, I’ve fallen somewhat behind on current events. I need someone willing to answer a few questions for me.”

A grin split the pawnbroker’s face. “My specialty! If something’s going on in Airspur, I know it, or can find it out. For the right price of course.”

“I’ve got coin to spare,” said Demascus, patting the satchel containing all the silver and gold coins he’d looted from the fallen.

“Well, I am hungry. It takes a lot of effort to run a business like mine.” Chant ran his free hand over the bulge of his stomach. “It’s a deal. Let’s go. I hear the Lantern is roasting up bluestream squid tonight. One of my favorites.”

The pawnbroker removed a wooden dish from a cupboard. He set it on the floor, and Fable jumped down. She immediately began chowing down on the bowl’s contents as if she hadn’t eaten in a tenday. The man gave the cat one more stroke, then straightened. His other hand still held the balled-up fabric.

Chant said, “Take this already! For someone so concerned about keeping it safe, you’re sure reluctant to get it back.”

Demascus took the scarf. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger; it was parchment smooth, and almost warm to the touch. It was the one from his vision! The mere touch of the fabric transmitted a feeling of satisfaction and relief through him.

“Let’s go, I’m hungry,” said Chant, and firmly pushed Demascus out into the street.

Chant turned to lock the the shop door, and for a moment, the splash of the water falling into the plaza fountain catchment was drowned out by the jangle of keys. They walked across the plaza, but Demascus paid no attention. He was utterly absorbed in what he held. The weave seemed finer than silk, but not slippery. It shimmered in the lamplight of the plaza, as if words might be hidden just beneath the surface.

A flicker of movement overhead was all the warning Demascus had. The next thing he knew, the scarf was torn from his grip.

“Thief!” yelled Chant, pointing.

A silver-skinned woman in a black mask spun up through the air, light as a cloud, receding. Demascus’s scarf made the pattern of the whirlwind as it swirled in her wake.

CHAPTER FOUR

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

RILTANA BOUNDED FROM WALL TO ROOFTOP, FROM FLOATING mote to suspension bridge, and from stone spire to empty air itself. The gossamer breeze swept her upward, all the way to her favorite look-over point on the northern cliff wall. The tempest in her soul called to the wind, and wind answered.

She laughed, and clutched her prize to her chest.

Finally, she had the damn scarf.

Her mark had looked as strange as he’d been described, with his skin nearly the color of chalk. His narrow face had looked at her with surprise so complete she laughed again.

She had not been told the man named Demascus was a member of the Firestorm Cabal. Usually the Cabal didn’t accept humans into their ranks, but her mark’s white hair showed that at the very least he wasn’t genasi. Cabal members had gulled most of Airspur with their crap about being noble vigilante defenders of the city. What a joke. She, at least, was wise to their lies.

And now one liar was light one scarf. She studied the length of fabric, wondering at its significance.

Riltana’s client, a hooded fellow with carrion breath, had specified to the hour when she could expect to see the white-haired man leave the pawnshop. Quite a prediction to make, considering it had been made about four years ago.

She’d sniggered when her client had first laid out the timeline for the job, thinking it was a joke. In response, the hooded man hissed. Apparently he wasn’t someone who made jokes.

Riltana had asked why, if Demascus was to pick up the scarf in the pawnshop, she couldn’t just go into the shop right then and steal it; why wait? Her client hissed again, louder and with more resonance than before. Not really the best explanation, but she’d decided not to press the issue.

Four years was a long time for even the best divination to go awry, but she’d been happy to accept the generous retainer. It provided a sum of coins large enough to ensure the lease on her loft for three full years plus change.

And today she’d shown up several hours before the specified time, crouching over the shop to await the appointed hour. The promised payoff had been too sweet to not see the commission through to the end.

Excitement tingled through her when she’d recognized her mark in the dingy courtyard. She’d had a moment of worry when drunks from the pub had intruded. She’d almost intervened then, but in the end she hadn’t had to. She watched him enter the shop following the fat human.

When he’d exited, he’d produced an appropriately shocked expression when she’d plucked the pale length from his hands. Shocked, and a little sad.

She smiled down on the wrap in her hands, then sniffed it; it smelled like parchment and library glue. Its knit was fine, but pliable. Probably woven with enchantment. Of what sort? She twisted the scarf and gently pulled at its length. Probably it contained a minor glamor that protected its wearer from cold, as was fashionable among the well-to-do. Whatever its nature, the thing was valuable to her client, which made it valuable to her.

To claim her payoff, she was to rendezvous with the hooded man just after midnight at the Sepulcher.

Once the Sepulcher had been the lair of goblins and orcs, before they were driven out by genasi settlers. Then it became home to shifty deals best made as far as possible from official notice.

She considered making her way to the meeting immediately; it wasn’t an easy place to reach, and required some time to navigate its approach.

But no. She’d been out for half the day, anticipating and preparing just the right place to fleece her target, then get away clean among the hanging earthmotes crowded with city architecture. She could use some down time. Besides, maybe today was the day Carmenere would return …

Riltana rolled the scarf into a ball. Her slim leather gloves tingled, and the bundle fell into the pocket dimension the gloves were keyed to. They were the perfect tool for keeping things safe. And, of course, the perfect tool for a thief as accomplished as herself.

She pulled off her mask, reached into the nothing again, and switched the mask for the signature blue and white robe of the Airsteppers Guild. She’d discovered long ago that city dwellers mostly ignored the scores of messengers bounding up and down Airspur’s cliff levels, whereas her stylish black bodysuit and mask would draw attention in full light. It’s easier to be invisible by blending in than by trying to physically hide.

Riltana pulled on the robe. Then she leaped into empty air, arms and legs wide as she plunged toward the bay that lay between the cliffs far below. Her left hand caught the pliant support wire of a suspension bridge that hung between two earthmotes, and her trajectory snapped outward, away from the cliff. She spun through the air, and came down easily on a roof of the next lower mass of drifting city, already running.

She dashed across rooftops, leaped gaps between buildings with impunity, and swung between motes, disdaining the city streets and bridges. She finally came to rest on a spire overlooking the Plaza of Leaping Fountains.

The open square hosted a dozen fancifully carved sculptures spouting water into the night air, which caught the light of hundreds of surrounding lamps that spiraled away from the square along the surrounding walkways. Revelers drifted along the cobbles touring the glittering theaters, cafés, shops, taverns, and other entertainments lining the streets. Many were singing, laughing, and sipping spirits shipped from exotic locales north and west of the Sea of Fallen Stars.

The Plaza of Leaping Fountains occupied a massive citymote that served as the central causeway between the facing cliffs. If something of note happened in the city, it frequently occurred at the Plaza. Which was why Riltana spent so much every month to secure her dwelling on it.

She jumped. Touching down only on the tops of iron lamp enclosures and roof tiles, Riltana traversed a quarter of the length of the citymote in a dozen heartbeats. Her path ended on the slanting roof of Barnard’s Tomes and Charms. A ladder ascended the side of the building from street level, but Riltana couldn’t even remember the last time she’d used it.

Her loft, which she rented from Barnard, was a large renovated attic that once stored a mishmash of moldering tomes. Riltana convinced Barnard a far better use of the space would be as an apartment, once it was cleaned up and refurbished with proper amenities. Barnard agreed, and spent some serious coin making the loft into a modern and comfortable dwelling.

Then he’d happily charged her an arm and a leg for the rent. Of course, he probably could have charged some noble’s son double what he asked her. After all, wasn’t the place perfect?

Riltana unlocked the oak panel door and entered her home.

Tiny wisplights woke to her presence, revealing a living space of hardwood floors, high ceilings, and overstuffed chairs scattered around a fireplace. It was perfect, save for one glaring absence.

Carmenere wasn’t there.

Riltana walked to the tiled table that rested along one wall of the modest “great” room. The message she’d scrawled for Carmenere remained as she’d left it eight hours earlier. As had all the messages she’d penned for Carmenere over the last three months. All unread, and tossed into a drawer.

It was stupid to keep writing them. Carmenere was never coming back.

Riltana sighed and brushed the last note into the same cavity where all the previous pleas to lost opportunity waited in the dark. When she’d started writing them, they’d given her some measure of relief. Each one was like casting away a stone laden with sadness. Eventually, she thought, her burden of sorrow would be lightened.

But months had passed, and her unhappiness seemed just as sharp as ever. She wondered if the daily scrawl had become its own burden. Had the notes transformed from something therapeutic into a behavior that prevented her from moving on?

She uncorked a half-full bottle of red wine and poured a generous amount into a crystal goblet. She dropped into a high-backed chair and sipped. Not bad, especially for a bottle that’d been open for three days already. But she’d better finish it soon before it turned; she hated to waste good wine.

Riltana swirled the glass. Images of her and Carmenere sharing drinks in her loft crowded around, as they always did. No one could laugh as loud as Carmenere, or make Riltana laugh back.

She had no one to blame but herself. She grimaced, wondering at her idiocy for the thousandth time.

Ego and pride has a price: loneliness.

Riltana downed her glass, stood, and snatched up a quill. She quickly dashed a new message to Carmenere, telling her how she was going to meet a client in the Sepulcher for a lucrative payment for services rendered. Thinking about the coin that would soon cross her palms gave her a jolt of satisfaction.

Looking forward to such a large payout was nearly enough to make her forget her troubles. Nearly … but not quite. But for now it would have to do.

Riltana changed back to her black jumpsuit and mask, and swept out of the loft.

The night was farther along, but the Plaza remained active. She sniffed the evening air, redolent with smoke and sea water, then raced across the roofs toward her destination.

The Sepulcher was concealed beneath Akanawater Falls, which surged into Airspur at the city’s westernmost limit. Observation points along the facing cliffs offered city dwellers and visitors alike one of the most beautiful sights in all Faerûn; so claimed a group of ebullient traders from Veltalar she’d once overheard. She supposed that by daylight the crystalline water crashing down the series of stony steps was impressive, especially when coupled with the body-shaking thunder that accompanied the panorama.

By night, the falls were not so beautiful; they were a roaring darkness of watery mouths leading to vortices capable of pulling a windsoul to her death by drowning if she wasn’t careful.

Many ne’er-do-wells in Airspur also knew the falls hid an entrance to an elaborate underground labyrinth that led to the Sepulcher. The Sepulcher hosted occasional illegal deals and chancy trades too dangerous to occur anywhere else. However, to reach the Sepulcher, one had to dive beneath the falls and swim past the vortices. Even then, brute strength or agile skill wasn’t always enough to win free of the grasping currents.

Riltana wondered how many would-be thieves had lost their lives trying that route. It was kind of a test; were you stupid enough to dive beneath the falls, or think twice? Would criminal masterminds subject themselves to such a risky path every time they wanted to unload a shipment of haepthum? No, of course not. Common sense dictated there had to be a way into the labyrinth that didn’t involve rushing water.

She eventually reached the alley she sought, midway up a switchback on Airspur’s north cliff face. A secret door concealed behind stacked flagstones provided entry into a dank cellar. Long abandoned, the cellar’s sole purpose was as a way in, one of three Riltana knew about, into the old tunnels that wound through darkness behind the cliff.

She snapped her fingers and produced a sunrod. She shook it, and yellow light spilled from its translucent length. Holding it before her, she entered Airspur’s labyrinth.

A complex of twisting tunnels and dead-end caves riddled Airspur’s cliffs. Some were natural caves and corridors, but others were obviously remnant delvings from a previous age, which included the sprawling Catacombs. The Catacombs had housed the Chessentan dead for centuries, and for fifty-plus years, genasi bones too.

Riltana detoured around the cemetery tunnels, which were lightly guarded by a detachment of peacemakers. She was looking for the farthest reaches of that expanse, some of which had been converted into malodorous routes for sewer runoff, despite that the ultimate destination of most of the black corridors remained unknown. Diverting the effluvia underground saved the bay between the cliffs from being the depository of the city’s waste.

Riltana had heard some of the corridors eventually opened into wider subterranean spaces. Crystal caverns, sunless seas, and fungus forests hung with sentient, carnivorous vines. She’d always assumed the stories were just that; tales told by thieves to frighten each other. Still, as she walked the tunnel, ignoring the many lesser ways and cave mouths that gave off the main passage, she wondered.

She passed one of the tunnels converted to sewer flow. The rancid, thick fluid rushed in a series of miniature brown rapids across her path. The odor of chamber pot was no less disgusting despite the fact that she’d been expecting it.

She continued onward for nearly another half hour, until she heard the muffled thunder of the Akanawater Falls vibrating through the rock. Had she been on the surface, the moiling roar might have deafened her. Down there, it was merely oppressive. She was close.

A dozen paces farther, and the dank smell of rotting fish made itself known. It overlaid the aroma of sewer … mostly. Another light, brighter than her own, glowed ahead. She doused her sunrod and stowed it with a pass of her gloves, then moved forward.

Riltana paused at the entrance of a large chamber. Several openings, including a few on the ceiling, provided entry into a cavern. The smell and humid air filled her mouth with a bitter tang. She stifled an urge to gag.

The light emanated from a crust of fungi coating the walls and ceiling of the cavity. By the horizontal lines staining the wall, it was obvious that the cavern had spent much of its past history partly and even completely submerged.

It was the Sepulcher. She’d only been there a few times before, once to fence an astral diamond, and another time to deliver a parcel. That second time she’d become lost on her way out, and had decided to avoid the place thereafter.

Then Kalkan had contracted her. Her earlier meeting with him had been in a café on the south face. She hadn’t been thrilled with the plan of handing over the scarf in the Sepulcher, but the coin was too good to squelch the deal.

Riltana entered the chamber, and saw several people had preceded her.

A brown-skinned man played alone at dice. A tiefling woman was engrossed in each throw the man made, her eyes squinting in concentration. And … orcs! Two orcs loitered along the far wall, apparently bickering over the contents of a ratty bag.

She’d seen orcs, of course, but hadn’t ever seen the beastly humanoids up close before. With their overlarge mouths, tusks, and grisly trophies dangling from their armor, they seemed like ghastly, ferocious parodies of true people.

She saw no sign of her original foul-breathed employer.

The man, an earthsoul, glanced up and saw her.

Riltana affected a jaunty wave. “I’m here to see someone,” she said.

Everyone turned and stared at her. The tiefling woman grinned.

The silence stretched, and Riltana’s stomach sank.

She said, “Do you know who I’m talking about? Did someone in a hood send you to meet me, or are you all here for some purpose of your own?”

Great. Her client had skipped out. Something must have happened to him in the last four years, and—

“Yeah,” said the earthsoul, whose szuldar lines somehow managed to appear dank as they curled across his skin. “We’re here to meet someone, on behalf of our employer. You must be the thief with the parcel.”

The tiefling woman laughed. It was the laugh of an imbecile, and not a friendly one.

“Perfect!” said Riltana, forcing confidence into her tone, choosing to ignore the appellation; she hated being called a thief.

She continued, “Hand over the coin I was promised, and the package I was hired to deliver is all yours.”

A sound behind Riltana made her glance back. Oh, this was getting better and better; a third orc had emerged from a side passage and stood in her exit tunnel.

Again the idiot laugh.

“Will you shut it?” Riltana snapped at the tiefling.

The orcs near the wall allowed their guttural argument to lapse, and fixed their hungry eyes upon her. One shuffled closer.

Riltana raised one hand and said, “All right you freaks, everyone stay where they are, or I’m gone, and your boss is out one fashion accessory.”

A familiar voice sounded from above, “Don’t be hasty, Riltana. My hired hands are overeager, is all.”

Riltana glanced up and saw that one of the openings to the cavern, no more than a hole in the ceiling really, was occluded by the shape of a man. A man in a hood.

“Is that you, Kalkan?”

“Indeed. Now—did you meet the pale-skinned fellow I hired you to find? Did you take Demascus’s Veil?”

“Yeah, I met Demascus. Briefly. Do you have my payoff?

Kalkan held up a satchel and shook it. The sound of coins clinking was evident even over the background rumble of the Akanawater Falls.

The hooded man said, “And the Veil; let me see it. I wouldn’t want to be swindled.”

The tiefling chortled. Something was definitely not right with her.

Riltana ignored the woman and produced the scarf from glovespace with a hedge-wizard’s flourish. “See?”

The man hunched over the hole to stare at the length of fabric, then nodded.

Riltana hid the scarf away again with a snap. She said, “It’s yours once that satchel purse is slung over my shoulder. Until then, I’ve banished the … what’d you call it, the veil? I’ve put it in a place only I can access.”

The man said, “Clever. But ultimately irrelevant. You see, Riltana, I don’t really want the wrap; my aim was only to deprive Demascus of it at the appointed time.”

“Uh … What? I don’t understand.”

“Your understanding isn’t required. What is required is your eternal silence.”

Son of a piss-pickled leech. The deal had gone bad.

Riltana flipped up and backward, spinning over the head of the third orc she’d guessed was probably closing in on her. She swept out her short sword even as she landed and stuck the orc in the kidney. It gurgled and collapsed.

A fourth orc she hadn’t anticipated emerged from behind a boulder and shoved her. She stumbled back toward the cavern’s center, tripping on the feebly moving body of the creature she’d just dispatched. She landed on her side. Impact slapped through her and made her lose her breath.

The tiefling woman crowed, and tried to kick Riltana in the face.

She grabbed the foot, twisted and pushed. The tiefling hopped backward, directly into her advancing earthsoul ally, causing a minor pileup.

Riltana spun off the ground and into her element. The air bore her up over the heads of her foes. Time to go!

She arrowed toward the aperture in the ceiling where Kalkan watched the proceedings, short sword straight over her head. Why deal with the hired help if she didn’t have to? She’d toss the double-crossing bastard down that stinking spy hole—

Kalkan said, “I think not,” as he raised a gloved hand. The world seemed to twist. Fire woke behind Riltana’s brow, and the wind let her go.

She spiraled back toward the cave floor, toward the waiting swords, axes, and daggers of her client’s goons.

“You quailing coward!” she screamed, the pain in her head fueling a red anger that competed with the fear burrowing in her gut.

Riltana ducked an orc axe that nearly intersected her downward trajectory. Then she touched down, using the earthsoul’s head as a step, and bounded over and away from the group in a high arc.

She landed near the far cave wall, her breath coming quick. In her haste to put some distance between herself and the massed might of the mercenaries, she’d jumped away from the exit. Her foes lay directly between her and easy escape.

An orc’s axe toss drew sparks from the stone next to her head. She returned the favor; in a single practiced motion she drew one of the daggers sheathed in her clothing and threw. Her aim proved more accurate. Another orc went down, that one grasping vainly at a dagger protruding from his eye.

Riltana tested the air, and found it unwilling to bear her again so soon. “Bugger!” The temperamental nature of the wind really pissed her off sometimes.

The sellswords rushed her, spreading out in a rough curved line to prevent her from slipping around them.

She braced herself, knees bent and sword tip weaving, ready to slip past a loose defense and stab whoever proved stupid enough to reach her first.

Predictably, it was the tiefling.

Riltana caught the angled cut of the woman’s long sword on her blade, shuffling away from the angle of attack as she did so. Then she spun in place, kicking out with the back of her left foot, and smashed the idiot grin from her foe’s face with her lashing heel. The tiefling collapsed on the floor like a sack of potatoes. That was three down.

“Hold!” thundered a voice from above.

The earthsoul and remaining orcs paused to look up at their employer.

Had her client lied when he said he didn’t really want the scarf? Maybe he was having second thoughts about trying to take it instead of paying her. She’d been lucky so far, and maybe he worried her luck would hold long enough for her to dispatch the remaining three.

Her gut urged her to run while the others were distracted, but the promise of that fat coin purse made her linger.

“You’re a poor substitute for real muscle,” the hooded man said, even as he backed out of sight.

“We’re just warming up!” the earthsoul yelled up at the gap.

“I doubt it,” came the reply, muffled by the intervening rock lip. “At this rate, she’ll kill you before I reveal my surprise.”

Surprise? That was enough for Riltana. She bolted, trying to dash past the largest gap in the skirmish line her enemies formed, between the earthsoul and a remaining orc.

But the orc stepped into her path, forcing her to pause to defend against a whistling axe strike.

The sound of metal on metal screeched from above.

The rumble of the Akanawater suddenly redoubled.

The earthsoul’s eyes went wide. He screamed, “Run!” He dropped his hammer as he dashed full out toward the far wall. The orcs looked confused but chased after their leader.

Riltana gasped, “Shit, shit, shit …” as she dashed after the earthsoul in turn.

A moist wind preceded the foaming wave that smashed into the chamber from one of the other openings. It caught the earthsoul and orcs in a twinkling, knocking them from their feet, and dragging them down a circular hole in the floor. Their screams were lost in the water’s roar.

Riltana hurdled the wave front, and this time the wind suffered to catch her before she dropped back into the surge. “Yes!”

She glided higher, and the flood’s white-water face followed; the room was swiftly filling.

She made for her client’s spy hole, which was empty. Maybe she could flash up and through before he realized she had escaped the initial surge, and before the air’s brief attention and grip faded.

Her client’s silhouette lurched into view. Riltana saw the hint of sharp white teeth flashing in the concealing darkness of his hood, just before an iron cover slammed down over the hole. The sound of a steel rod sliding into place scratched at her ears.

She would have screamed, but the rising water caught her feet. She sucked in a breath, a heartbeat before a violent current yanked her into the water.

Riltana was pulled under and flushed down the drowned cavity in the floor.

CHAPTER FIVE

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THE SPECTACLE OF DEMASCUS’S STOLEN SCARF DREW THE attention of nearby eyes only for a moment before people drifted back to their own concerns. As some shops shuttered, others opened for the night crowd, including a few smaller eateries and theaters. Their windows were haloed with vapor and candlelight.

Chant Morven watched the pale man, curious to see what he’d do. Demascus stood staring at the point in the sky where the the aerial thief had slipped over the rim of a higher earthmote, his mouth slightly open in shock.

“Well, isn’t that something?” said Chant, and frowned. He wondered if he had any liability in what he’d just witnessed. It’d been his job to see the scarf safe for the last four years. Seeing it stolen right before his eyes, despite that he’d handed it and his responsibility over to its rightful owner … well, he needed to think about it.

Demascus slowly turned and gazed at Chant. The expression on the man’s face was one of shock. His mouth worked, but no sounds emerged.

“Hey, are you all right?” Chant had seen that look before, but usually only on people who’d just been stabbed in a lung.

“I’m not all right. I need … that scarf.”

“Was it a memento?”

“I’d … hoped it would prove so.”

What’s that supposed to mean? Chant studied Demascus, but the man seemed out of words, lost at sea. He noticed again, as he had four years earlier, the odd designs that marked the back of Demascus’s hands, like the gray roots of something far bigger concealed beneath his clothes. He suddenly wondered if they were not tattoos at all, as he’d supposed all along, but markings more integral to the man’s body.

Chant shifted his weight. He should walk away. He’d already been punched in the face for trying to break up the rabble in front of his shop. He had enough troubles of his own to deal with. His next payment to Raneger was overdue again, and the question about what he was going to do about his son Jaul was never far from him.

But Demascus looked as if he was being pushed under water by his situation. It was a feeling the pawnbroker could relate to. And that lingering feeling of responsibility toward the wrap he’d held for so long was an unfamiliar barb that kept poking him.

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could call them back. He said, “Remember I told you I have a sideline in finding secrets around the city? I can find out who that thief was, maybe even find out what neighborhood she normally works; I’d have recognized her if she was based around here.”

An expression of gratitude gradually warmed Demascus’s features.

“That … Yes. I need that scarf.”

“So I gather. And I need interesting distractions to keep boredom at bay. Still interested in heading over to the Lantern?” Chant gestured toward the tavern. At the thought of food, his expansive gut rumbled.

Demascus’s chest swelled as if in preparation for a scream. But then he let it out and nodded. He said, “Yes, let’s do that. I can’t remember the last time I ate.”

Chant led Demascus into the boisterous establishment.

The aroma of garlic and seared squid settled over him. Suddenly, he knew that despite everything else, coming to the Lantern had been the right choice.

They sat near the wall. Chant asked the barkeep to bring them each a plate of bluestream squid and spiced rolls. And ale.

He let his gaze wander the establishment. He was very happy to note that Garth was nowhere to be seen. His cronies had dragged him out of the plaza, but apparently not back to the Lantern. Then he saw Mielka.

“Excuse me a moment, will you?” he said.

“Of course,” replied Demascus, who seemed in better spirits already.

The pawnbroker motioned to a short woman wearing a dull green stormcloak. She came over and leaned close. He explained in a loud whisper what he wanted. At one point she glanced disinterestedly at Demascus as Chant continued whispering. Finally she nodded, and he passed the woman a couple coins. She made a beeline for the exit.

Chant returned his attention to Demascus. Just in time to see the man cover his face with his hands.

“Hey, none of that now, we’ve got beer coming.”

Demascus sighed, but let his hands drop.

“That was Meilka,” Chant explained. “She does odd jobs for me. I gave her a description of the thief who took your wrap. With any luck, we’ll know something in a day or two.”

“Really?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Before Demascus could offer his opinion one way or another, two pints of bitter ale landed on their table, courtesy of the returning barkeep. Chant slid one over to Demascus.

He raised his mug, heavy with sloshing fluid, and said, “To finding out who took your wrap!”

Demascus clinked his mug with Chant’s.

Chant drank. The ale was yeasty and sharp, and cooler than the surrounding air. It tasted slightly of cinnamon. As far as Chant was concerned, it was the best in Airspur. By the approving look on his companion’s face, Demascus agreed.

“Better?” said Chant. “Good.” Chant felt better too. It was easier to push his own plight aside. The familiarity of his hand curled around the handle of the mug, and the kindling warmth in his stomach provided its own special comfort, if not taken too far.

When the barkeep reappeared with two heaping plates of food, the feeling of well-being doubled, and Chant smiled, feeling almost merry.

They set to. The squid was coated with slivered almonds, garlic, and red pepper. Chant fancied himself something of a gourmand, and knew that this same dish commanded triple the cost in some of the more fashionable neighborhoods. He knew it because he was the one who’d managed to finagle the recipe from those famous houses through his fledgling informant’s network, and pass it on to the Lantern’s proprietor.

When Chant recovered from his food trance, on account of there being nothing left on his plate, he realized Demascus was already finished with his portion.

Chant laughed and said, “Not many can beat me through a serving of food.”

Demascus grinned ruefully. The man’s features and posture were noticeably more relaxed.

Demascus said, “What kind of coin are we talking for identifying the thief?”

Chant brushed crumbs from his vest and said, “Give me a tenday, and I’ll have her identity nailed. I’m thinking twenty coins ought to cover my expenses, plus leave me a fair sum for my trouble.”

“A tenday!” Chant had expected the man to try to bargain him down on the amount, not the time.

“These things take time. I’m no wizard; I can’t summon helpful spirits that know too much, and if I could, you’d be on the hook for more than ten times that.”

“All right. Better than nothing.” Demascus allowed his chin to drop slightly.

Time to change the subject; Chant didn’t like morose dinner companions.

He gestured with his fork, pointing at Demascus’s jacket. He said, “So, you run with the Firestorm Cabal these days? You didn’t wear the red four years ago.”

“The Cabal? That’s what that drunk accused me of. Because of this jacket I’m wearing?”

“Yeah, what else? Or, what, you’re just wearing their colors for a lark?”

Demascus examined his jacket cuffs, his eyes narrowing as if he was remembering something unpleasant.

Then he looked up and blurted, “Tell me about the Firestorm Cabal.”

Chant felt his eyes widen as he said, “What do you mean, tell you about them?”

“Chant, pretend for a moment that I don’t know anything about red jackets or the significance of the one I’m wearing; just tell me what the Hells the Firestorm Cabal is!”

“All right, sure. Don’t burst a vein.”

Chant took a drink of his beer. Then he said, “All right, here’s the deal. Lots of folks believe the Cabal is pledged to the protection of Akanûl and genasi interests. And they do sporadically guard the nation from threats on sea, land, and in the air. They are especially vigilant whenever dragonborn out of Tymanther are seen near the borders. Most people see the Firestorm Cabal as champions of the people.”

“ ‘Most people’?”

“Well, I’m in a position to know better. The truth is they’re an organization of mercenaries and freebooters. Many who wear the red act more like villains than heroes. To my mind, all the good they do can be put down to calculated self-interest. Folks living on the higher motes are more likely to buy the Cabal’s line, but down here, most think of ’em as privateers, and they’re not welcome.”

“That explains a lot …” He ran a hand down one sleeve of his jacket, shaking his head with disdain.

“You’re not a Firestorm Cabal member, are you?” said Chant. “And you expect me to believe you’ve never heard of the Cabal?”

“Ah … something like that.”

Chant didn’t know if he should believe Demascus’s statment. Who didn’t know about the Cabal? Demascus was obviously no genasi, so he probably wasn’t a native of Airspur. His lack of knowledge suddenly struck Chant as dangerously naive.

Chant settled on saying only, “You, my friend, have some issues.”

“More than you know.”

Demascus took a long swallow of ale, then set his mug down carefully before him. He continued, “I’ve got a confession to make.”

Sharkbite, Chant thought. He really is a Cabal sellsword with a contract on me!

Chant reached for the hand crossbow hanging from his belt. “You’re working for Raneger,” he accused, his voice tight.

“Whoa, hold on!” Demascus said. “I want your help, not your blood. Here’s the simple truth; I don’t know what the Hells is going on. I woke this morning lying in the middle of some old shrine west of the city. I woke with … no memory of how I got there, or memory of, of even my own name! A few bits have since come back; I remember owning that scarf, for instance, and someone who called me by the name Demascus, but …” He shrugged.

Chant blinked. “You seem pretty functional for someone with no memory.”

“Only because I managed to fool you. Some unconscious thread obviously guided my feet to your shop, though it seems I could have just as easily missed it. I didn’t know you had my property until you told me.”

“Incredible.” Chant decided to act, for the moment, as if he were buying Demascus’s claim. He’d heard stories of people who’d been cursed or fumbled the casting of a spell, and even of spellplague victims who’d had their minds jumbled. He let his hand fall from his weapon stock and grabbed his ale tankard.

Chant sipped, then said, “And how is it you’re wearing the red?”

“When I woke up, I wasn’t wearing any clothing. Dead men lay all around me, though, and they all had coats like this one. I helped myself to what I could find.”

“You woke up in the middle of some sort of Firestorm Cabal massacre? Just this morning?” Chant hadn’t heard about recent Cabal losses. If Demascus was telling him the truth, he might just have a scoop on his hands. Which was as good as coin in his pocket if he could parley that information to the right client …

Demascus lowered his voice and said, “Besides the genasi, there were a few … demons, I think. I think it was a summoning ritual that went wrong. Way wrong! And I think I was intended to be the sacrifice. Whatever they did wiped my memory. I’m just lucky they didn’t finish what they’d set out to do.”

Chant frowned. He said, “Do you think they cursed you before the sacrifice, so if someone found and interrogated your body with necromancy afterward, your corpse wouldn’t be able to finger them?”

“I … Wow, that’s morbid. But yes, I guess that’s possible. I don’t remember enough to know.”

“Well, you remembered something when Garth attacked you out in the plaza. That light show was impressive.”

Demascus gave a half nod. “When they all started coming at me, I remembered standing on a sort of battlefield, fighting undead. A lot of undead. It was just a fragment though. I called some kind of storm of light to engulf the deathless …” He shook his head. “And I had my scarf! Plus a few other things, including an ancient sword that pretty much screamed Power.”

“Mmm-hmm. And that’s it? You don’t know why you were facing down an undead horde? Seems like an odd time to remember such a thing, in the middle of a glorified bar fight.”

Demascus shrugged.

“On the other hand, probably a good thing you remembered it; it was flashy. The way you put down Garth probably saved you from having to fight a whole lot more idiots.”

Demascus said, “I suppose that’s true.”

The pawnbroker fingered where Garth had punched him. It would probably leave an ugly bruise. He sighed. “Well, if you remembered your name, and your scarf, and now that bit about all the undead, it seems like your memories are returning. Maybe if you give it enough time, they’ll all come back.”

“Maybe.” Demascus didn’t sound too sure.

“I wonder who you really are. Obviously someone with some power to throw around.” An exciting prospect, all by itself. Because that would make Demascus someone it would be worth his time to befriend.

Demascus said, “Gods of Shadow, Chant, no one wonders that more than me!”

A simple idea occurred to the pawnbroker. He later blamed the ale for blurting it out before thinking through its implications. Chant said, “Hey, you know who probably knows who you are? The Firestorm Cabal. They’re the ones who left you at the shrine. They probably know all about you.”

Demascus sat straigher. He said, “Can you take me to them?”

“What, to the Motherhouse? Well, sure, but—”

“Wonderful.” Demascus slapped his palm down on the table hard enough to make their tankards jump. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER SIX

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THEIR BOOTS THUDDED ON THE NARROW SUSPENSION BRIDGE that arced between floating citymotes. Below, the many-colored lights of Airspur dropped away into the night down the south cliff face. An evening breeze played through Demascus’s hair, and he was glad of his coat, despite the trouble it had caused him.

“The Cabal has safehouses all around Akanûl,” offered Chant. Demascus could tell the man wasn’t sold on their decision to visit the Cabal. But neither had he bowed out.

“The Motherhouse is one of these safehouses I take it,” Demascus said.

“The biggest. Actually, the Motherhouse is the Cabal’s headquarters. It’s where the big shots meet when they’re not in the field, and it’s where new recruits are groomed, unless they’re found wanting like your new friend Garth.”

Demascus snorted. He said, “Is the Firestorm Cabal known for summoning demons?”

“No. Like I said before, they’re mostly freebooters. They dally in good deeds to keep up appearances. But if they have secret dealings with things out of the Abyss, that’d be news to everybody!”

Demascus nodded, recalling the diminutive monster that had tried to eat him, already snacking on a loose foot as casually as if it had been a sandwich. He said, “The ones I found by the shrine were up to something with demons. I’m certain of it.”

Chant said, “I know people who would pay good money to have that confirmed.” He rubbed his hands, whether in pantomime of greed or to warm them in the evening chill, Demascus was unclear.

They reached the south face and ascended via a series of bridges and switchbacks. The hour had become late, and only a few people were around. City lamps burned periodically in lonely vigil. Finally Chant pointed ahead.

A great granite block protruded from the cliff face, blank of any design save for the scoring of countless chiselers. “The Motherhouse,” the pawnbroker said.

Demascus studied the foreboding structure, trying to estimate its height and breadth. Hard to tell, without any visible windows or secondary entrances besides the grand double door at street level. Orange flame burned all around the main entrance on the block’s front face.

An elegant carriage in black lacquer was parked in the drive in front of the Motherhouse. Two winged steeds stood in harness before the carriage, and a windsoul in dark livery sat on the carriage holding the reins.

Chant touched Demascus’s arm and said, “Hold a moment …”

Someone exited the structure through the double doors and entered the carriage. Because of the distance and the position of the coach, Demascus failed to get a good look at the conveyance’s passenger.

The driver snapped the reins, and the two steeds pulled the carriage around the drive. Before they hit the street, wings were unfurled, and then horses, driver, and coach took to the sky. Demascus tracked the coach upward, but quickly lost it in the dark.

He looked at Chant. “What was that about?”

“That looked a lot like the royal carriage Queen Arathane uses.”

Demascus wasn’t certain who Arathane was, but he supposed the royal title told him enough to go on. He said, “And so?”

“For her to openly visit the Firestorm Cabal, something strange must be going on. The queen normally keeps an official distance from the activities of the Cabal.”

“Maybe it was an envoy.”

“Yeah, could be. Rumor has it that Arathane unofficially supports the Cabal’s activities, especially along the border.”

“Probably nothing to do with my situation,” said Demascus. He was impatient to enter the Motherhouse.

Chant shrugged. “Probably not.”

They walked, unchallenged, up to the double doors. The fire curling and snapping around the lintel was bright but heatless. The knocker was the sculpted symbol of a burning spike, the same symbol that decorated the shoulder of his borrowed coat.

Demascus reached for the knocker, but Chant put a hand on his arm.

“What?” he said.

Chant said, “It’s late. I doubt the Motherhouse is in the habit of entertaining visitors in the dead of night. If we’re going to learn something of interest, we’ll have to sneak in.”

Demascus said, “Does this place have any side entrances?”

“Not that I know of, but if we take a moment to look around …”

Demascus laid hold of the knocker, and rapped it against its metal plate, one, two, three times. The sound was surprisingly loud. He said, “I prefer the direct approach.”

The pawnbroker frowned, and Demascus knew a moment of chagrin. It seemed Chant didn’t appreciate impulsiveness. The man said, “If you think the Cabal is responsible for leaving you to die in the wilderness, what makes you think they’ll be happy to see you’ve survived?”

A good point, all in all. He was probably walking straight into—

The door swung open. A genasi wearing a red coat was revealed. The jacket’s cut was different than Demascus’s. She wrinkled her brow in confusion upon seeing them on the stoop. She glanced past them to the drive and said, “Oh, I thought …”

She trailed off, looking at Demascus.

“We’d like to come in,” Demascus said.

She said, “Of course, sir! Sorry, please come in!”

His heart lurched; she recognized him!

The woman stepped back and ushered them down a corridor over which a series of iron portcullises hung, poised to descend in defense of the structure. They emerged into a wide lobby tiled in white and green stone. Light spilled from each corner of the grand chamber, where a sculpture of a statuesque genasi held up a bronze bowl heaped with flame. Several comfortable divans were all empty at that hour. Demascus looked around … but nothing was familiar.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?”

“So … you know who I am?”

“I don’t know your name, sir; should I?”

“But you’ve seen me before, right?”

The door warden swallowed nervously. “No, sir, I haven’t. Is this some kind of test?”

He realized the woman was only reacting to the authority invested in his borrowed jacket or a subtlety in the design of the symbol blazoned on it. His excitement at being recognized whispered away.

He said, “No. No …”

Chant stepped forward and said, “My friend’s been out of touch for a while. Anything interesting going on he should know about?”

The genasi door warden said, “Uh, just the usual. More skirmishes along the Chessentan border. Reports of some bad business along the shores of the Akanamere in the south. Oh, and, let’s see …”

Chant said, “Anything local? We saw a black chariot pulling away as we arrived. That seemed interesting.”

The woman frowned at Chant. She said, “And who’re you?”

“I am Chant Morven,” said the pawnbroker. “I have accepted a commission from your organization to help track down special information.”

“Oh. Well …” She looked at Demascus for confirmation. He nodded.

“I guess that’s all right then. But I don’t have any comment about the chariot, on standing orders from the commander. Although … If you’re here to attend Lieutenant Leheren’s meeting, you’re late!” She gestured at one of the exits to the large room, then turned and headed back to the main entrance.

Demascus swallowed his disappointment and glanced at Chant. He said, his voice low, “Lieutenant Leheren?”

“One of the principals of the Cabal. One of the main figures beneath the deputy commander.”

“Let’s go see the lieutenant. Someone so important is certain to recognize me.”

“Leheren recognizing you may not turn out to be a good thing.”

They exited the lobby via the corridor the door warden had indicated. They passed three side halls and a total of twelve doors; Demascus couldn’t help but keep careful track.

Voices slipped around a door where the hallway terminated. Angry voices.

Chant put a finger to his lips, and they walked quietly to stand at the door.

“… is that the best you have to offer?” came a woman’s voice, tight with agitation. “With idiotic suggestions like that it’s no wonder the deputy commander put you on night duty!”

Another voice came through the door, but it was too muffled for Demascus to make out. A man’s voice.

The woman’s voice came again, louder, “What, you would have us do nothing? It falls to the Cabal to put right our mistake!” Mistake? That sounds promising, he thought.

Before second thoughts could dissuade his instinct, Demascus opened the door and entered the room.

A woman and two men were arranged around a large oak table. Maps of the city and the surrounding countryside lay across the dark-grained surface. Light from three hanging candle chandeliers gave the shadows in the room a life of their own. The men sat in high-backed chairs, but the woman was standing as if she’d been pacing. Each was dressed in a red jacket exactly like the one Demascus wore.

His eyes automatically swept the room, noting two additional exits, four unused chairs around the table, and three tall shelves along the wall. He saw from where the woman was standing he needed to take only two paces to engage her, while the other two genasi … He blinked. What in the name of the Nine Hells am I doing?

All eyes swiveled to fix on him. As the silence stretched, the second thoughts he’d beaten through the door caught up with him and perched on his shoulder. They whispered in his ear that he was possibly something of an idiot.

He coughed. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m here to see Lieutenant Leheren.”

The woman walked over to Demascus and looked him up and down. She said, “That’s me. But who’re you?” Silver lines traced swirls across the woman’s skin. She was a … stormsoul genasi.

“I’m Demascus. This is Chant, who—”

“And, why, Demascus, do you wear a lieutenant’s coat in the Order of the Firestorm?”

One of the genasi stood up. “An imposter!” The scarlet szuldar running across his bronze scalp marked him as a firesoul. A jagged spiral tattooed his neck in black ink, which seemed an odd counterpart to his natural designs.

The woman glanced at the firesoul, “It seems so, Jett. Or, at least a borrower of things he shouldn’t.” She returned her regard to Demascus. “What’s the meaning of this?”

Demascus felt as if the wind propelling him forward just died in his sails. They obviously had no idea who he was. Unless they were dissembling. Or—

“Answer her!” said Jett.

Demascus coughed. These people still represented his best bet at discovering his missing identity. He said, “I … was traveling west of Airspur, in the mountains, and stumbled upon an old shrine. Something terrible had happened. Nearly two dozen genasi, along with a few demons, lay dead. One genasi remained alive, just long enough to mumble something about an ‘elemental eye that watches’ or … something like that.”

The firesoul named Jett blanched, and glanced at Leheren like a child with his hand caught in the sweet jar.

Leheren didn’t notice. She was frowning suspiciously at Demascus. He added, “The genasi wore jackets like this one.” He patted his coat.

She said, “You’re saying you stumbled upon the bodies of a full patrol of Firestorm Cabal, all slain by demons?”

“Apparently. I found the bodies of demonic monsters anyway. Plus a live one feeding on the corpses. I dispatched it with a sword I took from the dead.”

“I see you also helped yourself to a coat,” said the stormsoul. “But this is foolishness. We’re not missing any patrols to the west. We don’t even normally send anyone that way.”

She turned and gazed at the other two genasi in the room.

Jett’s expression hardened. “He’s obviously some kind of spy, sent from Chessenta or Tymanther. Let me and Garel take him and his friend down to the Chamber of Questions and have a go at him.”

The other genasi, apparently Garel, jumped to his feet. He said, “I concur with Jett. Something’s not right with this fellow.”

“Hold on,” said Chant from the doorway. “Demascus came here to inform you, with no expectation of reward, how one of your patrols came to a bad end. And this is how you think to repay him? Anyway, you don’t have the authority to do any such thing. I’m a citizen of Airspur.” The pawnbroker folded his arms.

“You’re trespassing in a Firestorm safehouse,” said Jett. “Which means we can do whatever we like. Plus you’re self-admitted thieves, starting with this fellow’s coat and sword. Thieves and spies aren’t tolerated in this city.”

Demascus began to protest, but the lieutenant raised her hand, “Jett, enough. These two would have to be extraordinarily incompetent spies to wander straight into the Motherhouse and announce themselves to us, wouldn’t they?”

Demascus wondered if his cheeks were coloring.

Garel said, “That’s what they want you to think.”

“Oh, please,” said Leheren. She gestured for Chant to enter the chamber and said to him, “Were you with Demascus when he chanced upon this slaughtered group of the Firestorm Cabal?”

The human moved a few paces into the room. He said, “No. I don’t travel the Akanapeaks if I can help it. Demascus came to me in my shop and told me his story.” The pawnbroker didn’t bat an eye relaying the falsehood, which after all, was close enough to the truth.

Demascus said, “You can have this coat and sword. I came here … to tell you what happened to your people at the shrine, and learn what it meant. It wasn’t my goal to flaunt what I’d taken from the dead.” He shrugged out of his coat. Beneath it he wore the thin leather armor he’d also liberated from the dead. The genasi didn’t remark upon it.

The lieutenant took the jacket from Demascus and examined it. She ran her hands through the pockets, then said, “Did you find any identification?”

“No. None of the dead carried any papers, except a map showing the shrine’s location.” He produced the map and handed it over.

Leheren took it and smoothed it out on the table over the other documents.

“Nothing extraordinary; this old shrine appears on other maps. What’s more troubling,” she said, looking up from the table, “is that every Cabal member must carry identification at all times. I don’t understand why those you found did not.”

Demascus shrugged. “It’s what I found.” When I woke up there naked, he didn’t say.

A pensive look on Jett’s face transformed into one of calculation. He said, “If these men Demascus found carried no identification, perhaps they were the imposters! Attempting to sully the Cabal’s good name with acts of … of demonic ritual!”

“We certainly have our enemies,” murmured Leheren. “How very odd. A place of old power, and demons. Just like …”

“Just like what?” asked Demascus.

The woman looked at him. Pulses of silver seemed to flow through the szuldar that threaded her skin. She cocked her head slightly, as if she were mentally weighing him. Finally she said, “Just like other stories of demons we’ve recently heard. At least, monstrous creatures of some sort. Perhaps it’s a sign that you show up now speaking of creature incursions, on the heels of a contract we’ve just taken from the queen.”

“I knew it!” said Chant. Demascus looked at him, and the pawnbroker smirked. He said, “A royal carriage was leaving as we arrived.”

“Yes. Well,” said Leheren, “Since you two are already involved, it shouldn’t hurt to tell you that this is not the first such incident to trouble Airspur of late. We’ve heard rumors, but the queen’s envoy laid it out for the deputy commander.”

The lieutenant pushed aside Demascus’s map and revealed a detailed sketch of a city built up on either side of two cliffs framing a deep bay. It was Airspur. Four sites were circled in red ink.

Leheren said, “Each marked location represents an attack by nightmarish entities. Descriptions are vague and vary wildly, so we don’t really know what we’re dealing with. This one”—her finger stabbed down to one circle on the north face—“was an attack over an abandoned temple to some dead Chessentan god. This one”—her finger moved to a lower neighborhood—“occurred within the confines of an old druid’s grove, now a city park. These other two, same thing; monsters popping out of nowhere in the immediate vicinity of places where either divine power once flowed, or where an old portal once emptied.”

Demascus said, “The demons I discovered were in an old shrine dedicated to animal spirits of some sort.”

“Exactly. For some reason, demonic creatures are popping up where spiritual energy once flowered. Such places are acting like beacons to these horrors. We have to find out why. Are you interested in helping us?”

Demascus blinked. “What? Me?”

“You seem the type; you showed up here to tell us what you’d found, as your friend indicated. In my experience, people who stumble upon an awful scene like the one you describe turn the other way and run. They don’t wonder how to fix the situation—they think only of saving their own skin. You picked up a sword and dealt with the threat that remained.”

“Actually, it caught me by surprise. I had no choice but to fight. It was lucky I managed to kill it. I’m no hero, if that’s what you’re implying.”

His denial tasted false in his mouth. The reclaimed memory of his stand against an undead host argued that he had faced down evil, and maybe’d been pretty good at it. His brows furrowed.

Leheren said, “But here you are, one monster to your credit, and obviously a desire to find out more. So, I’ll ask once more: do you want to help us figure out what’s going on and put a stop to it?”

“I want to find out what’s going on.” Including who the Hells I am, he didn’t say. “So, yes, I’d like to help, if I can.”

The woman glanced at Chant. “And you?”

The pawnbroker coughed and said, “I assume standard contractual terms apply?”

Leheren nodded impatiently. “Yes, I’ll pay you, if that’s what you’re asking!”

“Then, by all means, I’m interested in hearing what you have to say.”

“Good, because I’ve just thought of a task for you two. Based on how easily you walked into the Motherhouse, your talents seem suited for gathering reconnaissance. I need you to look into someone for me. Someone who I’d rather didn’t find out that the Firestorm Cabal is taking a closer look at his operations.”

Jett said, “Leheren, you’re too quick to trust these two strangers. And besides, I thought we decided not to risk antagonizing the fire wizard.”

“That hadn’t been decided,” Leheren said. “And, yes, I’m aware enlisting these two smacks of desperation. But we need answers. And besides, I prefer to think I’d be a fool if I did not take advantage of what’s just dropped in our lap.” She pointed at Demascus and Chant.

“You want to send us to spy for you because if we’re caught, you’ll have plausible deniability?” asked the pawnbroker.

“Perceptive,” said the lieutenant.

“Who do you want us to spy on?” said Demascus.

“A wizard named Chevesh. He’s got a tower in Airspur—”

“What’s Chevesh got to do with the demons at the shrine?” interrupted Demascus. Was Leheren sending them off in a direction that had nothing to do with his missing memory?

The lieutenant raised a placating hand and continued, “Everyone knows Chevesh has dabbled too deeply in fire magic, and his mind has cracked. But he’s too powerful to risk annoying on mere suspicion, so people in Airspur leave him to his pursuits. But on my list of who might be responsible for summoning demons randomly into the city, Chevesh is in the top three. He’s been sanctioned before for destructive experiments involving the Elemental Chaos.”

Something connected in Demascus’s memory. He blurted, “That’s where demons come from; the Abyss swirls at the center of the Elemental Chaos.”

“Right.” She raised an eyebrow at him, but went on, “However, suspicion isn’t evidence. We can’t just barge into his tower with an elite Cabal strike force without some sort of proof. The Order of the Firestorm has had past altercations with Chevesh and, well, it was a mistake to let him live.”

Chant said, “What did he—”

“Is that the mistake you were talking about, before?” said Demascus.

She cocked her head and smiled. “Just so,” she said. For a Firestorm Cabal member, she seemed less like a mercenary captain than Demascus had expected. She seemed like someone who really cared about threats to Airspur.

Leheren continued, “Allowing Chevesh his autonomy back then was a decision made over my head. This time we’ll have him dead to rights, if you find evidence he’s summoning demons into Akanûl.”

Jett grunted and said, “Leheren, the only ‘mistake’ here would be to let these two poke their noses into Chevesh’s business. If he connects them back to us, he’ll come after the Cabal. He’s dangerous.” The firesoul rubbed at the tattoo on his neck.

“Plausible deniability,” said Chant again, in a manner that suggested he liked saying that phrase.

“The deputy commander assigned me this task,” said the lieutenant. “And I think I know best about how to proceed. These two have no previous connection to us. They’ve shown a measure of interest in the Cabal’s well-being by warning us what Demascus found at the shrine in the Akanapeaks. We shouldn’t spit at the gifts fortune throws in our path; that’s not the Firestorm Cabal’s way.”

Jett frowned.

“But,” Leheren said, fixing her regard on Demascus, then the pawnbroker, “don’t mention this commission to anyone. And if Chevesh does discover you lurking around his tower, pretend you’re robbers.”

“How will he react to thieves in his home?” asked Demascus.

“With extreme prejudice,” supplied Jett. “If you’re lucky, he’ll kill you right off.”

Perfect. Demons, and now crazy fire wizards. And somewhere between them, if fortune smiled, his true identity. He just had to get past the obstacles that could rob him of more than just his mind.

“We’ll deal with Chevesh, if it comes to it,” said Chant. “I have a way with people.”

“Then I think we have a deal.” She held out her hand.

“Hold on,” said Chant. “What are we looking for in the mage’s tower exactly? If we’re going to break in to find evidence, it’ll be a lot easier if we know ahead of time what we’re looking for.”

Leheren frowned. She said, “If you can find a ritual scroll inked with a demon summoning spell, that’ll be a good start. Something solid I can use.”

“Great,” said Demascus. He held out his hand and shook to seal the deal.

“Return if you find anything, but not immediately; return by roundabout paths. If Chevesh notices you and has you followed—”

“I’m familiar with this wizard,” said Chant, “and following thieves seems like too much subtlety for someone like him. He’d rather just blast us.”

“Probably. In truth, I regard you both as expendable. But if you do come back in one piece with news, you’ll be doing a great service to your city. Also, hold a moment …”

Leheren pointed at Jett. “Jett, get a team together. Visit the shrine shown on Demascus’s map. Bring back the bodies; if some group is implicating us in foul deeds, we need to know it, and stop it. On the other hand, if you find no evidence of this man’s story being true, I would also like to know.”

She stared at Demascus and Chant for a cool heartbeat, then added, “Because that would put a whole new spin on the conversation we just had.”

“You’ll find the bodies,” Demascus said. Unless some animal has dragged them off, or more demons have shown up and eaten them, or—

“I’m sure.” She motioned with a shake of her head at the door.

Demascus kept his lip buttoned over all his second thoughts and followed Chant out.

Both men maintained silence as they exited the Motherhouse. Outside, the evening chill had deepened, and Demascus was down one leather coat. He folded his arms across his chest.

“Do you have a place to stay?” the pawnbroker said.

“Not yet. But I have some coin. I can rent a room at the Lantern. Good thing the lieutenant didn’t make me hand over everything I scavenged at the shrine.”

“If the bodies you found were imposter Firestorm Cabal, she wouldn’t have any more right to that stuff than you.”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense. Listen, I’m sorry I got you into this. You can walk away and forget it, and I won’t think any less of you. Based on what Leheren said about the fire wizard, we might end up hurt or worse if we beard him in his den.”

“Are you kidding? We’ve stumbled into a font of covert information. And we’re getting paid on top of it. I’ve risked more for less coin.” The pawnbroker made a face at something only he could see, as if he’d just taken a bite of a bad piece of fish.

Good, thought Demascus, I need an ally. He didn’t see that he had a choice in visiting the mad wizard. If Chevesh was behind the demon incursion, he probably also held the keys to Demascus’s missing memory. Plus, the idea of facing off against a wizard in his tower sent a shiver of anticipation through him. He should be afraid, especially since every time he tried to draw his sword, he dropped it, tripped, or otherwise embarrassed himself. But he was going to learn exactly nothing if he turned away.

They retraced their route back to Chant’s shop. Demascus yawned. His legs were like lead weights. He couldn’t ever remember being so tired—

Demascus stopped that line of thought dead in its tracks. He couldn’t remember a lot.

“Nice thinking, telling them how you stumbled on the shrine,” said Chant. “But did you also make up that bit about the ‘Elemental Eye’? Because it sure got Jett’s attention.”

“I didn’t make it up. And yes, I noticed Jett’s reaction. It was a hit. He knows something about it.”

“Maybe. But Jett was full of bluster and threat. People who act that way do so because they’re secretly cowards, or are afraid you’ll find out something they’re trying to keep secret. I couldn’t tell whether he was concealing something or if he was actually scared. Or both!”

Demascus made a noncommittal noise. He wondered if he had once been familiar with the phrase “Elemental Eye?” He was becoming sick of all his self-questions. He concentrated on trudging back to the shop. Because if he considered his situation overlong, he’d be forced to admit he was less afraid of being killed by an annoyed wizard or hungry demon than finding out he wasn’t the hero he hoped for.

What kind of person strangles priests?

CHAPTER SEVEN

AIRSPUR LABYRINTHS
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

RILTANA FELT LIKE A GARMENT THAT HAD BEEN HIT REPEATEDLY and enthusiastically by a drying cane to knock out laundry water. Yet she was still soaking wet.

With an arm trembling from exhaustion, she pulled herself another foot through sucking mud. She found purchase with her boots on a protrusion. She pushed, extending her legs to their full length, trying to ignore the mud’s cold embrace, and edged forward several more inches. Dirty water dripped into her eyes. But her hands were even more muddy, and wiping at her face, she’d already learned, wouldn’t help.

Blinking furiously, she pulled herself forward another foot. How far along this tunnel had she come? She’d lost track. Riltana knew she was making progress, but to what ultimate end? Light streamed from the sunrod clenched in her teeth. Her jaws were getting tired, and she made an effort not to bite down so hard.

When that piss-drinking bastard flooded the cavern, she’d figured she was dead. The swirling water had knocked her around and flushed her down a drain that dropped almost vertically into the earth. She’d managed a few breaths, but not all had been of air. Her lungs still burned from the coughing jag that had consumed her after the rough water slide spit her out.

Riltana’s head had eventually stopped whirling. So she’d shaken her sunrod from glovespace and taken stock. She had discovered she’d washed up, or down more accurately, into a tunnel hardly wider than a gopher hole. Calling it a tunnel was generous; it was composed of nearly as much mud as air. She couldn’t recall the specific series of loops, slides, and plunges that had deposited her there; she’d been too busy flailing and trying not to drown.

So she began crawling. How long ago was that? Hours?

At least none of Kalkan’s hired goons had washed up near—

The tunnel gave way beneath her.

Riltana found herself falling in a wide expanse. She gasped, and the sunrod dropped from her open mouth.

She was in her element! Air streamed past, and she folded into it. Oh, gods—that was good! She threw her arms wide and asked the wind to bear her up. Though dank and cold, it answered, and her plummet slowed.

Without the sunrod, it was absolutely black, except for a spark somewhere below. How close was the floor of whatever cavity she’d fallen into? That spark was coming up quick! She strained to bring herself to a complete stop.

Not soon enough. Something came up beneath her and smashed her like a hammer. The blow knocked the air out of her, and she curled up and gasped like a fish out of the sea. Dull pain resolved from the shock of the fall in her ribs and her left foot. Once again, she was out of her element.

When her breath came back she groaned and blinked several times. Eyes open or closed, everything looked the same. The spark, probably of her dropped sunrod flickering out, was gone. Black was her whole world.

Moving air brushed her cheeks and tickled her nose with dust and old rot, reminding her of the cellar below her grandmother’s home. Like that, but wider, wilder … and more ominous. Plus the tang of something unpleasant. Riltana strained her head one way, then another, sniffing, and caught the offensive odor, musty and sickening, even stronger.

She wrinkled her nose. At least she’d found a place the Akanawater hadn’t recently flooded. She hated the water.

“Well, isn’t this a pretty picture,” she croaked. She was lost somewhere in the labyrinths of Airspur, probably in ruins of a city that had squatted there before the Spellplague had dropped a piece of Abeir over half of Chessenta.

The sound of a pile of sliding pebbles riveted her attention.

“Who’s there?” she called. Riltana heard an ugly note in her voice, the desperate keen of fear. Hold it together, woman. She took in a deep breath and stood. Ouch. She was going to have some bruises.

She tried again, louder, “Is anyone there?”

Her voice echoed into a surprisingly large distance before failing. Dread trailed cold fingers down her spine. Had she fallen all the way down to the Underdark?

Another clatter jerked her head around. Her eyes tried to open beyond the capacity of her skull.

She reached for the short sword sheathed on her back, and found it gone. It had been washed away! Her other hand automatically went to her calf sheath, and found the leather-wrapped pommel. A dagger was in her hand an instant later. The hilt was wet, but thank Tymora, it was good to hold honest steel.

“All right, come on, stop hiding in the dark like a coward, I’m ready for you!”

Nothing. Her heart thundered, and her spit dried to dust.

Another clatter, closer this time. And a strange chittering, like the sound insects make … What was it?

She cursed herself for a simpleton and snapped the fingers of her free hand. The curve of a miniature ceramic pot slapped into her palm. She raised it, and dashed it on the ground.

Blue-white incandescence exploded from the alchemical flare. It was blinding, but she turned her head at the crucial instant.

A heartbeat later and the flare’s illumination faded to a bearable level. Riltana saw that she stood at the bottom of a hollow shaped like an elongated teardrop, open on her left to a larger gulf of darkness. Besides the single large opening, dozens of miniature tunnels punctured the nearest wall at floor level, each one running off into lightlessness. Dust lay heaped everywhere.

She shifted her foot, and the dust crunched.

It wasn’t dust; the heaps were made up thousands of disintegrating cockroach casings.

“Gah!”

The musty odor intensified, clogging the air. A thrum, as of hundreds of tiny feet, vibrated through the soles of her boots as each of the miniature tunnels spewed a bristling swarm of squirming black cockroaches.

Riltana leaped upward as the swarms converged to carpet the cavern floor. The attar of roaches was like a blanket of stink trying to smother her. At the top of her trajectory, her free hand grazed a sloping wall of the hollow. She corkscrewed her legs to change her facing and slammed the dagger in her other hand into a crevice in the stone even as she began to fall back. The concave slope and her improvised rock brake arrested her slide before she fell back to the floor.

Her breath came in great gasps. The light of her flare continued to flicker in the cave’s center, throwing highlights off thousands of skittering, oily bodies. She hated cockroaches. She’d invested a serious chunk of coin in a charm for her loft expressly fashioned to exterminate the little buggers. The wriggling scene before her was like their revenge.

Something occluded one of the miniature tunnels. A cockroach the size of a dog. The insect squirmed out into the mass of its tiny cousins, and began to unfold sooty wings. Two more scuttled out after the first.

Time to go!

Riltana studied the exit in the cavern’s wall, almost directly opposite the surface she clung to. She sought the wind’s regard, despite having just enjoyed its favor to save herself from a hard introduction to the cave floor. Air was a temperamental element, and calling on it overmuch exhausted its goodwill.

A breeze answered, briefly clearing the air of the cockroach odor.

She fell into it, arms wide to guide invisible wings of rushing air. Riltana flew across the chamber and out, even as two of the entirely-too-large cockroaches lifted off the ground in pursuit.

She hurtled into a tunnel larger and dryer than the one she’d been forced to bellycrawl through. The wind released her and she rolled into a landing that saw her back on her feet facing the hollow. Sure enough, the alchemical flare’s failing light outlined the shapes of two monstrous winged bugs coming after her. At least the carpet of cockroaches hadn’t yet spilled out of the teardrop hollow.

Riltana found a new dagger on her other calf.

One roach buzzed straight for her, mandibles clacking. She ducked beneath its malodorous bulk, and plunged her dagger straight into its abdomen. It squealed, sounding far too much like a genasi child. The sound startled her so much she lost the dagger.

The second roach came at her from behind, hovering like a giant dragonfly. She twisted away, but it managed to lacerate her shoulder with a pinching bite. White pain spiked across her vision. Riltana staggered.

“Shit-sucking bugs!” she screamed, and reached for the two daggers hidden along her forearms. Only one was where it should have been. She palmed it and jabbed at the closer roach, but the point skipped off its dull carapace.

It lunged for her face, mandibles straining to clutch her. She slipped left, and in a moment of inspiration, slashed her dagger through the thing’s wing. The sheared membrane twirled off one way, and the bug crashed to the floor, the intimidating drone of its presence suddenly reduced to the sound of one wing slapping the rock.

Riltana grunted with animal rage as she kicked the thing as hard as she could. Her boot tip, steel-toed to make it a weapon nearly as fearsome as a mace, crunched through the carapace. It squealed as its sibling had, and she kicked it again. The arch of her foot lofted the roach back up the tunnel toward the hollow.

Speaking of the bug’s sibling … she whirled. The one she’d stuck first lay unmoving a few paces up the rocky corridor. She sidled over to it, ready with her boot if it so much as twitched. It lay on its side. The hilt of a dagger in the thing’s abdomen twinkled in the rapidly dwindling light of her flare. Riltana snatched the dagger and jumped back. It remained convincingly motionless.

Good.

But the alchemical light was almost used up. Her sunrod was gone, probably broken.

Riltana shuffled farther away from the hollow as the flare snuffed out. The sound of thousands of roach bodies scraping on rock persisted, but in the complete darkness, seemed to grow louder. Was it really, or was it only in her imagination?

She gingerly reached out until her hand grazed the tunnel wall. She used it as a guide to move away from the unsettling noise.

As the adrenaline from the fight faded, the ache in her ribs and foot returned. She was bone-weary and bruised. Hungry too. What she really wanted to do was—

A rock caught her boot. The steel toe kept her foot safe from stubbing, but off-balanced in the blackness, she fell.

The pinch in her ribs expanded to become a fiery bar trying to lift free of her skin. Riltana gasped. Then she swallowed the curse that came so naturally to her lips. She didn’t want to attract the swarming bugs out of the hollow. Instead she lay in the dark, tears running from her eyes, until the new pain faded enough for her to sit up.

Too bad she hadn’t thought to double up on light sources. Her gloves, as fantastic a treasure as they were, could only hide away a total of five objects, and she always kept one space open, in case she “acquired” an interesting piece of artwork or other finery that required quick transport.

With the sunrod and alchemical flare gone, her hidden resources were down to a small yellow marble she called the Prisoner’s Stone, and the scarf.

She’d pried the yellow sphere from the eyesocket of a statue of the primordial named Karshimis. That escapade had nearly cost Riltana her life. But the stone had proved worth the risk. In the right situation, it was a lifesaver.

Unfortunately, with no prison bars, cuffs, or vault doors to impede her escape, this wasn’t one of those situations. Which left the pale length of fine cloth.

The scarf had to be more than a simple piece of fabric for her double-crossing client to go to so much trouble for it. What had that lying bastard claimed? That he’d only wanted it taken from Demascus at the “appointed” time? Crazy talk.

She sheathed her remaining dagger and produced the wrap. She couldn’t see it, but she was able to detect its slight weight across her palms when it appeared. Riltana wound one end around her left fist, and pulled the other end tight. Even through her gloves she could discern the scarf’s silky smoothness. She brought it closer to her face and sniffed.

The odor reminded her of a parchment shop. Without her eyes, touch, smell, and hearing were all she had to go by; she wasn’t about to lick it.

She said in a bare whisper, “Scarf, show me your power.”

Riltana felt stupid, huddled in the dark, talking to an inanimate textile.

No response.

“Damn it, if you’ve got something inside you, now’s the time to reveal it, or I’m going to stuff you in a roach hole!”

Hairline threads of light raced through the fabric, and she sucked in a quick breath.

More light gathered in bundles that traced through the scarf’s weave like tiny falling stars.

Riltana was rapt as the glimmers slowed, then letters like moonlight threads scrolled between her hands. Written on the scarf’s surface were the words:

Return me to the Sword, and I will guide you from this warren.

Relief surged through Riltana. She was going to live!

The scarf was an item of power, and it knew the way out. She whispered, “You bet! The Sword, I promise. Just tell me where I need to go!”

The scarf flexed in her hands of its own accord, like a snakeskin suddenly come under some sort of spell of animation. She let go of one end.

The loose end of the wrap rose in the air, reminding her even more of a serpent, and pointed. It produced a directed shaft of illumination like the beam of a bull’s-eye lantern.

She pulled herself to her feet and managed a pained grin. Her rib pinched and her left ankle complained, but hope was almost as good as a sip of magical balm.

The thief shuffled forward, and the scarf twisted to point the way.

The tunnel was more of a fissure than a walkway. Riltana shook her head. Had she attempted to feel her way along, it seemed inevitable that she would have caught her foot in the central crevice, or fallen into one of the many natural chimneys. Even with the illumination provided by the semisentient scarf, the going wasn’t easy. She hurt too much.

Time passed. She made progress, but her good spirits eroded with the jolting pain that burned up her heel each time she came down on her left foot, and she revised her earlier sentiment.

Hope was not anywhere close to as good as a magical balm.

Why didn’t she carry a healing potion in her gloves? Because her oh-so-clever plan of keeping one space empty was the strategy of a moron. As her breath hitched with a new jab from a rib that was probably fractured, she formulated a new plan. If she made it out of these godsdamned tunnels, she’d buy an elixir. If she later happened upon something more valuable than a sunrod, balm, or flare, she would simply replace one for the other. Brilliant.

The passage Riltana followed broke into a divergence of several crossways. The scarf chose one. She hobbled in the direction indicated. The corridor she took sloped upward. A rivulet of liquid trickled down its center too. That seemed promising, but she was wary of another flood.

She said, “Scarf, how do you know which way to go?”

More words flowed across the length of fabric:

I am the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge; what was once recorded, I know. Those whom the gods select for death, I authenticate.

“What is recorded? Those who are selected to die? I don’t understand.”

Apparently, that was all she was going to get. New words stubbornly failed to glitter on the wrap.

“Fine, be that way.”

The slope was sapping the last of her reserves. And it was getting muddy. Gravity and gunk joined forces to grasp at her boots with each step. She paused to catch her breath. The scarf twisted in her grip and almost pulled free.

“Hold on,” she wheezed. “I just need a moment to rest.” She put her hands on her knees and let her head sag. Riltana wanted to sit, but she was afraid if she did so, getting up again would prove too daunting.

When her breathing finally calmed and heartbeat slowed, she resumed her slog.

She lost exact count of the number of rests she had to take; more than five, but less than ten.

When the scarf went limp and dark, she sagged and nearly fell herself. Gray speckles impeded the edges of her vision, visible against another light flickering ahead.

Another light?

She forced herself up the tunnel and entered a large chamber illuminated by a growth of bioluminescent fungi on the walls and ceiling. The place smelled of garbage. Puddles of mud and water covered portions of the floor. She blinked, and realized where she was: the Sepulcher.

She was going to live! A grin stretched her mouth, and she hobbled forward, toward the tunnel through which she first entered this cursed place, making her way around the muddy pools of slowly draining overflow. The residue of the flood that—

“Who’re you?” croaked a voice.

Riltana spun, and nearly fell over as dizziness racked her.

A little man in shoddy leather armor perched on a rock. The figure clutched a ratty bag in one hand, a club in the other. The greenish skin and distorted face told the rest of the tale: it was a goblin.

It looked cautious and ready to flee. Good. Riltana had dispatched her share of the thieving little bastards. Goblins had moved in recent years, like colonizing rats, into the dark alleys and uppermost portions of the labyrinths beneath Airspur. They were becoming more than a mere nuisance, especially for someone like herself, who also preferred to work in the shadows and underbelly of the city.

“Scamper off, blister, or I’ll cut you,” she said in her most intimidating voice, which was ruined as a coughing jag descended.

By the time she had her breath back, stars were dancing across her vision. At least the goblin had disappeared off the rock.

A sinister titter behind her was all the warning she received. Weakened as she was, it wasn’t enough to avoid the brutal club that smashed into the back of her head.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

WAKE UP.”

Demascus pulled the extra pillow over his head. Someone shook him. His dreamy lassitude frayed. He moved the pillow away from his face and said, “What?”

The overweight pawnbroker was leaning over him holding a lantern. A purring pocket of warmth on his chest proved to be Fable, who was staring at him with a disquieting fascination.

“Oh, right.”

Demascus remembered. They’d decided to get some rest, then rise a few hours before dawn, when fire wizards were least likely to be stirring around their towers. It had seemed like a good plan a few hours ago. Now, with the lantern shinning into his squinting eyes, it struck him as the height of idiocy.

“Time’s wasting,” said Chant. The human set the lantern down on a side table next to the cot. Chant had procured the frame bed from a storeroom heaped with curiosities. He’d set it up in the rear of the store, next to a display that included a stuffed moose head.

Demascus sat up and pulled on his boots. A small platter of olives and bread, and a mug of tea lay on the table next to the lantern. On the floor next to the cot was the sword he’d taken from the shrine. A long leather jacket dyed black with scarlet stitching was draped over the end of the counter.

“I found you a new coat. A merchant pawned it a few tendays ago. He needed the coin to pay off a hefty festhall debt.”

“Thanks.” Demascus helped himself to the food and drink. He rose and belted on the sword, then turned to examine the jacket. It was of a finer cut than the red coat he’d returned to the Cabal, but the red pattern along the hem was especially vivid. Six silver buttons ran down the front, and dramatic epaulets erupted from each shoulder. He said, “It’s quite … attention-grabbing.”

“Nice, huh?” Chant grinned.

“Yeah.” He wasn’t sure what to think of it. “How much do I owe you for something like this?”

“We’ll work it out after we see if Chevesh is harboring demons.”

Demascus nodded. He rubbed the last of the sleep from his eyes and noticed the dark circles beneath Chant’s. He said, “Did you get any rest?”

“Hardly. Too much to think about. I’ve got a few pokers in the fire besides this business with you and Chevesh. A business like mine has difficulties all its own.”

“Oh.” Demascus couldn’t tell if the pawnbroker wanted to talk about it or not. He decided to let the topic go. When the man didn’t volunteer anything further, Demascus figured he’d made the right call.

He pulled on his leather armor, then the coat over it. While he dressed, Chant prepared another meal for the cat. From the smell, it seemed Fable enjoyed a meal of dried fish. “This ought to hold you a while,” Chant told the animal.

They left the shop. The streets of Airspur finally seemed empty. Their route took them down along the bay.

Chant muttered, as if to himself, “If only people were like the sea …”

Demascus replied without thinking, “People are like the sea. You can only tell what’s on the surface, and anything could be hiding underneath.”

Chant grinned. “You’re pretty clever for someone who’s lost half his mind.”

Demascus was surprised at the pawnbroker’s praise. He wasn’t trying to be clever; he was frustrated. With so many of his associations wiped away, reading people and their motivations was proving difficult for him.

Finally they came to a neighborhood of wide streets and empty windows. Nestled among the dark buildings was a single tower built of wide marble blocks. Orange light fingered the closed shutter slats of the top floor.

Chant said, “Not only is Chevesh mad, he’s also centuries old, if you can believe the stories. Despite his obsession with fire, he’s human. A human who thinks the gods somehow cheated him by not making him a firesoul.”

“You’ve met him?”

“I’ve heard things. He’s even crazier than rumors paint him. Which is why we must get in and out without Chevesh being any the wiser. If we’re discovered, he’ll flash fry us quicker than you can say ‘Master of Melee-Magthere.’ Think you can be sneaky?”

“Sneaky? I …”

Out of nowhere, a memory came to Demascus. He was hunched before a sealed iron gate with the likeness of a man’s screaming face. His sword was a comforting weight on his back, and his scarf was wrapped tightly around his left sleeve. He pushed his hair back, from which several charms dangled. A bundle of dark cloth lay before him.

He unrolled the bundle to reveal a neatly organized selection of thin wires and tiny hooks. He withdrew a hook and a wire with practiced hands, and applied them to the lock set in the screaming face. Gold highlights flashed from the twist of golden metal he wore on his thumb as he worked on the lock with quiet, cold, effortless mastery.

The recollection whispered away.

Demascus blinked. Where’d that been? He’d had his scarf. And that was the second memory he’d recovered where he’d had that overly large runesword, the glittering ring, and the charms in his hair. But unlike the previous recollection, instead of wearing a panoply of silver armor, he’d been draped in leather armor so black it might as well have been sewn from night itself.

“Hey,” whispered Chant. “Lost you there for a moment. You all right?” The pawnbroker glanced at him nervously.

“Sorry. Yeah, I have a little skill at skulking, or at least getting past locks. But I don’t have my tools.”

“You remembered something?”

“Just a flash. I may have once possessed passable skills as a lockbreaker. And better fashion sense.” He fiddled with the design on one of his cuffs.

Chant studied him a moment, as if suddenly wondering whether Demascus was of sound mind. The pawnbroker apparently decided Demascus wasn’t about to lose the rest of his mind then and there because he said, “I hope your body can recall what you cannot. We’ll approach along the left side of the street. Stick to the shadows.”

Chant advanced, and Demascus followed. The pudgy man impressed Demascus with the loose ease of his gait and his ability to slip in and out of the light. Demascus attempted to do the same.

After a few paces, he found he could replicate Chant’s stealth nearly move for move. The darkness was like a cloak he could pull across himself, almost at will. A wave of pure enjoyment swept through him, and he had to concentrate not to grin like a madman.

When they reached the side of the tower, Chant raised a hand.

“What?” whispered Demascus.

Chant shook his head, and tapped his ear.

Demascus listened. Very faintly came the merest intimation of a regular sound from the tower. Not so much a boom, but a vibration through the stone. Each beat corresponded with a flicker of light from the shuttered windows high above them.

The pawnbroker dashed forward, darting into an alcove along the tower’s side Demascus hadn’t even noticed.

Demascus followed, and found the pawnbroker huddled over the lock of a small service door. The hook and wire in Chant’s hands were akin to the ones Demascus had seen in the vision of himself, if a bit rustier.

He lowered himself so his eyes were even with Chant’s. He couldn’t quite recall the name of the little metal sliding parts inside the lock, but his hands moved in sympathy with the pawnbroker’s. He grinned.

The lock snicked. “We’re in,” Chant said. He stowed his picks in their cloth case and rolled it up. Then he inched open the door and peered in. A beat later, he pushed into the space beyond. Demascus followed and quietly closed the door after.

They stood in a dingy pantry lit by a flickering taper held by Chant. By the dim light Demascus saw shelves stacked with provisions of every sort. The neatly organized chamber appealed to him, but he felt suddenly nervous.

“Chant,” he whispered. “How is it that by picking a single lock on a service door, we now stand inside a wizard’s tower? Seems too easy.”

“You were expecting a magic ward, or a guardian drake maybe?”

“Uh, something like that, given how you’ve described Chevesh.”

The pawnbroker nodded and dropped his picks into his satchel, one that hardly seemed big enough to contain the bundle. He said, “The thing about Chevesh is that he’s really crazy. Word on the street is that he doesn’t guard his tower because that means he can pretty much do what he wants to people stupid enough to break in here—of course, the thieves of Airpur know this. Everyone gives Chevesh’s tower a wide berth.”

“What do you mean, ‘do what he wants’?”

Chant shrugged. He said, his voice hardly more than a whisper, “That’s the question, isn’t it? For all I know, the rumors are all bunk. It’s all been academic before now. Either way, we’re going to be better off if we stay quiet. You ready?”

Demascus nodded, despite how his mouth had gone dry as a desert.

They went to the opposite door and peeked out. Beyond was the tower’s core, around which stairs spiraled upward. The stairs paused in their ascent at a series of landings, all of which were dark except for the topmost level, which blazed with flickering light. Three doors opened off of the ground floor besides the one in which they stood.

A bronze statue with hair and beard of red flame stood at the base of the stairs, providing light for the lowest level of the tower. The figure was squat like a dwarf, nearly as wide as it was tall, and masterfully detailed in its execution. It almost looked as if the colossal hammer clutched in the figure’s right hand was a separate object—

The “statue” scratched its chin with its free hand, then returned to apparent immobility.

Merciful gods, that thing was alive.

Demascus tapped Chant on the arm and whispered, “So, what do we do?”

The pawnbroker returned his look, his expression apprehensive.

Demascus pulled the man back from the door and said as quietly as he could, “That’s no firesoul. It looks like it could smash us into paste with that hammer.” Something about it was familiar. It was just on the tip of his tongue …

Chant shuddered, “Yeah. Maybe we should—”

“Azer,” said Demascus suddenly, a little too loud. Then, quieter, “Azers are the servants of fire giants, usually. Or titans. They’re at least as tough as they look.”

Chant said, “Are they from Faerûn? They must be from an echo world …”

“Maybe. I don’t remember anything else. Can we get to the upper level another way?”

“I don’t see one. Well, we could climb up the outside.”

Demascus looked at the pawnbroker’s bulging belly. No matter how graceful Chant seemed, it was hard to imagine the human inching his way up the smooth expanse of the tower’s exterior.

He said, “How about we try a distraction? We need to lure its attention to the front door. When the fire dwarf checks it out, we dart up the stairs.”

Chant nodded, a smile breaking through his worried frown. He said, “I know just the thing. Wait here. Be ready.” Then he slipped back the way they’d come and out the service door.

Demascus inched forward. He flicked his eyes between the azer and the main entrance. He wondered what the pawnbroker had in mind. His hands felt clammy, but he wasn’t scared. If anything, he felt almost … disappointed that they were going to sneak past the guard.

A half song later and Chant was back. The man whispered, “Wait for it …”

A muffled bang resounded from outside the tower. The front doors shuddered slightly.

The azer’s head swiveled toward the sound. It hurried toward the main entrance.

“Now,” hissed Chant as he glided forward. He traced the wall like a fat shadow. Demascus revised his earlier opinion about the pawnbroker’s agility should scaling a wall prove necessary, and followed in Chant’s footsteps.

The azer paused at the doors and blared, “Who goes there?”

Demascus blanched. He quelled an urge to charge the vulnerable backside of the dwarflike extraplanar guardian.

Chant took each step like a cat on the prowl and Demascus did his best to imitate the man’s technique.

The azer’s gaze never wavered from the front doors, and then the curve of the next tower level blocked the view. Another few steps and they were on the second level. No guardian waited for them there.

Chant gave him a light clap on the arm, and Demascus grinned, despite his regrets.

They continued upward, ascending five levels in all, without incident or azers. The third level was painted bright red, and the fourth echoed with faint music.

The topmost landing had two doors. Flamelight roared around the frame of one.

A crash of breaking glass came from beyond the illuminated door, followed by a lunatic laugh that literally raised the hair on Demascus’s neck.

They tiptoed to the entrance. Chant looked at Demascus and mouthed, “Ready?”

Demascus nodded. The human carefully set his hand to the dragon’s head ring and pulled open the door just enough to see in.

Balls of free-floating flame banished all shadows in the room beyond. A third of the roughly circular chamber gurgled and hissed with elaborate glass piping. The tubes pumped magmalike fluid between a series of ever more complicated vessels.

A portion of the chamber was empty but for a ring of cooled brass poured out to form a wide circle on the floor. Arcane formulas written in chalk spiraled around the brass fixture like a madman’s depiction of a whirlpool.

A series of workbenches, shelves stuffed with containers of every description, and odd bits of equipment Demascus couldn’t immediately identify circled the walls.

Where was the crazy wizard?

Chant took a quick breath, then carefully lifted a finger to point at the ceiling.

A man floated among the balls of fire. A powder blue robe draped him, blue but for the snarling embroidery depicting flame flowers and fire eyes on his sleeves. Red tongues danced along the man’s fingers, along the wand he clutched in one hand, and along individual strands of his long, unkempt hair.

“That’s our lunatic,” confirmed Chant, his voice pitched just above the crackle of fire.

Demascus nodded. A haze of pale blue smoke surrounded the wizard. Chevesh seemed lost in some kind of meditation. Whatever suicidal urge had goaded him to attack the azer remained quiescent in Chevesh’s presence. Good. Demascus took a deep but quiet breath, then began studying the room for anything suggesting demonic summoning rituals, extra fake Cabal coats, or white scarves missing their owners.

The only thing immediately suggestive was the brass circle. Though he couldn’t remember exactly how he knew, Demascus was certain a fixture like that could be used to call entities from the Abyss. On the other hand, a magic circle could serve as the endpoint for a long-distance teleportation. Or as a barrier to screen out background magical influences. Or …

Lots of things, probably.

Circumstantial evidence wasn’t going to fly. They needed something substantial to bring back to the Firestorm Cabal. He glanced at Chevesh again. The wizard remained enthralled with the inside of his eyelids.

Without giving himself the benefit of consideration, Demascus darted out onto the main floor. Chant made a quiet sound of protest, but Demascus didn’t pause.

He skirted a metal chair that was bolted into the stone floor. Leather straps lay slack on arm rests, and an elaborate crown of needles perched on an extendable metallic arm. Demascus was glad that the chair’s insectoid embrace was empty.

Another two steps and he was at a workbench. Demascus glanced up at Chevesh; still in his trance. Demascus began sorting through the jumble of papers and scrolls. If he could find a piece of evidence implicating the fire wizard in the series of demon incursions, great. But what he was really searching for was some hint of his own place in all this, some scrap of his own lost identity.

Topological mixing, haepthum shipments, primordial blood, density of periodic orbits, flame vortices, strange attractors, thaumaturgic exclusion zones, and a litter of incomprehensible diagrams and calculations were all he could find on the workbench. None of it triggered the least hint of memory, or had any obvious demonic connection. Demascus looked up and saw Chant lingering in the doorway. The pawnbroker motioned frantically for Demascus to retreat.

Demascus shook his head, and pointed to the next workbench.

“Can I help you find something?” a voice overhead said.

He jumped as his gaze snapped up. Chevesh’s eyes were open and fixed on his own. They were the color of a candle flame with just a hint of coal at the center.

“Um,” said Demascus, mentally fumbling for something halfway plausible.

“I don’t recall inviting you into my laboratory. But here you are, riffling through my research. That’s very rude. Care to explain yourself?” Chevesh’s voice was as melodious and polite as if he were speaking to a naughty nephew, not a thief in his home.

Demascus cleared his throat and tried again. He said, “I apologize, mage. I need to find something out. For instance … do you know who I am?” He held his breath.

Chevesh’s blond eyebrows rose slightly as he gave Demascus a closer look. Then he said, “No. Should I? Are you the new deliveryman from the prison?”

Demascus said, “The—”

“We are the new deliverymen from the prison,” interrupted Chant from the doorway. “But it looks like we’ve caught you at a bad time. We’ll come back in the morning, when it’s full light out. How’s that sound?”

Chevesh regarded the pawnbroker for a moment, then said, “Neither of you wear the prison insignia, and if you’d come from there, you’d know to leave the inmates in the cells I’ve prepared on the third floor.”

“We’re new,” persisted the pawnbroker.

The wizard said, “Chant Morven, isn’t it? I haven’t taken so much haepthum that I don’t recognize one of Airspur’s up-and-comers. You pull the strings of snitches, sniffers, and gossip-mongers who infest Airspur’s dingier neighborhoods. At least, when you’re not selling people’s castoffs.”

“Ah. I’m delighted my reputation precedes me,” said the pawnbroker—in tones that implied the opposite.

Chevesh descended until his feet, tucked into boots the color of blood, touched the floor. He returned his regard to Demascus and said, “But I don’t know you. Yet you asked me as if I should. So tell me; who are you? I don’t even recognize your race. You’re no genasi, nor human either.”

The wizard didn’t think him human? Demascus pushed the feeling of surprise to the back of his mind to deal with later. He said, “I don’t know who I am. I was hoping you might.”

“Lost your faculties, eh? How fascinating. But why would I know? I’m no mind reader or fortune-teller. However … there is a way to learn more about you. How would you like to volunteer for a little test?”

“Could your test restore my memory?”

“I doubt it.” Chevesh shrugged. He walked to the iron chair with the straps. “But, if you’ll just sit yourself down right here—”

“Does your research have anything to do with demons?” interjected Chant, who still retained his position just outside the room.

Chevesh said, “Demons? Please. Nothing lies down that path but degraded bloodlines and disturbing dreams. Believe me, I’ve tried. Decades ago. It was a blind alley for my purposes. Look around; see any demons? Any Abyssal alphabets? Can you smell the stink of fiendish ichor or hear the screams of sacrificial victims? No.”

“Then what is your research?”

“I am on the trail of primordial blood. To begin with, I aim to instill the blood of firesoul genasi into one not born with that heritage.”

“Why?” said Demascus.

“Because I want it!” the wizard screamed suddenly. He cleared his throat and returned to his original calm tones, “Once I perfect the technique, I’ll apply it to myself. Imagine how extraordinary that will be.”

The wizard’s eyes gave off twin streams of smoke. The man had apparently already made some steps toward his goal.

Chevesh continued, “Now, enough with the all the questions.” The wizard patted the seat and raised his eyebrows to Demascus in invitation.

“Hold on,” said Demascus, taking a step back. “You’re telling me you don’t know anything about a demon summoning ritual gone wrong west of Airspur?”

Chevesh gave an exasperated sigh. “You seem awfully interested in demons. Is that what I sense is different about you? Does the blood of fiends runs in your veins?”

“No,” said Demascus, “At least, I don’t think so …”

“Sit down, and we’ll find out.” said Chevesh.

“Demascus, I think it’s time for us to leave this nice gentleman,” said Chant. “We have an appointment to keep.”

The wizard frowned. As thoughtlessly as if swatting a fly, Chevesh flicked his wand in Chant’s direction. A bead of flame snapped from the end. The pawnbroker dived out of the door as the bead detonated into a ball of swirling incandescence. The boom and shockwave swept back across the laboratory, shoving scrolls off workbenches, fluttering Chevesh’s robes, and enveloping Demascus in a rush of warm air.

The wizard said to Demascus, “No, please stay. I insist.”

Demascus ducked behind an enormous glass vessel filled with burning red fluid. The wizard didn’t follow. Demascus wondered if Chant had moved far enough to avoid the wizard’s attack. Or was his only friend and confidante in Airspur suddenly a crispy outline on the floor of the tower?

He pulled out his borrowed sword and gazed at it. What could base metal do against a master spellcaster of Chevesh’s league? Probably only anger him further.

Cryptic syllables rang through the laboratory. Demascus realized the wizard was chanting. A spell, probably one designed to flush him out into the open.

“You are behind the demon incursion in Airspur! Admit it!” yelled Demascus in an attempt to disrupt the mage’s concentration. He steeled himself to emerge from cover and charge the wizard.

The chanting petered out, then Chevesh spoke in his polite way, “Who’s the crazy one here? I told you three times, I’m not into that stuff. If you wanted demon summoners, you should have gone to the Firestorm Cabal.”

Demascus blinked. He rounded the side of the vessel, but he didn’t charge. “What do you mean?”

Chevesh stood ensconced in a swirl of fire. His wand was ablaze, and sparks danced between his teeth. He said, “The Cabal has secrets and projects it hides from the Crown. For decades they’ve been meddling with plaguechanged creatures, bringing them in from the changelands for study. But that’s taken a twist. A changelands salvage team returned with something from the south, a fragment of an old statue or fossil. But it had nothing to do with the Year of Blue Fire. I have it on good authority that ever since they began researching the relic, the Cabal has suffered demonic nightmares.”

A bad feeling skittered through Demascus. Had Lieutenant Leheren sent them on a wild boar chase? Or was the fire mage lying?

Demascus studied the wizard. The man, in all his flame and finery, didn’t seem concerned with how the world perceived him.

“What do you mean, demonic nightmares?”

“Figure of speech,” replied the wizard, who had caught a reflection of himself in a crystal panel. The man smoothed his mustache ends with his free hand as he spoke. “The Cabal is apparently trying to revive the ways of an elder cult of chaos.”

“A chaos cult,” Demascus said flatly.

“The Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye. Not a good idea. Which is why Elemental Eye worship has caught on in Toril. Even I am not insane enough to dream of rousing the Chained God. Anyhow, none of that matters for you.”

Chevesh brought his wand down so it pointed directly at Demascus. “Get in the chair, or burn. And really, I don’t care which you choose. I love a good fire.” He smiled like a child anticipating a sugarplum.

Demascus ran for the door.

Two streaks of fire blasted from the wizard’s wand so fast they whistled as they flew.

One struck Demascus a glancing blow on his left shoulder. He felt the initial impact like a tap. Then it bloomed into dull heat. He smelled burning leather as the armor beneath his jacket caught fire. He kept running.

A wall of flame roared down to block his path. Demascus skidded to halt with his heels only inches from the barrier, lying on his side. At least he’d retained his grip on his sword. For all the good it would do him.

Chevesh held his wand high. Its tip burned the same hue of red as the wall of fire.

“You’re faster than you look,” said the wizard. “I can’t wait to crack open your ribs and see the color of your heartblood.”

A curl of anger commandeered Demascus’s arm. He swept his sword out of its sheath. As before, the ghost of forgotten runes trailed a wake of swirling, ethereal light. The crescent of radiance glided across the floor and enveloped Chevesh. A flash of lighting blasted the wand from the wizard’s hand.

The wall of fire blinked out, leaving behind a haze of gray smoke.

Was the wizard down? No. Chevesh’s wild hair was even more crazed than before, but otherwise the man seemed no worse for wear; the human apparently drew strength from crazy.

Seeing he was observed, Chevesh made a show of crooking his finger. The wand clattered back into his grip.

The pawnbroker’s voice hissed from the exit, “Stay down!”

Three crossbow bolts whizzed over Demascus’s head. Two embedded themselves in Chevesh’s shoulder, and one smashed into glass piping behind the wizard. Burning fluid sprayed into the laboratory.

Demascus jumped to his feet and threw himself through the door. Behind him echoed a scream of rage and a blast of scalding air.

Chant was already bounding down the spiral stairs three at a time, gripping his remarkable crossbow in one hand. The pawnbroker’s green brocade shirt was blackened, but he was obviously still very much alive. Demascus was relieved; if the human had come to serious harm helping him—

Light blossomed overhead, bright as the noonday sun. Demascus didn’t look; he concentrated on overtaking Chant even as his suddenly sharp shadow fluttered ahead of him on the curved steps. His body worked smoothly and efficiently, and even in the face of being burned to a crisp, he exulted in the sense of strength in his limbs.

The azer waited for them at the bottom of the stairs. Its hammer was so hot it glowed white.

Chant yelled, “Don’t engage it!” and hurtled over the side railing while still ten feet above the floor. He did a fair impression of someone skilled at leaping from heights, though his landing lacked something of grace; it was more of a bounce. But then he was up and making for the kitchen even as Demascus vaulted the railing on the opposite side.

“Chant Morven, you’ve made yourself an enemy this night!” thundered Chevesh’s voice from somewhere above.

Demascus dropped, delighted with how easily his body took the impact. His muscles knew what to do; he flexed into the fall with his waist and knees, and vacated his landing spot a heartbeat before the azer’s hammer smashed down.

Then he was through the kitchen and out of the tower, running down the street after the pawnbroker beneath a sky showing the first hints of approaching dawn.

CHAPTER NINE

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

CHANT EASED THE DOOR SHUT. HE’D APPLIED A SPOT OF OIL to the hinges before leaving, and the door closed without a sound. Regular soft snores continued to issue from the back of his shop. Demascus still slept.

He was in serious need of some rest himself. But he hadn’t gotten where he was by doing what was easiest. Or by making simple assumptions. Which was why he’d spent the morning putting out feelers on Demascus. He wanted to believe everything the pale man had told him was true. But belief and evidence were two different animals.

Why’d he get involved with the stranger? Now a mad wizard has it out for me, he thought.

Under normal circumstances, Chant wouldn’t have given an amnesiac lost soul the time of day. Too many folks in similar straits showed up at his shop with a tale of woe, clothes a decade out of fashion, and a keepsake to sell off. Usually stinking of ale and missing a tooth or two.

Chant was jaded. He had to be; he’d be a poor pawnbroker if his heart went out to every sob story related to him within the confines of his shop.

And it was precisely because he was jaded that he’d been intrigued by the stranger, he realized. Demascus’s tale was demonstrably more interesting than a drunk who’d been rolled for all his possessions, memory included. The theft of the scarf before his very eyes, a piece of fabric Chant had kept safe for four years, proved that. The stranger was part of something big, even if the man couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

Which meant that helping Demascus find himself again might prove to be Chant’s salvation too. And if not that, at the very least a much-needed diversion. That was, assuming Chevesh didn’t find his shop later that day and burn it to the ground …

Anyhow, providing a few sniffers with a description of a tall man with tattoos the color of a dead hearth was more than a mere precaution. Information channeled through informants, rats, and snitches around the city might eventually provide enough clues to recover all of Demascus’s memory.

It was entirely possible Chant would learn the stranger really was only a dockworker who’d managed to survive being sacrificed by some wizard’s first and last demon summoning. Well, that was interesting. It would mean Demascus was a lucky sod.

But, no. The way he’d seen Demascus handle himself against the mage, even with no memory of who he really was … well, he was obviously not a commoner.

Chant tucked the “closed” sign into the front window, then padded to the other side of his shop.

Demascus had stripped to his smallclothes. He slept on his stomach, one arm a pillow for his head. The man’s tattoos ran down each arm and continued all the way to the end of his two longest fingers. But the design that ran along Demascus’s arms was just an outlier of the main tattoo on his back, which seemed to be some sort of intricate pattern of jagged filaments that suggested the shape of a sword. It was incredibly elaborate.

Chant had considered tattoos for himself on a couple occasions, but had never made the committment. Tattoos containing magic were too expensive. And nothing of enough positive consequence in his life had occurred that he wanted to set it down with such permanence.

Sometimes, forgetting was a kind of absolution … though Demascus obviously didn’t see it that way.

What would it be like to have no memory of himself and his deeds? Might it be the ultimate exoneration? A blessing indeed, for some; to forget your past, and move forward with a fresh start. Chant’s lips twisted.

He would give much to leave behind his problems. Most notably the series of astoundingly poor decisions he’d made some two years earlier at Master Raneger’s Den of Games. Being rash had always served Chant well. But taking “bold” chances was something only novices did when it came to gambling. He should have known that the eladrin’s games were fixed. Indeed, he had known; but he’d trusted more in a pair of pawned dice than Raneger’s ability to swindle his customers. Ebony dice that their owner assured Chant would bring him luck. Why hadn’t he been more canny? Any dice with actual power to bring their owner lasting luck surely wouldn’t have shown up in a pawnshop.

Chant had tested the dice countless times, and found them astoundingly reliable … until the one time it counted. At the Den of Games, the dice turned on him.

It was ironic. All the people who showed up in his shop to pawn their valuables to pay off debts—their liabilities were nothing to what Chant owed Master Raneger’s house.

Of course, even if he managed to forget what he owed, regular reminders would be served, thanks to the bruisers who showed up each tenday to shake him down for a repayment, plus interest. Chant’s network of sniffers and spies was a trembling sapling compared to Raneger’s mature tree. No matter how Chant wriggled, he was unable to free himself from the end of the hook Raneger had set for him.

If it wasn’t for Jaul, he would have fled Airspur, and started fresh somewhere else. Maybe Calimshan, where genasi were also said to be common, but perhaps Cormyr, or Aglarond, or High Imaskar …

But Jaul made that impossible.

He recalled his last contact with his son, sliding down memory’s well-worn and rutted path. It had been in this very shop, and Chant had been angry.

“You run with those toughs long enough,” he shouted at Jaul, “and sooner or later you’ll end up doing something you’ll never be able to live down!”

“What, like stealing?” said Jaul, his jaw set. “Like spying? Like lying to almost everyone you meet? Like what you do, Father, every day of your life?”

Cold fury crested over Chant’s composure, washing away his calm words and reasonable answers on how everything in life falls along a continuum. About how shades of gray were only gray if you didn’t take the time to fully consider their repercussions. And how if you moved too far to the far end of that spectrum, gray turned to darkness, and there was no coming back.

Instead he yelled, “Get out my shop! No son of mine talks to me that way!”

Jaul stormed out that day, and never returned.

The next time Chant saw his son, it was in the Den of Games, working as a bouncer in the front room. Seeing Jaul there, just seventeen years old, preening in Raneger’s colors as he watched the door, was too much.

It was a betrayal. Lost in the fumes of blueleaf and a river of gold ale, Chant determined to show Raneger a run on the house like he’d never seen. He fished the ebony dice from their pouch and blew on them. He retreated to the back room, where only high rollers were allowed. There, he proceeded to bankrupt himself.

In the aching light of the following afternoon, a politely worded message arrived by courier. In thin letters drawn out with soulless efficiency, the message indicated the obscene sum he owed Raneger.

He turned the message over and saw the likeness of his son sketched on the back. Sharp terror tugged at his stomach. He knew immediately what the portrait implied. He realized only then how bullheadedly he’d pursued his own destruction.

Despite their estrangement, or perhaps because of it, Jaul would serve Raneger as the perfect, if unwitting, hostage.

“Damn it all.”

The sleeping man snorted and turned in his sleep.

Sorry, Demascus, he thought, and moved farther from his guest’s cot.

With such a run of bad luck, it was oddly fortuitous he hadn’t sold off Demascus’s scarf. He’d almost done it a few times, after the tall stranger failed to return to claim it in the time specified. Without it—

Exhaustion crashed down on him like a barrow of stones. An image of his bed wafted before him, soft and warm in the loft. But not yet. His mind was gummy from lack of sleep, but he had one more thing to check before he allowed himself a nap.

Fable appeared from nowhere, her green eyes luminous in the light trickling through the shutters.

“You scared me, you little devil,” he whispered. The cat twitched an ear, then padded across the floor to an empty crate. Fable liked to sit in the short-sided crate like it was some kind of cat throne. Funny little creature. He smiled.

Chant wound around a display of silvered dishes and formal napkins, and paused before a rusted ship anchor. He pulled it out of the way, shoved a wooden box of pewter mugs with his foot, and paused to regard the cabinet he’d uncovered. Books and scrolls were visible through the cabinet’s narrow glass doors. He scanned the titles. He’d accumulated a collection of tomes and librams over twenty years of buying oddments. Some were from the libraries of down-on-their-luck genasi, but the core of the collection was from a single source: a group of ragged salvagers had brought him a chest filled to bursting with moldy tomes. They’d told him they’d pulled the chest from a Chessentan ruin they found on an earthmote south of Airspur.

Chant had paid good coin for the books, thinking he could turn around and sell them at a fair markup.

But there they still moldered. Apparently not as many book collectors wandered through pawnshops as he’d hoped, and he’d never taken the time to set up an external sale.

Maybe that was good. The things Chevesh had mentioned reminded him of something he’d seen scrawled across one of the pages.

He pulled a thick volume from the shelf that smelled of mushrooms and was titled Cults of Tyranny. He opened it on the counter.

The book could have used an index. Or even a table of contents. Chant paged through, searching for the image that had caught in his memory when he’d first shelved the book so many years ago.

And suddenly there it was on the page: the image of an eye, superimposed on a jagged spiral design. The caption read, “The Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye was the heart of a religious sect that terrorized locals when it sprang up in west Chessenta in 1340 DR. The cult hired bandits, consorted with demons and evil powers, and caused much destruction before it drew so much attention to itself that it was finally destroyed by an alliance of forces. The cult never managed to gain a foothold in Faerûn, which some attribute to Mystra’s direct intervention.”

That was all.

Chant frowned, and paged through the rest of the book. He found nothing else related to the Elder Elemental Eye.

He turned back to the page with the symbol again and studied it. It looked sort of familiar, like he’d just …

“Waukeen’s empty purse!” he cursed. He knew where he’d seen it.

Demascus began to struggle in his sleep. The man’s hands went to his own neck, as if he were trying to loosen a shirt collar drawn too tight. He thrashed and yelled, “No!” and sat up on his cot, eyes wide and blinking.

“What’s wrong?” said Chant.

“Huh?” said Demascus, staring at him in confusion.

“You were dreaming. A nightmare of some kind.”

Demascus rubbed his neck. He mumbled, “Oh. Yeah.”

Chant studied the pensive expression on Demascus’s face. Whatever the dream had been about, it hadn’t been pleasant. He decided not to press.

Instead he said, “I’ve found something you might find interesting. Come take look at this,” and pointed at the picture in the book. “Remind you of anything?”

Demascus swung his feet off the cot and into his boots, then came to the counter.

He examined the symbol, and his eyes narrowed. He said, “Minus the eye in the center, that’s the sign that fellow at the Motherhouse had on his neck!”

Chant shook his head. He said, “Chevesh wasn’t lying.”

Demascus began donning his gear. “Time to call the Firestorm Cabal to account,” he said.

“Hold on; we need a plan. We can’t just burst into the Motherhouse and accuse everyone there of being liars!”

“Why not?” Demascus said. He finished with his armor and belted on his sword.

“Because if they lied to us before, they’ll probably try to kill us to protect their secret. If they’re summoning demons, I doubt they value our lives, except as possible sacrifices.”

“If it was as simple as that, they would have killed us when we were there yesterday. Anyway, Lieutenant Leheren wasn’t lying to me, I’m sure of it. It was the other two, Jett and that other genasi.”

Chant nodded but raised his hands, “Let’s think this through.”

Demascus ignored Chant and pulled on his coat as he walked to the exit. “We can think it through on the way.”

“Are you trying to get yourself killed? If the Cabal really is calling demonic monsters into Airspur, maybe we should figure out some way to alert the queen that she’s being hoodwinked by the very people she hired to …”

But Demascus was already gone.

Chant was tired. His muscles ached from the evening’s escapades, and he’d managed to bang his shin somewhere along the way. It was so tender to the touch that when his boot top accidentally brushed it, he yelped with pain.

He considered letting the stranger go and be done with him. The thought of his bed was a powerful lure.

Fable meowed. “You already ate this morning,” he told the cat. “Earn your keep and find the rat who keeps eating holes in the tapestries.” Fable just looked at him, then settled more comfortably in her crate.

He glanced at the wall above the counter. Jaul’s likeness, rendered in deft strokes of black ink, was pinned there. Chant muttered, “I swear this is going to be the death of me,” and left his shop.

He dashed to catch up with the swiftly departing Demascus. He garnered a few looks for his haste; Chant wasn’t known as someone who dashed anywhere, unless it was to be first in line at the buffet held once a tenday at Creighton’s Sea Bonanza. It was an image of portly ineffectualness he’d worked hard to fashion, and he cursed Demascus for making it necessary to reveal himself as capable of moving so rapidly in front of all his contemporaries.

He reached Demascus’s side and said, “Wait!” then put his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. All for show, of course. If anyone had noted his athletic dash, they were treated to a wheezy, gasping finale that should make it all right.

Demascus waited. His eyes widened in surprise. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

The last time Demascus had seen him move swiftly, Chant had taken steps three at a time, vaulted a banister, and sprinted out of a wizard’s tower without showing any ill effect.

Chant waved him off without explaining his apparent lack of breath and straightened. He said, his voice low, “I’m going with you. I’ll help, I told you before. But we have to be a bit more cautious. We can’t just run up to the front doors and demand to be let in.”

“Then what?”

Chant began walking. He said, “We find a spot where we can observe the Motherhouse from a distance, and we watch.”

“What’s that going to accomplish?” The man’s lips were thin with impatience.

“We wait until we see Leheren or Jett emerge. We follow them without revealing ourselves until they’re well away from the structure. That way, if we confront them for answers, they won’t have the entire strength of the Firestorm Cabal to call in their defense.”

Demascus considered. He said, “What if they don’t come out?”

“Then we devise a new plan.”

“That sounds awfully close to making it up as you go.”

“My speciality.”

Damascus sighed. Finally he said, “That sounds … reasonable. Thanks for helping me, Chant. It seems I’ve got something of an impetuous nature.” He frowned, as if unhappy with the idea. “I really appreciate you going out on a limb for me, especially given my situation.”

“Like I said before, I’m helping you because information is coin, and this situation is shaping up to be a dragon’s hoard.” And only coin will see Jaul to safety, he thought.

They made their way in casual fashion, by roundabout routes suggested by Chant, until they reached an earthmote with a parklike overlook. From it, they could look down on the Firestorm Cabal’s main safehouse.

Demascus scanned the vista, his eyes growing wide. “I don’t understand. Are we lost?”

Chant was confused too. He hated that feeling. “No … we’re not lost, but …”

The Motherhouse was gone. In its place was a gutted, fire-blackened ruin of tumbled stones that sent a pillar of smoke into the sky.

“Lords of light,” whispered Demascus. “What’s happened?”

Throwing caution to the wind, they descended, until they stood with the crowd of onlookers who’d gathered to regard the spectacle of destruction.

Demascus accosted a genasi at the edge of the crowd. “What happened to the Motherhouse?”

The genasi shrugged and said, “No one knows. Sometime in the night, it must have caught fire.”

Demascus turned to Chant, his expression stricken.

The pawnbroker could only shake his head. His aches had aches, and he felt a powerful need to sit down. He backed away from the press, then slumped onto a street bench. He sighed. If Demascus failed to recover his memories, then any hope Chant had of riding the stranger’s coattails was gone. His debt to Raneger would continue crushing him beneath its merciless weight.

He gave a halfhearted chuckle. It had been a stupid plan anyway.

Demascus followed him to the bench, but the man’s attention remained riveted on the destroyed structure.

Chant rubbed at his eyes so hard that tiny lights flashed behind his lids. When he blinked away the tears, he noticed someone with white leather boots had joined them.

Chant looked up into the dark eyes of a woman somewhere in her second or third decade of life. She clutched a mace in one hand so tightly her fingertips were white. Her long-sleeved, floor-length court dress was unadorned save for a scattering of gold stars around each sleeve. Her hood was pushed back, revealing traceries of gold running through coffee skin; she was an earthsoul. She wore an emblem of a silver disk, with seven stars around a pair of eyes.

“Hey,” said Chant. “Who’re you?”

The woman said, “My name’s Carmenere. Word is, you’re looking for Rilta. Why?”

Murmur blinked the eyes of its fleshy costume. It experimentally opened and closed the mouth, clacking the teeth. The body Murmur inhabited had again succumbed to sleep, allowing Murmur to wake in turn.

Murmur picked itself up, still awkward in the fragile form. The body was beginning to show signs of the approaching molting; the flesh was becoming slightly tougher than mortal bones and skin. But until the day when Murmur could take complete control of the vessel, it must be careful to keep its ill-fitting flesh suit in one piece.

If being careful was the only price it had to pay, Murmur was happy to do so, considering how it had spent the previous centuries distilled to its essential self and trapped in a fused globule of once-molten stone.

Murmur regarded the small chamber. Why had its borrowed body chosen this place to sleep? The room wasn’t where Murmur was accustomed to coming to itself. Unfamiliar fixtures and devices adorned the chamber. Murmur didn’t recognize their purpose.

The garment the body adorned itself in was also different than what it was used to. Murmur ran its flesh hands along the hem of the opposite jacket sleeve, feeling the smooth texture of a leather garment. Why was its host attired as if going out for the day? Usually Murmur’s host was wearing light nightclothes when the demon dream took control.

If Murmur wanted, it could have plucked the secret meanings of everything that lay around it from the depths of its host’s mind. But such a direct intrusion would be like using a knife to peel back its host brain one layer at time. Though Murmur would learn much in the process, afterward the mind would be a dissected, ruined mess. Host bodies tended to curl up and die after that. Murmur knew that from firsthand experience.

The price of such immediate gratification would force Murmur to find a new host and begin the process of embodiment all over again. Though hunting the dreams of mortals was a pleasure Murmur quite enjoyed, doing so would set back the date of molting even further. Plus this particular flesh was nearly ideal for Murmur’s needs.

Better to merely skim the surface for meaning. To its sleeping host, Murmur’s presence and control of the body was hidden, except as memories of a recurring nightmare. A nightmare that was growing more and more terrifying each time its host slept. Eventually the dream would become the only reality, when the molting finally gave Murmur complete control and a real anchor in the new world. Then its host mind would be consumed utterly, and Murmur’s patience would finally pay off.

“My lord?” said a voice.

Murmur swiveled its head around on its neck. It regarded a creature whose form was not dissimilar from the one Murmur wore. But the intruder was native to this world. He was one of the few who knew of Murmur’s presence. But like the others who knew, he had sworn himself to Murmur’s cause.

The servitor had been especially helpful in providing aid, resources, and information as requested. Murmur had heard the man’s name, but hadn’t made a special effort to fix it in its mind. Or even taken the trouble to ask the man to remove the hood he constantly wore. Murmur didn’t need to see the man’s features to recognize him—his vomitous breath made him unique in any crowd.

“I rise. Tell me, servitor. Where are we? Why are we not below?”

“An accident, my lord.” The figure pointed to one wall, where daylight came through shuttered doors.

Murmur threw open the shutters, then walked with its stiff-legged gait out onto the balcony.

The city of Airspur was spread out beneath it, but Murmur’s eye was immediately drawn to a tower of smoke climbing into the sky and the tumbled ruins beneath it.

“The Motherhouse,” said Murmur.

“One of the cadre got loose, my lord. With you absent, your host thought it best to bring the entire safehouse down on its head to trap it.”

“You couldn’t stop it?” Murmur suppressed the flame of wrath that urged it to try and bite off its servitor’s face.

“It wasn’t necessary.”

“I’ll decide what is or is not necessary. The Cabal—”

“Will rebuild. They have the resources.”

Murmur glared at the servitor, twitching with its effort not to yank a nightmare loose from the man’s mind and set it upon him like a tumor.

“And in the meantime,” continued the servitor, oblivious to how close he was to the end, “we go about your work below, without the necessity of keeping your activities secret from the Cabal members not yet sworn to the Elemental Eye. After all, the vault remains, beneath all the rubble.”

“… it seems this is not the unmitigated disaster I first imagined.”

The man bowed so low his hood scraped the floor. He must have realized how he’d overstepped his place. Then the servitor backed out of the chamber. Murmur watched him go.

Once the molting was over, the demon dream promised itself the first heart and mind it would feast upon would be that one’s. Nothing tasted so sweet as betrayal.

Murmur returned its attention to the scene beneath the balcony. Dozens of people had gathered to watch the final embers gutter out.

Murmur wondered which nightmare among those it had solidified had gotten loose. Probably the one Murmur had given the name “Screamripper.” Of all those Murmur had so far fashioned, Screamripper had proved least amenable to being held in thrall, despite being born and fleshed with Murmur’s power, and despite having taken the pledge to the Elder Elemental Eye. Of them all, Screamripper seemed to sense the pledge that Murmur administered to each new member of the cadre was a sham.

Such was the power of its strongest children—they knew something of Murmur’s secret mind. And Screamripper suspected that Murmur’s devotion to the Elder Elemental Eye was merely expedient.

As with so many other things, that wouldn’t matter once the molting was complete. Screamripper would come to heel. And then they could concentrate fully on Murmur’s real purpose. The collection of Scour’s scattered pieces was almost—

Its attention jerked back to the scene out on the street. Three people lingered on the edge of the crowd. One was …

One was familiar. A man with white hair. Had Murmur marked the man as a servitor, or drawn a nightmare from him?

No.

Murmur’s flesh costume involuntarily sucked in a breath through its teeth. Murmur knew that man.

It was Demascus.

A cold wind seemed to blow across all Murmur’s plans and dreams, threatening to knock them down like a house of cards.

The demon dream recalled the last time it had seen that white hair and those ashy tattoos. In a place between worlds, where Demascus and his allies had brought all the dreams of Murmur and its siblings to nothing.

Demascus could only be present, here and now, if he intended to finish what he’d started so long ago.

But it didn’t make any sense; how had the man come to be here? The demon dream’s last interaction with the man had occurred so far away that miles couldn’t be used as a measure.

Murmur heaved its puppet flesh away from the balcony’s edge. Disconcerting sensations screamed through the body of its host, and in turn, through Murmur. It felt sick, as if a creature of cold sea water and hate burrowed at its intestines. Should it flee this body altogether, and find some new dream to infect? Or just physically run, and hope the molting occurred before Demascus caught up with it? Or …?

Murmur forced itself to pause in the shadow of the door.

No.

It had invested too much energy here to abandon its effort without at least learning how Demascus had tracked it down. If it ran without discovering more, Demascus would probably just find it again. Murmur braced itself, and glanced back.

The three figures remained on the street. Demascus hadn’t glanced up at the balcony. The man didn’t seem especially wary. His weapons were not even in evidence.

Was the man playing with the demon dream? Or did he really not know what looked down upon him?

Demascus was talking to companions. What was he saying? Murmur’s hearing was keen; the demon knew how to extend the senses of its flesh shell to the bleeding edge. Literally.

But the noise from all the onlookers drowned out the conversation of its ancient foe.

The question remained: If Demascus had traveled to the world called Toril, and had ventured specifically to Airspur, why hadn’t he already confronted Murmur? The demon dream was so much weaker than the last time they’d met. It had failed to regain contact with any of its siblings save Scour, it had enrobed in flesh only a handful of nightmares, and it hadn’t even gone through its first molting yet …

Maybe Demascus hadn’t yet figured out whose dream the demon possessed?

During the day, the flesh shell Murmur wore went about life normally, having no idea what slumbered inside.

And what if Demascus was also weakened? The two people Demascus spoke with were not of the avenging company that had broken the first circle of cultists that called Murmur and its siblings from their fossil dimension. Perhaps that group was scattered and weakened too?

Murmur noted further that Demascus was attired plainly, compared to the elaborate ensemble he’d sported before. What had become of his keening sword, his undulating veil, his blazing ring, and the god-given icons braided into his hair? Apparently he’d traded it all in for a secondhand noble’s coat and a mercenary’s long sword.

Lips stretched spastically across Murmur’s lower face; a smile.

Maybe, just maybe, Murmur had the upper hand this time around.

The demon dream reached out with its talent. A low trembling shook the floor. Shadows swelled up out of the corners and dim areas of the room like a rising tide of encroaching water. The light around Murmur fell by half, as if night approached. The dimness expanded, and washed over the side of the balcony. It trickled across the cobbles toward the Motherhouse ruins.

None of the onlookers noticed; the shadows were only a side manifestation of Murmur’s talent, and as such, the effect was only visible to itself, and perhaps those with special sensitivity.

Murmur reached into the ruins of the Motherhouse through the conduit of lassitude, and dug beneath the detritus with fingers of immaterial coercion.

It found the creatures it sought. A few that it had already lured from terrified minds, given ectoplasmic flesh, and pledged to the Elder Elemental Eye.

Murmur caressed their minds, pulling their attention from dreams of mayhem and annihilation. Murmur impressed upon one a psychic image of Demascus, and for good measure, an image of the two people Demascus talked with.

“Follow them,” ordered Murmur. It considered asking the monster to bring them back, so it could feed them to the pit.

But no. That would be a complication.

Murmur continued, “When they are alone, kill them. Bring their skins to me; their fluids and organ meat are yours.”

CHAPTER TEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

DEMASCUS GAPED. THE MOTHERHOUSE WAS A SHELL OF smoking cinders. Gone, like his expectation that his questions would be answered. The black vapors meandering up into the sky might as well be flags flown at the funeral for his hopes.

Who was responsible for this travesty?

Anger, hot and bitter like a slug of coffee fresh from the pot, kindled. He did not like being denied. Those who crossed him learned the error of their ways, or they died. Died in a—

He blinked, and the anger collapsed before his surprise at his own reaction. Where the Hells had that come from? Demascus pulled at the hem of his coat and swallowed. The intractable fury of a moment earlier was like a residual taste of iron in his mouth. For a moment, he’d been so furious, he could have throttled someone …

Merciful gods, he thought. Is my temper the reason I killed a priest?

A woman interrupted his reverie. He only half heard what she said, but he gratefully seized on the interruption of his own fruitless reverie. Something about …

“Rilta?” he blurted. “Who’s that?”

The genasi glanced at him, looked him up and down, then replied, “It’s Riltana. I used to call her Rilta for short. Why’re you looking for her?” She returned her regard to the pawnbroker.

Chant shook his head. “I don’t know anyone named Riltana,” he said in a weary voice.

The woman—she’d claimed her name was Carmenere—frowned. She said, “You’re Chant Morven? The one asking around about someone answering to Rilta’s description, right?”

Understanding dawned. “The scarf thief!” Demascus said. “You know her?”

Carmenere gave a diffident shrug. “Maybe.”

“Is Riltana a windsoul genasi with a black mask and formfitting leather armor?” Chant asked.

“She’s been known to wear a getup like that,” said Carmenere. “You called her a scarf thief. Did she take—?”

“Yes! My scarf! She yanked it right out of my hands. That scarf was very important to me!”

Demascus glared at the woman. He knew his manner was accusatory. He knew that he should take care not to scare her off. But he couldn’t muster the control to soften his stance.

The lines around Carmenere’s mouth deepened into a frown. She murmured in a voice stripped of emotion, “Rilta has been known to take things that don’t belong to her. Usually things that aren’t of so much value that their absence would be missed too much. Usually.”

“Value?” yelled Demascus. A few people from the crowd of onlookers glanced at him. He didn’t care. “What does that matter? She’s a thief, and—”

Chant heaved himself to his feet and put a hand on Demascus’s shoulder.

Demascus glared at the pawnbroker, but shut up.

The human cleared his throat and said, “Pardon my friend, Demascus; that wrap has significant sentimental value to him. Maybe you could tell your friend Riltana we’d like it back? That we’d even be willing to pay to have it returned?” Chant’s voice was a model of friendly sincerity.

Demascus finally managed to leash his outrage, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. It was all he could do to stop frowning.

Carmenere said, “I would tell her but … she’s missing. And I’m worried.”

“What do you mean, she’s missing?” said Chant.

“I went by her place yesterday when I heard you were looking for her,” said Carmenere. Her expression wavered, as if much lay behind that simple statement.

“And?” Demascus said.

The woman pulled out a ragged piece of parchment. “I found this message.”

Chant took the scrap and squinted at it. Then he pulled a pair of reading lenses from his pocket and perched them on his nose, and perused the paper.

“What’s it say?” asked Demascus.

“It’s addressed to Carmenere; Riltana says she’s going to meet a client in the Sepulcher to receive payment for services rendered. So?”

Carmenere said, “Rilta should have been back already! She never returned last night, or this morning. I’m afraid something’s happened to her in the Sepulcher.”

“What’s the Sepulcher?” said Demascus.

“A place where crooked deals are made,” said Chant thoughtfully.

Carmenere looked at the ground.

Demascus said, “Let’s go. I need that scarf to help me remember—”

Chant elbowed him, and moved his head slightly in Carmenere’s direction.

Right, Demascus thought. Probably better not to announce his incapacity to every single person in Airspur.

“Carmenere,” said Chant. “We’re heading to the Sepulcher. Will you accompany us to look for your friend?”

“I don’t want …” The woman shook her head. She looked up from studying the ground. “No, I’m out of her life. If you find her, and she’s all right, please don’t tell her I’m the one who sent you after her.”

“Um. Sure,” said Chant, obviously nonplussed.

It’s probably not politic, thought Demascus, to tell the genasi what he intended to do if they found Riltana. Instead he said, “Where do we need to go?”

The pawnbroker pointed west, toward the crevice where the two cliff faces of Airspur came together beneath a veil of roiling white water.

“Did you hear that?” said Chant.

All Demascus could hear was a crashing roar. The rumble of the nearby falls had found its perfect resonance in the tunnel, and the sound was trying to vibrate its way to the center of his skull.

Demascus shook his head. Reaching the Sepulcher had turned out to require a trip into the labyrinths beneath Airspur. The pawnbroker had known which way to go; he said he’d visited the out-of-the-way “drop point” on a couple previous occasions. They’d already traveled nearly half an hour through passages, some of which were make-do sewers for Airspur, and he was ready for the trip to be over.

Chant paused and looked back along the tunnel. Demascus copied the pawnbroker, and studied the apparently empty passage.

“What?” said Demascus, his voice low.

The man shrugged. “Not sure. It sounded like something in the tunnel behind us.”

“I can’t hear anything but the falls.”

“The Akanawater is impressive, eh?”

“Impressively deafening.”

The pawnbroker chuckled. Demascus swallowed a twitch of irritation. The noise was working on his fraying temper, but that didn’t mean he had to give in to it.

They moved forward. The odor of rotting fish grew stronger. The smell finally succeeded in blotting out the fecal oppression of the sewer flow, though that was hardly a relief.

Chant raised his hand and pointed at a faint glimmer of light ahead.

“That’s it,” whispered the shop owner. Demascus nodded and put his hand on his sword hilt.

They entered a sizeable chamber sporting one, two, three … a total of seven exits. One of which was sealed with a rusted iron valve on the ceiling.

The misted air was humid with fish stink. Light emanated from a coating of fungi on the walls and ceiling. A series of overlapping tidemarks on the wall made it clear the cavern periodically flooded. Even then, water pooled in low spots on the floor. A few contained desperately darting fish, indicating the last influx must have been very recent.

A woman in black leather lay limp and unmoving near a side wall. Not far from her was a smaller body, stretched out so that it lay partly submerged in a pool.

“That’s her!” said Demascus. Chant grabbed at his arm, but he twisted loose and splashed across the Sepulcher. If this was some kind of elaborate ambush, he was ready.

Demascus crouched at the thief’s side and … she did not have the scarf. He wanted to scream and shake the body. He mastered that impulse and instead felt for a pulse along her neck.

A regular but faint throb was his reward.

“She’s alive.”

Chant joined him, but his gaze swung around the cavern in anxious arcs.

“Can you wake her?” said Demascus. “We need to find out what she did with my scarf.”

The human pursed his lips as if weighing options. He finally pulled a glass vial of healing elixir from his belt.

Demascus had used such potions hundreds of times. Thousands maybe … He blinked, momentarily overcome with a cavalcade of images and sensations of treating bleeding stomach cuts, head wounds, broken legs, stabbings, beatings … He rubbed his eyes to clear the montage.

Chant was supporting the woman’s head as he poured the curative balm down her throat. In the span of a heartbeat, color returned to the genasi’s pale skin. She choked, and her eyes shuttered open.

She blinked. Her regard switched from Demascus to Chant and back. She was confused.

Demascus cleared his throat.

Riltana’s eyes widened and she said, “You!”

“Yes, me,” said Demascus. “Where’s my scarf?”

The thief raised a shaky hand to her head. The cloud-colored crystal strands of her hair were pulled back in a braid.

“Pus-faced goblin ambushed me, hit me on the head. I don’t know …”

Demascus gaped at the other form lying half beneath the surface of a pool just a few paces from Riltana. He leaned over, grabbed it by the filthy rags that served as its footwear, and pulled it out of the water.

It was a goblin. Its eyes bulged. The goblin’s hands were locked with rigor mortis at its throat, trying to claw away the pale scarf that wound around its neck so tightly the creature had strangled.

“Merciful gods!” said Demascus. It was his scarf. But … his hand caught midway in the act of reaching for it. The goblin had died, just like the priest in his memory, struggling for breath. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Which meant the fabric was an enchanted instrument of death; not a scarf at all, but a garrote!

Maybe losing it, and knowledge of his past self, had been a blessing. Maybe it was something he’d even arranged to occur. Yet here he was, on the brink of retrieving it, and maybe a life he’d wanted to run from.

“Is that it then?” said Chant.

“Yes. But, I don’t …” The layered wrap of the scarf, the way it snugged so tight to the dead creature’s neck … he felt sick. An echoing, roaring sound clogged his brain, getting louder.

Wait. The roaring was real.

Chant and Riltana both glanced at the tunnel where they’d entered as an even louder roar reverberated across the damp chamber.

A monster crouched there. Its cat-slit red crystal eyes were fastened in hungry anticipation on Demascus.

“Pig-straddler!” cursed Riltana. Then, “Why didn’t you leave me unconscious? I can’t handle any more of this shit!”

The monster was humanoid, but its extra set of arms, its stooped-forward posture, and the shoulders—almost deformed with muscle—gave it something of the aspect of a hunting feline. Its mouth was a forest of teeth, and red crystalline spikes burst from its head and upper back like a primordial crown.

Demascus recognized it. It was kin to the demon he’d faced in the shrine. But this one was far more powerful than the dretch he’d dispatched. It looked like it was bred expressly for efficient evisceration.

The beast burst out of the tunnel and pounced, claws extended in a fourfold embrace.

It touched down in the center of the chamber, having covered ten paces in a single leap. Then it was in the air again, moving so fast Demascus could hardly focus on it.

He thrust his sword before him, holding the hilt higher than the point to create a momentary shield. Time seemed to slow from frenetic to merely swift as translucent runes slicked the blade. The eviscerator’s momentum hurtled it onto the transient incline of his sword even as he imparted additional force with a shove.

The demonic thing flipped over him, its roar becoming a confused squeal as its limbs windmilled without finding purchase. It crashed into the far fungus-coated wall. The regular temporal flow reasserted itself as the thing scrabbled to right itself.

Demascus heard boots scraping on the cave floor, then two crossbow bolts struck the beast. One was deflected by the crust of reddish crystal, but the other caught it where an arm emerged from its torso. The eviscerator yowled, but more in fury than pain.

“Demascus!” Chant called, “Watch—”

The demon flung itself right back at Demascus. The arm Chant had hit with his bolt hung limp, but the monster’s speed seemed unimpeded.

Demascus tried the same roof technique, but the creature had learned from its last manic charge and stopped short. One set of claws raked at his stomach, forcing him to drop his sword to guard it. The second set of claws went for his suddenly unprotected eyes.

He threw his free arm over his face. The armor on his forearm caught the claws, but the force of the blow wrenched his arm, sparking a pain so fierce that tears sprang to his eyes. He shuffled back, and his boot heel caught on the soft form of the dead goblin.

He stumbled. How ironic, he thought as he caught his balance. I’m going to die here, just as the most significant relic of my memory returns to me.

He yelled his frustration in the thing’s face. “What do you want? Why are you trying to kill me?”

The creature paused, then croaked, “You have displeased a disciple of the Elder Elemental Eye. Your skin is forfeit.”

What the—? “I don’t know anything about your Elder Eye!” yelled Demascus. “It’s all some kind of mix-up. I just want to know who I am!”

Suddenly Riltana was behind the demonic beast. She plunged a dagger into its side with vicious accuracy, then danced away. Demascus was certain the same attack on him would have put him facedown. The creature barked in pain, but ignored the woman. It focused its gaze on Demascus again and said, “For my service, I get to eat your heart.” The monster obviously wasn’t going to be satisfied until Demascus was dead, and apparently dismembered.

He jumped when something touched his leg.

The scarf had partly unwound from the goblin. One end was poised in the air like a cobra. Words formed along the hovering length of fabric:

Take me up.

The beast hurled itself back across the cavern.

As if from a distance, Demascus saw his hand grab the scarf.

Like a banner in a strong breeze, the coiled end of the wrap unfurled into the air. The free end reached across the space separating Demascus from the charging creature. He thought it would try to wrap around the beast’s neck, but instead it caught the beast around one ankle and pulled. The eviscerator, still advancing, bumbled its footing and sprawled at Demascus’s feet.

Demascus plunged his sword at the thing’s head.

The creature raised one of its arms and took the blade in the palm instead of the temple. Then it leaped off the floor with inhuman strength, and onto Demascus.

The mass of the monster hammered him to the ground and his head cracked against the stone. The demon clutched him with its two good arms, while the third remained tangled with his blade.

Demascus retained his sword and threw his other arm up to protect his neck from the thing’s claws. “I took you up,” he grunted to the Veil. But the white length of material seemed played out. Great.

The creature decided to live up to the name Demascus had given it by attempting to burrow into Demascus’s stomach. It had to scratch through a layer of jacket and leather armor before it could reach soft skin. Probably because its normal complement of arms was reduced by half, it didn’t immediately succeed. But Demascus was lying on his back with one wrenched arm. He knew he only had a moment before his armor wore through and it gutted him.

He yelled a wordless challenge into the thing’s face, released the sword that wasn’t really helping him, and transferred both hands to the scarf. He whipped the cream-hued Veil up and around, trying to swirl it around the demon’s throat.

The wrap twitched to life once more!

But the monster recognized the threat. It bounded off Demascus, straight up and away from the animated Veil.

Three crossbow bolts caught the beast, two in the back and one along the side of its face. A dagger hurtled through the air and stuck in the hollow of the demon’s throat.

The creature made a funny gasping sound, snapped at Demascus reflexively, then tried to rip the scarf out of Demascus’s hand, even as a clear gelatinous fluid became a torrent down its chest, adding to the gore already spattering out of the monster and pooling at its feet.

It was a tug of war.

“Let go, demon!” yelled Demascus. He hauled back on his end.

The demonic thing did the same, and in so doing, pulled Demascus to his feet.

Before he quite knew what he was doing, he twisted, put his hip into the creature’s stomach, then pulled on the scarf with all his strength. If the creature had let go its end, Demascus would have put himself in a very bad spot. But the beast held on, and paid for its perseverance by being flipped over Demascus’s extended leg. The creature flew ten paces across the chamber.

It came down badly. The cracking sound of several bones snapping ricocheted on the stone walls.

This time the monster did not get up.

Demascus leaned forward, put his hands on his knees, and just breathed. He kept his eyes on the body a little longer before glancing around. Chant was poised to fire his crossbow again. Riltana stood with bent knees, ready to charge or flee. Her face was set in an angry scowl, and she held another dagger ready.

“I think it’s dead,” said Riltana.

Demascus nodded and straightened.

“You went hand-to-hand with that thing and lived,” said Chant, as he slowly lowered his hand. “Impressive.”

“Are you kidding?” said Demascus. “I was an inch from losing my intestines. Got any of those for sale in your shop?”

The pawnbroker chuckled. He said, “What the Hells was it?”

“The same kind of beast that ambushed me at the shrine. But this one was bigger and stronger.”

“A demon then,” mused Chant.

“It seems so.” His imperfect memory wasn’t up to the task of precisely identifying it, but the scarlet crystal encrustations seemed distinctly wrong. Focusing on them for long made his eyes sting.…

“It was tracking us,” said Chant. “How wonderful for you.”

The creature’s body slumped as it lost color and shape. It ran and boiled to nothingness. Even the vapor of its passing faded, all in the space of a dozen heartbeats.

“Easy cleanup, at least,” said the pawnbroker.

Riltana palmed her dagger and said, “All right. What’s going on?”

Instead of answering, Demascus let one end of the scarf dangle to the floor. Since the creature was defeated, the wrap had returned to acting just like a normal piece of fabric. He twirled it for effect and looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Your scarf. I guess you wanted it back.” The woman had the grace to look embarrassed. “But how’d you find me? And why did you save me? And what was that thing?”

Chant said, “We don’t know what that was or why it was following us. But we came to find you because we wanted—”

“Why did you steal my scarf?” interrupted Demascus.

Riltana studied the tunnel exit a moment, then returned her gaze to him. A tension seemed to melt out of her.

She sighed and said, “Because someone promised to pay me if I took it. But instead, he tried to kill me.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THEY WERE FILTHY AND EXHAUSTED. CHANT SUGGESTED THEY talk back at his shop, but after a stop at a bathhouse on the way. Demascus paid for the visit from the shrinking stash of coins he’d recovered from the shrine.

Bathed, laundered, and refreshed somewhat in mind as well as body, they met in the courtyard outside the pawnshop an hour later. Despite her promise to reappear, Demascus wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed to see the thief had kept the rendezvous. She could have as easily fled, and left him in the dark regarding the nature of her employer.

Demascus checked the scarf for the hundredth time. It was wound round and round his left arm, where it tenaciously clung of its own accord like a fighter’s wrap. Soon, he thought, you’ll give up your secrets.… But am I ready to know them?

Chant pressed a coin into the palm of a loitering youth with instructions to return with a carrypot of stew and a couple loaves of bread from the Lantern.

The pawnbroker unlocked the door and ushered them in. Riltana looked around with a half smile at the mundane, the bizarre castoffs, and cherished treasures.

Chant pulled a chair, a stool, and a chest from his collection and arranged them around the main counter. He took down a silver platter setting and arranged bowls and spoons for three. “We can talk as we eat,” he said.

The food arrived a few moments later, and they set to.

“I should have had the lad bring a pitcher of ale across too,” mused Chant.

Demascus was too busy slurping soup to answer, but he nodded. An ale would have been nice to help settle his nerves.

He jumped when the cat meowed. Fable had appeared on the countertop, her tail straight up with unwavering confidence. Chant didn’t even look up as he shooed the cat back down. Fable meowed once more, obviously reproachful, then jumped into her crate to study them with sphinxlike disdain.

Riltana pushed her bowl away first. She watched him finish his own helping, then said, “I apologize for taking your wrap. And … thank you for showing up when you did, and reviving me. Why’d you do that? Most folks are less gracious when they corner someone who’s made off with their property.”

Demascus wiped his mouth and hands on the linen napkins Chant had provided. He nodded and said, “We’ve been looking for you ever since you took it.”

“Is it sentient?”

“What do you mean?” said Chant, leaning forward.

Riltana said, “Is it invested with so much magic that it has a kind of awareness? It called itself the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge.”

“Aloud?” said Demascus. His throat grew taut. This is it, he thought. This is where I find my memories again …

“Words appeared in the weave.”

Demascus unwound the scarf from his arm and laid it out on the counter. Everyone slid back in their chairs, as if afraid it might suddenly rise up like a rearing snake.

That name, the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge … He knew it. But the context refused to come clear.

He sighed and said, “All right, who hired you to take it from me?”

Riltana said, “Someone called Kalkan. I never got a good look at his face. I’m not sure he was a genasi. His breath smelled like … rotting meat. Maybe he was a half-orc.”

“You never met him before he hired you?” said Demascus.

“No. I have something of a freelance career in, ah, acquisitions. It’s not unusual for people to hire me to find things for them.”

“I see.” Demascus tried not to freight his voice with condemnation, despite the fact that the woman had just admitted to a life of larceny.

Riltana leaned forward, “But this job was odd in every detail. Normally, I don’t snatch purses or articles of dress. But Kalkan explained that’s exactly what this job required. He specified when and where you’d appear. And that when I saw you, I was to grab the scarf and bring it to him.”

“That strikes me as purposefully provocative,” said Chant.

“It sure got my attention,” agreed Demascus.

“You’re right,” said Riltana, blinking. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. It’s like Kalkan wanted you to track me down …”

“Which we finally did,” said Chant. “Lucky for you.”

Riltana raised a finger. “You know what’s really strange? Kalkan didn’t just hire me a couple days ago; he hired me four years ago.”

“So?” said Chant.

“Think about it. Kalkan knew to the moment when Demascus would emerge from your shop with the scarf.”

“Oh … oh!” said the pawnbroker, sitting straighter. “That’s quite a prediction. Especially since Demascus himself didn’t know he’d be in my shop two days ago.”

A chill brushed Demascus’s spine. So fine a detail divined so far into the future just wasn’t possible. He said, “It wasn’t a prediction; it was foreknowledge.”

“What’s the difference?”

Certainty washed through him like a winter wind. He said, “Anyone can predict what might happen a song from now, or an hour, and sometimes even up to a tenday from now. Magic or divine intervention can help narrow the focus on the cloud of branching possibilities. But seeing the future accurately is a devilishly difficult task, one that even eludes the gods. Anyone who possesses such a refined ability would be dangerous beyond compare.”

“Kalkan knew,” said Riltana. Her eyes narrowed. “But maybe it’s not such a miracle. Maybe you and he set this up ahead of time, to draw me into some kind of crazy scheme all of you prepared!” She pushed her chair back, crossed her arms, and glared at them.

Chant raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know this Kalkan,” said Demascus.

“And how do I know if you’re being honest with me?”

He sighed and decided to tell the thief the whole truth. “In fact, I don’t even know who I am. I woke up two days ago without any memory except a few tattered fragments. One of my reclaimed memories is of … this scarf.”

“That’s it?” said the thief, her manner still suspicious.

“No, there’s more.” Demascus then related how he’d survived being the guest of honor at some kind of demon summoning ritual put on by the Firestorm Cabal, how he’d found his way to Airspur, and how he and Chant had tried to learn more of his past by visiting the Motherhouse. When he told her about facing Chevesh, she whistled and murmured, “You broke into the fire mage’s tower? Maybe you’re both escapees from a nutter’s house.” He concluded by describing how, upon returning from Chevesh’s tower, they found the Motherhouse in ruins.

“All right,” Riltana said finally, raising her hands as if in surrender, “That all sounds too crazy to be anything but the truth.”

“Why’s that?” said Demascus.

“Lies need to be simple, so you can remember them,” offered Chant.

“Exactly,” said Riltana. “So how’d you find me?”

Demascus glanced at the pawnbroker, recalling how Carmenere didn’t want to be mentioned.

Chant said, “We found the note you left in your loft.”

Demascus glanced down, uncomfortable with the falsehood. But they’d promised.

“Was anyone there? At my loft?” said Riltana.

“No, it was empty.”

The thief frowned, then she shook her head. “Well, thanks again for pulling me out of there—even if you did bring that demon with you.”

The cat padded back to them, and wound around the thief’s ankles. She studied Fable a moment, then lifted the cat.

“Careful!” said Chant. “Fable only likes to be petted on the head. She’s a bit temperamental.”

The cat settled into a purring puddle in Riltana’s lap. She stroked down the cat’s head and back. The pawnbroker shook his head. “She’s just lulling you into a false sense of security.”

“Don’t worry. I know cats. I used to have one when I was small.”

“Tell me more about Kalkan,” said Demascus. “He tried to take the Veil from you without paying your fee?”

The thief looked up from Fable. “Yeah … well, no, he didn’t try to take the scarf from me. He said he didn’t actually want it. What he wanted was to deprive you of it at that particular time and place. Then he dumped the Akanawater on me.”

“Extreme,” said Chant. “It doesn’t make sense though.”

“I don’t think he counted on me surviving,” volunteered Riltana. “Once he saw I’d taken the wrap on schedule, he told me my ‘eternal silence’ was required. Or something like that.”

“But here you are,” said Chant.

“Right, here I am, angry as a hive of bees knocked out of a tree. I’m not going to let this go. Kalkan just made himself an enemy.”

“How’d you survive drowning?” said Chant.

“It was the scarf. Good thing I had it …” Riltana trailed off, then gave a self-deprecating grin. “It guided me out of the deeps.”

“How?” said Demascus. He ran a finger along the fabric.

Riltana said, “It shone like a lantern. It pointed the way back to the surface after a torrent washed me into deep tunnels. It named itself the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge, and said it knew what was recorded, and that it witnessed those who were fated to die.”

Demascus looked from her back to the wrap. He’d heard something like that once … but the effort to remember was like trying to catch campfire embers blowing in the wind.

Riltana said, “It agreed to help me, but only if I returned it to the Sword.”

“The sword?” said Chant.

“The Sword,” corrected Riltana. “Some sort of really powerful blade I guess.”

“More and more fascinating,” said Chant. “Any of this ring any bells, Demascus?”

Demascus gave an ambivalent nod. The Sword. The name’s significance was on the tip of his tongue. But it refused to resolve. Was the “Sword” the blade he remembered carrying in his memory fragments? It seemed a distinct possibility; the weapon had looked like an extraordinary piece of hardware.

Demascus scratched his chin and let his gaze drift to the rafters. They reminded him of massive parallel beams he’d once seen in a shining temple of light.

The memory washed over him suddenly and completely, and he saw creatures of perfect feature and form standing in small groups beneath a massive vault.

He was among them, in gleaming finery of white silk and gold. His greatsword was on his back, the Veil was wrapped around the hilt. Charms hung in his braided hair, and his ring hummed to itself on his thumb.

A man standing next to Demascus clapped him on the shoulder. The man was of middle height, with kind eyes, and sandy hair worn long. He was attired in priestly garb, and he was smiling, but it was a nervous smile. He said, “Are you ready?”

Demascus nodded and said, “Yes, Tarsis. It’s time to speak with the avatar.”

“You seem amazingly calm for where we are, and what we are about to do,” said the priest.

“I’ve done this before.”

The priest wiped at his brow. He obviously had not.

They walked the length of the temple, to the far end, where a nondescript man sat on a stool against the wall. He wore a silver breastplate, and a golden scrollcase hung on his belt.

The man strummed a lyre, and though he played no song, the chords hung in the air like living creatures of glowing gold. The sounds didn’t so much fade as escape into the world as if born.

Tarsis fell to his knee in an elaborate genuflection. Demascus performed a respectful bow.

The man set aside his instrument and rose. He said, “Demascus, I greet thee. I suppose the whispers of Fate cannot be ignored, even for one such as me.”

Demascus said, “Binder, I go where Fate points me.”

The man smiled, and the light in the temple brightened. He said, “Of course. And I would be foolish to stand in the way of gears that transcend even this world. I, if anyone, know this to be true.”

“You are the Binder of All Knowledge,” said Demascus. “I’m sure you understand it all far better than I.”

The man sighed. “Yes. Though sometimes I like to pretend otherwise. But let’s take care of business first, shall we? After that, I want to learn more about the place from where you come. It is not every epoch that a flesh-and-blood opportunity to expand my knowledge comes calling.”

Demascus said, “I’m afraid I can’t speak of anything previous to this moment; your pardon. All I require is a token, and a name.” He reached up and loosed the Veil from the hilt of his sword.

The man said, “Undryl Yannathar. You can find his most dangerous agents in the nation of Akanûl.”

The name spoken appeared across the Veil’s length, picked out in red lines, then faded.

Demascus nodded. He’d never yet seen the Veil not accept a divine commission, but he supposed it could happen one day. The Veil was Fate’s filter. Or at least, that was how he liked to think about it. Something had dragged him out of his own world and dropped him into Toril. The Veil had seemed to know about it ahead of time, and what but destiny itself had the power to breach parallel continuums?

Demascus shook his head and declared, “It is met. Undryl Yannathar has been marked. I shall find him, and deal with him and his agents.”

The man said, “That of which I am but the smallest part cannot touch Undryl, for he believes he does right. But he has been led astray in a manner that threatens to completely fracture my church.”

“Which is why I am here.” I do the dirty work of the gods, he wanted to say, so the gods can keep their hands clean.

The man pressed a small metallic charm into Demascus’s hands. The charm was in the shape of a blank scroll. He said, “With this token, you may call upon a sliver of Oghma’s power when you need it most.”

Demascus wound it into his hair with all the others already there. “I know,” he said. Then, “Payment is accepted.”

Tarsis led him away from the man, who returned to his stool and idle strumming.

“That went well,” observed the priest, and grinned at Demascus.

Demascus smiled back.

The memory faded, and he found himself still staring at the rafters in Chant’s dingy pawnshop.

It felt like he couldn’t breathe. A coughing fit racked him, and he pushed away from the counter.

“Are you ill?” said Chant, rising.

Demascus shook his head. The man, Tarsis, who had directed him into the presence of a divine avatar …

Tarsis was the man he remembered strangling to death.

CHAPTER TWELVE

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

CHANT BROUGHT DEMASCUS A GOBLET FILLED WITH WATER. The tattooed man sipped, and nodded gratefully.

“What happened?” Chant asked. “Did you choke on a carrot?” He glanced at the dregs of stew on the counter. Fable, still in Riltana’s lap, twitched her ears in interest, perhaps thinking she was about to be fed the leavings. Chant hoped it hadn’t been a cat hair that—

“I remembered something,” Demascus said. He set down his goblet and took up the length of fabric again.

“Riltana says you’re the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge,” Demascus said to the scarf.

The scene struck Chant somewhat ridiculous, but Demascus continued in an earnest tone, “I remember you, but only in broken fragments. The same way I remember my past; it’s like looking into a shattered mirror, one with most of the pieces missing. Why can’t I remember anything? Who am I? Am I a … divinely sanctioned killer?”

Riltana made a sound of surprise simultaneous to Chant’s own. Demascus didn’t pay them any attention; his eyes remained focused on the parchment-colored cloth. A divinely sanctioned killer? wondered Chant. What in the name of the King of Coins was his guest talking about?

“Answer me! My name is Demascus, and if you are bound to me, help me!”

The Veil twitched in the man’s hands, suddenly supple. When Demascus dropped it, the scarf unrolled across the counter, winding like a snake to avoid the carrypot of stew. Words faded into view on its surface:

You were bound to the world to wage endless war against darkness. Born and reborn to mortal life, death can’t permanently claim you. With each new incarnation, you lose all of what you were except for a smattering of memories. You are the newest incarnation.

The message faded as if sinking beneath the surface of a milky pool.

Demascus whispered, “Merciful gods.”

Chant put a hand on Demascus’s shoulder as the man swayed slightly, because it looked like he might fall over. He wished someone would do the same for him! Because, the words implied …

“You were dead?” said Chant.

“Many times, sounds like,” said Riltana. “It’s like something out of a story. A sort of a resurrection blessing. Or … a resurrection curse?” The thief looked at him as if to gauge his reaction.

Demascus mopped his brow with his jacket sleeve. He said, “No, that’s crazy. I don’t … I don’t know how that could be true. But …”

More words formed on the wrap:

Others like you exist, angels who traded divine existence for mortal flesh. But you have attained a greater continuity between incarnations. Your implements are anchors of memory and purpose. I, the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge, am one such implement. You are, as you have been before, called Demascus.

“See?” said Riltana. “The Veil of Wrath and Knowledge; that’s what it called itself last time.”

Fable focused with single-minded fascination on the changing words dancing across the wrap. The cat raised herself from Riltana’s lap until her hindquarters were higher than her forepaws, as if she was about to pounce.

“Stop that,” said Chant. He released Demascus’s shoulder and leaned over to grab his cat. Fable struggled to be put down, and he hastily let her down on the floor. Crazy animal, he thought.

Demascus watched the cat bound into a corner, but his gaze seemed unfocused. Chant could imagine why. What the magic scarf suggested seemed farcical.

On the other hand … it explained the fragmentary nature of Demascus’s memories, and perhaps, the grandeur of them. He was, a what, a fallen spirit? An angel bound to live over and over again?

“To what purpose are these … lives?” Demascus asked the Veil.

Another collection of words appeared, though these were fainter than before, and blurrier:

Beware, Demascus. Your last incarnation overreached himself to draw out your nemesis, and so fell closer to sin. Find your ring, if you can; it possesses the bulk of what you sacrificed so much to discover, but if not your ring, take up your sword.

“My nemesis?” said Demascus, his voice loud in surprise. “Who’s that? And why don’t you just tell me what I need to know?”

More words appeared, these even fainter; they were hardly decipherable for their blurriness:

I wasn’t with you when you died last; your sword was. You set me aside before your death, so I could begin the process of reminding your new incarnation of yourself outside your regularly established method. With your sword, perhaps you can find your ring, and from that, all the rest. But I am done. As Fate’s banner, I must abide by grievous limits. And I have exceeded them.

“Just tell me where to find my sword then!” Demascus yelled.

But the Veil dulled and fell like a shed length of snakeskin.

Demascus pounded his fist down on the counter. The carrypot and silverware jumped.

Oh, no, thought Chant. I hope this isn’t where we find out our friend is prone to going shark-starving crazy.

“Did both of you see that?” Demascus demanded, holding the scarf at arm’s length as if reluctant to touch it.

Chant nodded. He said, “I did, and it’s … incredible. You know, I’ve heard stories about beings, once divine, who have come into the world—”

“Yeah, they’re called fallen angels,” said Riltana. She peered warily at Demascus.

“No,” said Chant. Was Riltana purposefully trying to wind Demascus up? “An angel who willingly gives up its divine form …”

“Is called a deva,” supplied Demascus, all anger gone from his voice, leaving behind mere tranquility of tone. “It just came to me. It’s what I am.”

The whirling uncertainty behind Demascus’s eyes fluttered to stillness. The blot of doubt and insecurity that bent his shoulders lifted.

“I am a deva. I’ve lived before. I can remember bits and pieces of those lives. But never enough …”

Chant studied Demascus, wondering if some visible manifestation would accompany the memory, like wings sprouting from his back or holy fire erupting from his head. Or …

“What’s a deva?” he blurted.

Demascus stared at Chant, began speaking, then fell silent, as if he couldn’t quite put into words the images flickering before his mind’s eye. Riltana flashed an interrogative glance at Chant. He gave a slight shake of his head in return. He didn’t know where this was going.

Demascus cleared his throat and tried again. “A deva is a being that has given up a divine existence in order to walk in mortal guise, over and over again. But I don’t feel like a ‘fallen angel.’ Or any kind of angel for that matter. I don’t remember having any form other than this one. In fact, I feel all too human to have any angelic heritage. I especially don’t feel like I’m some kind of divine intermediary like the Veil implied … though a couple of my fragment memories do suggest …”

The uncertainty slipped back into Demascus’s expression and posture.

“What’s wrong?” asked Chant.

Demascus threw up his hands. “I’ve just discovered I’ve got some kind of crazy past, and some kind of ‘nemesis’ who remembers me from it. One that’s probably still after me. Whatever plan the previous version of me put together to get me up to speed seems to have fallen apart. And, on top of everything else, I still don’t know why the Cabal tried to sacrifice me to a demon!”

“If you don’t have any memories of anything before the shrine,” said Chant, “maybe they didn’t try to sacrifice you to a demon. Maybe that’s where you … reincarnated … after all the action was over, then jumped to conclusions.”

Demascus paused. He shook his head and said, “But I’ve been in Airspur. I remember genasi. I was in your shop.”

“Yeah, four years ago. And the scarf says you had some kind of clever plan. No doubt that’s why you left it with me. You probably died … that day.”

Demascus studied his hands. Chant noticed how smooth and scar-free they were; odd for a warrior. Unless that warrior had only worn his flesh for a few days …

Chant shivered.

Demascus said, “Burning dominions … chances are, you’re right. Gods, I’m having difficultly keeping all of this in my head at one time.”

Riltana said, “Not to pile on, but why did you ask the Veil if you were a divinely sanctioned killer anyway?”

“I asked it that because … I remember talking to an avatar of Oghma.”

This was becoming too much. “The Lord of Knowledge?” said Chant. “You remember talking to him? He’s a god. That can’t be right.”

“I said an avatar, not the actual deity. And to the extent I can trust any of my memories, I’m sure it is right. He wanted me to … deal with somebody. And though the avatar didn’t specify, I got the impression he wanted me to do so with extreme prejudice. And it was pretty clear Oghma’s commission wasn’t the first of that sort I’d taken from, uh, highly placed divine intermediaries.” Demascus ran a hand through his hair. He looked resigned when his fingers failed to brush against anything but hair.

“Well, backstab me and call me a rat’s aunt,” said the thief. “You’re claiming you’re some kind of assassin of the gods?”

“I suppose I am. Or, I was. And I’m not sure that’s an identity I want to reclaim. Some of the things that I can recall are not—”

“Have you considered the other possibility?”

“What?”

“That you’ve escaped from the Healing House after being knocked on the head too hard.”

Demascus opened his mouth as if to offer a hot retort. Then his mouth quirked, and he began laughing.

Chant joined in, and Riltana smiled. The pressure of all the revelations and guesses abated somewhat. The thief is more politic than I guessed, Chant thought.

Finally Demascus answered her, “The evidence suggests something less prosaic, though I am beginning to wish otherwise.”

Riltana nodded and said, “Yeah, it’s unlikely you’re merely a nutter with a wild hallucination to share. The Veil saved my life down in the labyrinth. It’s no mere conjurer’s prop. They don’t just give scarfs like that out on street corners.” Her eyes settled on the cloth and glittered.

Given her history with it, Chant was pretty sure the glint was mere reflexive desire, not contemplative avarice. She’d have to be pretty bumbling to steal it again, now that they knew her interest in it. And Riltana did not strike Chant as the least bit stupid.

Demascus said, “Regardless of what I was before, it’s not who I am now.”

“But maybe you can be so again,” said Chant. “If you find your sword. It’s either that, or … you could turn your back on it all, and start fresh. Throw away the Veil, leave Airspur, and never look back.”

“But then I’ll never really know who I was,” protested Demascus.

Riltana leaned forward. “Or figure out what the Veil meant by you falling into sin. What’d you get up to?”

Demascus rubbed his brow as if trying to massage away an incipient headache. He said, “In my very first memory, I was strangling a priest with the Veil. A priest whose name was Tarsis, I think. A priest of Oghma.”

“Oh,” said Riltana.

Chant asked, “Was this Tarsis the one the avatar wanted you to dispatch?”

“No. Tarsis was the one who introduced me to the avatar. The name the avatar gave me to deal with was Undryl Yannathar. Who also means nothing to me.”

Chant shrugged and Riltana said, “Never heard it before either.”

Quiet again descended on the shop. Chant didn’t know what else to say, so he just studied … the deva.

Demascus stood up suddenly. “I should go.”

“Go where?” said Chant.

“Away from here, until I can figure out what’s going on. I feel as if my head’s in danger of exploding. And I shouldn’t drag either of you into my problems.”

“I dragged myself into it by stealing your scarf, you idiot,” said Riltana. “And then Kalkan tried to kill me. No one puts a hit on me and gets away with it. In my line of work, you can’t let people walk over you. And I bet you he’s your nemesis too! Don’t walk away from help I’m happy to give you free of charge.”

“And I,” said Chant, “have far too much to gain, in knowledge alone, to not help you figure out what it’s all about.” On the other hand, he didn’t say, I hope that your mysterious nemesis doesn’t decide to even the odds by taking out your newest associates first. I’ve got enough people scheming for my skin.

Riltana snorted and said, “Not to mention the prestige you’d gain for palling around with a divine assassin.”

“What’re you talking about?” Chant frowned at the woman.

“I know the circles you run in, Morven. People you interact with make my petty thievery look like child’s play.”

His face felt warm. But he didn’t gainsay Riltana. Instead, he stared at Demascus and said, “So it looks like you’ve got some allies in this. If you really want to untangle your past, you’ll manage it quicker and easier with our aid.”

Demascus blew out a long breath. He finally said, “You’re right. Thank you.”

“Good, now sit down,” said Riltana. “Because I want to know what that four-armed creature was that attacked us after you found me in the caves.”

Demascus shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Chant didn’t want to tell Demascus or Riltana about his own troubles; it was none of their business! But he’d been bitten enough to know holding secrets too tightly from friends was asking for it. He said, “Listen. I’ve made a few enemies myself. One so fierce you could call him my nemesis.”

“Really,” said Riltana, but in a way that suggested she wasn’t the least surprised.

“But they’re mostly street thugs, not monsters like what came after us. Not that I think that’s relevant to the demon that ambushed us. I think we have to assume it was something meant to find and dispatch Demascus.”

Demascus said, “The thing in the Sepulcher was like a more powerful version of the thing that attacked me when I woke up at the shrine. It even croaked something out about the Elder Elemental Eye when it attacked us, and we know the Cabal was involved with that.”

She nodded, then mused, “It’s still hard to believe the Cabal Motherhouse is destroyed.”

“Saw it with my own two eyes,” said Chant. “Anyhow, if the Cabal was somehow involved with the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye, then perhaps it’s no wonder. The Elder Elemental Eye is nothing to trifle with, no matter how bat-crap crazy you are.”

“And now,” said Riltana, “your Veil has apparently exhausted its ability to communicate. We’re out of leads. Until the next demon shows up and tries to kill us again.”

Chant’s brows suddenly furrowed in thought. Right before they’d arrived at the Cabal headquarters …

“What?” said Demascus.

“Remember we saw that black chariot in front of the Motherhouse? It was pulling away when we got there?”

Demascus nodded.

“Someone at court knows about the Cabal’s involvement. At the very least, they know about the demonic incursions, according to Lieutenant Leheren.”

“A black chariot?” said Riltana.

“Yes. Chased with silver like ice.”

Riltana breathed in. “Only the queen uses that coach,” she said.

“Are you sure?” replied Chant, looking at her quizzically. “I thought it might be an envoy of the Crown.”

“Well … I used to know someone who is close to the queen. Arathane reserves that conveyance for herself.”

Chant goggled. He said, “You know the queen? Extraordinary! Can you set up some sort of meeting?” He smiled, imagining himself talking with Queen Arathane.

“I didn’t say I know the queen—I know an associate of the queen!”

“Who?”

The woman looked uncertain, which Chant decided Riltana was not used to.

“Now’s not the time to be shy,” he wheedled. “If we’re going to get to the bottom of this before someone sends another monster after Demascus, we need to utilize all our resources, call in all our favors.”

Riltana said, “I know the queen’s niece.”

“Ho ho!” he crowed. “Right to the top! If it gets out I am a sometimes-confidant of the queen—”

“But … she hates me. I don’t even know if she would agree to see me, let alone try to set up a meeting.”

“What’s her name?”

“Her name is Carmenere.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THE SETTING SUN DRAGGED RILTANA TOWARD A MEETING SHE both dreaded and gleefully anticipated. Her stomach couldn’t quite decipher her emotional state, so settled on feeling queasy.

Her rescuers were still in the pawnshop, but she expected they’d emerge soon. She’d insisted they wait until dark before visiting Carmenere. The woman wouldn’t appreciate seeing Riltana again, and would be even less happy to find her estranged friend in the company of two rough-looking men on her doorstep in the full light of day, where any passerby could see.

So they’d relaxed, though the pudgy shop owner had been overexcited at the possibility of meeting the queen. When Riltana proved too taciturn to respond to his ever wilder guesses about how likely they were to actually set foot in the audience chamber, he retired to his room above the shop for a nap. Demascus had busied himself looking through some old books Chant had shown him.

Riltana had decided against returning to her apartment to wait out the waning afternoon. Instead she found a place to sit and put up her boots in the square outside the shop. Chant’s pawnshop was beyond the edge of the Darkled Depths, far enough from the overhanging motes that a portion of the plaza enjoyed late afternoon sunlight.

She’d spent part of that time wondering about Demascus. Riltana was wary of surface judgments. Too much of her own life depended on manipulating how people saw her and reacted to her. So for her to believe Demascus had lived many lives, and that he was the reincarnation of someone who once rubbed shoulders with gods … Well, it was going to require more evidence than the man’s claimed memories and hints spelled out on a scarf, no matter how impressive a name it had.

Of course, Kalkan’s murder attempt made the whole thing too personal to ignore. If Kalkan was coming for Demascus again, Riltana would be hiding nearby, so she could slip a length of sharpened steel into his kidneys.

So she’d watched the comings and goings through the square. Genasi were a colorful people, but Riltana was used to the flashy dress of her fellow citizens, often chosen to further highlight the particular color and pattern of szuldar energy lines that marked most genasi’s faces.

It was the ones that took no particular effort to make themselves stand out that Riltana’s attention was automatically drawn to. She’d seen one such fellow a few times, apparently a windsoul by the glimpses she saw of his shimmering skin, though he was mostly covered by threadbare wraps. He spent several bells sitting near the square’s entrance. A wide-brimmed hat sat on the street before him, accepting coin from benevolent strangers. From what Riltana could see, he’d made fairly decent custom.

Finally the sun dipped beneath the Akanawater Falls where the facing cliffs of Airspur came together. The light shone with brilliant gold for a couple instants, then gave way to the spreading twilight.

She stood. Lounging in the square wasn’t as comfortable without the sun’s warm caress. Her neck was stiff from reclining, so she rolled her head around in slow circles.

Demascus emerged from the shop. He scanned the square with a worried frown until he saw her. She nodded greeting.

“Did you get any rest?” he said.

She nodded again.

“Good. So did we. Let’s go see your friend.”

“All right. Hold on.” Riltana pushed past Demasus into the shop.

The pawnbroker was hunched over his counter, chopping jerky with a cleaver. Fable was winding around his legs meowing as if she hadn’t eaten in a tenday.

Chant glanced up as Riltana entered. He said as if embarrassed, “She won’t eat if the pieces aren’t small enough.”

“Of course. Say, shopkeep?”

“Yes?”

“What kind of weapons do you have on hand? Besides that cleaver, I mean. I lost my short sword beneath the Sepulcher. And a handful of daggers too.”

Chant looked at Demascus, who had followed Riltana back into the shop. “Can you finish this?”

“Uh, sure.” The tattooed man picked up where the pawnbroker left off, though with less speed and precision. Fable’s meows grew more pitiful and strident as she was forced to endure waiting even longer. Oh, the abuse! thought Riltana, and smiled.

The human directed her to a case containing a battle axe, a crossbow, and a set of matching long swords with lacquered handles. She opened her mouth to patiently explain the difference between a dagger and a battle axe, but Chant pulled open one of the wide, narrow drawers beneath the display to reveal five short swords.

She closed her mouth and examined the hardware. A couple pieces were clearly decorative, but three were real weapons. A sword has to be designed for its intended use. The three she’d identified were all no-nonsense lengths of steel, but one was pattern-welded, and it tapered in thickness from the base of the blade to the point in a way that told Riltana, at a mere glance, that it was a fine piece of workmanship. Its hilt was tightly wrapped with leather that may have once been dyed white, though hard use had caused the color to darken. A snowflake was etched into the blade near the guard.

“Does that engraving have any significance?” she said.

“The fellow who pawned it didn’t say so; he’d have pointed it out if the blade possessed some kind of enchantment. ’Course, it’s possible the blade was stolen. Maybe it does mean something.” He shrugged.

She plucked it from the drawer and gave it a few experimental swings and thrusts. “I’ll take this one,” she said.

“Good choice.”

He closed the drawer, and opened another one a few down from the first. A random mess of daggers cluttered the compartment. None were decorative; all were equal opportunity lengths of death. She smiled, and selected twelve.

“And how about restorative backup; got any more of those potions? I always like to carry at least one.”

Chant nodded, and produced a vial filled with a thumb of blue liquid. She palmed it, and the elixir disappeared.

“Light sources?” she asked.

The man motioned to a rack of candles, lanterns, sun-rods, and torches. She grabbed a sunrod.

“How much for everything?” she said as she secreted the daggers in the various concealed sheaths stitched into her armor.

Chant named a figure, she made a counteroffer, and so it went until she finally sheathed the short sword in her over-the-shoulder scabbard. The pawnbroker grinned and accepted her last proposal.

Fully equipped again, she thought. Let Kalkan find me now!

Demascus finished chopping. He scraped the litter of jerky into a bowl and set it on the floor, though Fable nearly knocked it flying as he brought it down.

They left.

Twilight was normally Riltana’s favorite time of the day. The thousands of lights dotting the facing cliffs and twinkling on the floating motes of the magnificent cliff city were a wonder. But she looked inward, and relived the scene of her last interaction with Carmenere. It was a memory she tried not to brood upon constantly. Thinking about other things had proved to be a skill, and one that she’d improved at.

Except with the night’s trip destined to end at Carmenere’s door, that terrible night came crashing back down on her.

She’d been in her loft, enjoying a delicate wine from a renowned cellar somewhere west of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Carmenere stormed in.

When Carmenere was upset, she yelled, her face flushed, and her hands fluttered like birds. Riltana had seen it enough to know the woman’s harsh words were a temporary squall. Carmenere was high-strung, but she was always willing to be mollified by words of contrition and quiet companionship.

That time Carmenere did not come through the door with her arms waving and her face red with emotion. She was pale and quiet, as if drained of all emotion. Her face was expressionless as a cliff face.

Oh shit, thought Riltana.

“How could you?” said Carmenere. Her voice was dull with fatigue.

“How could I what?” said Riltana.

But she knew what. Guilt rose like bad wine in the back of her throat. Carmenere knew. Riltana swallowed and tried to formulate her next words. It was important she get each one of them right—

“How could you trade on our friendship like that?” said Carmenere. “I thought we were …” The woman trailed off. She didn’t scream, she didn’t yell. She just dropped her head in resignation. That tiny movement spoke volumes.

Denials leaped to Riltana’s lips, but she couldn’t force them out. It wouldn’t do any good.

Carmenere had obviously discovered that the painting of the first queen of Akanûl was missing from the foyer of the royal court. She’d apparently assumed that Riltana was the one who’d taken it.

And she was right.

Riltana’s eyes teared up. Carmenere would never forgive her. But she had to try to make it right.

“I can explain!” said Riltana, her voice taut. “I was going to bring it back! I just borrowed it for a fortnight, so we could study the style and get it just right; my friend Threneth and I were going to surprise you …”

Carmenere just stared at her, her expression boring into Riltana like a waterwheel-powered drill bit. The woman said, “You were never my friend. All we had was a charade, and one I was foolish enough to fall for. The very tenday I show you around the royal court, and you steal something. You’ve been using me all this time. It was your plan all along.”

“No, it’s not like that! I didn’t even know who you—”

“I don’t want your excuses, Riltana. I’ve heard them all before. I thought your tiny thefts were exciting; daring. They made you dangerous. I’d never had a friend like that before. More importantly, you seemed to like me for who I was, not who I was related to. I’m such a fool.”

Riltana swallowed again because her words had stopped. She could well imagine how it looked to Carmenere. Anything she said would sound hollow, a made-up pretext. If things had gone as she’d planned, her activities would have culminated in something wonderful.

Of course something had gone wrong, and instead of only spending a night outside the royal court, the famous painting of the first queen had gone missing. That bastard Threneth had run off with it! She’d spent the two previous evenings looking for him in all his favorite haunts.

“Carmenere, please, I was going to bring it right back, you’ve got to believe me! I was going to commission a series of two more pieces, after the style of the first, and I wanted it to be a surprise!”

“Then where is it?” Carmenere’s voice remained dead.

“I … I lost it. But I’m looking, and I’ll get it back. I promise!”

Carmenere’s blank expression never wavered. She said, “I never want to see you again. Don’t contact me. If you do, I’ll report your theft to the royal guard.”

And that had been that.

If you live long enough, she thought, you’ll accumulate memories you’d give anything to erase. The hollow feeling she’d spent months ignoring expanded, and she put a hand to her chest in real pain.

Her boot caught on the curb, and Riltana angrily jerked her hand back to her side. She’d been walking without paying any attention to her surroundings.

The night was cloudless and cool. Demascus and Chant were still following her. Because of the roundabout way she’d decided on, they had the narrow street almost completely to themselves.

We’re halfway to Carmenere’s place, she thought, and shivered.

“You all right?” said Demascus.

She glanced back to nod, then spied a figure passing into the illumination cast down by a high window. It was the beggar she’d seen soliciting coin earlier in the square outside the pawnshop. The hat he’d used to collect the generosity of others was on his head, the brim pulled low.

“Hold on,” she said, and pointed.

Chant and Demascus both glanced backward.

Demascus said, “What?”

The beggar saw her gesture. He hurried toward them.

Riltana whispered, “That fellow was begging in the square. Now he’s following us.”

The human stiffened. “Sharkbite!” he cursed.

Demascus said, “Do you know who that is?”

“I hope not,” Chant said.

The beggar drew near and doffed his hat, bowing with such exaggerated grace Riltana realized it was mockery. She pegged the man as a windsoul, though she couldn’t be certain in the dim light.

“Greetings,” said the stranger in a gravelly voice. “My name is Inakin.”

“The rumormonger?” said Chant, his voice uncertain.

Riltana paced forward until she was even with Demascus and Chant, three to one.

“The same,” said the newcomer. “Though I’ve got something more substantial to pass on than idle speculation, Chant Morven.”

The human pulled his dagger from its sheath and gripped it so that the point of the blade was directed at the ground. He said, “And what’s that, you slimy piece of pig offal?”

Demascus jerked his head to stare at the human. The invective surprised Riltana too. She prepared herself for trouble.

Inakin adjusted the hat and smiled. He said, “I can tell you’ve figured out why I’ve chosen to speak with you here, far from your home and away from peacemaker patrol routes. So, do you have it? You’re behind again. This is the third time.”

“Get out of here,” said Chant. “I told Raneger I’d have it in a tenday!”

“Yes, but—I get a bonus if I can shake it out of you earlier.”

Demascus stepped forward. “Listen. We don’t have time for foolishness. Why don’t you—”

Inakin grabbed Demascus by the throat. The movement had been so fast that Riltana hadn’t seen the hand move; one moment Inakin’s hand was at his side, and the next instant it was squeezing Demascus’s neck. The deva made a choked sound of surprise.

Riltana swore, and flipped up into the air on a breath of air. As she came down, she kicked out with all the mass of her descending body behind it, aiming at the crown of Inakin’s head.

At the last possible instant, Inakin interposed the struggling Demascus between himself and Riltana. Her boot slammed home with a vicious crack, directly into Demascus’s head.

Riltana alighted, but stumbled and nearly fell with the shock of knocking her ally senseless. She’d kicked hard.

Inakin laughed and tossed the limp form of his captive aside, and drew his blade with his other hand. Demascus toppled to the ground like a rag doll.

She swept her new short sword from its scabbard and spared a glance at Demascus, who wasn’t moving, then at Chant. The pawnbroker stood his ground, dagger at the ready. But indecision clearly racked him.

“Help me put this blood blister down!” she yelled.

Chant said, “It’s more complicated than that …”

Inakin laughed and said, “Don’t involve yourself in this fight, Riltana. Dear Morven hesitates for a reason. If you don’t want to be similarly enmeshed in things you don’t understand, walk away.”

She didn’t give a yellow squirt about becoming …

Her mouth fell open as the full import of his words hit her. She said, “You know my name?”

“I know many people in Airspur, though they don’t know me. It’s why my ‘rumors’ so often prove accurate. Like I said before, thief, step away, or everyone’s going to know your name, not just me.”

Riltana hesitated. Her persona as a lowly messenger for the Airstepper’s Guild was a facade she depended on for her livelihood. This Inakin, if that was even his real name, was threatening to strip it from her.

That pissed her off.

“You think you can make me do what you want?” she said. “Then you don’t know me at all.”

She advanced, short sword at the ready. She whirled the tip, trying to draw Inakin’s eye as her other hand smoothly drew and flung a dagger.

Inakin jumped back, and the spinning blade only clipped him instead of finding the meat of his shoulder.

She said, “Chant, help me!”

The pawnbroker grimaced, and said in a defeated voice, “If we hurt Inakin, someone close to me will pay. Don’t attack him.”

Understanding hit her like a bucket of cold water. This man, or someone Inakin worked for, was holding a hostage against Chant’s good behavior.

“Well, shit,” she said.

Inakin laughed. “Now you see, dear Riltana. So step aside. I have business with your overweight friend.”

She ground her teeth, and considered stabbing the condescending bastard in the stomach regardless of the consequences.

She said, “Chant says he doesn’t have whatever you’re looking for. If you want to get to him, you’ll come through me.”

“Riltana!” said the pawnbroker in a kind of panic.

Inakin grinned. A spark of electricity blazed under the man’s hat brim, tracing his szuldar and sparking in his eyes. He was no windsoul, as he’d been trying to project; Inakin’s heritage was the storm!

“Don’t worry, Chant,” said the man. “I don’t mind disposing of this garbage before we talk about your account. Don’t interfere, and Jaul won’t come to any harm. The wench, on the other hand …”

Wench! She decided that Inakin would have to die.

Inakin raised a hand and a thunderbolt flashed out, quick as thought, and struck her. She cried out within the discharge of nerve-burning power, and fell onto the cobbles, but thankfully behind the cover of a rain catchment barrel. The wooden vessel stank of stagnant water.

Her clothes were smoking, and she couldn’t feel the right half of her body. She retained her sword, but only because she couldn’t make her hand unclench itself; her arm flopped nearly uselessly.

She regretted her bravado. Inakin was obviously more of a player than she’d recognized. Carmenere always said that Riltana’s temper would be the death of her.

“Where are you hiding, little birdie?” sang Inakin.

She blew out a breath, palmed a dagger, and waited.

Inakin came up, just a little too close, as she’d hoped he would. Blowhards were usually alike in their overconfidence. She’d made the same mistake herself.

He opened his mouth, probably intending to brag about how easily he’d taken her down. Riltana scissored her legs and spun onto her back. Then she drew both legs to her chest, kicked upward, and caught the rumormonger square under his jaw. He grunted and stumbled back several paces as she rolled to her feet.

The dagger she’d palmed was already in flight, but the pain of her wound fouled the aim. Instead of burying itself in his throat, the dagger skittered along Inakin’s ribs.

He raised his hand, as if preparing to loose another bolt.

Riltana’s eyes were drawn from Inakin by movement in the darkness beyond him.

Something else was in the alley.

A shadow—no. A man made of shadow wielding a sword studded with faint gleams. His eyes were pits, his nose a cruel slash, and his face a mask that might well frighten a demon.

The shadowy man took a step into darkness, and reappeared a dozen paces closer, right behind Inakin.

The man … was Demascus! Even as she recognized him, the film of dimness slipped away, as Demascus cast the Veil in a nooselike loop around Inakin’s neck.

Inakin’s confident expression shattered as his eyes popped with surprise.

Demascus whispered into Inakin’s ear, “I said we didn’t have time for you.”

Chant called, “Don’t kill him!”

The deva didn’t hear, or chose not to. His hands were like steel springs engineered for a single task.

“Demascus!” Chant yelled, “Stop it!”

The plea finally penetrated. Confusion chased across Demascus’s face. It almost seemed as if the man woke from a dream.

He let go one end of the strangling fabric, and Inakin collapsed to the ground. The rumormonger’s eyes rolled around in their sockets as he drew in gasping breaths.

A scalding pain breached her consciousness. An ugly black wound, only half cauterized and still oozing blood, stretched down her right side. Oh, crap.

The leechson had seriously hurt her!

She limped over to Inakin with the intention of giving him a swift kick to the ribs.

Chant got there ahead of her and held out his hands. “No. Please.”

She growled, “If I ever see you again, you ill-bred measle, I don’t care what anyone says; I’ll flay you. Or let my friend here finish what he started.”

Inakin pushed himself to his feet and stumbled away. At least the man had the good sense not to say anything provocative before he disappeared.

Riltana narrowed her eyes on Demascus. The deva massaged his temple as if it ached. She said, “So … what the Hells was that? You said you couldn’t remember anything. But I just saw you neutralize Inakin like an elite royal peacemaker would take down a highway robber.”

“I … It felt so natural. I just let myself go. It was exhilirating! I felt such a sense of mastery. But now … it’s gone again.”

“Good,” said Chant. “I didn’t much like what I saw.”

Demascus seemed to blanch.

Riltana sniffed. What lurked in the deva’s past? Something even more deadly than Kalkan, apparently—Demascus himself. The news just gets better and better, she thought.

She pointed an unsteady finger at the pawnbroker. “So, why’s the rumormonger after you?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“I beg to differ,” she said. Anger made her voice shrill. “I feel half-cooked!”

The human looked at the street. “I owe a man named Raneger a fantastic sum of money. I’m on a ‘repayment plan,’ but his interest rates guarantee I’ll never succeed.”

“Raneger?” she said, and shook her head. That was someone you definitely did not want on your bad side. “What kind of hold does he have over you?”

“Raneger’s got my son.”

She sighed. Pretty much what she figured. Worrisome that Raneger’s hired muscle had known her name too, but she supposed that in some circles, Riltana the Thief had a reputation. Circles that included dung-eaters like Inakin, apparently.

Chant said, “I didn’t mean to involve either of you.”

Demascus seemed to get hold of himself. He clapped Chant on the shoulder and said, “You’ve risked your life to help me. I’m not sorry to help you in return, whatever the danger.”

“Thank you.”

Riltana considered offering a similar sentiment, but decided Chant could probably figure it out for himself.

“Let’s get out of this alley,” Chant said. “It’s not like Inakin to travel alone, without backup. Only his arrogance made him think he could single-handedly cow us. He’s probably gathering his hirelings as we speak.”

“Right,” said Riltana, and winced as her burn flared. “Carmenere doesn’t live far from here.”

They resumed their journey. After only a few steps, the pain of her wound grew so overwhelming Demascus took her left arm to help support her.

“Drink your curative,” Chant said, his voice worried.

She shook her head. “This is not a small burn. It’s going to require more attention than a single restorative potion.”

Demascus looked worried. “Then what?”

“We keep going,” she said. “Carmenere can help.”

By the time they arrived, her skin felt as if it was on fire, and she was panting. They entered a narrow walk behind the main way, a little-used entrance she’d used often in the past.

The patio door to Carmenere’s flat was flanked by two planters. Jasmine and sage grew in them, and their combined scent made Riltana forget her pain a moment. How many times had she and Carmenere emerged in the cool night air to look up and watch the stars? The stars and moons, which Carmenere so loved.

Chant rapped on the door.

“Give it a moment,” she whispered.

They waited, and Demascus helped her sit in one of the two wooden chairs.

The door scraped open and a splinter of light cut across the patio. A silhouette in the doorway hesitated. A woman in the robes of a silverstar cleric of Selûne.

“Who is it?” came Carmenere’s voice.

Chant said, “It’s your friend Riltana. She’s hurt.”

The door opened, and Carmenere emerged.

“Rilta?” said Carmenere. Her brows furrowed with concern. Just seeing the earthsoul lightened the pain. A little.

“Heya. I … I’m sorry to bother you. But it’s important. See—”

Carmenere bent over and hugged her. In surprised reaction she tried to return the hug, but the embrace brought fresh torment to her burn, and she cried out.

“What’s wrong?” said Carmenere.

The pawnbroker said, “It’s my fault. A creditor came looking for me. He ambushed us, and I’m afraid your friend was caught in the crossfire.”

“A bastard stormsoul jacked me with lightning,” Riltana confirmed in a weak voice.

Carmenere laid a hand on Riltana’s forehead. Her palm was cool, and the touch all by itself soothed her feverish skin. Carmenere whispered, “Selûne, give this one peace.” Moonlight spilled from Carmenere’s hand, and washed Riltana in silvery radiance. It was like a gulping a tumbler of cool water after an afternoon of toiling in the dusty sun. The pain dwindled over several heartbeats, until it was a mere ache.

Riltana clutched Carmenere’s hands in silent thanks.

“I’m so glad you found her,” Carmenere said to Chant and Demascus.

Demascus nodded slowly, as if still distracted by Carmenere’s display of divine magic. He said, “We had to; she had something I needed.”

What had Carmenere meant, she thought, about finding her? How had Carmenere known she was missing? She said, “Uh … what’s going on here?”

Carmenere said, “I found your note at the loft, Rilta.”

“You found it? But Demascus and Chant said …”

The earthsoul shook her head. “Word reached me that someone was looking for a windsoul thief in a black bodysuit and mask. I knew it had to be you. I thought it might have something to do with the … the painting. I was worried you’d gotten into real trouble. So I stopped by your place. When you didn’t answer, I let myself in, and saw your note, and that you hadn’t been back …”

“We were the ‘someone’ looking for you,” said Chant. “Carmenere found us, and gave us the note.”

The earthsoul said, “I told them you’d gone missing. And … if they found you, not to mention my name.”

“Oh. Why did you tell them that?”

The earthsoul looked at her for what seemed like a full song, her eyes dark.

Which was answer enough. Just because Carmenere was worried, she thought, didn’t mean Carmenere has forgiven me.

Riltana figured she should say something, but didn’t know what. She was afraid whatever words tumbled from her mouth would be the wrong ones. Excuses, apologies, or plans on how they could get the painting back; it would only remind the silverstar why they’d fought so bitterly in the first place.

“Oh, Rilta, it’s good to see you. I’m glad you didn’t come to harm,” Carmenere finally said.

It was so good to hear her nickname on Carmenere’s lips. No one called her Rilta but the earthsoul. Regret stung her eyes. She wanted to tell Carmenere how sorry she was, how devastated she was at the way her surprise had turned sour, that it hadn’t been what she wanted. But she’d said all that before, and it hadn’t impressed Carmenere the first time.

Chant cleared his throat.

“Sorry to bother you so late,” he said. “But we actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What about?” The silverstar looked at the pawnbroker suspiciously.

“I know you don’t know us, and this is probably an imposition, but it’s very important—”

Riltana put a hand on Chant’s arm. “Let me.”

She looked Carmenere in the face. “Something shady is going on with the Firestorm Cabal. And my friends might have some insight into what that is. We need an audience with your aunt—Queen Arathane.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

MURMUR SWIVELED ITS HEAD AROUND THE TINY CELL.

The arms of its host were bound to a wall. A cell wall. A cell that was one of several Murmur had ordered constructed beneath the Motherhouse, using the stolen authority of the body it inhabited when its owner fell asleep.

The demonic entity considered a moment. Its servitor had apparently decided to take Murmur’s last instructions literally, and made certain its wayward host didn’t wander off. But where was the servitor to free Murmur now that it had reasserted control?

No matter; the chains and bars were only an inconvenience.

Three other fleshy mortals were bound in the cell with Murmur. Murmur stretched the lips of its flesh costume to reveal its teeth. The bruised man with a ragged beard hanging closest blanched; Murmur’s attempt at a smile had apparently gone wrong.

Then the demon dreamed its talent into the man’s mind.

The mortal’s consciousness was an amorphous swirl of emotion that sat atop his subconscious like a hat on a boulder. It was the same with all these so-called “self-aware” creatures; far more lurked beneath their minds then they knew. Murmur formed its talent into a silvery hook, plunged it into that inchoate swirl, and wrenched free a wriggling nightmare. The diaphanous protocreature streamed from the man’s eyes, nose, and screaming mouth.

The half-formed thing quickly lost its insubstantiality. Under Murmur’s psychic regard, its limbs filled out one by one, gaining color, heft, and depth. Each one was an engine of rending. The head formed last. The thing didn’t have a mouth; the man’s nightmare gave it a row of blinking scarlet crystal eyes where that orifice would normally be expected.

“Release me from these chains,” Murmur commanded the entity.

The thing bobbed its head in acknowledgment. It reached with a malformed claw and snapped the iron links holding Murmur’s host body.

Murmur next pointed at the door.

The nightmare put its shoulder down and charged. The iron barrier was jerked off its hinges.

Murmur exited the cell with its stiff-legged stride. The nightmare lay on the ground, panting and clearly damaged by its effort. Not one of Murmur’s smartest creations.

The beasts of subconscious fear were drawn to Murmur. They couldn’t help it. Calling them from fields of night terrors and giving them semireal flesh was Murmur’s craft.

“I name you Portalbreaker,” intoned Murmur to the creature.

The thing’s naturally destructive rage was suppressed in Murmur’s presence. “I swear you now to a power greater than both of us. If you do not take this pledge, I shall revert you back to nothingness. But if you swear on the name I reveal, you will serve me without question, lest an even greater punishment than dissolution find you.”

The thing blinked its many eyes. Murmur took it as assent and said, “You are hereby and forever pledged to that entity that transcends my own power as a mountain overshadows a pebble. I swear you to the Elder Elemental Eye who watches, forever, all those pledged to His name. He knows if those sworn to Him remain true.”

More blinks. Murmur touched the creature with its talent, and saw the words were having their expected effect. The thing possessed a naturally rebellious demonic nature that urged it to tear free from all compulsions. But freshly clothed, and in the presence of its midwife, it was uniquely vulnerable to suggestion. Expectation and belief were every bit as powerful as binding magic, when conditions were right.

Murmur hated that it was reduced to calling upon the power of the Elder Elemental Eye. But its prospects were diminished in this new world where it had fetched up. Murmur was hardly a shadow of what it and its siblings had originally intended.

Its very first host body in this continuum had been a true devotee of the Elder Elemental Eye. That one and his fellow cultists had long prepared to meet their lord. In the end, all they’d done was open themselves as hosts for Nualin, Murmur, Scour and all the others released from the fossil universe …

But before they could embark on cosmic obliteration, and to the Hells with the bound, powerless Elder Elemental Eye—disaster struck.

They failed.

Murmur lost all its siblings, except for Scour. Murmur saw Scour fall, preceding Murmur to what it assumed would be their final obliteration.

It had known nothing for a long time. Until a blackened, burned portion of Murmur was discovered by Firestorm Cabal salvagers and brought to the Motherhouse.

Murmur blinked the eyelids of the flesh it wore. Crusts broke and rubbed like gravel against the lids. Murmur understood it had stared too long without blinking, absorbed in thought. Its host’s sight-giving orbs had dried and everything was blurry.

What a nuisance. It rubbed at its eyes, moving with measured spasms so as not to poke the soft spheres completely out of its host’s head. Its fine control was improving, but the body’s strength was increasing in equal measure, which meant Murmur had to pay attention lest it damage itself. Overall, it was a good sign.

The molting was imminent. It needed to suffer through just a few more insensible periods while its host’s mind was awake. After that, Murmur would be complete, and its host would be gone forever, subsumed in the change.

It would be stronger after the molting, and that strength couldn’t come soon enough. In this new world, separated from its siblings, Murmur’s abilities were diminished. At first, it could barely call forth alarming shadows.

Feral instinct allowed Murmur to enhance its enervated strength.

It sniffed out sites that echoed with thaumaturgic history, where magic cast long ago had left an imprint. Better yet, it discovered locations where spiritual energy still waxed and waned, where reality’s fabric was stretched. In such places, the rules were constantly in flux. In such places, Murmur found its powers magnified, allowing it to summon fiends of the subconscious into the world almost as potent as those it had once birthed, despite occasional accidents from which none returned save itself.

Murmur had known frustration, which was nearly more than a demonic entity such as itself could bear. Despite its slow progress, the fact remained that while it remained alone, it could never reclaim all it should be. Its chances at achieving anything like the grandeur of the original vision shared by Murmur and its siblings had seemed unlikely.

Then Murmur had recalled the Elder Elemental Eye. Murmur’s original host had revered that entity so fully and without question that he and his fellows had blithely given themselves to Murmur and the other plague demons.

There was power to be had in that kind of unthinking devotion.

Thus Murmur resurrected the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye in Toril.

In return for power and cultists, Murmur promised to devise a plan to free the Elder Elemental Eye and release it on the continent of Faerûn.

So it swore each of its mortal servitors and birthed nightmares to the Elder Elemental Eye. It presented itself as the Eye’s incredibly capable cult leader, from whom all the great one’s commandments would flow.

And its strength had swelled thereby …

Murmur plodded through the vault beneath the shattered Motherhouse, until it reached a great subterranean space. Cells lined the roughly circular space.

Quiet sobs, whispered prayers, desperate oaths, and even a few titters of insane laughter issued from behind the rusty iron bars, but that was difficult to hear over the underlying buzzing, clicking drone.

The cells were arranged so all of them had a bird’s-eye view of the chamber’s center, which held the pit.

The constant, hungry drone emanated from the central cavity.

The pit was Murmur’s second chance.

The demon dream lumbered to the seething edge of the crater and recalled how, not long after beginning its “cult” project, it had sensed a faint stirring. A familiar presence, away south of Airspur. As if a gift from the Elder Elemental Eye itself for initiating worship of the banned deity!

Murmur recognized signs that could only be from one of its siblings. Murmur sent pledged nightmares to collect its brother. What Murmur’s cadre found over many months was deposited into the pit.

The pit seethed with insects. Trapjaw ants, jumping spiders, cockroaches of every color, fleas, moths, and more swarmed the hole. Many of the specimens were outsize, and several moths had wingspans reaching two hands in width, and stinging proboscises that could uncurl to reach several feet. Pale radiance pulsed from the fat abdomens of flitting lightning bugs, so bright even Murmur had to squint.

“Greetings, Scour,” Murmur addressed the pit. “Can you hear me?”

The insects continued their mad scurrying. Because they were only bugs. But in sum, they contained a seed of Murmur’s sibling.

The infestation represented months of patient collecting. Nor was it complete; many of Murmur’s nightmares and secretly pledged Cabal cultists remained bent to the task south of Airspur, combing the twisted lands of Akanûl for colonies that harbored some fragment of Scour’s essential essence.

“Be patient, my brother,” said Murmur. “You shall soon wake again, as I have, when you’ve eaten enough. Are you hungry?”

Murmur turned and pointed at one of the cells.

“No!” came a hoarse cry from behind the bars.

The nightmare at Murmur’s heels understood. Portalbreaker danced across the uneven rock floor to the cell.

“Open the door, don’t break it,” Murmur said.

Too late; the cell door was already off its hinges, and the cell occupants were screaming their lungs out. Murmur wondered if it shouldn’t release its binding on this particular nightmare and try again …

Portalbreaker entered, bent over a woman with blonde hair shorn close, and snapped the manacle chains restraining her.

She tried to run, but Portalbreaker snatched her up like she was a wayward two-year-old.

Murmur pointed to the pit. The woman struggled so desperately she almost managed to break the nightmare’s hold. Almost.

Portalbreaker went to the cavity and held the woman high over the edge. Her screams reached a crescendo pitch. It grated on the ears of Murmur’s host body.

“Toss her in!”

Portalbreaker released the woman.

The mass of scuttling insects broke her fall. Then they swarmed over her. They covered her like a second skin of carapaces, chitinous legs, and mandibles. Her cries became desperate gasps as they burst from the pit’s funneled walls and echoed around the chamber.

The other captives called out in sympathy, in fear, in terror; each knew their own fate was the same, even if they didn’t know why. Their understanding wasn’t important. What was important was that with each life fed to the pit, Scour grew stronger. One day soon, enough captives would be sacrificed to catalyze Scour’s mind.

Then Murmur would have one of its siblings back. Then they could start anew in a fresh continuum.

The demon dream laughed as it imagined the glorious future they would fashion together. A future of crumbling, burning, screaming ruin!

A future in which the Elder Elemental Eye watched as they consumed Toril from the inside out.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

MORNING’S PALE FINGERS REACHED THROUGH THE WINDOW blinds and nudged Demascus awake.

He lay on the guest bed Carmenere had shown him last night. The coverlets were soft and smelled slightly of gardenias. That reminded him of an emotion. A sensation. Something far from here, having to do with a high crystal spire, a fragrant sunrise that smelled of spring flowers, and a fleet …

He couldn’t place it. All that remained as he breathed in the scent and thought about it was a hollow place in his chest.

Demascus supposed he’d get used to such disconnects. In time. For the moment though, he felt like some kind of invalid, stumbling toward recovery. What if he never got his memories back? Then his life would be just glimpses and half-remembered dreams, and nagging feelings of loss.

But after what had happened with Inakin …

After Demascus found himself used as a body shield, he’d blacked out for an instant. The next thing he knew, he was behind Inakin with his scarf around the genasi’s neck. A thrill of mastery, of power, of … glee rushed through his sinews and tingled across his skin. He reveled in the strength and skill of his body and craft and—

And then he’d come back to himself, with Chant’s pleas in his ears.

After that, he’d felt nothing but shame.

Demascus had suspected that he might not much like the person he used to be. Now he was beginning to fear that it was worse than that. He knew he’d been a killer, but he’d supposed he’d only killed for the highest moral reasons, at the behest of divine beings.

What if he’d enjoyed it?

He felt unwell.

Demascus heaved himself up and went to the clay washbasin beneath a mirror framed in bronze. He splashed water on his face, and saw Inakin again in the reflection, as he whipped the Veil around the vulnerable neck …

No. Think about something else, he told himself. Anything!

Right … After they’d shown up on Carmenere’s patio, she’d proved a gracious host to the two strangers. And to Riltana, who’d clearly wronged the earthsoul. Demascus had the good grace not to inquire what was the matter. It was no business of his. Although based on his own first interaction with Riltana, he could guess well enough.

He found a washcloth and soap.

Riltana was probably lucky Carmenere hadn’t thrown the thief out on her ear.

But the devotee of Selûne wouldn’t hear of them heading back through the city with “Rilta” so recently recovered from her burn, and who knew what other creditors lurking in the streets.

Which had suited him. By the time they’d finished explaining to Carmenere how they thought the Firestorm Cabal was covering up some sort of cult, the night was well advanced. The more they’d described how and why they believed the Firestorm Cabal was involved in something insidious, the more concerned and distressed Carmenere became, though she hadn’t explained why.

Whatever her reason, it apparently convinced the earthsoul to help. Even Riltana, who was the reason they’d intruded on the earthsoul in the first place, looked surprised when Carmenere agreed to send a message to her aunt in the morning.

He dried his hands and face on a towel displaying patterns that reminded him of layered sediments beneath the ground. Then he buckled on his armor and coat.

He took the pale length of the Veil between his hands. “Do you have any direction for me this morning?” he asked.

The scarf didn’t so much as flutter.

He tied it in a knot around his sword hilt, so that two ends fell free, and left his room. He walked the length of a twisting hall.

At the end of the passage he found Chant, Carmenere, and Riltana gathered around a small table beneath a skylight. He automatically took account of each exit and window, and where every person stood in relation to the next …

He blinked, and focused on the pawnbroker. Chant, with all his bulk, seemed uncouth and out of place in the room with such fine matching decor. Not that he seemed to care; the man only had eyes for the repast laid out on the table.

The human had remained visibly upset long after their run-in with the rumormonger. That concern seemed washed away by the aroma of breakfast cakes, and the scatter of crumbs around Chant’s plate told the tale of his unsinkable appetite.

“Eat something,” urged Carmenere. She pointed to a platter of fruit, cheeses, and a pile of steaming flat cakes.

Demascus grabbed a pale oblong fruit and bit into it. It was unexpectedly sweet and firm. He gobbled the entire thing, except for the stem, in moments.

Chant smiled, and tossed him a piece of cheese. “Try the cheese. The silverstar has a discriminating palate!”

Carmenere nodded in thanks at Chant’s compliment.

Demascus chewed on the cheese. It was smooth, nutty, and certainly better than any cheese he could remember eating. Not that that meant much.

He said, “Thanks for putting us up, and feeding us.”

“My pleasure,” the silverstar responded. “If you would like some smoked meat, I have that too. I didn’t put any out because Riltana doesn’t eat meat.”

“You don’t eat … meat?” said Chant, his tone as incredulous as if Carmenere had just revealed that tomorrow the sun would fall to Faerûn.

Riltana said, “I don’t.”

“That can’t be healthy. Are you sick? And, it’s so good!”

The woman sighed. She said, “I don’t like to preach about my habits. But since you asked, I don’t eat the flesh of beasts because they are living beings just like you and me. They have sorrows, joys, and pangs of loss every bit as strong as we do. To me, it’s like cannibalism, and should be avoided.”

Chant shook his head and said, “But it’s the way of things; the wolf eats the rabbit, and we eat the wolf.”

“Oh, for the love of Karshimis—We have a choice; the wolf doesn’t. Except sometimes, the wolf does have a choice. I’ve heard tell of too many talking magical beasts to feel comfortable about biting into a beef sandwich. For all I know, it might be minotaur.”

The human opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Smoked fish—maybe it’s mermaid, or sea elf,” she said. “I don’t want to accidentally eat some sea elf’s child caught in a fishing net, you know?”

Chant stared at the thief a little longer, then just shook his head.

Demascus ate more cheese.

Chewing, he watched Carmenere and Riltana. The thief remained on edge, but wasn’t as apprehensive as the previous night. For the moment, anyway, the two seemed as if they’d mended their fences.

“So,” said Chant, finally pushing away his platter, “are we ready to go?”

Carmenere drew in a breath, and expelled it. “Yes. I have arranged for a meeting, and a conveyance with a diplomatic flag. Better that we arrive with the seeming of importance. That way we can ignore a lot of bureaucratic nonsense.”

The pawnbroker popped a piece of bread into his mouth and nodded. He mumbled around the half-chewed food, “Thank you again for helping.”

Carmenere let a violet plum roll back and forth across her palm as she said, “As a silverstar of Selûne, could I do less?”

“She’s always going out of her way to help people,” said Riltana, smiling.

Carmenere said, “Even when people repay my friendship with …” Carmenere looked down at the table, her face twisted.

Riltana’s smile froze, then she slumped slightly, like a wax candle left in the window too long.

Demascus coughed. So much for mended fences. An uncomfortable tension descended over the room.

That wouldn’t do. Into the silence he ventured, “Carmenere, tell me about your link to Selûne. How closely do you serve the Moonmaiden? Does she ever talk to you?”

Carmenere slowly looked up, and she nodded. Her features untwisted, and she said, “That’d be incredible and wonderful. But no. I do her bidding without that grace. I walk where the moonlight leads, like all silverstars. Stories tell of such things; gods and mortals speaking and interacting, but I doubt it actually happens often. The gods have many cares across this world, and others.”

Demascus managed to nod, though his mind’s eye flashed back to his visit with an avatar of Oghma, when he’d accepting a tiny charm from the avatar’s hand.

Except he didn’t have that scroll-shaped charm any longer, or any of the charms his fragmented memory hinted at. He only had imperfect recollections and the claim of a cryptic piece of fabric that seemed best suited to strangling people.

He said, “If your god never interacts with you, how can you be sure that what you do is right?”

Carmenere said, “How can it not be? Selûne’s power fills me when I ask her for strength. My prayers are answered in the form of divine magic. If she were displeased with me, my ability to heal and render aid would almost certainly fail.”

You’d be surprised, he wanted to say. He recalled again the avatar’s commission to deal with Undryl Yannathar. The avatar had told him, “That which I am but the smallest part of cannot touch Undryl, for he believes he does right.” Whoever this Undryl had been, he had apparently believed he was serving Oghma’s interests, and had apparently never lost whatever power he wielded in the name of the Binder.

Bells chimed at the front of the house.

“The coach is here,” said Carmenere. “It’s time to go meet the queen.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THE CONVEYANCE’S EXTERIOR TRIM WAS GILT, AND THE INTERIOR was plush with green and yellow cushions, witchlights for illumination, and red felt lining. A door on either side, and a window in back—but the pane of glass was too narrow, Demascus noted, for an enemy to get a shot through. The side windows on either door were a different matter entirely, but they allowed him to see out at least as well as any theoretical foe could see in.

“I could get used to this,” said Chant, who lounged across from Carmenere.

Riltana reclined next to Carmenere, opposite Demascus. She said, “Better enjoy it. Court conveyances aren’t lent out often. Even to people secretly related to the queen. This is the first time I’ve gotten to ride in one.”

Carmenere’s lips thinned. She said, “Thanks to your antics, Rilta, the palace guards know what you look like. The only way past the perimeter is to bypass it entirely. Only people the Crown trusts implicitly can call one of these coaches. I didn’t know until this morning if one would come if I called; I’ve never tried before. Anyway, it’ll see us past all the external security.”

“How interesting,” said Chant. He sat up straighter in his seat, the wheels in his mind obviously spinning. Demascus trusted that the human was his ally, but he wondered if Carmenere should be more careful around someone who professed to be a broker of illicit information.

Riltana studied Chant. She was probably thinking the same thing.

“Security’s a funny thing,” said Chant. “It can be hardened beyond all hope of penetration. But if you can find a way to get around—”

Riltana leaned forward and put a hand on the human’s shoulder. She said, “Word to the wise: anyone who enters the palace in a coach must still deal with the queen’s elite bodyguard.”

Chant jumped ever so slightly at the contact. He answered, “Ah, of course.”

Silence inside the coach seemed to grow heavier the longer it stretched. Without knowing exactly what he was going to say, Demascus opened his mouth and started talking. He said, “I don’t know much about, uh, Queen Arathane. Is she … well-loved by the people?”

He knew the question was stupid the moment it escaped his lips. Of course Carmenere would think her aunt was well-loved, and who in the coach would gainsay the royal niece?

Chant chuckled. He said, “She’s got a reputation for being fair, but strong. A pretty good combination, though I think her mother, Queen Cyndra, was more ‘loved.’ No offense,” he said to the silverstar.

“None taken,” responded Carmenere, with a faint smile. “My aunt is good at her job, whatever the nobles sometimes like to pretend. Even the poorest among the genasi can expect shelter and food.”

“And despite the roadblocks the Court of Majesty has thrown in her way,” said Chant, his tone making the statement more of a question than declaration.

“The Court of Majesty?” said Demascus. “I thought the Court and the queen were one and the same.”

“The court is a location,” said Carmenere. “It is where a conclave of five that includes the queen and the Four Stewards meet to decide policy. The stewards are the queen’s councilors, and they hold important positions of their own as well. But if they all decide as one, they can block Arathane’s decrees.” A hint of bitterness had crept into her voice.

“Which is why,” said Riltana, “the queen sometimes goes around the Court when she needs to get things done quick. She’s particularly fond of the Firestorm Cabal when it comes to such endeavors. Or so I’ve heard.”

Carmenere gave the thief a heated look and said, “Rumors can be had for coin and a wink; doesn’t make them true.”

“My source was pretty close to the queen, once upon a time,” said the thief, her tone vaguely accusatory.

“If you think—” began Carmenere.

“I don’t care what—” said Riltana simultaneously.

“Hey,” yelled Demascus, so loud he startled even himself. Everyone in the coach looked at him. Then Chant leaned back and studied the ceiling, as if suddenly very interested in the pattern on the red felt lining.

“Riltana, please don’t bait your friend,” said Demascus, feeling his own face grow warm. “We need her help. I thought you were sorry for whatever it is you did. You’re not acting like it.”

“I …” began Riltana in a heated tone. Then she sighed. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

Her tone contrite, Riltana said, “Carmenere, if you’d just let me make it up to you. It just … makes me so angry that you won’t give me a chance. I swear I didn’t mean for things to turn out like they did.”

The silverstar exhaled. She said, “I know. But what you meant doesn’t matter. It’s what you did, and what happened afterward. The Four Stewards are always looking for … little ways to gain leverage over the queen. Even the questionable associations of a niece can put the queen in a bad light. Especially if one of those associations steals a crown treasure.”

Riltana’s head jerked. “A steward contacted you?”

Carmenere said. “Tradrem Kethtrod.”

“The Steward of Earth!” exclaimed Chant. Both women shot him an irritated glance.

“Sorry,” mumbled the human. Demascus studiously kept a smile off his face.

Carmenere continued, “Tradrem didn’t contact me directly. But his informants looked into the matter of a certain stolen painting. They were close to discovering how the thief got into the palace in the first place, and that thief’s connection to someone in the queen’s family. It was only luck that connection wasn’t made, though I suppose they still could.”

“Tradrem Kethtrod operates a spy network,” Chant whsipered. “But I thought he mostly employed it outside of Akanûl’s borders.”

Demascus nodded, and returned to listening in.

Carmenere was saying, “Even if I were tempted to forgive you, I can’t. You’re too unpredictable. I know you mean well, but I can’t have someone close to me whose next well-meaning stunt could end up weakening Arathane’s reign!”

Riltana said, “I … I see,” and turned her gaze out the window.

Demascus’s mouth twisted. The atmosphere inside the conveyance had gone from oppressive to merciless. He wondered if he’d ever done something so stupid it’d cost him a dear friendship. Given how swiftly his heart was beating, maybe his body remembered something he did not. He wished he’d just let the original silence hang.

The pawnbroker coughed and gestured through the window on his side. He said, “We’re almost there.”

The coach drew across a sweeping bridge high over the rippling bay.

At the end of the bridge brooded a massive chunk of unsupported earth encrusted with the queen’s palace.

A small earthmote hung over the palace. A spiraling, free-hanging stair reached up from the highest palace spire to the mote, which was bedecked with banners and gleaming crystals.

Chant pointed at it and said, “The Court of Majesty.”

Demascus eyed the free-hanging spiral stair. Vertigo feathered the base of his spine as he imagined ascending those steps.

“We won’t be going up there,” said Carmenere. “The Court of Majesty only convenes once a tenday, barring emergencies. Besides, we’re going to meet with the queen alone.”

The coach slipped off the end of the bridge and under a white arch that pierced the outer wall of the palace. Genasi soldiers in bulky armor and weapons, conveyances of every color, and dozens of floating balls of magical fire were arrayed on the palace grounds.

“What’re those?” said Chant, pointing at the fire spheres.

“Animated wards,” said Carmenere. “They’re only barely intelligent, but very loyal. If we were marked as enemies, they would converge and explode.”

“Oh.”

The coach passed through several more gates, then came to a stop at the edge of a small walled garden nestled along the inner palace walls.

The driver jumped from his seat and opened the coach door.

They emerged into a cloud of lilac and jasmine that grew thick along the garden wall. Past the wall, a river of blue flowers flowed beside a cobbled path, swept beneath a bridge, and upended over a fall of forget-me-nots, bluebells, and irises.

The path continued straight into a silvery bower planted with white lilies. The petals blended into a fluttering pale gown, sewn along the hem with glimmers of blue and red.

Demascus drew in a surprised breath when he realized Arathane wore the gown.

Who else but the queen could wear something so magnificent with such royal certitude? The garment’s faultless lines draped a queen and a woman, revealing strength and beauty in equal measure. Her arms and shoulders were bare, and her lavender skin made the surrounding blooms seem almost lifeless. Silvery lines like intricate tattoos traced her arms, throat, and spiraled upon her cheeks.

Arathane’s hair was a bundle of braids composed of crystalline silver, and over them rested a white circlet whose flawless lines bespoke faultless craftsmanship. A faint glimmer of radiance played through the circlet, like the light of a distant storm cloud on the horizon. Her eyes seemed to faintly echo that light as they stared directly back into his.

Demascus’s composure fled like a startled flock of shrieking jays. He’d rarely, or perhaps never, seen a woman so beguiling as Queen Arathane.

His legs didn’t so much lose their strength as become unmoored from the ground.

“Merciful gods,” he muttered.

Carmenere strode into the bower. She occluded Demascus’s view of the queen, and the world came back. He sucked in a breath as if surfacing in deep water.

The silverstar clasped hands with the queen. Chant inched ahead and stood at the entrance. Riltana remained where she was, as did Demascus. The thief was looking at him.

She said in a low voice, “Are you feeling well?”

Demascus said, “Yes. I … Uh. I see the queen is a stormsoul.”

Riltana suppressed a grin. She said, “She can have that effect on some people. Come on, let’s meet her before she decides you’re a simpleton.”

Demascus nodded, but let Riltana and Chant precede him into the bower. Then they all bowed, more or less in unison.

Queen Arathane said, “We’re not in court; please don’t waste time on formalities. I get enough of that every day. So … Carmenere said you had something urgent to explain? But tell me your names first.” Her voice was pleasant but firm.

Carmenere said, “Arathane, you remember Riltana?”

The queen nodded at the thief. “Of course. It’s good to see you again.”

Riltana seemed perfectly at ease as she nodded back, but Demascus saw the tension in her shoulders.

“And this,” said Carmenere as she gestured at the pawnbroker, “is Chant Morven. He runs a shop in Airspur.”

“Among other things,” Riltana murmured to Demascus.

“Your Majesty,” said Chant, who made as if to bow again, then obviously remembered what the queen had just asked, and ended up performing an odd little head motion.

The queen had the grace not to notice. Her eyes fixed on Demascus.

The funny feeling in his knees returned.

“This is Demascus,” said Carmenere.

“Thanks for agreeing to see us so quickly,” he said. He thought his voice came out normal, thank the gods.

“Demascus; that’s an odd name,” said Arathane. “You must come from across the Sea of Fallen Stars.”

Was she asking him a question? He didn’t want to bumble through explaining his missing mind, and all the rest. It would only complicate things.

He settled on, “I do, Your Majesty.” It was even the truth, sort of. He came from across the sea, all right, way across and beyond the confines of Faerûn itself.

She cocked one eyebrow and smiled at him. “Mysterious. When time permits, I’d like to hear more of your homeland, Demascus.”

His brain seemed to fuzz. He swallowed with relief when her regard left him again. What was wrong with him?

The queen motioned to the pillow-strewn benches that lined the open-air structure. “Please sit, all of you, and we’ll talk.”

The earthsoul sat down next to Arathane. Demascus followed Carmenere’s lead and lowered himself onto the broad seat across from the monarch. Chant positioned himself on Arathane’s other side, but left a respectful distance. Instead of sitting on the bench, Riltana plopped down on the floor with her legs stuck out. Demascus wondered if Arathane thought it a disrespectful pose. Probably not; the bower lent the meeting a surreal informality. Most royals didn’t interact with those below their station as Arathane was with them.

Was Carmenere so important a figure in Akanûl that informality accorded to her was extended to her friends, or was it just the queen’s way?

The woman’s presence was intoxicating. Combine that with how gracious she seemed and … Demascus blinked. Don’t even go there, he told himself. The version of himself that had met the avatar of the God of Knowledge had done so with aplomb, without becoming overawed. Then again, Oghma’s avatar hadn’t been mortal, female, or as bewitching as this violet-hued stormsoul …

Demascus realized everyone was looking at him.

He coughed. Enough foolishness. Time to concentrate on why he was there. He said, “Queen Arathane, thank you again for making time for us, and I hope you’ll agree our problem is something that requires immediate attention. You see, we’ve stumbled upon a cult operating secretly in the city. A cult that professes to worship some kind of chaos demon called the Elder Elemental Eye.” To his own ears, his words sounded a little rushed.

Arathane’s eyes narrowed.

He continued, concentrating on clarity, “As it happens, we gained the attention of this cult thanks to our meddling. They’ve tried to dispatch us once already.”

The queen glanced at Carmenere, a line of worry creasing her brow.

The silverstar said, “This was before they came to me, don’t worry, Aunt.”

“Anyhow,” said Demascus, “Evidence suggests that the cult might actually be headquartered out of the Firestorm Cabal. The only problem is—”

“Explain that last statement,” said the queen. All hint of a smile was gone from her features. The silvery lines of her szuldar sparked to life.

Chant interrupted, “Your Majesty, Demascus and I took a commission from Lieutenant Leheren to look for cult activity in the tower of Chevesh, the fire mage. What we found there convinced us that, though Chevesh is definitely a crazy lunatic who bears watching and probably investigation by the peacemakers, he has nothing to do with the cult. In fact, a lead we gained there sent us back to the Motherhouse. But when we returned, we found the structure entirely destroyed.”

Demascus noticed the queen’s posture stiffen ever so slightly.

“That news is well-known,” she said. “It is a great loss.”

Then, “I appreciate you bringing your suspicions to me. I agreed to meet you because I dote on my niece and haven’t seen her in months. But I’ve got my own sources of intelligence, thanks to the Steward of Earth, and I can assure you we’re bending all available resources into determining what happened to the Motherhouse.”

“Then you already know about the Cult of the Elder Elemental Eye?” said Chant.

“I grant you, that name is new to me. You can be sure I shall immediately inform Tradrem of this potential connection.”

Chant leaned forward to speak, but the queen said in a preemptory manner, “I’ve enjoyed meeting all of you. And it’s been especially nice to see you again, Carmenere; you should come around more. But I’m afraid my free time this morning has concluded, much as I regret it.”

Arathane stood, and the rest of them scrambled to follow her lead. She swept to the exit, her gown hem wavering over the ground like a storm cloud.

Demascus said to the woman’s retreating profile, “We saw your carriage outside the Motherhouse the night before it was destroyed. And we know you asked the Cabal to look into monster attacks across Airspur.”

The queen paused at the bower’s edge. She said, “How do you know that?”

“Lieutenant Leheren told us. Before she sent us to spy on the fire mage.”

“That was injudicious of her,” said the queen. “But ultimately irrelevant.”

Demascus threw up his hands and said, “Will you just listen?”

Carmenere shot him a warning glance. Arathane rotated and let the weight of her full regard fall on him.

He swallowed and said, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, to raise my voice. But you should know that after we left the Motherhouse to, ah, meet up with Riltana, we were attacked by another of these demonic monsters. It targeted us specifically. And now that I think about it, it probably trailed us from the Firestorm Cabal headquarters! Because it said—”

The queen said, “You really believe the Firestorm Cabal is implicated in the monstrous outbreaks afflicting the city?” She let her head fall to one side as she considered him with flashing eyes.

“Your Majesty,” said Chant, shuffling a pace closer. “We do believe it. The information we gained at Chevesh’s tower isn’t the only strike against the Cabal. When we met Leheren and two other lieutenants, one of them bore a jagged spiral tattoo on his neck. That mark is one of the signs of the Elder Elemental Eye. And … both the beasts we’ve fought, one by Demascus alone, swore allegiance to the same entity; the Elder Elemental Eye!”

The queen peered at Chant, then at Demascus, and finally at Carmenere as if for confirmation.

The silverstar said, “I have no reason to doubt their claims. And it could explain the destruction of the Motherhouse, through some sort of internal strife.”

Arathane lingered in the exit, her face impassive. Demascus noticed for the first time four genasi in palace livery stood within earshot. They scrutinized the queen, as if perhaps waiting for a sign from their sovereign.

Their distance from the bower and from one another, the weapons visible on their belts, and reserves likely nearby, just in case …

The queen said, eyes locked on Chant, “Tell me this; did you come here seeking a reward?”

“No,” said Demascus.

Chant opened his mouth as if to disagree, but Demascus hurtled onward. “Regardless of what you decide, I’m already involved. All of us are, to some extent. Even your niece, now that she’s associated with us. We’ve been marked by this cult. They’re sending killer monsters after us, by all that’s holy! Odds are, they’ll continue to do so until we’re dead. Even if you don’t want or need our assistance, if you have any information at all that would help us, we would be greatly in your debt.”

Arathane didn’t move for several long heartbeats.

Demascus wondered if he should describe his awakening at the shrine, the Veil’s revelation of his past incarnations, and the possibility that some kind of nemesis hunted him. The urge to reveal it all was overpowering. But doing so would just further muddy the waters, or even give the queen pause to wonder about his sanity. He forced himself to watch the monarch in silence as she decided.

Arathane sighed.

“You’re going to let us help!” guessed Riltana. She shot a quick look at Carmenere, then away.

The queen said, “Yes. We can aid each other. If you swear by your names to keep what I am about to tell you confidential to those of us gathered here?”

“I swear on my name,” said Demascus. The oath had tumbled out of his mouth before he quite realized it.

“As do I,” said Carmenere.

Riltana looked around the bower as if looking for some hidden scribe. She said, “I am Riltana; I swear.”

Chant shook his head like a man just informed that his child had a terminal illness. But he said, “I’m Chant Morven; I swear to keep what you tell us here between only the five of us.” The human’s tone was resigned.

Arathane leaned into the bower. She said, her voice lower than before, “The deputy commander of the Cabal is a friend of mine. In an unofficial capacity, the Firestorm Cabal sometimes provides services to the Crown, especially when I don’t want to involve the stewards.”

“I’ve heard rumors to that effect,” said Chant.

“And if you know what’s good for you, they’ll stay rumors,” said Carmenere.

“Let the queen continue,” said Demascus.

Arathane’s mouth quirked in what might be a smile. She continued, “I visited the Motherhouse to enlist the Cabal’s aid in the matter of several monstrous rampages. He told me then he’d discovered a secret faction within the Cabal.”

“Ah,” said the silverstar.

“Ah, indeed. The Firestorm Cabal is divided. However, he mentioned nothing about a cult or the Elder Elemental Eye. On the other hand, the deputy commander was concerned this splinter sect might be responsible for the monster attacks around Airspur.”

“Wait, you knew the Firestorm Cabal was involved?” said Chant.

The queen speared the pawnbroker with her gaze. “I just said so, didn’t I?”

The human said, “Pardon, Your Majesty.” His face reddened.

Arathane said, “The deputy commander suspected a few subordinates in particular. He explained he would have his most trustworthy lieutenant look into the matter, and determine if there really was a link between the monsters, the splinter Cabal faction, and the genasi he suspected.”

“Leheren? Was she the one the deputy commander put in charge?” said Demascus. “And did he tell you the names of the ones he suspected?”

“Was it Jett?” said Chant.

“He didn’t provide names; he seemed to have things well enough in hand. But that was before the Motherhouse was destroyed. I haven’t had any contact with the deputy commander since then. I’m afraid that he and many others may have lost their lives in the blaze.”

The stormsoul queen dropped her gaze, and the lights in her circlet dimmed. And was that a sheen of sorrow in her eyes? The queen said the deputy commander was a friend …

Riltana said, “Have you sent a team to investigate the ruins?” The woman seemed completely oblivious to the queen’s mournful attitude.

The queen wiped at her face. That tiny movement was the first time since they’d entered the bower that Arathane seemed the least bit vulnerable. Demascus brushed at his own face as if in unconscious sympathy.

“Officially,” said Arathane, completely in control of herself, “it’s a matter for Magnol’s civic forces. The Steward of Fire has dispatched a special detachment to the ruins to see what can be learned.”

“What’d they find?” asked Riltana.

“Nothing; at least nothing regarding monsters, secret factions, or … cults. Which means the investigation is officially over; it was put down as an accident. Survivors are being located, and Firestorm Cabal lodges in other parts of Akanûl are sending representatives.”

“But?” said Demascus, sensing that Arathane was holding something back.

She nodded and said, “More could possibly be found at the Motherhouse, if the searchers knew where to look. But I can’t ask Magnol to send his team back, because it would alert the stewards to my special knowledge of the Cabal. They’ve heard the same rumors Chant has, I can assure you, and I do not want to give them any further reason to believe I sometimes circumvent the Covenant of Stewardship to safeguard the realm.”

“We can investigate the Motherhouse ruins for you,” said Demascus, “if you tell us what to look for.”

“You’ve guessed my intent, which means you’re intuitive,” said the queen. “By the sound of it, you’ve successfully faced these oddly demonic creatures before, which means you’re also able to handle yourself in a fight.”

If only you knew, he thought. He said, “I am. We all are.”

“And Carmenere, will you accompany Demascus, Riltana, and Chant Morven, as my personal agent in this matter?”

“Hold on,” said Riltana, “this could be dangerous! Carmenere’s not—”

“Not what?” said the earthsoul, one eyebrow arched.

Arathane said, “Carmenere is a silverstar, and one of some ability. She goes with you.”

“Thank you, my queen,” said Carmenere, and smiled.

Chant clapped his hands and said, “Wonderful! We should go right away, before too much more time passes. What should we be looking for, Your Majesty?”

“In the basement levels, look for the sign of the Firestorm Cabal inscribed over the symbol of a cube. You’ll find it inscribed here and there, as if a decorative flourish. But each point where that dual sign is inscribed marks an entrance to the sublevel vault. I want you to enter and see if it was destroyed with the rest of the Motherhouse. If not, see what you can learn.”

Demascus watched the queen walk down the path, one elite bodyguard on each side. She was a vision, no doubt about it. But without her direct presence to focus on, his thoughts spiraled back to the question that had ambushed him earlier.

Will I find a link to my past self—my past selves—in the Motherhouse vault? I might be offered the chance to embrace all I once was … and never be able to escape myself again.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THE RUINED MOTHERHOUSE NO LONGER POURED RIVULETS of smoke into the sky. The massive construction lay in shattered heaps. Barricades alive with darting witchlights screened curious citizens out of the site. Peacemakers and Cabal members conferred in groups of two and three. Reconstruction was set to begin in a tenday or two; until then, no one was allowed in or out except ranking Firestormers.

Which was why Chant was crawling on his belly through an alley that neighbored the ruin, keeping his head down. Mud slicked his fine clothing and face, and the unpleasant stink clinging to him suggested he’d accidentally crawled through dog droppings.

Riltana slid ahead of him as easily as breathing. Behind Chant labored Carmenere. The earthsoul looked at least as uncomfortable as he felt pulling herself forward on her elbows, which surprised him. As an earthsoul, he would have expected Carmenere to be most comfortable so close to the ground. Demascus brought up the rear, lost in his own thoughts, but making reasonable headway.

The deva had remained uncharacteristically silent since they’d left the palace. At first Chant thought Demascus was mooning over his meeting with the queen. But then he suspected something else bothered the man. Not fear, though. After what Chant had seen Demascus do in the alley, he had a hard time believing anything could frighten the deva. Which was frightening to consider. Someone who didn’t feel fear was a liability on a team composed mostly of people who did not, as a matter of course, return to life if killed.

And if Chant was killed under the Motherhouse, chasing after Demascus’s identity and the truth of the Elder Elemental Eye, what would become of Jaul? Raneger had much to answer—

Riltana stopped. One finger went to her lips, then she pointed at a crack in the masonry. Was she suggesting they go through it? A giant block rested on a ridge of broken pilings, forming a sort of long tunnel. No way was he was going to fit …

The thief slipped into the gap.

He exhaled a long-suffering sigh. Then he wriggled after. Usually his husky frame didn’t impede him in the least. Not this time, he thought, struggling forward. It was at times like this that he seriously considered restricting himself to just five meals a day.

The odor of smoke and ash permeated everything. Plus the whiff of something dead.

The cleft emptied into a rubble-filled space open to the sky behind the largest heap of tumbled masonry, which neatly blocked the view from the street. Chant concentrated on remaining quiet. The mumble of conversation from a group of Cabal members penetrated the obstructing detritus. The friends had Arathane’s permission to investigate the ruin, but they were sworn not to reveal the queen’s involvement. Which essentially meant they were, indeed, trespassing.

A collection of mauls, pickaxes, pry bars, and other tools were laid out on tarps. Smaller piles of stone, wood, and cloth lay in regular piles around the periphery, as if they’d been sorted. A wheelbarrow stacked with crumbled stone rested at the mouth of an opening that plunged underground.

“Where are the workers?” whispered Carmenere.

“Lunch break,” he guessed. He pointed to the opening. “Let’s try there.”

They descended, picking their way around debris that the workers hadn’t yet managed to clear. If they’d gotten there sooner, the sloping tunnel would probably still be blocked.

A door hung half off its hinges at the bottom of the descent. Demascus took hold of it and carefully swung it. It scraped and resisted, but he managed to open it all the way.

The chamber beyond was half-collapsed, making what had apparently served the Motherhouse as an expansive beer and root cellar into a cramped and wreckage-strewn cavern. A yeasty, damp odor competed with the stink of ash and smoke. It made him a little sad to think of so much ale soaking into the earth.

Demascus entered, his head scanning left, right, up, and down. Chant was pretty sure the man was automatically assessing the room in case he had to kill someone in it. That was what assassins did, right?

Riltana was right on Demascus’s heels. Her face mask made her eyes seem particularly wide.

Chant came next, his crossbow a comfortable weight in his right hand. He didn’t normally think of himself as a violent man, but he’d put in enough time practicing with the unique triple-shot weapon that he was justifiably proud of his precision using it.

Unfortunately the light leaking down the stairs didn’t illuminate the area beyond a few paces.

Demascus said quietly to Riltana, “Do you have the sunrod you bought from Chant?”

“Wait,” Carmenere said. “Selûne can provide.” A silvery glow like the full moon swelled from her outstretched hand. The glow became a distinct sphere of phosphorescence that rolled away from her through the air and into the dark chamber like a miniature moon.

The space was bigger than he’d realized. Though the ceiling was collapsed, an open area was visible beyond the broken timbers, rocks, and rubble that filled the center of the chamber. Several passages gaped on the far wall.

“Perfect,” said Demascus.

The deva edged forward. Chant followed, wary for any timber movement or shifting surfaces in the floor or ceiling. Halfway around he noticed a lantern hanging on the wall above a wheelbarrow lying on its side. Two pickaxes and a pry bar lay on the ground as if they’d simply been dropped.

“Did the workers down here go for lunch too?” Demascus asked.

“Maybe,” Chant replied. But why would they leave their tools?

Carmenere said, “Maybe the queen sent word to pull the workers out on some pretense so we could sneak in.”

“You’d think she would have mentioned that,” said Demascus. He drew his sword.

They advanced around the collapsed chamber’s perimeter in single file, Demascus in the lead, Chant trailing at the rear.

The pale light revealed a short silhouette. He saw it was a whole keg with its brewing seal intact. “Hey, this one’s not broken!” he exclaimed. He bent for a closer look. Yes! Liquid sloshed in the container when he nudged it.

“What does that matter?” asked Carmenere.

“Uh … it seems like a shame to let it go to waste.” By her look, the silverstar thought differently.

A low growl pushed thoughts of salvage from his mind. The sound was guttural, rough, and hungry.

Movement glimmered in Carmenere’s light. What he’d taken for a heap of refuse stood up on four legs and shook out scaled wings that were nightmarishly wide. Eyes wide as tea cups caught the silvery light, set in an almost human face. Almost. Curved barbs rose from its spine, and the tip of its lashing tail was crowned with spikes.

Chant recognized the beast from his books: it was a manticore. Manticores were vicious predators, sometimes trained as sentries by people who didn’t mind losing a few trainers to the process.

The creature growled again as its tail vibrated like a rattlesnake’s.

“Don’t excite it,” said Chant, his voice low. “It’s probably a guard. If we back off, it might leave us alone.”

The manticore’s snarl cracked off the close walls. Its tail lashed more violently.

“Down!” yelled Demascus as he hit the dirt.

Chant ducked behind a timber. A handful of spikes nailed themselves into a splintered rafter overhead. That was close!

He peered around the support, straining to control his rapid breathing. Demascus was back on his feet, sword tip aimed at the manticore. The ribbonlike length of the attached Veil twitched of its own accord.

“Everyone all right?” Demascus yelled.

“It missed us,” came Carmenere’s voice from Chant’s left. The silverstar was behind an overturned workbench.

Chant drew aim on the beast, but the deva blocked his shot.

The manticore advanced. Demascus jabbed at its eyes. It flinched, but flailed with a huge paw, forcing the deva backward. Chant’s line of fire cleared. He took his shot.

His crossbow spat a bolt. An arcane rune on the stock triggered, and one quarrel became three. Two found their mark.

The manticore screeched and reared, reflexively biting at a bolt protruding from its breast. Demascus stepped in to swipe at the beast’s exposed belly.

The thing’s wings were faster. They crashed in on him from either side like battering rams. The blow turned the deva sideways and nearly spun him off his feet. Chant feared Demascus was going to drop his sword. The pawnbroker plunged his hand into the quiver of bolts he wore on his thigh, trying to select one bolt in particular by feel.

Then Riltana was beside the deva, holding her short sword like a pike. She lunged and put another hole in the creature. Blood spurted from the wound. The manticore tried to bite her head off in retaliation. She danced back, remaining just out of its range.

Demascus swayed, shaking his head, apparently trying to clear away the aftereffects of the buffeting wings. Chant fumbled his bolt, and cursed. The manticore crouched low, as if preparing to spring at the disoriented deva.

The manticore’s tail rattled again, as it had before it sent its first salvo. Sharkbite! Demascus is too confused to take cover! He opened his mouth to cry warning, but another command sounded first.

“Goliath, break! Muzzle it!” The strange voice cracked with authority.

The manticore’s lethal rattle died to a rustle, and the beast’s wings pulled in to fold across its back. A low growl sounded as it bared its teeth at Demascus. Then it began inching forward as if pulling on an unseen leash.

“I said muzzle! Stand down, Goliath, these are not enemies!” came the voice again. Wait, he thought, that’s … Lieutenant Leheren’s voice!

The lieutenant emerged from one of the dark passages, the lantern gripped in one hand showing a bare flicker of flame. A long sword occupied her other hand. She said, “Goliath, down; save your strength until I command it!”

The bestial, almost humanoid face grimaced. Then it growled, “As you wish.”

Chant blinked. The thing could speak! He’d missed that in his reading.

The manticore sat back on its haunches and began to lick its wounds.

“Lieutenant,” said Demascus, surprise evident in his tone. “What’re you doing down here? I thought you were dead.”

Leheren’s red leather jacket was burned and as black as if she’d been rolling in ash. Her face was smudged, and her hands were so filthy she might as well have purposefully coated them in coal dust. Her eyes were sunken from exhaustion. She’d obviously seen a few things since she’d asked him and Demascus to check out the fire mage’s demesne.

She said, “I’m trying to figure out where the traitors are in my organization. What are you doing here?”

“We’re … trying to do the same thing, I guess,” Demascus replied.

The genasi only half-lowered her sword. She said, “And how do I know you’re not in league with the bastards who tried to take over the Cabal from inside?”

“Only by our actions, I guess,” said Demascus. “We’re here to help.” A good answer, Chant thought. He nodded in agreement, trying to make his face as sincere as possible for the lieutenant’s assessment.

She lowered her sword and said, “I see a silverstar accompanies you.”

“I do,” confirmed Carmenere.

Chant moved up to stand next to Demascus. He said, “Lieutenant, you look ill-used. Are you all right?”

Leheren gestured around at the ruined basement and growled, “What do you think?”

“Sorry,” he said. Then, “You said traitors are in your organization. So you know …”

Leheren’s shoulders slumped. She leaned against the wall and wiped at her forehead with a filthy jacket sleeve. She said, “Yes, I know. The deputy commander wanted me to find out for certain who among the command staff were involved.”

“What did you determine?” asked Demascus.

“I’ve determined that the reason demonic monsters are popping up randomly in Airspur is because a handful of Cabal members are responsible. Under the guise of regular activities, they’ve secretly been setting up some sort of cult!”

“Is someone named Kalkan involved?” Demascus asked. If Kalkan was tied to the cult, then he could start to make some sense—

Leheren shook her head. “I’ve never heard that name before. Should I have?”

Demascus sighed. “No. Well, maybe. He’s involved in this somehow …”

“How about Jett?” Chant said. “That tattoo he has isn’t just for show, is it? He’s one of the cultists. He serves the Elder Elemental Eye.”

Leheren grimaced. “Yes, I think Jett is one. One day a few months ago his disposition seemed to shift from pleasant to surly, and he was wearing that new tattoo. I thought it was a silly affectation. Jett Var, Garel Komar, and others too. But even some without the mark are part of it. Though I scarcely want to believe it, I have reason to believe the deputy commander himself is implicated. Plus who knows how many journeyman-grade members.”

“The deputy commander?” said Carmenere. “That can’t be right. He’s the one who set you to ferret out the cult.”

Leheren said, “Without someone of his authority involved with the conspiracy, it couldn’t have stayed under wraps for so long. I would have known.”

The queen’s not going to be happy to hear about this, Chant thought.

Leheren continued, “I’ve been down here for I don’t know how long, sifting through broken tunnels, looking for where they might yet be hiding.”

“By yourself?” said Demascus.

“I didn’t know who else to trust. Once I discovered the Cabal was compromised, I realized anyone could be a damn turncoat.”

“When they found out you knew about them, they brought down the Motherhouse?” asked Riltana.

“No. I collapsed the Motherhouse. I figured I’d crush the infestation with a sudden bold move, and quash everyone involved. But I failed.” Leheren shoved her blade into its scabbard with an unsteady hand, then leaned against the wall.

“I’m afraid you did,” said Chant. “A beast with ties to the Elder Elemental Eye attacked us after the Motherhouse’s destruction.”

She nodded wearily.

“How long have you been down here?” said Carmenere.

“Seems like days. I think I … wandered into an unsafe area, and was caught in a collapse. I hit my head, so things are a little foggy.”

“We should get you to the surface,” said Carmenere. “You need tending. And rest.”

“The silverstar’s right,” agreed Demascus. “But first, tell us where you haven’t looked yet.”

Leheren straightened. “No. No, I’m not leaving here until I find them. It’s my responsibility.”

The lieutenant glared into the cavity sheltering the manticore and directed her lantern at the far wall.

Chant looked in too, searching for the symbol Arathane had described.

The walls were bare of decoration, save for the scoring of claws and spikes, and splatters of dried blood. The floor was a mess of gnawed bones and feces. He wrinkled his nose. Some of the bones looked gruesomely fresh. The manticore had probably chased away the wheelbarrow owners. Or … eaten them?

Leheren muttered, “I must be getting close.” Her gaze fixed on the passage to the right of the manticore den. She stumbled once, then made for an exit.

Demascus whispered, “Should we try to haul her back to the surface against her will?”

Chant shrugged and said in a voice equally quiet, “She’s almost dead on her feet. And I think a little crazy from exhaustion.”

“And I’m pretty sure she has a concussion,” said Carmenere. “She said she bumped her head.”

“Although,” said Chant, feeling a little guilty, “even injured, she’s got a better chance of leading us to the sublevel than we do of stumbling on it blind.”

Leheren wasn’t waiting on their conversation. She entered the passage and walked out of view.

They followed the lieutenant. The translucent ball of moonlight called by the silverstar came along like an obedient dog, providing just enough light to navigate.

Leheren was a good way down the passage already. They hurried to catch up, but she exited the far end of the corridor well ahead of them.

The chamber beyond the corridor wasn’t large or high. Several rusted chests were shoved against one wall. Three rude tunnels provided exits. Leheren was nowhere to be seen.

Demascus said, “Where’d she go?”

Chant cocked his head and put his hand to one ear. He heard a faint scuffing as of boots on stone. He pointed down the middle tunnel. “That way. I think.”

Demascus dashed into the passage. I don’t like this, Chant thought, but followed after Carmenere and Riltana.

They broke out into a room slightly larger than the one with the chests. Leheren wasn’t there either.

“Is she trying to lose us?” Chant said. Maybe they should have brought the lieutenant back to the surface.

“I don’t think she’s in her right mind,” said Carmenere. “She ran off before I could ask Selûne’s aid on her behalf.”

The walls were irregularly sized stones mortared in place, though most of the mortar was long gone. A litter of skulls lay on the floor. Humanoid skulls, Chant noted.

“Burning dominions, why are there skulls down here?” Demascus suddenly exclaimed. The deva seemed particularly upset. Chant wondered what memory, if any, the skulls had triggered.

“Maybe evidence of the cult,” said Chant. “Which would mean we’re close.”

“I think Leheren went this way,” said Riltana, who was peering down a steep stair of mismatched stone slabs. The descent looked more like a ladder than a staircase.

“Then that’s where we go,” said Demascus. “Keep an eye out for a flame inscribed over the symbol of a cube. Even if we lose the lieutenant, we can still access the sublevel.”

They took the stairs. The stairwell meandered as it descended, then emptied into a room lit by torches.

Leheren was there.

She was threatening a genasi with her long sword; its tip rested in the hollow of the man’s neck. The genasi was dressed in the red leather of the Firestorm Cabal, but had defaced it with black paint showing a jagged spiral. A similar symbol had been carved into the back wall of the chamber. The new design was situated almost directly above a flame and cube symbol.

We have a winner, Chant thought.

The genasi’s fearful eyes tracked to them as they entered, then darted back to Leheren.

“I said, explain yourself, recruit. What in Karshimis’s name are you doing down here?”

“I … this is my post, Lieutenant!”

The room, except for the back wall, was draped in yards of red cloth hung inexpertly from torch brackets. An old couch in the chamber was similarly covered in scarlet swathes, while a mounded heap of the material apparently served the genasi as his bed. A crude table, a single chair, and a couple kegs rounded out the chamber’s furnishings.

“And what is this symbol you’ve adorned yourself with?”

The genasi glanced again at the newcomers.

“Answer me!” screamed Leheren.

The man’s gaze snapped back and he squeaked, “The Elder Elemental Eye, Lieutentant!”

“And,” continued Leheren, her voice gone quiet and flat, “how long have you secretly served this Elemental Eye down here below the Motherhouse?”

“Not long. I was only recruited a few tendays ago.”

“Why did you betray your Firestorm Cabal comrades?”

“Betray? Lieutenant Jett said learning about the Eye was how one joined the Cabal’s inner order. I thought this was a promotion—”

Leheren slapped the genasi so hard he tumbled to the floor.

“Bind him,” she said, glaring at the genasi. “You’re a fool. There’s no inner order. How stupid are you?”

Demascus watched over the genasi while Chant used one of the lengths of red fabric to bind him hand to foot. The fellow seemed stunned, but whether at the lieutenant’s blow or her accusatory words Chant couldn’t tell. Both, probably.

Leheren and Riltana studied the wall with the inscribed symbols.

Riltana reached to touch one. Leheren knocked the thief’s hand away before she could touch the wall.

“Hey!” said Riltana.

“Sorry. Something’s not right here.” Leheren turned to regard the captive. She said, “If there’s a trick to opening the passage, now would be a good time to tell us. As opposed to after we trigger something nasty.”

Chant said, “Yeah. That would probably makes us feel less charitable toward you.”

Demascus raised a single eyebrow and measured out a length of scarf, which Chant found more intimidating than Leheren’s and his own efforts combined.

The genasi coughed. Then he mumbled, “It’s a three-step sequence. Press each symbol twice, starting with the flame, then the square, then the spiral, in that order. Otherwise some kind of curse is triggered. I don’t know what.”

“And what will we find beyond?” said Riltana. “More guards?”

“This entrance is hardly ever used. I’ve only seen it open once, and I’ve never been beyond the threshold. All I saw were stairs. No guards.”

Leheren kept her eyes on the man another few moments, then rose. She touched the symbols in the order prescribed. Chant held his breath.

Stone grated on stone, reverberating through the small chamber. A slab of the wall slid away, revealing broad gray steps leading down.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

DEMASCUS BUMPED HIS HEAD HALFWAY DOWN THE low-ceilinged stairs and cursed, “Burning dominions!”

Leheren paused a step down from him to offer an accusatory glare.

He motioned for her to continue, embarrassed he’d allowed his thoughts to wander so much he’d fumbled his footing. No matter how many times he turned it over in his mind, he couldn’t remember anything about anyone called Kalkan. Or anything about the Elder Elemental Eye. Yet one or both were trying to kill him! It was driving him to distraction.

When he failed to provide any explanation at his outburst, Leheren gave an angry shake of her head. The motion made her sway, as if she was dizzy.

Demascus steadied her with a hand on the shoulder, but she jerked away from his touch. “I’m fine,” she said.

He knew otherwise. Her eyes, which had been the color of the sky when they’d first met, were so bloodshot it seemed her pupils floated in red crystal. She was obviously running on nothing but fumes, and was probably coming down with something too.

Leheren resumed her trek down the suffocatingly narrow, steep passage.

Should he insist the lieutenant go back and rest? If she continued on for much longer, she was going to collapse from exhaustion.

No; Leheren would only refuse, and he’d gain nothing but an argument and further delay.

He checked to see if the others still followed. Chant noticed and gave a little wave. Demascus nodded, then continued downward.

He didn’t care for the confined stairs. Something about the too-close stone made his eyeballs sweat and his stomach hurt. To say nothing of his head where it had struck the ceiling. If something ambushed them in the confined area, their chances would be miserable.

Leheren reached the bottom of the stairs. Thank all the gods of light and shadow! Demascus eased forward to peer over the lieutenant’s shoulder. The tiny stairwell emptied into the dim recess of a wider area lit by smokeless torches on wall sconces.

Three people talked in the wide hall carved from raw basalt. All wore the red of the Firestorm Cabal. Their armbands were stitched with black jagged spirals.

One leaned against a stack of boxes. Two others were gesticulating at her or maybe at the boxes she leaned on. One was pointing at a large exit to the hall, while the other gestured down the hall in a different direction. An argument about where the boxes were supposed to go?

The only other feature of note was a square column. Each face was as wide across as five people standing abreast. The two column faces Demascus could see each revealed carved images of something he couldn’t make out, one black, the other green.

“I don’t care!” yelled a tall watersoul genasi. “Murmur has enough bees. It doesn’t want any more, and I’m not going to be the one to piss Murmur off.”

“We were told to gather as many bees from around the site as we could find,” said a bald man with red szuldar etching his face. His tone was stubborn and defiant.

“That was last tenday, ash-for-brains. Now we’re looking for scorpions and ants. Get these out of here before Murmur finds out how much time you’ve wasted.” The tall watersoul kicked at one of the boxes.

The buzz from a swarm of angry bees was instantly audible. The woman leaning against the stack hurriedly backed away.

“It seems a pity to waste all this hard work,” said the argumentative genasi.

“You know what will be a pity?” said the watersoul. “When Murmur decides to punish you, and me too for being stupid enough to recruit you to the inner circle! Do you want your quarters to be relocated to the edge of the pit?”

The red glints in the firesoul’s szuldar snuffed out and his eyes widened in fear. He said, “But we’re pledged to the Eye—”

“Don’t be an idiot. You can serve the Eye just as well as food for the pit. Perhaps better.”

Food for the pit? thought Demascus. He imagined some sort of toothed hole in the earth.

Whatever the pit was in reality must have been similarly upsetting, because the two genasi responsible for the buzzing boxes gathered up their stack and walked away down the hall to the left, which was the direction the tall watersoul had wanted them to go.

Lieutenant Leheren suddenly stepped out into the hall.

“Son of a piss-pickled leech,” hissed Riltana. Demascus had to agree. Being impulsive was his job. But there was a time and place for impulsive, and demon cult headquarters wasn’t it. Unless she had a plan …?

“You there,” said Leheren, her voice ringing with authority. “Please explain what I just witnessed.”

The watersoul did a double-take. Then he apparently tried to swallow his tongue, but finally settled on a bronchial cough.

Leheren put her hands on her hips and glared at the man, waiting him out.

“Should we join her?” Chant whispered, who was so close Demascus could feel the man’s breath on his neck.

“No. I expect she’s trying to pretend she’s part of their cult. Revealing ourselves will just muddy things.”

As the man got control of his coughing, he went down on one knee and bowed his head. He said, “Please accept my apologies; I didn’t see you there. Where did you—”

“That’s not important,” said Leheren. “Your name’s Yuriel, isn’t it? I remember seeing you around.”

“Uh … You’ve learned my name?” said the watersoul, his voice breaking into a quaver.

“Yuriel! Focus! What’s going on with those bees?”

Yuriel glanced in the direction the other two cultists had gone, as if wishing he was with them. He swallowed and said, “A minor misunderstanding, nothing serious. One of the outlying salvage teams hadn’t gotten the word that we’re off bees.”

“For the pit,” said Leheren, not quite making it a question.

Yuriel’s hands shook and he nodded. Damn. What was the pit? The lieutenant couldn’t press the man too much on that point, or he’d become suspicious.

Leheren said, “Stand up.”

The watersoul cringed.

Demascus marveled. The man was terrified of Leheren. He must assume that because her position was high in the Firestorm Cabal, the same held true in the secret cult. Apparently those high in the cult didn’t treat their inferiors well.

“I said stand up, Yuriel! I want you to do something for me.”

The watersoul scrambled to his feet.

“That’s better,” said the lieutenant. “Now, answer me this; is Lieutenant Jett Var down here?”

“I think so.” Yuriel gestured toward the exit to the hall where the two bee-toting genasi had wanted to go. “Down near the pit. Dealing with the secondary collapse.”

“Secondary collapse?”

Yuriel gave Leheren an odd look.

Oops, Demascus thought. Apparently the lieutenant should have known about that. He tightened his grip on his sword.

Leheren just continued to stare at the watersoul, waiting.

“Ah,” said Yuriel. “The ceiling came down on half the brig. The Motherhouse is still settling. We’re still digging out what’s left, looking to see which sacrifices survived. But you must know that because …”

“Of course I do,” said Leheren. “Now get out of here. I need a moment of peace, and your presence annoys me.”

“Yes … Lieutenant,” said Yuriel. The watersoul watched Leheren for an instant as if for a reaction. Then he gave a slight bow. It wasn’t with nearly the deference he’d first shown, Demascus thought. Should he charge out of the niche and run the watersoul through? The man suspected Leheren wasn’t one of the converted!

Too late. Yuriel took off down the hall so fast he was almost skipping. A few instants later Demascus heard a door slam.

Leheren glanced at the recess where Demascus and the others were keeping out of sight. “Come on,” she said.

They emerged and scanned the hall. Empty, he thought. But if he was forced to fight, at least he had space enough to swing his sword and use his scarf. Instead of making him anxious, as the thought of fighting had in the cramped stairwell, the idea lit a tiny fire of anticipation.

“What now?” Chant said.

Leheren and Demascus walked around the central column, studying the relief-carved figures on each face. Two faces were variations of a huge tentacled thing, and the other two depicted entities composed of burning magma radiating steam.

“This is new,” mused Leheren. “Of course, I haven’t been to the Vault for years. I wonder how long the cult has been active down here?”

Demascus said, “Listen. I think Yuriel figured out you’re not part of the cult. We need to move before he decides to call for help. If he hasn’t already.”

Chant said, “I agree. When Yuriel called you ‘Lieutenant,’ your Firestorm Cabal title, it could have been a test. Someone high in the cult is probably referred to as ‘Grand Elemental Invoker’ or something even fancier.”

“Very well.” She turned from the carved idols and made for the large hallway. “Yuriel said Jett was this way.”

“And the pit,” Demascus added. “Whatever that is.”

The hallway was lit with more smokeless torches. Minor passages gave off either side, but the large doors at the end seemed most promising.

Leheren reached them first and tried one iron ring. “Locked,” she said and relinquished her grip.

Demascus advanced to the doors and gave the pull ring a savage jerk. The door only rattled.

“Let me,” said Chant. The human pulled out his set of lockpicks and bent to the keyhole. Ah, Demascus thought, thank the lords of light that one of us has the wit to be crafty. If I’ve got the half-remembered instincts of a grand-class assassin, shouldn’t I be better at the subtle stuff?

Riltana edged forward to watch the pawnbroker work. Half-recalled muscle memories made Demascus’s hands twitch with each movement of Chant’s tools.

A click of the mechanism told the tale. Chant grinned up at Riltana, then back at Demascus as he stowed his picks.

The door swung easily to reveal a passage lined with iron bars. Desperate-looking captives hunched or lay inside small cells, some of them fastened by chains to the bars. A few were so starved Demascus wondered how they were still alive.

Anger, cold and pure, suffused him. Whoever was responsible would pay for their cruelty. Such brutality could never be forgiven. His hands tightened on the Veil.

Farther along the passage, the ceiling had collapsed on a whole bank of cells. A handful of cultists dug at the rubble, shoveling dirt into carts—thunk, thunk!—and levering stones too big to pick up with iron pry bars.

None of them were Jett. That didn’t matter—by their presence, the cultists were implicated. Demascus focused on the nearest figure, a genasi wearing the arm patch of his new faith over his Cabal jacket. You’re mine, he thought, and his fingers tingled with anticipation.

“Stop!” someone yelled, breaking his deadly focus, leaving a swirl of confusion and repugnance at how excited he’d become over the thought of killing.

But who’d shouted? It hadn’t been his imagination, surely … he whirled, and saw Yuriel plus a posse of cultists crowding the mouth of the corridor.

“We’re blown,” said Riltana. She swept out her short sword.

Demascus said, “Inside! Close the door!”

He pushed Leheren and Chant before him past the threshold. Carmenere and Riltana crowded in behind.

Crossbow bolts clattered and thunked on the door as he and Riltana shoved it closed. Chant clicked the lock, and for good measure, Carmenere threw a bar across the doors. Yells of alarm and outrage sounded outside, but they were muffled. Demascus heard Yuriel’s voice screaming, “Who’s got the key? The key! Well, get it!”

“How much time do we have?” he asked Leheren.

She shrugged. “We need to find Jett, and the deputy commander too, and put a stop to this,” replied Leheren.

The cultists already in the cell bank ahead of them had stopped clearing the rockfall. They stared at Leheren in fear and confusion.

The lieutenant barked, “Where is Jett?”

Something heavy banged against the doors. Yuriel apparently couldn’t find the key.

One of the cultists hesitantly pointed down the hall.

As if on cue, Jett and another cultist entered the corridor from the far end. If anything, the tattoo on Jett’s neck was even more pronounced than the last time Demascus saw the man. The expression on Jett’s face was thunderous, but flickered briefly to amusement when he saw Demascus.

Then his eyes widened as they fastened upon Leheren.

Leheren advanced, her boot heels ringing on the stone. Demascus followed, a pace behind.

She marched past the dumbfounded cultists with shovels dangling in lax hands, until she was face-to-face with the object of her wrath. Jett stood his ground, but the cultist at his side—Demascus suddenly recognized him as Garel—visibly shrank back.

Leheren stared at her fellow lieutenant. His mouth worked, but nothing came out.

Then she slapped Jett, just as she’d done to the first turncoat they’d met. The genasi’s head rocked back. The cultists nearby gasped and one let out a tiny sob of terror.

But Jett had the opposite reaction. He rubbed his cheek, red from Leheren’s hand. His lips slowly curled into a smile, and his shoulders straightened.

He was no longer afraid, Demascus realized. Why?

Jett said, “Lieutenant Leheren. I was worried about your safety in all these collapses. But here you are, walking around and feisty as ever. And you’ve found friends.”

Leheren said, “Surrender, Jett, or I’ll slay you and everyone we find down here. How on Faerûn did you think you were going to get away with forming a demon cult inside the Firestorm Cabal?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied, his voice light. “Maybe because I’m only a co-instigator in all this.”

“Who, then?” said Leheren. “The deputy commander?”

Jett snorted. “No. A demon. It calls itself Murmur.”

A creature appeared from one of the cells as if summoned by the name. It held a limp genasi in one clawed hand. The thing was vaguely humanoid, but only just. Its limbs weren’t meant for anything except rending, striking, and tearing. It had no mouth; only a scatter of blinking scarlet across the otherwise empty face.

The Veil flared. Demascus licked his lips, and pointed his sword tip at the creature.

“Murmur?” Demascus asked. The thing was a nightmare, an offense against common sense, and—

“Hardly,” Jett said. “This creature is one of Murmur’s progeny. It’s called Portalbreaker.”

“A demon?” said Demascus.

“Sort of,” said Jett. He actually chuckled.

Demascus narrowed his eyes. I hate this guy, he thought. I should probably just cut him down right here and now.

Portalbreaker advanced, dropping the limp captive.

“Call it off,” Leheren commanded.

A resounding boom drew Demascus’s eyes in the direction from which they’d come. The doors they’d closed and barred lay on the ground. Yuriel stood there with a parade of cultists.

Riltana yelled, “Bastard pig-straddlers!” The airsoul leaped at Yuriel, and Carmenere followed at a run. So it was going to be a two-front fight. Not good. He automatically noted the positions of Yuriel and the attacking cultists, seeing where each would likely go, and how many would find their progress blocked by their fellows. Which gave him a moment.

He flicked his attention to the front as Portalbreaker charged. Despite all its eyes, it made as if to go right past Leheren as though it couldn’t see her.

It shouldn’t have ignored her; Leheren’s quick sword lopped off one of its arms, spraying clear ichor everywhere.

Portalbreaker wheeled to face the lieutenant, completely quiet even in the face of the wound she’d just dealt. New crystalline eyes popped open all over its body, each shedding fell red illumination. Whatever grace the woman had first enjoyed was gone.

Demascus closed the distance to Portalbreaker while all its attention was on Leheren. His breath came in short gasps.

When he’d fought Inakin in the alley on the way to Carmenere’s, he’d found a sort of power in the gloom, different from the radiant light he’d generated with his sword before that. The shadows had become like physical things, shrouds of dusk eager to bend at his touch. Could he do that again?

Torches lit the hallway, making the shadows dance and die too quickly for him to grasp them. All except for the shadow of the Veil tied around his sword.

The shadow of his scarf seemed to extend like a black ribbon, undulating in a cold wind that blew across a dark echo of the corridor in the real world. What in the name of all the dominions am I seeing?

Portalbreaker’s remaining clawed limb beat aside Leheren’s sword and fastened around her neck. Her mouth opened in a soundless gasp and her eyes went wide. The lieutenant’s sword clattered to the ground as she scrabbled with both hands, trying to peel away the demon’s overlarge hand from around her throat.

Demascus cried, “Let her go!” and snapped the shadow of his Veil. A layer of gauzy dusk seemed to fall across the creature like a shroud.

“Oh,” he said, as he saw what was revealed.

Portalbreaker didn’t notice the billowing film loosely covering it. It continued to squeeze Leheren’s throat. Her feet kicked helplessly in the air. The demon was strong!

But … it also had its weak points. Through the lens of the shroud, the thing’s physical and spiritual anatomy communicated itself to Demascus. He saw seven points of energy glimmering beneath the creature’s flesh. Each point pulsed with a different color and pattern, and each told Demascus one truth about the Portalbreaker, revealing a potent strength, or a surprising weakness.

For instance, he saw immediately Portalbreaker couldn’t be strangled. The bluish energy point at its throat indicated it was not a bottleneck for blood and air as was the case for most living creatures.

Because … it was not really even living! It was some kind of arcane construct of mental energy, demonic ichor, and hideous will. And while swords and other weapons could eventually bring it down, like any physical entity, Portalbreaker possessed a unique vulnerability too.

A golden point of light pulsed in what would have been the solar plexus of a mortal creature. With the shroud’s aid, he saw the spot was a complex knot of energies, looped around and around each other like a seamstress ties off thread.

Demascus glided forward and punched his sword into the creature’s back all the way to the hilt, so that the tip punctured the golden point.

Portalbreaker’s eyes all flared instantly, sending shafts of scarlet light in all dierctions. Its legs lost their strength. The monster crumbled, and its eyes flickered out.

Leheren fell from its claw and struck the ground at the same time as the demon. She lay worryingly still.

The piece of gloom he’d thrown across the monster was gone. Or his ability to discern it had fled. Not that he needed the shroud any longer. The monster began evaporating.

He rushed to Leheren. She wasn’t breathing.

“Lords of light, aid me!” he whispered, and patted his belt for one of Chant’s healing doses.

He saw Riltana run a firesoul through with her short sword, then leap away from the counterstroke like a leaf on the wind. Carmenere laid about her with a mace that glimmered with moonglow. Chant had taken cover behind an overturned torturer’s rack and was firing his hand crossbow at cultists who remained in one place too long. They were holding off the press, thanks in part to the narrow corridor—

“Demascus.”

He jerked his gaze around and saw Jett. The traitor stood with his hands out to either side. Why hadn’t he joined the fight?

“Your demon’s dead,” said Demascus. His questing fingers kept searching for a tiny glass ampule of blue fluid on his belt. He was sure he’d grabbed one …

Jett said, “Murmur can make more, each one twice as awful. It builds them from nightmares. Murmur’s created a whole cadre of them.” The genasi at his side, Garel, nodded in agreement, though he had none of Jett’s insouciance.

“Ah. Well, where is Murmur? And all his nightmare demons? And let’s stop with the code names—I know Murmur is the deputy commander.” Demascus knew no such thing, but maybe he could lure Jett into confirming Murmur’s identity.

Jett shook his head, “It, not he; Murmur hates it when we refer to it as if it had a gender. Anyone who makes that mistake ends up in the pit.”

Why was Jett just standing there? And with that smug look on his face?

“Fine, we’ll do it your way,” Demascus said. “Where is it? Where is Murmur?”

He failed to find the healing potion. He let a finger rest on Leheren’s neck. No pulse, and she was already cooling. Oh, gods, she was dead.

Garel stepped forward and kicked at him, but he dodged. He straightened and backed away from the body, his sword at the ready. Tiny flickers of light danced on either side.

Garel sneered, and said, “Thanks for bringing her back.”

Lieutenant Leheren sat up. Her head rotated like a puppet’s until she found Garel. She’s alive! thought Demascus, and he allowed himself a smile. With her, they might just make it out of here!

Leheren’s hand shot out and clamped on Garel’s ankle. He cried out when she squeezed. Then she pulled the suddenly screaming genasi to her and took a huge bite out of his leg as if Garel were no more able to defend himself than a piece of fried chicken.

“What’s she doing?” came Chant’s unbelieving voice.

“I am hungry,” said a voice devoid of mirth, hope, and humanity. Demascus flinched. The voice had emerged from Leheren’s mouth. But it was the voice of something else entirely.

Her eyes, which earlier had seemed tired and bloodshot, had become orbs of blood-lit quicksilver. Her szuldar shone with the same metallic red light, as if her skin was moments away from splitting.

Demascus couldn’t make his mind work. Had Portalbreaker infected Leheren with some kind of demon sickness?

Leheren said, “Servitor, explain. What am I doing here?” Again her voice was a soulless, scratching parody of the lieutenant’s normal tone.

Garel screamed again, but she casually lifted him then brought his body down on the ground with a body-crunching thunk. Then Garel only grunted through broken teeth.

Jett said, “My lord Murmur.” The genasi’s fear had returned, but he continued speaking, “Your host wandered off when the cell we kept her in collapsed. We had been worried for your safety.”

Demascus said to the lieutenant, “What … who … You’re the cult leader? You’ve been lying this whole time?”

Leheren’s head moved with the same careful precision until she fixed her awful eyes on him. No, not her eyes. Its eyes. What lived behind the facade was no longer Leheren. It was Murmur.

Murmur blanched when it saw him. Its mouth opened in a parody of a scream, and it bawled like some kind of demonic infant. The sound entered his head and beat at his mind like a hammer. He dropped his sword and grabbed his forehead, trying to hold in his suddenly throbbing brain.

Murmur took the opportunity to bound away from him like an insect. It landed clumsily behind Jett, Garel in tow.

“It’s him,” grated Murmur.

Now what? Demascus felt like his brain was caught in burning, thought-deadening oil. He gritted his teeth, and yelled, “Chant! Riltana! Over here!”

But Chant and Riltana were fighting off a new wave of cultists.

Demascus bent, and retrieved his sword with one unsteady hand. The Veil fluttered and shone, while its shadow lengthened and wriggled like a live thing.

Murmur screamed, “The molting is at hand!” and slapped a hand on Garel’s forehead.

“What’re you doing?” said Jett, backing away.

Murmur said, “This one’s oath to the Elder Elemental Eye has come due!”

Then Garel and Murmur both screamed as every szuldar line on Leheren’s body split wide. Her skin sloughed off, revealing raw muscle, viscera, heart, lungs, and brain. Instead of blood, liquid crystal percolated up from between every crevice and fold of tissue, shining with abyssal red brilliance.

As the liquid crystal inundated Leheren’s organs and form, Garel’s body deflated. His scream dwindled to a choking whisper. His limbs crinkled and folded up on themselves, then disintegrated into so much dust. His last utterance was, “No, my soul …”

He was gone. As was Leheren.

The thing that had lived in Leheren remained. It had become a terror of rubbery black limbs veined all over with pulsing arteries of incandescent red crystal. Its lower body was wreathed in a tumble of scarlet crystalline tendrils. Its jaws dropped open nightmarishly wide, and it loosed a birthing call of triumph. The sound was piercing and hideous, and sent a jolt of terror through Demascus every bit as painful as a dagger thrust to his stomach.

“The molting is complete!” it crowed.

Then it said, “Things will go differently this time, Demascus.”

This time? It didn’t matter. Murmur was obviously some kind of demon, and trying to play with his mind. Either way, I should kill it, he thought. Now.

He grasped the shadow of the Veil and let its trailing end drape across Murmur. Through the shroud of gloom that apparently only he could see, Demascus studied the demon.

“Gods,” he whispered, as his certainty withered. “I can’t fight this!”

Seven points of energy blazed through the creature’s partly insubstantial, changeable form. It was equal parts flesh and illusion, but the liquid crystal that was its blood and life-force was wrong in every way. It did not belong on Faerûn. Or even … in this universe.

Murmur, larger than it had been, reached a red-veined black limb into the cells on either side of it. Quick as stooping eagles, each taloned hand plunged into the head of a captive. When they emerged, each one gripped a writhing, incorporeal nightmare.

Demascus stepped back. It was all too much. He was out of his depth. He had to—

Murmur released the entities it had just ripped from the minds of the captives. They inflated as they writhed, and took on demonic shapes. One was a hybrid between a scorpion and a ram. The other some kind of squealing, bubbling mass of slime. Each was a foul monstrosity. Each apparently wanted to eat Demascus.

The slime mass slid straight for him. The scorpion demon jumped then skittered along the ceiling, faster than its sibling, and threw itself down on him.

Demascus deflected the first monster with his sword. But he couldn’t evade the second. It engulfed him with its wet, cold embrace. The venom of its body numbed his skin on contact.

Demascus yelled, “Run!” to his friends as he lost feeling in his legs and arms. He heard Murmur laughing.

He screamed one more time. He tried to tell Chant, Riltana, and Carmenere to save themselves before it was …

Too late.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

SOMEONE HAD KICKED HER IN THE HEAD, RILTANA thought, then dragged her, scratching and bumping, across broken rock. She tasted blood in her mouth.

She groaned and opened her eyes. Flickering, greenish light stung her eyes. She tried to rub her head, but a manacle clanked tight. Chains bound her wrists, securing her to the front of her cell. The memory of the cultists flanking her and beating her senseless came to her in blunt echoes communicated by her ribs, her back, and her aching head.

She was in a cage, one of a dozen or so around the periphery of a subterranean chamber. Some cells were sunk into the stone, others hung from the ceiling like aviaries. Many contained ill-used captives.

A man she didn’t recognize was manacled next to her. His clothing was mere tatters, his eyes were wide, and a constant babble of mumbles fell from his lips.

“Be quiet, you leech-licking lunatic,” she hissed. But the man wouldn’t shut up.

Beneath his mad stream-of-consciousness she detected a clicking, buzzing drone.

Riltana bent her head to a painful angle to see what was behind and below the cage.

The cell overlooked a cavity in the chamber’s center that was the source of the droning noise.

The cavity churned with insects! Bees, ants, moths, scorpions, and scurrying beetles. And cockroaches! She hated roaches. Especially ones as large as Chant’s cat, Fable. Fireflies, or something like them but with mandibles, pulsed with pale greenish radiance, bright enough to light the entire chamber.

Bones littered the pit’s edge, each one pocked as if scoured clean by thousands of insect mandibles.

You’ve got to be kidding me, Riltana thought, her gorge rising.

She jerked her gaze from the pit. Where were her friends? Oh pus in a bucket, where was Carmenere?

There! Two enclosures from her own cage. The earthsoul slumped from cuffs around her wrists, and her head rolled to one side. Someone had removed her armor and her weapons. She was smeared in dirt, blindfolded, and blood stained her forehead.

Fury built and then burned away her bowel-loosening fear. They’d hurt Carmenere! Someone was going to answer for that.

Her armor, with all of its concealed daggers, lock-picking wires, and other tools of her craft, was missing. But her captors had failed to remove her gloves. Which meant she would soon be free! But she had to get Carmenere out too. She had to be careful, and make sure no one saw her get free. Where had they stored her belongings—

“Tell us what you want!” echoed through the room. The voice was … it was Demascus!

She gazed left and saw the man two cages over. His dangled directly over the swarming pit. Manacles on the deva’s wrists and ankles suspended him spread-eagle in midair inside his cell. They’d left him only his smallclothes. She saw the tattoolike designs on his arms extended up his shoulders, then plunged down the center of his back, creating a design that looked an awful lot like a sword.

His eyes were covered. Whoever had covered his eyes obviously didn’t know the significance of the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge, because they’d used the Veil as the blindfold.

She couldn’t see Chant, but she decided to assume the human was in a nearby cell. Unless his bones numbered among those on the pit’s edge …

“Murmur!” yelled Demascus. “Answer me!”

A mixture of cries, prayers, and pleas for salvation, plus a particularly loud bout of gibberish from Riltana’s cellmate, was his response. No cultists, or that awful thing that had been Leheren, were obviously present.

She debated calling out to Demascus. His voice sounded fragile, as if he were on the edge of some kind of break. Acknowledgment from her that at least one of his friends remained alive would give him something to focus on … No. It would be stupid to draw attention to herself. If she could escape her cell without any of the cultists realizing it, then she might be able to release him too, after she saved Carmenere. He’d appreciate freedom better than a friendly voice in the dark.

Riltana rubbed her finger and thumb together and concentrated on her gloves. A yellow marble swelled into her grip. The Prisoner’s Stone, as she called it, which she’d stolen from an image of the primordial Karshimis. Relief made her giddy for a moment.

She whispered the phrase that had come to her in a dream, “Neither cage, nor chains, nor prison walls shall keep me from salvation’s light.”

The manacles slipped off with hardly a jangle. The bars beneath her feet parted like water, and she dropped lightly to the dirt beneath. Free!

The maddening drone from the pit vibrated through her; its edge was only a pace away from her boot tip. She retreated from the rim until her shoulder blades brushed the cavern wall. So far, so good. Nothing had reacted to her escape, and she still couldn’t see any cultists. A fierce grin touched her lips.

She stashed the Prisoner’s Stone back in glovespace, then raced for the exit tunnel.

Belongings from recently interred prisoners might be stowed near the captives in a guard chamber, she thought. When she’d been caught three years ago by the Airspur peacemakers, they’d had one. She hoped the cultists operated similarly.

Her cellmate began to scream, “Don’t leave me, Lady! Come back for me!”

That insane turd! No time to go back and quiet him.

She ducked into the exit tunnel. Torches set in black metal wall sconces wound down around a natural curve, providing light. A side chamber gaped just a few paces down it.

Ah ha! The guard chamber, had to be.

She padded forward and peeked in. The chamber’s flickering illumination came in through several arrow slits that looked back out onto the chamber of the pit. She’d missed seeing them earlier.

Lucky no cultists were here, she thought. They would’ve probably seen her drop out of her cell.

Riltana darted into the guard room. She pressed her eyes to the nearest aperture. Demascus, Carmenere—and there was Chant too—remained secure in their cages. Don’t worry, she silently promised. I’ll get you out.

Wooden trenchers scabbed with dried food tumbled from the stack on a high shelf. Several sealed casks of lamp oil hunkered along the opposite wall, competing for space with two larger barrels, both open, one filled with brackish water, the other with rancid stew. Three wide chests were pushed up against the wall beneath the slits.

Riltana flipped open the lid of the nearest chest.

Yes! She extricated her leather armor from the jumble. She slipped on the black one-piece and reveled in the comforting weight of her secreted daggers and tools. Even the snowflake-inscribed short sword she’d bought from Chant remained in its scabbard.

She recognized Carmenere’s bulky armor and her mace, and Demascus’s noble’s jacket. The other weapons, armor, and bits of equipment were probably theirs as well. Too much to carry in one trip.

She grasped a handle on the chest’s long side and pulled. The chest scraped along the ground easily enough, and the sound of metal on stone was drowned out by the pit.

Riltana checked to make certain the exit tunnel was still clear, then hauled the chest out of the guard chamber. She dragged it into the chamber of the pit until it was positioned beneath Carmenere’s dangling cell.

She closed the lid, stood on the top, and slid the bolt in the cell door. Not particularly well secured, she thought. She flipped up and into the cell, and set to work freeing the unconscious Carmenere from her manacles with her set of picks and wires.

“Lady! Lady! Lady!” screamed her insane cellmate over and over. She gritted her teeth and finished the job, promising to kick the crazy man until he stopped babbling.

Carmenere slid to the floor of the cell, still limp.

Riltana produced the curative draft she’d purchased from Chant. She gave the contents to the lolling silverstar.

The earthsoul opened her eyes. Riltana’s heart felt light as a feather in an updraft. She smiled down at her friend, but put a finger to the woman’s lips. Carmenere took a moment to take in her situation. She rubbed her wrists.

“I’ve come to save you,” Riltana whispered.

“Thank you,” replied the earthsoul. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

“As if I’d leave you!”

Carmenere smiled, and Riltana felt her heart become lost at sea all over again.

“Greetings, Scour,” came a voice ripped straight from Riltana’s nightmares.

Murmur was in the chamber!

It was standing at the edge of the pit, gazing into it as if the cavity were a reflecting pool. The strobing flickers of the firefly radiance gave the demon’s already ghastly silhouette a guttering, crawling texture.

A wave of fearful cries and whimpers swept the room.

Murmur said to the mass of scurrying bugs, “Can you hear me?”

Carmenere looked at Riltana. The woman didn’t dare speak, but the desperate question in the silverstar’s eyes was clear: What should we do?

Riltana draped a placating hand on Carmenere’s shoulder even as she tried to control her own howling fear.

The demon had failed to notice Riltana had gotten loose and into a different cell than the one she’d been put in. Or that someone had dragged a chest out of the guard room and positioned it beneath a hanging cage. If her luck held, maybe the thing would return whence it had come when it finished playing with the bugs in the floor. Please, she thought, just turn around and leave, and don’t look this way.

“Murmur!” yelled Demascus, as if to spite her hope not to draw the demon’s attention. “I can hear you! What do you want with me? How do you know me?”

That pig-straddling leech fondler! What was the deva doing? Not all of us get reincarnated when we do something stupid!

Murmur’s crystal-veined bulk turned so that its gaze fell on the deva. Its eyes swirled like whirlpools, light and dark red crystal, down to a vanishing point. Riltana shuddered, but the nightmarish regard flicked past her and Carmenere.

The demon undulated on a bed of scarlet tendrils, moving as lightly as a dream despite its bulk, until it was directly before Demascus’s cage.

Demascus craned his blindfolded gaze right and left, sniffing the air.

“I am here,” said Murmur, its voice a cavalcade of scurrying rats. “But you already know that, don’t you, foul entity?”

The deva jerked. He said, “My name is Demascus.”

“I recognize you whatever your name. I saw you outside the Motherhouse. You’ve hunted me across creation. You nearly managed to catch me unawares while I was still weak and awake only while my host dreamed. But I saw you first! Now look where your devotion to duty has gotten you: alone and soon to be food for the pit!”

Demascus’s chin dropped. He said, his voice low, “I don’t remember you. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Riltana looked away from the drama and squeezed Carmenere’s shoulder. She pointed at the cage where Chant was chained. She dropped her head to the silverstar’s ear and said in a bare whisper, “I’m going to free the pawnbroker while the demon-thing gloats. Be ready to run for the exit.”

“When?” Carmenere whispered back.

“You’ll know when. Your equipment is in the chest beneath this damned aviary.” Riltana slunk to the hatch, her eyes fastened on Murmur’s broad back. She was ready to freeze in place should the demon turn her way.

Murmur shouted to Demascus, “Don’t lie to me! You and your band disrupted the ritual and blasted us into oblivion. And now you’re here to tidy up loose ends.”

Riltana reached the edge of the cage, then leaped into the arms of the air. They bore her like a silent breath in an arc that grazed the cavern roof, then down. She alighted silently on the cage holding Chant. Her eyes darted back to check on the demon. It still hadn’t noticed her. Keep it talking, she thought.

The deva said, “I don’t know you. My first … clear memory is from a shrine west of Airspur. Dead Cabal members everywhere. But that’s not my first memory of Faerûn. I remember other things … Just not you. I didn’t come looking for you. If you know me, you must have drawn me here. Why?”

“A shrine west of Airspur?” said Murmur. As the demon spoke it stretched one rubbery limb until it touched the cage next to Demascus’s. “Surrounded by a ring of stone columns?”

“Yes,” said the deva.

Murmur’s elongating fingers slid the latch on the cage. It said, “I know that shrine well. I sent a group of servitors and nightmare scions there.”

Riltana quietly rolled off the top of Chant’s cage. The human inside was awake. His eyes darted between her and the demon. He knew enough to keep quiet.

“I found your cultists and monsters,” said Demascus. “They were all dead. Except for one hungry little biter I dispatched. Why did you send them to the shrine? I thought I’d been kidnapped as a sacrifice for some kind of demonic ritual …”

Murmur’s tarry limb snaked into the cell and wrapped around a boy. The boy’s head lolled. His eyes bulged in fear, and he uttered a guttural cry of distress.

The nightmare demon said, “One of my servitors told me of the place. So I sent them to collect a portion of the spiritual energy building there.”

“Spiritual energy?”

Murmur withdrew the boy and raised him over its head. The kid’s struggles became more frenzied, but the demon’s resilient grip held him without strain. What can I do? Riltana thought. If I show myself, the thing will just grab me too.

She swallowed and turned away from the scene. She threw the bolt of the pawnbroker’s cage, entered, and produced her wires and picks.

Chant’s eyes were glued to the tableau outside. With the twist and lift of a wire, she removed the first manacle. The pawnbroker flinched, and mouthed, “No!” A scream ripped her attention back to the chamber.

Murmur’s grip was empty … It had thrown the boy into the insect pit.

The volume of the swarming insects swelled. The sound of thousands of hungry mandibles, beating wasp wings, rustling carapaces, and scuttling spider legs drowned the sound of someone being consumed alive by insects. Oh gods!

Chant went for the exit, but was jerked to a stop by the manacle that remained around his wrist. His motion nearly knocked the wire from her hand. She hissed, “Don’t move, or we’ll be next!”

Murmur’s voice came, “Eat well, Scour.”

“What are you talking about?” said Demascus. His voice cracked and broke. Whatever front he had thrown up had obviously faltered with the boy’s life.

“You’ll discover that soon enough,” said the demon. “You, and everyone in this chamber, and perhaps everyone in the entire city of Airspur will become food for my slumbering sibling.”

She had to get the Hells out of there. Her hands shook, and she fumbled her first attempt at the human’s restraint.

“I … I see. Why is Scour asleep?”

“Because of you!” Murmur suddenly raged. It grasped Demascus’s cage and shook it like a terrier shakes a cornered rat.

Riltana removed Chant’s remaining manacle. She whispered, “All your stuff is in that chest beneath Carmenere’s cage. See it?”

The pawnbroker rubbed his wrists and nodded. He was pale and battered, but the human’s eyes were dark with determination. He muttered, “We’ll make this demon sorry for what it’s done.”

“No!” she breathed. “What we’re going to do is create a distraction! We free a passel of other prisoners, the ones that look like they still have some kick in them. Then, when Murmur’s busy chasing them down, we free Demascus, and we run from here like greased pig-snugglers!”

“I’ll help free the prisoners,” said Chant. “Then we’ll see.” The pawnbroker glided out of the cage as quietly as she herself could have managed, despite his bulging belly. She followed.

The demon had let go of Demascus’s dangling cell. The deva shook his head to clear it from the rough handling.

“Tell me one thing,” said Demascus, his voice even more strained. “You didn’t cause that spike of power at the shrine? You didn’t summon me with some sort of ritual?”

“No,” said Murmur. “Why would I be insane enough to call forth one of the few beings who ever bested me?”

“A servitor told you of the shrine?” said Demascus. “Who?”

Murmur grated, “I hardly bother to learn their names; they all become food in the end. It was … The one who liked to wear a hood. He told me of the spiritual spike, and how I might profit from it. Hold—I remember. My mind is improving apace with the molting finally complete.

“His name is Kalkan.”

CHARTER TWENTY

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

ONLY A HINT OF LIGHT LEAKED AROUND THE EDGES OF HIS blindfold, but Demascus could sense Murmur’s presence—a blot of inimical cold, far too close. His battered body throbbed, and the manacles were a torture all their own.

But all that went away as the demon’s words hit home.

“You … you know Kalkan?” asked Demascus.

The leaden voice replied, “Enough talk. I’ve given Scour something to wake its appetite. It’s time for the main course. You, Demascus.”

The pain crashed back down on him, and it served as the conduit for a cold draft of pure fear. He did not want to be eaten alive by a swarm of semisentient bugs!

“Think of it as an experiment,” continued the abyssal voice. “How long will it take the insects to eat through your skin and bone before they get to your heart or brain? Everyone I’ve thrown into the pit lasts at least a song. The screaming usually stops before that, but that’s only because the bugs have eaten the tongue and soft tissues of the throat.”

The bolt on his cage being drawn back scratched his ears. A presence defined by the smell of blood and rot moved closer.

He spasmed in the manacles, forcing his strained muscles to jerk as hard as they could against the restraints. But the metal cuffs only cut deeper.

He panted, motionless again. “I don’t want to go into the pit,” he said. He was amazed at how matter-of-fact his voice sounded.

“But you’re the perfect sacrifice,” said Murmur. Demascus turned his head from its stagnant breath. “Of all the creatures I’ve collected to feed my sibling, your spiritual presence is the most vital. It radiates from you like a fire. When Scour eats you, it will finally wake, I’m certain of it!”

Cold, rubbery fingers brushed Demascus’s face.

Demascus cried, “Let go!” and wrenched at the restraints again, on the edge of complete panic. So much for his matter-of-fact voice, part of his mind observed. Fresh daggers of pain shot down his wrists and arms.

Murmur chuckled.

Demascus remembered the alley and Inakin, where he’d walked through shadow. He tried to push away his distress and concentrate, imagining himself setting foot on the gloomy road as if it was any other path … Nothing. Because he couldn’t see where he was going!

This is it, he thought. I’m going to be eaten. His mind felt sluggish, fevered.

Murmur’s grip enveloped him. And still he couldn’t see a godsdamned thing! Only a mocking shimmer came through the blindfold.

Wait. The texture reminded him of … Was it his Veil? It was.

“Help me, Wrath and Knowledge!” he screamed. “Or all you’ve revealed ends here!”

The Veil flexed, unknotted itself from around his head, then settled around his neck like a simple scarf.

Murmur’s oily arm, veined with scarlet crystal, gripped him tight with hideously flexible fingers. The monster’s visage blocked the open cell door. Its mouth was agape, and its scarlet eyes swirled like twin views into the Abyss.

And beyond, Demascus saw the cavern, striped with light and dark. Each stripe of gloom was, from a certain point of view, like a shortcut. A path. An escape!

Demascus imagined walking down a darkling lane …

A cool wind tousled his hair as he stepped out of the manacles, out of Murmur’s grip, and to the far side of the cavern into a pool of shade.

He was free, and he could see. His mental inventory of his situation bloomed in his hindbrain as he subconsciously noted the details of the horrid chamber, where each cell was embedded or hung, how many steps from where he stood to the edge of the pit, and the location and distance to—

A howl of anger lashed the room. “Come back here!”

—the exit to the chamber of horrors; it was on the opposite side of the room, across the pit from where he’d appeared.

Murmur lifted its hands as if beseeching the roof to collapse. Demascus felt some disregarded terror stir in answer behind his eyes. He mentally clamped hold of the diaphanous wight, until it settled again into the place where forgotten night terrors go.

Others were less successful. A miasma of tumbling color and shapes streamed from the mouths, eyes, noses, and ears of a swathe of manacled captives.

The turbulent mist of bad dreams flowed to Murmur. They lapped over and layered the demon. It turned around in the the torrent as if luxuriating in the flow, and a ghastly second skin materialized around it. A skin of twining arms and gaping mouths, undulating worms and exposed viscera, transforming Murmur’s already horrific bulk into an unspeakable nightmare.

The captives who retained their sanity screamed. Demascus whispered, “Lords of shadow, preserve me.” Murmur was an enemy beyond his strength, he knew it. He should flee, immediately, before—

The slap of bare feet on rock pulled his eyes from the awful visage. A black-haired halfling and a watersoul wearing just scraps of clothing were running, free of their cages and manacles, to the exit. On the opposite side of the room, another handful of unshackled captives variously ran, limped, or crawled from their cages.

Demascus blinked at the escapees, who were like the embodiment of hope that life might go on. At least for some. He blew out his breath as the panic Murmur’s countenance had blasted straight into his brain subsided.

“No one escapes,” said all the nightmare’s mouths at once. The massed voices were like a toll of doom.

A limb of hands and arms and red worms snapped up the black-haired halfling and hurled him directly into the pit. A squirming limb swiped at the fleeing watersoul but missed.

The next escapee was not so lucky; a woman with only one boot and scars running down her arm screamed when Murmur caught her. Her eyes found its own, desperate for succor. Then Murmur tossed her into the pit.

“No!” he yelled.

Murmur bellowed from a dozen mouths, “Demascus! Time for you to meet your destiny!”

“I don’t remember what you are or who,” he yelled. “But if I beat you in some past life, I can beat you in this one too.”

“No. This time, you’re alone,” said Murmur. Its awful grin widened.

I am on my own, Demascus thought. Just like the woman Murmur threw into the pit. Just as he’d been from the moment he’d opened his eyes on the shrine. He didn’t have a single memory to hold on to. No one who cared about him.

The demon dream gestured, and a storm of pilfered nightmares rolled off the demon’s hide and washed toward Demascus.

He felt as if his feet were glued in place.

“Demascus!” hissed a voice. “Stop standing there like a half-wit and run!”

It was Riltana. In all her vitriolic glory.

Then he saw Chant. The human was hunched over the manacles restraining a mad-eyed fellow who was screaming, “The Lady was here! The Lady! The Lady!” Spittle frothed the man’s lips.

And where …? There! Carmenere crouched behind a large chest, shrugging into armor. A litter of items lay around her. Including the sword he’d found at the shrine.

He wasn’t alone. The thought illuminated his mind like the sunrise.

Time seemed to decelerate.

He tore the Veil from his neck and snapped it like a whip. The scarf came partly alive in his hand. The far end wrapped around the sword hilt at Carmenere’s feet. He jerked the sword to him through the air. The hilt slapped into his palm. A glitter of pale runes immediately formed, hovering over the blade.

Demascus focused on his sword, and on the runes that spontaneously formed whenever he wielded it. Each of those runes was … what? A memory. A very precise memory. One rune blazed, and it contained a recollection of divine light.

Time resumed its merciless march. Demascus cut the air in a downward slash. The sword tip inscribed an arc of swirling radiant energy. Murmur’s nightmare wave bore down on him, threatening to envelop him in fear unending. But the line of angelic fire he’d summoned sliced clean through the cresting miasma. Its tattered edges rolled past him on either side, and dispersed.

“Perish, demon!” yelled Carmenere.

Demascus saw that the silverstar had donned her armor and found her mace. It glowed like the full moon. A shaft of the conjured light touched Murmur’s seething flesh, tearing rents into the shuddering facade.

Three crossbow bolts and two hurled daggers punched into Murmur’s opposite flank a heartbeat later.

Murmur staggered and made an odd sound. Sort of like the sound an overconfident tough would make who’d taken an unexpected shot to the nether regions, Demascus thought. This demon can be beaten! he thought.

He flung himself at the demon. A radiance, like that which he’d just channeled from his sword, flickered around him like a protective nimbus. When the glow struck Murmur, his aura erupted into a flash a hundred times brighter.

The stolen nightmares the demon had plated itself with evaporated like dew in sunlight.

He hewed at what remained: a violet-skinned, crystal-veined eight-foot-tall monster supported by a nest of red crystal tendrils, naked in all its original horror.

Murmur’s spiraling eyes caught Demascus’s. The demon’s mouth unhinged in an unholy grin. Demascus realized the thing wasn’t the least bit hurt; they’d only managed to disrupt its nightmarish facade.

Crystal strands snaked around his waist and lifted him off his feet. Murmur lifted him over its head.

Demascus couldn’t help but glance down into the roiling crater. Biting insects beyond count thronged there. The half-consumed carcasses of the victims Murmur had already thrown in were strewn down the sides, their shapes suggested only by humps of seething beetles, ants, and cockroaches. Wasps and stinging moths darted just above the aperture like a halo.

“Merciful lords,” said Demascus. If he died in the pit, would he wake up some place and some years hence, his memory wiped clear once more? His flesh and bones didn’t believe it. His mortal frame feared for its life.

One end of the Veil flickered as light woke in individual threads. Words appeared in the weave. Without thinking, he spoke them aloud, “I swear, I shall slay you. So long as I breathe, you will not escape me.” As he voiced the phrase, he knew them as prophecy. Murmur would not be shut of him so long as Demascus bent his every thought on fulfilling the oath he’d just spoken.

Murmur reared back, then tossed Demascus into the pit.

Or tried to. The power of Demascus’s avowal bound the demon’s grip.

Demascus’s weight pulled Murmur forward, and it stumbled a step closer to the edge of the bug-swarmed cavity.

A crazed scream rang out, “For the Lady!” It was the spittle-flecked captive, running free with one manacle dragging behind him. The madman threw himself at the demon, and struck it from behind with the unrestrained strength of a psychopath.

Already overbalanced, Murmur tottered into the pit.

Sounds took on a base quality as they stretched out, and the light dimmed. Everything moved slowly but Demascus, who flicked the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge up. The Veil’s far end caught a bar of his cage and wrapped three times.

The improvised line nearly jerked out of his hand when it snapped tight. But that was only a prelude to Murmur’s full weight, which threatened to rip his shoulder from its socket.

He screamed, dangling by one hand, his arm a torment of molten agony. He kicked at Murmur, and slashed at the tendrils still gripping him halfheartedly. But his arm holding them over the swarm hurt so bad he could barely think. It was all he could do to not let go.

“Help!” Demascus called. His voice came out a croak. “Chant! Riltana!”

The pawnbroker appeared at the edge of the hole, eyes wide. He leveled his hand crossbow and pulled the trigger.

One bolt went wide. Two buried themselves in Murmur’s arm, just above its elbow. The monster convulsed, lost its grip on Demascus, and tumbled into the pit.

The demon wailed, its voice a howl of such animal supplication and suffering that Demascus just about bobbled his grip.

He allowed his sword to fall, and reached up until he gripped his scarf with both hands. Then he craned his head down to witness the struggle beneath his feet.

Murmur was at the pit’s nadir, flailing with demonic energy. Each time one of its arms came down, it squashed hundreds of bugs. Each time it shook itself like a hound, hundreds of churning legs and mandibles lost their grip. However, the host of tiny insects seemed numberless. In the end, all the demon’s frenzied efforts were hopeless. Demascus’s last sight of the demon’s violet hide was when Murmur bellowed, “Servitor! Kalkan! Why do you just stand there? Help me before—!” A tide of voracious beetles covered the demon and poured into its open mouth.

Demascus looked away, nauseated.

And saw Jett standing near the exit holding a smokeless torch. The genasi was smirking at him.

What in the name of all the dominions? Jett’s lord had just perished, but the servitor looked as smug as someone who’d gotten in the last word of a monumental argument. Jett caught Demascus’s eye, then flipped a hood over his head, casting his features in shadow.

“Hold on,” yelled Riltana.

He glanced up to see the thief was in the cage where the Veil was secured, then back to Jett. The genasi was gone.

“Hey!” Riltana said, louder. “Pay attention! I’m going to pull you out of there!” She grabbed the length of fabric and started hauling him up. She was stronger than she looked.

I’m going to live, Demascus thought wonderingly, as he cleared the edge of the pit. If his pain-swaddled fingers could just stay clenched around the scarf another few heartbeats.

A babble of voices echoed through the cavern.

Genasi wearing the sign of the Elder Elemental Eye hurtled into the chamber, waving swords and aiming crossbows. A fleeing captive took one crossbow bolt in the leg and went down. Another bolt clattered on the bars of Riltana’s aviary.

“Son of a piss-pickled leech!” cursed Riltana. “Cover me!” The windsoul continued hauling on the Veil, her face pinched.

The pawnbroker, who’d been standing anxiously watching Demascus’s ascent, dived for cover. Carmenere, closer to the exit, charged the cultists. Two bolts ricocheted off her armor.

Demascus tried to summon up a path through shadow to safety, but the fire in his arms was too much.

Then Riltana’s hand gripped his, and pulled him into the cage. Such an enormous surge of relief swept through him that he felt giddy. “Thank you, Riltana.”

“We need to get out of here,” she told him. Her eyes were on the conflict near the exit.

He said, “I lost my sword in the pit.”

She said, “Carmenere just brained a cultist who dropped his sword. Take that one.”

She patted his shoulder, then leaped from the cage, executing an amazing spiral through the air as she flew much farther than a simple jump could have possibly propelled her. She unsheathed her short sword while still aloft. Her booted heels came down on the silverstar’s left, and she immediately stabbed a cultist in the kidney.

Demascus heaved himself to his feet, spared one final glance into the pit—Murmur remained a twitching shape sleeted with bugs—and pulled the Veil. The secured end came loose and wrapped of its own accord around and around his left arm, partly covering the ashen designs marking his deva heritage.

He tried once more to mentally step through space, aiming for the silverstar’s shadow formed by the light of her own mace.

Nothing happened.

“Gods!” he yelled, and leaped for safe ground, beyond the pit’s voracious edge.

He came down awkwardly, but kept to his feet. He sprinted to the skirmish line, picked up a long sword dropped by one of the cultists, and joined the fight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

CHANT TOOK HIS EASE ON THE CHEST RILTANA HAD DRAGGED into the chamber. He wanted nothing more than to leave the cult-infested subterranean hole and never think about it again.

They’d quelled the handful who had rushed into the chamber only to realize Murmur was no more. That had taken the fight out of most of them. It was an advantage that he and the survivors had taken brutal advantage of.

He accounted himself pretty good with his crossbow. Riltana had shown him a whole new meaning to the word fierce. And Demascus … well, put a sword in his hand and point him at an enemy, and he was simply lethal. Carmenere had struck the cultists to subdue. But not the others. Not even him …

“You didn’t even try to save them!” Carmenere said. “They were just duped, they didn’t know their cult was a sham …”

Riltana put a comradely hand on the woman’s elbow. “It’s all right,” Riltana said. “It doesn’t matter how they came to their beliefs; what matters is that they were trying to kill us. But we stopped them.”

Carmenere shrugged the thief’s hand off, and walked to the handful of released captives who’d survived their ordeal.

Ouch, thought Chant.

Riltana looked at Demascus, her eyes imploring.

“She’s just exhausted, like all of us,” said Demascus. But to Chant’s ears, the deva’s voice was uncertain.

Chant tended to side with Riltana, but he could see Carmenere’s point. Still, in the heat of a fight, you had to defend yourself as fiercely as possible. Even from hoodwinked cultists.

He wondered what it had been like for Lieutenant Leheren. The cult had grown right beneath her nose. Worse, actually—she’d hosted the demon that walked her body around at night creating the cult. Talk about dangerous sleepwalking. He hoped the genasi had never truly come to understand her role. Not that it mattered; her body had been completely transformed into Murmur … only to be eaten by bugs, which still buzzed and roiled in their pit.

He shook his head.

It was funny, Chant thought. I was so excited when I decided to befriend Demascus. I was going to ride his coattails to fresh knowledge, coin, and notoriety in the city. And indeed, we enjoyed a conference with Queen Arathane herself! I doubt Raneger could say the same, despite all the man’s underhanded influence.

After that rendezvous, he’d been exhilarated. Surely, as a confidant of the queen, he was on the verge of earning enough influence and coin that the debt he owed to the crime lord would soon be paid. And Jaul’s safety could no longer be held over Chant’s head.

But what did it matter now? Imprisoned in the iron cage, he’d seen true evil in the form of a demon who animated nightmares. The inner contents of people’s deepest fears scraped out of their brains and clothed in flesh. It was an unthinkable violation. Then he’d watched the demon throw screaming, living people into the pit, where they were consumed alive.

He closed his eyes.

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Demascus was standing over him. The man had learned—or probably remembered—how to move with the silent tread that would do an assassin proud. Which was no surprise.

The deva reached out his hand, and Chant flinched.

“Whoa, sorry!” said Demascus. The deva jerked his hand back.

Chant immediately felt ashamed of his reaction. He said, “Not your fault. I just can’t get the images of Murmur out of my head. Or what he did to those people.” And, he didn’t say, I’m unnerved by your newfound facility with darkness and light. The light, so merciless in its radiance, the dark so all-encompassing …

Demascus studied him a moment, his brow creased with concern, and looking not at all like an assassin or divine killer. He gave a slow nod. “Yeah. Same here. But remember, we destroyed Murmur; threw him in his own torture pit.”

Chant gazed at the edge of pit. The awful droning that had accompanied Murmur’s death spasm had died down to a light buzz, and the firefly lights were back to their original, still ghastly, flickering. A smell, like attar of roaches times one hundred, was growing. He wrinkled his nose.

“What did Murmur mean when it said you had defeated it once before?” Chant asked.

Demascus frowned. He said, “I wish to the gods I could remember. I asked the Veil, but it’s decided to make like an ordinary scarf again. I suppose the demon was talking about one of my, uh, previous incarnations. A long time ago. Which I suppose means Murmur was my nemesis the Veil described. Except …”

“What?”

“Murmur learned about the shrine from Kalkan. Otherwise the demon wouldn’t have sent servitors up there to try and collect the excess energy for its own use, and I wouldn’t have found their bodies and tracked down their origin. And I wouldn’t have ended up nearly becoming food for the pit.”

Demascus rubbed his temple.

Chant added, “And Kalkan was the one who hired Riltana to steal your scarf in the first place. And he’s still out there.”

“He’s not the only one,” said Demascus. “Jett was standing by the exit right before that last wave of cultists attacked. I imagine he ordered them to delay us. And he’s probably, right now, preparing an even bigger force to make sure we never escape.”

Chant swallowed. “Sharkbite. That means every moment we delay, the worse our chances.”

“Yeah. Otherwise I’d suggest we deal with the pit. But we’ll have to come back and figure out what to do about it later.”

Demascus helped Chant to his feet. They collected Riltana, then moved to stand by Carmenere, who was tending to the wounds and hurts of the survivors.

“Time to go. We might be facing some resistance out in the halls. The sooner we make a break for it, the less time they’ll have to prepare.”

Riltana said, “First good suggestion I’ve heard today.” Her words were light, but Chant noticed how she gazed anxiously at Carmenere, who studiously ignored the thief.

Demascus said, “Good. Let’s get the survivors out of here too. And keep an eye out for Jett in particular.”

It took a fair amount of time before they actually left the chamber of the pit. A few of the freed captives wouldn’t do anything but rock back and forth and stare, until each in turn had received the silverstar’s healing touch, which was enough of a balm to get them moving.

Two of the captives regained their wits relatively quickly, and helped Carmenere round up the rest. One was a watersoul named Ushen, an Airpsur peacemaker, the other a dwarf trader called Redanvil.

They also had three captured cultists to marshal, products of Carmenere’s merciful mace blows. They bound the cultists’s feet together with rope, but gave them enough slack to hobble. Chant scowled at them, putting all the menace he could in his expression. But they didn’t have any fight left in them. It was more like they were waking from a bad dream. A few openly wept.

He didn’t feel sorry for them, though he stopped Redanvil from kicking them when no one else was paying attention. Maybe the cultists had been compelled or fooled. But maybe they were acting; before anything else, they had been sworn members of the Firestorm Cabal.

After far more time than it should have taken, they finally escorted the freed captives and cultists from the chamber of the pit.

The exit tunnel opened onto the cell-lined corridor where Murmur and the cultists had trapped them. The way was completely clear. If an ambush had been planned, the narrow corridor would have been the place to bottle them up. Chant breathed easier, thinking they were finally on their way.

“This way!” he yelled, pointing at the smashed doors at the end of the corridor.

“Not until I’ve made sure Jett isn’t still down here,” said Demascus, pointing the opposite way, which continued on past the entrance to the pit chamber.

“We’ve got to get these people out of here,” said Carmenere. “The captives need more tending, and the cultists must face justice.”

“You go ahead, then,” said Demascus. “You two, stay with Carmenere, will you?” He gestured to the freed watersoul and dwarf.

Redanvil, who’d helped himself to a cultist’s sword, said, “Wouldn’t think of leaving her. We owe her, and you, our lives.” He executed a smart salute with his blade.

“Hold on,” said Riltana, glancing between the silverstar and the deva. “We shouldn’t split up. Carmenere, just keep everyone here until—”

“These people have spent enough time in this cellar of horrors,” the earthsoul said.

“But we need to make sure the cult is completely eradicated,” Riltana replied.

Carmenere nodded and said, “Rilta, go with Demascus and Chant. I’ll make sure nothing else happens to these poor people. Redanvil and Ushen will help me. All right? We’ll talk later. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Carmenere nodded, distractedly, Chant thought, and directed her newly deputized aides on how to best herd the crowd down the corridor.

Chant watched them, vacillating between leaving with the silverstar and staying to help Demascus. The last thing he wanted to do was find and fight more cultists.

Riltana turned her angry regard on him, and said, “Are you coming?”

“Of course,” he replied, forcing lightness into his tone.

She stalked after Demascus, who’d already taken off down the corridor in the direction opposite the way out. Chant forced the thought out of his head.

They passed another bank of cells, all empty.

Demascus entered a foyerlike space with three doors on the opposite side. The floor was carved with the omnipresent jagged spiral, and guttering green fire burned in ornate braziers.

A corpse with the sign of the cult on his sleeve was facedown on the floor. Blood overflowed the symbol of the Elder Elemental Eye.

Demascus rolled the body over. No one recognized the earthsoul revealed.

“That’s one down,” said Chant.

Demascus said, “Some kind of falling-out in cult land.” He examined the body. “This fellow didn’t know he was in peril. He was stabbed from behind and without warning.”

“Like he was assassinated,” Chant said.

Demascus met the pawnbroker’s eyes, and gave a curt nod. “Yes. It’s what I would have done, if I didn’t have a garrote …” Demascus frowned.

Something clattered behind the middle door. Riltana whispered, “Listen! Someone’s still here.”

Chant drew his crossbow. The stock’s cool touch in his palm calmed his jangled nerves.

Demascus crept to the door. A glimmer of yellow light spilled out when he cracked it. The deva peered in.

Something bulky crashed to the floor in the room.

Demascus’s own shadow rolled up across his body. A silhouette of gloom, not Demascus, pushed the door open and slipped inside.

A bronze-skinned genasi with a jagged spiral tattoo on his neck stood in the center of a ransacked office. He clutched a disk in one hand—no, the disk was strapped to his palm.

“Jett!” Chant said.

The genasi looked up. The cultist’s eyes slipped right past the shade of the deva slinking around the room periphery and found Chant’s.

“Well done,” Jett said in a bored voice. “I didn’t expect you to make it. Where’s your friend with the hole in his brain where his life should be?”

“Give up,” Riltana said. “Murmur’s dead! Your whole sad enterprise is finished.”

Jett’s eyes narrowed. A phantom light preceded dual bolts of silvery energy, one aimed at Chant, one at Riltana.

Chant dropped to the floor and simultaneously fired. Two quarrels stuck into the doorframe, and one punched into the wall over the cultist’s left shoulder. The silvery bolt only grazed Chant, but the touch snapped his brain so hard he saw only gray for a moment.

He rolled to his left, out of the doorway. Riltana rushed past him into the office. More crashing came from inside the room. “Sharkbite!” he hissed and hauled himself to his feet, shaking his head to clear it.

He launched himself through the door, hoping he was moving quickly enough to avoid another mind-twisting attack by the genasi.

Riltana fenced with Jett, who had produced a dull black length of iron. He seemed at least as capable with a blade as she was. And where was Demascus?

For all Riltana’s facility, Jett’s strokes seemed surer and more practiced. Still, she forced him back, pace after pace, to the corner. The peal of blade on blade echoed off the stone walls.

Chant loaded his crossbow, but instead of firing he said, “Jett, why’d you join Murmur and swear yourself to the Elemental Eye?”

The genasi’s lip curled. He beat Riltana’s sword out of line and executed a counterstroke that would have disemboweled her if she hadn’t jumped back. He said, “Murmur presumed it was my master, and I, its servitor. The demon had it exactly backward. I was the one who coaxed its stony fragments back to life, who provided the distraction it needed to implant itself in Leheren, and who told it where to find the shrine west of Airspur.”

Demascus appeared on the periphery of Chant’s vision, as if he’d been there all along, but suddenly deigned to be noticed.

“Ah!” said Jett, a smile on his face. “I figured that might draw you out.”

Demascus said, his tone puzzled, “Murmur said it was Kalkan who discovered the shrine where I woke.”

Jett grinned. His teeth elongated until his mouth was a sea of blackened, bloodstained fangs. His ears budded until they were demonic flaps, and horns leaped askew from his head. His hands twisted around, becoming clawed digits that were jointed backward. In a twinkling, Jett had gone from genasi to … What? A predator, that was certain.

“That’s because I am Kalkan, you simpleton,” said the creature.

Demascus gaped. His lips worked. Finally he managed, “You’re the creature from my vision! You stabbed me in the stomach!”

“To think, I once feared you so!” replied Kalkan. “But I must admit, I’m glad you only recall the least fraction of what you once were. And without your precious ring, you’ll remain exactly where I want you.”

“R-ring?”

Riltana, apparently unimpressed by the transformation, thrust the tip of her short sword at Kalkan’s neck so swiftly he was forced to shuffle back in turn. She said, “You tried to kill me, you damned leech-kisser. You’re going to answer for that right now!”

“Am I? I think you’re wrong.”

“You’re cornered,” Chant said. “Give up.”

Kalkan was literally backed into the office where both walls came together. But instead of looking the least bit ruffled, the beast actually smiled a toothy grin.

I don’t like this, Chant thought. The beast is up to something.

“He’s …” Chant began, but it was too late. The entire corner pivoted as if on a spring, carrying the grinning Kalkan around on the swiveling floor. The sharp report of an alchemical detonation accompanied the trick door’s activation, and black smoke spewed everywhere.

Chant fired his weapon blindly into the smoke.

Demascus bellowed something about lords and dominions, and Riltana put together a string of curses so foul they would have pushed Chant back on his heels under other circumstances.

He got another quarrel from his calf quiver, but the oily smoke got into his lungs. He backed away coughing, trying to get clear.

After his last hacking cough, the dying hiss of the alchemical vents was the only sound in the room, and they were already petering out.

A shape moved in the dispersing cloud. Chant snapped the bolt into the crossbow and took aim.

Demascus appeared, his eyes red and his cheeks tear-streaked from the black fog.

“By all that’s holy and sovereign!” Demascus yelled. “He’s gone!”

Chant blinked. Sure enough, the corner was empty. Jett—no, Kalkan the tiger-headed beast—was gone.

And so was Riltana.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

RILTANA LUNGED THROUGH THE PIVOTING DOOR WITHOUT losing a limb when the mechanism slammed shut.

Acrid smoke burned her eyes and stung her lungs. She concentrated all her willpower on not coughing aloud. She didn’t want Kalkan to know someone was with him in the hidden space behind the wall.

The sound of spewing gas died. She heard a distant tread, growing fainter.

No, you don’t!

She couldn’t see a thing, but the floor was smooth, as was the wall she traced with her fingers. She scurried forward as fast as she dared while remaining quiet. As long as she didn’t lose contact with the wall, she should be all right.

The passage sloped up precipitously. She slowed her pace, just to be safe; those catlike ears Kalkan had sprouted could probably hear someone running behind, out of breath and panting.

A flash of light ahead traced the shape of something manlike, then darkness returned.

She accelerated—and saw a glow spilling from around a door soon enough to avoid smashing straight into it.

She listened. The faint sounds of the city issued through the crack.

Riltana found the pull and opened the door.

She looked out across a dank alley.

And where—There! A man in a dark hood stroke quickly away, head down.

I see you, she thought. She took off after him.

After that, it became a sort of game.

Kalkan was adroit at moving quickly through Airspur, from bridge to mote, and mote to cliff. The fellow used every shadow to his advantage, and seemed able to glide through knots of congestion and traffic without pausing.

Riltana was equally adept at moving quickly through the city, but her paths were rooftops, lamp posts, and bridge supports. The hardest part was to stay close enough to Kalkan that she wouldn’t lose him, but far enough back that he didn’t realize he had a tail.

The first time Kalkan circled back to a plaza he’d previously visited, Riltana was sure he knew he was being followed. But after he employed a few more false paths and backtracking tricks, she realized he was probably merely taking standard precautions before returning to his lair—she did exactly the same thing every time she returned to her loft after a night of work.

This guy is good, she thought, realizing she’d just lost Kalkan for the third time. Had the creature gone up the wide stairs on the north cliff face near the Drakeyards, or down?

She chose up. The stairs’ ultimate destination was a ridge. She breathed easier when she saw the flash of a dark hood. Kalkan ducked into the front gate of a manor house walled in white stone.

Where others saw walls, Riltana saw roads built deliciously high. She launched herself on a passing breeze. The moment her boots found the wall top, she dropped to her belly. It wouldn’t do for her to be silhouetted against the view.

She was just in time to see elaborate double doors close behind Kalkan.

The mansion was certainly ostentatious enough to be a noble’s residence. But Riltana mostly avoided burgling such homes. Nobles usually had the means to employ more than merely natural safeguards for their treasures and loved ones.

She studied the building’s facade, looking for likely entrance points. The upper story balconies seemed like her best bet, assuming she could avoid triggering any arcane wards.

Riltana squirmed along the wall until a tree obscured her from the manor. It was a generous magnolia tree, blushing pink with blooms well out of season. She flung herself off the wall onto a branch that would have been too thin to support her weight had she not been moving so quickly and with a lifting breeze beneath her feet. Then she literally cartwheeled sideways through the air, mimicking an aerial seed caught by the wind, and landed light as a petal on the closest balcony.

The terrace fronted a lounge filled with comfortable chairs. A table was strewn with papers, a bottle of wine, and a single empty glass.

The room appeared empty. She watched, crouched low, silent.

The question came unbidden: Why am I all by myself getting ready to storm the citadel of the enemy? She’d run Kalkan to ground. The smart thing to do would be to leave immediately, and collect Demascus, Chant, and Carmenere …

Well, probably not Carmenere. As far as the silverstar was concerned, Riltana’s business with Kalkan had nothing to do with the welfare of the city. The earthsoul had made it crystal clear that she cared more for the concerns of others than she ever had for Riltana.

The thief ground her teeth. Screw going for help; she could handle this on her own.

She slunk into the lounge.

The papers covering the table were letters. All of them were apparently from dealers quoting prices for particularly expensive sculptures, paintings, or old tomes. All were addressed to Kalkan. Kalkan apparently had an eye for expensive art. How wonderful. And unhelpful.

She sidled to the door and peered into the hallway beyond.

Several more doors, and a stairway at one end.

And … voices! Or one voice anyhow.

A gruff cadence echoed from one of the doors at the end of the hallway. She strained to catch individual words, but the sounds were too muffled.

Riltana tiptoed down the hallway, prepared to dash at the first sign anyone suspected her presence.

She slipped up to an open door and peeked in.

The room was set up for heavy-duty ritual magic. The large arcane circle permanently inscribed across the floor was the first tip-off. Gold had been poured into the inscribed circle, making its permanency all the more flamboyant. Small piles of incense sent up trails of smoke at four points along the larger circle.

Kalkan stood at the center of it, chanting, gazing into a second circle, similar to the first—except it was smaller and inscribed on the wall. He held a smoking thurible in one clawed, oddly jointed hand.

This is my chance, she thought. I should jump him while he’s distracted.

A slaughterhouse stench made her hesitate.

Kalkan removed his hood. The beast that had worn Jett merely as a facade was revealed once more. It was hard to believe it had been a masquerade all along.

But the creature had Jett’s voice, which was Kalkan’s voice. And a gravelly, smirking way of speaking that was both infuriating and frightening in equal measure.

The chant finished with a rising, snarl-like shout. Riltana shrank back from the doorway, afraid he’d heard or seen her.

She drew her blade an inch from its scabbard, ready to fight or run …

Kalkan said, “The way is open, Great One. Can you hear me?”

He wasn’t talking to her!

A whisper came back, a sibilant sort of hiss. Riltana couldn’t quite make it out. She crept to her former position to see what awful thing had been summoned.

Kalkan still faced the circle on the wall, which had become an abyss of darkness. He said, facing it, “Demascus remains a loose end.”

Leech piss! she thought. Kalkan was reporting in to some kind of superior.

The whisper returned, issuing from the void, just loud enough for Riltana to make out, “You must prepare for the end game, my disciple. Soon enough, he will discover or remember where his sword is, and try to recover it.”

“It is destined,” Kalkan said.

“Then go to the deva’s tomb. Await him there. He will come to you.”

Kalkan replied, “I remember, Great One. It is I who told you.”

What was that supposed to mean? she thought. Kalkan is some kind of diviner?

Kalkan set the thurible on the floor, then as casually as if he were walking from one room of his manor to the next, he entered the circular hole of nothing in his wall, and was gone.

“Rat-snuggler!” she hissed.

Her first instinct was to rush the cavity and see where Kalkan had gone.

No, she told herself. You’ve already pressed your luck too much.

So she waited a full song, then another, studying the circular hole. It didn’t fade back to becoming a mere wall, as she’d half feared and half hoped.

Time to get Demascus, she thought. Instead, she stole into the room to give it a quick once-over.

A table squatted on the opposite wall, heavy with glass jars, piles of scribbled parchment, inks, quills, and colored stones. Behind the table, the wall was plastered with drawings. She edged closer, and realized they were, every one, of Demascus.

There were probably a hundred. Demascus wearing armor, climbing stairs, fighting with a greatsword, wielding two matched long swords, Demascus leaping a massive crevice, standing at attention in a line of mighty soldiers, bending his knee to someone in a throne who glowed with divine power, Demascus with his Veil strangling a giant, whirling through shadow, and … more. All drawn with the same strong lines and attention to detail. All focused with monomaniacal contemplation on one person.

Riltana put a hand to her mouth. She’d seen something like this once before, when she’d broken into the home of a barrister rumored to have a breathtaking collection of rubies. Instead she’d found a secret room covered in likenesses of different women. All women who’d previously gone missing, never to be seen again.

Riltana had fled the home and anonymously tipped off the peacemakers the next day. The man had turned out to be some kind of vampire or ghoul—she’d never really found out which—living like a normal person by day, complete with a law practice, friends who all would swear up and down he was one of the most thoughtful people they knew. But each tenday he meticulously planned how to kidnap, kill, and eat a fresh victim. All so perfectly that no one in Airspur ever became suspicious that a monster lived in their midst, preying on them.

The drawings before Riltana were exactly like that, though they seemed to span several different … incarnations, if that was the right word. As if Kalkan was a serial killer, but always chose the same victim, over and over, through each new life. How extraordinarily dreadful if true, she thought.

The carrion smell was thicker at that end of the room than when she’d first noticed it at the entrance. Kalkan was gone. So where was it coming from?

She approached the wall, but veered toward a closet door in the corner. It was being used as just one more surface to display drawings of Demascus. She opened it.

The nauseating odor swelled tenfold. The chamber beyond was a blood-soaked slaughterhouse of hanging meat, stripped of fur and skin. Most of it was swollen with rot and maggots, and a malodorous discharge pooled beneath each carcass, thick with flies. Bloody knives plunged into a wooden carving block showed that bits and pieces of the flesh had been carved off and … eaten?

Oh gods, she thought. She gagged on rising bile.

The carcass closest to the door—it almost looked like a dangling arm, not a hoof as she’d first thought …

Riltana lost her composure to a fit of explosive retching.

The hanging carcasses were not animals; they were people.

CHARTER TWENTY-THREE

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

UP THERE,” THE THIEF TOLD DEMASCUS, HER VOICE STILL flat.

She ascended one side of a set of matching stairs that converged on a landing. Afternoon light blazed down the steps from a stained-glass window depicting an apple tree laden with red orbs.

Demascus followed the windsoul up.

She’d found him and Chant searching the alley where the secret passage had let out. His relief had dissolved his dour mood. He was so happy he could have kissed her. She explained she’d trailed Kalkan back to his lair, but her manner had been oddly subdued. She explained that Kalkan had escaped through a hole in the wall.

He hadn’t wasted time interrogating her. And here we are, he thought. In the home of the creature who’s haunted my dreams since I first woke on that damned altar. He was close to understanding everything … which worried him more than anything else.

“Kalkan owns this manor?” said Chant. “A place like this will set you back some serious coin.”

Riltana paused at the top of the stairs. She said, “It’s probably how he was able to get away with feeding off people, owning a place with grounds so large that neighbors couldn’t hear their screams …”

The thief had also explained she’d found a room filled with rotting corpses hanging from the ceiling. Apparently, Kalkan’s predatory features were more than just show. He really was a flesh-eater. A man-eater.

And not only a predator—but a schemer interested in killing Demascus. Kalkan had insured that Demascus would be caught up in Murmur’s schemes. Schemes somehow entangled with a previous life, where he’d evidently stymied several demons kin to Murmur, with the help of allies he no longer remembered the least thing about …

That was an unproductive line of thought. Soon, he would know more.

The Veil claimed his sword, or ring, would trigger more memories. But Riltana said Kalkan waited by his tomb, where perhaps the items, the ones he’d seen in his visions, lay with the moldering remains of one of his former selves.

If he went for those objects, Kalkan was sure to attack him.

Those objects contained the missing portion of himself, of which he was apparently only a fraction.

When it came down to it, he was no longer certain he wanted that reunion to occur.

What good can come of looting a corpse I shucked like a snake’s skin? he thought. That life is over; maybe its memories should be too. And what if I absorb so much, I lose myself, and become a different person? Won’t that be a death for the man I’ve learned to be these last few days?

He was afraid the answer was yes.

“Are you coming?” said Riltana. She stood at end of the hallway, her arms crossed. Her normally lustrous skin seemed drawn and almost tarnished, as if she was sick.

Demascus took a deep breath, then joined her.

The room was as she’d described it, complete with a still active portal leaking darkness, a rogues’ gallery featuring himself in various guises and outfits, and an overwhelming smell of death.

Riltana stayed near the entrance. He and Chant went to the wall and gazed at the drawings. Kalkan had a gift for art—at least when it came to capturing images of his favorite topic—Demascus.

Demascus studied his portrait in one particularly compelling piece. His back was to the perspective, and he stood poised with a two-handed runesword held high, his Veil and many charms aloft in the wind blowing across the mountain peak on which he stood. Hovering off the face of the peak was a colossal dragonlike abomination, its breath of billowing green gas enfolding him.

Demascus had no memory whatsoever of the event. Or … of any of the other scenes depicted on the wall in their hundreds. That was the person he might become if he found his memories. The man depicted was a complete stranger.

“Kalkan’s made quite a study of you,” Chant said quietly.

He had no words.

“The bodies … are behind there,” Riltana choked out. She pointed to a door in the corner.

“Should we examine them?” Chant said.

He said, “I’d rather not.”

“Good choice,” said the thief.

The drawings tore at his guts enough, with all the unanswered questions they posed. He didn’t need to be wrenched by seeing the trophies of a murdering psychopath.

Demascus retreated from the drawings, until he stood before the portal. The darkness was a physical blot, hanging just an inch off the wall. The lip of the effect wavered and blurred, as if renegotiating its terms with reality every moment. Beyond it, he imagined Kalkan watched him.

What would happen if I simply walk away? he wondered. He could break the cycle the pictures hinted at. Leave Airspur, and settle down in some distant land and learn a peaceful trade. Beer brewing maybe, or storytelling. This is my last chance to stay ignorant. My last chance to stay myself.

And if he did turn away, he’d resign himself to forever wonder why he’d killed a priest in cold blood.

“Let’s go find our friend,” he announced.

“Lead on,” Chant said, “We’ll follow.”

Demascus unsheathed his latest sword, and grabbed the Veil in his other hand. Just to see if he’d get an answer, he addressed it.

“Veil, what lies beyond this portal? Is it my tomb?”

A single word appeared in pale light in the fabric:

Yes.

Demascus stepped through, and found himself on the shore of a sunless sea.

An earthy breeze engulfed and cooled him. He was underground, in some kind of canyon-sized cave chamber. A ramshackle collection of boulders formed a circle on the cave floor, and he was standing in the center of it.

He stepped out of the stone-bounded area to clear the portal, and to get a better look at the island that lay at the center of the half-drowned vault. Dark wavelets rolled to the island’s bone-strewn shore. Pale cavelight from luminescent growth and faded runes illuminated dozens of wide catacomb mouths along the island’s periphery, providing watery paths deeper inside. The failed majesty of ruins lay heaped above the winding entrances like a crown of broken spires.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it.

“Where on Toril are we? What’s that?” came Riltana’s voice. She stepped clear of the circle, her gaze fastened on the funerary island. A moment later Chant flickered into view. His eyes widened at the panorama.

“Is that your tomb?” said the thief. “I mean, the tomb of your last … self?”

“I suppose it must be,” he replied. “Except it looks grand enough to be some fallen necropolis. Thousands must be interred there!” The magnitude of the darkling island took his breath away.

“If you say so,” said Chant, who remained in the stone circle where he’d appeared. “How do we get across the water? I’m not swimming, I’ll tell you that for free.”

“There,” said Riltana, pointing at a gondola-like craft pulled up along the shore not far from where they’d appeared.

Chant gave an exaggerated sigh and left the circle. They trooped down to the boats across pocked black rock and inspected the boats. One was more than large enough to carry them all. Demascus was amazed that the boats all seemed seaworthy, despite how ancient they were.

“This one’s got oars,” Riltana noted. “You won’t have to get your clothes wet after all, Chant.”

They pushed the craft out into the cold water and hopped aboard.

“Be ready,” the pawnbroker said. “If this place has guardians, it’s a good bet they live in the water.”

“Then why provide boats?” Riltana asked.

“To lure us into range,” Chant said knowingly. He flipped a crossbow bolt through his fingers as his eyes scanned the nighted waves.

Demascus hoped the pawnbroker was wrong, but didn’t have any evidence to soothe the man’s worry. So he took up the oars and sent the skiff gliding out across the lake.

Except for the occasional splash of ice-cold water from a dipping oar, nothing troubled their passage. No one spoke as Demascus rowed. The sound of keel scraping stone marked their landfall on the cemetery island.

A craft smaller than their own was moored next to a stone jetty.

“There!” Demascus said. “Someone came this way.”

“Kalkan,” Riltana said.

They tied up next to the smaller craft, then searched it. If it had been Kalkan’s conveyance, he hadn’t left anything behind.

“Now where?” Riltana said.

Their choices included walking straight into a gaping catacomb mouth or ascending to the island’s higher elevation via a narrow, wandering stair in the cliff face.

One end of the Veil animated, and threw a beam of light from the tip. In a manner almost like a human’s extended finger, it pointed to the stairs.

“We go up,” Demascus said.

The stairs provided a relatively easy climb to the top of the cliff. From there, a jumble of smashed gravestones, tilted memorial spires, rusted plaques, and half-collapsed mausoleums stretched away across the island.

“Sharkbite, it’s cold up here,” said Chant. The man’s breath steamed out in great puffs of gauzy white. Demascus was acutely aware that such a vast difference in temperature between the rest of the cavern and the island couldn’t be “natural” in any good sense.

The Veil’s animated end scanned the tableaux a moment, then directed them down a cobbled lane lined with a crumbling columbarium wall. Displaced urns from the wall lay shattered and askew across the way. Dark ashes spilled from some.

“A whole lot of disturbed graves,” said Chant, his tone worried.

“But is there any sign Kalkan came this way?” Riltana asked.

Chant kneeled to the cobbles. He carefully examined the stone, then rose, nodding. He said, “Something came this way recently, wearing boots. Scrapes along the paving stones are far enough apart to indicate whoever it was either was unnaturally tall, or more likely, that he was in a hurry.”

“Be on your guard, either way,” said Demascus, his own breath a waterfall of white. He stepped forward. His boot came down on a loose funerary urn. The sound of it cracking beneath his heel was loud as a bombardier’s detonation. Oops …

Sure enough, something stirred in response. Demascus pulled his sword free and ignited the imaginary glyphs along its edges, as greenish luminescence coalesced from the shattered urns. The glow swirled into a blot, and became a vaguely humanoid shape of terror.

“A specter!” barked Chant, his voice a full octave higher than normal.

The ghostly creature’s swirling, ethereal tatters feathered across him, and Demascus’s nose hairs froze and his fingertips went numb. He slashed, but his blade passed right through the specter as if it were only a dream.

Then it screamed. A barrage of horror sleeted through him, potent as a shot of whisky and sharp as a scalpel. He fell on his face, and his sword spun away from his nerveless grip.

“Lords of light!” he croaked, and scrambled for his weapon on hands and knees that suddenly didn’t want to function.

His hand found the hilt, and he regained his feet, barely. Where was the specter? He couldn’t see it. Was it gone? No. Unlikely it would appear just to say “Boo!” then run off.

The pawnbroker lay on his back, and Riltana perched on a grave marker a full ten paces away.

“Chant, are you all right?” he asked.

The man groaned.

The specter, quick as an eye blinking open, reappeared. It hadn’t gone anywhere, it had just turned invisible.

Its insubstantial claw glided straight through Demascus’s leather armor and drew a tear across his soul. Strength poured from him, and it was all he could do to not go down again.

His first instinct was to step away through a lane of shadow. But … that would probably only make him even more vulnerable to the creature’s attacks. It was the light he required. Light like what had blazed in the temple of Oghma, when he’d stood before the avatar of knowledge …

Some measure of his strength returned as a half-real glyph on his sword brightened. He summoned the temple light of his vision and set his sword afire with it. The specter came on, oblivious, until he swept his sword through the insubstantial undead. Golden light outlined the specter.

Features resolved above the undead’s ill-defined and vaporous torso for a single heartbeat: a man’s face, teeth gritted in ageless hate. Demascus laughed, and his voice broke strongly across the lane, “Your reign of terror ends here, lost one.” A wild exultation fired his limbs and his mind, a side effect of the glorious light. But he didn’t care. He reveled in it.

The specter retreated, flickering as if attempting to fade from sight again, but the radiant glow prevented it from slipping away from mortal eyes.

“Destroy it, while the gods’ light pins it!” Demascus yelled.

Chant rolled to his feet and sent three metal-tipped shafts through the undead’s swirling form, tearing great rents in the ectoplasmic flesh. Riltana popped up opposite Demascus, and shoved her short sword directly into the torso, where a living being would have kept its heart. Her blade took fire from the radiance still surrounding the specter. The short sword found the knot of animation keeping the undead bound to the world, and severed it.

The specter dispersed like mist in a sudden wind. A mournful cry faded to nothing, and the unbearable cold went with it.

The light faded, and the exhilaration leaked away, leaving him feeling almost empty.

“Nice job, Demascus,” said Riltana.

He merely nodded. “Everyone all right?”

“Thanks to what you just did,” she replied. “So … When you summon that kind of glow, it almost seems divine, like something Carmenere might manage. Which god did you call for aid?”

Chant glanced over, his eyebrows high with interest.

Demascus glanced around, noting the location of each broken urn and gravestone. The immediate threat seemed over, so he sheathed his sword. Finally, he answered Riltana, “No god in particular. More like … all of them, I guess. Or whichever one is paying attention.” He felt vaguely embarrassed as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Hmm. That’s scarily disturbing,” she replied. “Still … I like it better when you call the light. When you shroud yourself in shadows, you seem almost like a specter yourself.”

“Oh.” He didn’t have a response. He didn’t want to tell her that he wasn’t necessarily consciously choosing which abilities to employ. It was more like the abilities were choosing him.

He wondered if using light more than shadow, or the other way around, could be setting him up for some kind of consequence he didn’t know enough to avoid. Another reason to recover his sword: maybe it would give him the context to judge his actual situation, and put an end to the guesses.

They continued down the lane, until they came to a plaza. Black iron rails fenced off the surrounding graves-cape, though great rents made the barrier meaningless. The leaning tombstones surrounding them almost looked like stalking beasts in the ambiguous light, curled and ready to spring the moment no one was looking.

A hole plunged into darkness at the plaza’s exact center.

Chant examined the edges of the shaft, running his finger along the lip. He nodded to himself. “See these scratches? Someone went over the side and climbed down here. Someone with, um, claws, it looks like.”

Demascus peered downward. It wasn’t completely dark as he’d first thought: a glimmer of reddish light shone somewhere below, perhaps a reflection off a pool of liquid. He wrinkled his nose. Stagnant water, by the smell of it.

“Does anything seem at all familiar?” asked Riltana.

“If this leads down to Demascus’s tomb, he’s not likely to remember it,” said Chant, as he uncoiled a length of rope from his pack.

Demascus said, “Chant’s right. I don’t even know where this cavern is in relation to Airspur.”

Chant glanced at the distant shore where they’d arrived, then said, his voice raised, “I’ve been assuming we could return the way we came in. If we’re lost down here, you’re going to see a grown man throw a fit. I promise you, it’ll be like nothing you’ve experienced in any of your incarnations.”

Demascus said, “I’m sure there’s a way out. Either way … now you’ve got me curious, what kind of fit does a grown man throw?”

Chant burst out laughing.

“Shush!” said Riltana. “You’ll warn anyone below we’re here.”

“It’s not pretty,” said Chant, still grinning.

Demascus chuckled. He decided that, if he lived through whatever was waiting for him in his tomb, he would laugh more.

Chant tied rope to the iron fence, and dropped the rest of the coil into the well. He said to Demascus, “Do you know how to go down a rope?”

“Uh … just shimmy down?”

“Hmm. In a pinch, but, here …” Chant showed him a clever method of wrapping the rope so that he sat into it, which allowed the rope to support his weight even as it played out. He leaned back and jump-walked down the shaft.

The hole magnified the sound of his boots against the curved wall. The rope rasped on his palm and fingers, making him grateful he didn’t have farther to descend.

The shaft dropped him into a mausoleum tiled in black stone. The light came from flames burning from iron candelabra in each corner.

Demascus dangled in a shadowed space, scanning for his nemesis. Kalkan wasn’t there. Or if he was, he was hiding. He wondered if Kalkan had lit the candles, or if they simply had magically burned alone and untended for years in silence.

The mausoleum floor was dominated by a shallow pool. Clear water revealed several fish skeletons lying still on the bottom. Demascus half expected to see them flit around beneath the surface.

A tunnel mouth provided an exit from the funerary space in one wall. Opposite it, across the pool, a massive sarcophagus crouched. The wan candle’s magical light silhouetted it, giving the enigmatic carvings a stuttering life sketched out in flickers.

Except for the sound of his own breath and heart, it was noiseless. The stone tomb was his own. Seeing it, his earlier resolve to get his sword and more of his memories faltered. Demascus felt frozen in the utter quiet like a fly in amber.

“Well?” came Riltana’s voice down the hole in the ceiling, shattering the silence with a riot of echoes. “What do you see?”

“A sarcophagus!” he called back up. He let go of the rope and dropped to the floor next to the shallow pond. “Come down!”

The sound of rushing wind preceded Riltana’s rapid descent. She landed, absorbing what would have been a fatal impact for him with a ringing slap of boot heels on stone.

“Show-off,” he said. Riltana shrugged. Her eyes were fastened on the stone coffin.

The dangling rope jerked, and Chant slid down it with practiced ease. Demascus would have been impressed if he hadn’t just seen the windsoul drop fifty feet.

He approached the sarcophagus. The designs were so thick that newer symbols overlaid older etchings. Gauntlets, shields, leaves, orbs, eyes, stars, anvils, skulls, moons …

“These are all symbols of the gods!” he said.

“They might be,” said Chant. “But if they are, I don’t recognize half of them. Like this one.”

The pawnbroker pointed to a symbol that might have been a raven’s head. “Or this.” His finger moved to a symbol that looked sort of like a stylized eye.

“There are more worlds than just Toril,” Demascus said. “And more gods too.”

“What do you mean?” said Riltana.

“I can’t quite put it in words … I just know that all these symbols are legitimate divinities, somewhere.”

“Amazing,” said Chant.

Riltana said, “What about this?” The thief pointed to several lines inscribed on the stone face.

Chant read, “ ‘Agent of Fate, Emissary of Divine Judgment, Cutter of Destiny’s Thread. You died as you lived, and will live again. Demascus, Sword of the Gods.’ Sharkbite! Does—”

“Let’s stop wasting time. Help me get this gods-cursed thing open!” Demascus said. He put his shoulder to one side of the stone lid and heaved.

“Wait,” said Chant. “We should check for traps.”

Demascus repositioned his feet, and pushed harder. The stone groaned its displeasure as the heavy lid slid three inches, revealing a sliver of darkness.

“No traps,” he said, and pushed again. The lid slid farther open, revealing a cavity two handspans wide.

Chant and Riltana bent to help. The next heave pushed the lid nearly all the way off.

The Veil, wrapped around his arm, took light. Its glow revealed a body nestled in the square cavity. Funerary wrappings swaddled it, and it was shrunken with decomposition. A smell like dried daisies dusted the air. They all gazed into the sarcophagus for a handful of heartbeats. Demascus felt not the least stir of recognition. It couldn’t possibly be the previous version of himself.

“Well?” said Riltana.

“It … It’s just a dead body,” Demascus said. “Less than that—rags and dust. It could be anybody.” He hadn’t expected this sad display. Disappointment hollowed his chest. No rings adorned the corpse, and—

“Get the sword,” said Riltana, peering over his shoulder.

He’d missed it at first; a huge blade did lay along the side of the wrapped remains, but was covered in a fine layer of silver-gray dust.

Demascus reached in, then pulled the greatsword from the tomb. It was nearly as long as two normal blades laid end to end.

The weapon quivered, shaking the dust from its length. For a moment, a newcomer stood in the mausoleum with them. Was it Kalkan? … no. It was a woman, with eyes like distant storm clouds, glaring at him as if he’d broken some kind of promise, as if he’d done her a wrong so grievous that no apology could ever make amends. Regret, sharp as a knife, whirled into him with the force of a tornado.

Demascus gasped and—

The woman was gone, as if someone had pinched a candle flame.

“What is it?” said Chant.

He shook his head, deciding it would be impossible to provide a meaningful explanation. The woman had been a memory fragment, jarred loose when he’d grabbed the sword, was all. He hoped. He gave one last glance at the empty space where she’d just stood, then examined the weapon in his hands more carefully.

A series of alphabet-like runes, blood red down one side, porcelain white down the other, obscured the blade’s shimmering pattern weld. He knew those runes—every time he picked up any sword, an imperfect memory of those runes formed, quasi-real recollections of the real thing he held in his hand.

The sword’s edge was beveled, and its fine edge was free of nicks and notches—the sign of an enchanted blade. Its balance was exquisite; despite his one-handed hold of the massive piece of metal, it seemed no heavier than a sword a quarter its size. The crossguard was an intricate affair of two opposing styles, as if the weaponsmith had managed to forge two weapons into a single whole.

“The Sword of the Gods,” he breathed, and the Veil twitched. Words appeared in its weave:

The blade is Exorcessum. It is not the the Sword of the Gods; you are.

A coin-sized object dislodged from a crossguard. He caught it in his free hand. It was a metallic charm shaped like a scroll. He recognized it immediately—Oghma’s symbol.

The charm flashed, and a new memory unspooled in his mind. Demascus realized he’d been wrong all along.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE FINAL STAND (1475 DR)

I’M MISSING SOMETHING IMPORTANT,” DEMASCUS SAID TO Tarsis.

“What do you mean?” asked the sandy-haired priest standing beside him at the ship’s railing. A shadow from a floating earthmote darkened the air between them.

“I’ve read all the scrolls provided by your temple. I’ve scanned the tomes. I’ve even consulted the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge. But I’m afraid I still don’t understand Akanûl. So … tell me something pertinent about this place all those matter-of-fact documents left out.”

Tarsis gazed out over the hundreds of watercraft crowding the Bay of Airspur. The man snorted and said, “What makes you think I know? I met exactly two genasi before we sailed here. Moreover, I can barely distinguish an Akanûl merchantman from ships sailing from High Imaskar or Tymanther. Though I recognize the flags of a few.”

The priest pointed to a couple of vessels with square-rigged masts. “All the way from Impiltur. And that one’s from Sembia. That one over there …” He pointed to a triple-masted ship called Green Siren II captained by a fellow in a flamboyant wide-brimmed hat. “Actually, that one, I have no idea.”

“You’re a native here. This place must have some resonance with you.”

“Demascus, I’m a native of Toril. This is the first time I’ve visited the southern coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars. And besides; Akanûl is almost as much a stranger to Faerûn as you are.”

Demascus grinned. “Well, I suppose that’s perfect. If you, a leading disciple of the Binder of Knowledge, haven’t got the first clue why Undryl Yannathar might have come to this far shore, Landrew is probably equally flummoxed.”

“I’d say he’s more than flummoxed; I expect he’s down in his cabin right now casting stones, trying to contact his master, failing to do so, and wondering who’s betraying who.” Tarsis chuckled.

Demascus said, “He’s played the part of a true cleric of his faith perfectly. If the Veil hadn’t revealed his secret allegiance, I’d never have guessed that Landrew answers to Undryl.”

Tarsis’s amused expression faded. He said, “I wouldn’t have guessed it either. I’ve known Landrew for half a decade. Nor can I scarcely credit that Undryl is still alive. He retired from the Oghmanyte Church in Exile twenty years ago, at least. If the avatar hadn’t named him …”

“He’s alive. Or animate at least.”

“What, undeath? Do you really think it’s gone that far?” Tarsis asked. “I mean, we’re all servants of Oghma, whether you want to call us namers or lorekeepers. Both factions believe they serve their lord in the proper fashion, and that the opposing faction is the one who has wavered from true faith.”

“They’ve had more than a century to make nice,” Demascus said. “I’ve seen fanaticism play out like this before.”

“And now it’s come to this,” said Tarsis, shaking his head. “If only we’d found some way to compromise.”

“Something more significant than a doctrinal difference is in play,” Demascus said. “Trust me; the gods don’t call on my services merely to serve as an arbiter for misbehaving children. Your factions may have quarreled for decades, doing slow damage to the overall faith. However, something truly dire must have occurred recently if my intercession is necessary.”

“Then I wish the avatar would have simply explained as much,” said Tarsis.

He must be tired to openly criticize his god, Demascus thought.

On the other hand, maybe not. He’d learned in the tendays since he’d accepted his latest commission that it wasn’t unusual for an Oghmanyte to question pat answers, especially newly revealed knowledge. They were also given to discussing facts that others accepted without question. Tarsis, Brenwin, and even Landrew didn’t seem like dogmatic adherents of “ancient truth” like so many other religious authorities he’d dealt with. For that reason, the Oghmanyte faith was like a breath of fresh air, regardless of whether it called itself the Orthodox Church or the Church in Exile.

Which made the emergence of factions all odder. If differences in interpretation of the observed world were celebrated and discussed in the church, the long divide over doctrinal differences was more than an anomaly. It was a fundamental sickness.

Actually, it was probably an assault.

Which explained why an aspect of Oghma had finally contracted Demascus to put an end to the troubling division, and had explicitly chosen one faction over the other when he’d aimed the Sword of the Gods at the former leader of the Church in Exile. Sort of the ultimate “no confidence” vote, really.

“How much longer do you think we can keep Landrew guessing?” Tarsis said.

Demascus shook his head. “I’d hoped the man would slip up on the passage from Procampur, and provide me some actionable intelligence.”

“Still nothing?”

Demascus shook his head.

Tarsis said, “It doesn’t surprise me, I guess. Landrew’s played the part of a loyal lorekeeper to perfection. Just last night he, Brenwin, and I traded anecdotes of the faith. I went further than I’ve gone before; I called out the old decrees of Undryl Yannathar as blasphemy. Landrew didn’t bat an eye; he joined in with me and Brenwin denouncing the so-called Great Patriarch.”

“I heard.”

Demascus rubbed his eyes. Lords of light, he didn’t know what to do next. What use was an avenging sword and assassin’s contract when the target refused to show himself, and his one lead failed to slip up?

He said, “This entire trip may be a bust, Tarsis. Undryl Yannathar may not even be in Akanûl.”

“But the avatar said he was!”

“No, the avatar said that Undryl’s ‘most dangerous agent’ was in Akanûl.”

Tarsis opened his mouth as if to disagree, but paused. Then he said, “Binder forfend! Enough with the pretense. Let’s just grab Landrew and … and make him tell us what he knows!”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered that. A half-dozen times, truth be told. And doing so still remains my last resort, though I have a feeling that even if we put Landrew to the question, he’ll refuse to give up anything. Fanatics are like that, even in the face of persuasion.”

The priest’s features went pale. “Wait, do you mean torture?”

“That, or magical inducement. Neither works particularly well in my experience. The innocent end up implicating themselves to escape the pain or compulsion, and the fanatics die before they talk. In a great many cases, compulsion is only useful for forcing false confessions. Which is too bad, because otherwise my job would be a lot easier.”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose.”

Demascus said, “Don’t worry, I’m mostly joking.”

“ ‘Mostly’?”

He shrugged. “I do what the gods need doing and attempt tasks they couldn’t ask their goodly servitors to accept. Sometimes that means getting my hands dirty. I don’t enjoy it.” Usually I don’t anyway, he kept to himself.

“I would hope not.”

“Believe me, if I ever find myself edging close to the line, I’m hanging up Exorcessum. If I lose my principles, my existence is forfeit, at least as I am now. I’d find a punishment too ghastly to describe.” Again, he kept his doubts to himself. In truth, he sometimes luxuriated in his abilities so fully he risked everything. It was only by Fate’s grace he retained the thread of his purpose when his body challenged the energies of divine retribution. That exultation was too fantastic to give up, no matter the risk.

“Sorry, I didn’t meant to give offense,” said Tarsis.

Demascus said, “I know.” The priest merely wanted to know more about his role as the Sword of the Gods. Asking questions was part of the man’s nature. But Tarsis seemed too pleasant a fellow to burden with the ambivalent truth.

Time passed. They watched elementally colored genasi load and unload ships in the shadow of towering cliffs.

Finally Tarsis said, “Then we need to take a desperate measure.”

“If you’ve got a new idea, I’d love to hear it.”

The priest’s complexion grew a shade paler. He said, “The avatar said that if things remained as they were, the entire Oghmanyte church would come unraveled.”

Demascus nodded.

“I can’t allow that. I’d give my life to preserve the church, in Oghma’s service. And I’ve just thought of a way to convince Landrew that you’re on his side, not mine.”

“If I could gain Landrew’s confidence, that would certainly help,” Demascus said, and waited. The priest was wringing the symbol of his faith and his mouth was twisted with indecision.

Tarsis blew out a breath and said, “All right. You’ve got to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you’ve received secret instructions from the Binder. You have to convince Landrew that you’ve broken with the Orthodox Church and want to meet Undryl to pledge yourself to the Church in Exile.”

“Words aren’t going convince—”

“Kill me.”

“What?”

“Confront Landrew with my body and tell him you’ve made your choice.”

“I’m not going to kill you!” Demascus said. He reassessed his earlier opinion—Tarsis was a lunatic.

“Just hear me out,” said Tarsis. He licked his lips and continued, “I’m a senior priest in Oghma’s Procampur temple, on a mission to save the church from dissolution. If I die, my fellows will pluck me from Kelemvor’s judgment, in the name of the Binder of All Knowledge.”

“Tarsis, rituals that tread upon the territory of the lords of the dead are not guaranteed. Kelemvor is jealous of his perquisites. I’ve seen such rituals fail more often than not.”

The priest swallowed and said, “I know that. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“I’m not,” Demascus said. “This is a crazy, ill-considered plan, and I’m not going to give it another moment of discussion, because it’s off the table.”

Even as he denied Tarsis, Demascus realized the scheme had a certain lethal merit. In the face of the failure of all their other tactics, it might be their only option. He knew then, with a sick certainty, what he would have to do.

He wrangled with Tarsis for another bell anyway. He hoped their heated words would pry some new idea loose. They walked the ship, as they traded arguments in low, hushed tones. Finally, as they walked the length of the hold, Tarsis convinced him.

He decided nothing would be gained by waiting or planning for the deed. It had to look authentic, and to that end, the assassination had to be authentic.

Demascus stepped behind the man and looped the Veil twice around Tarsis’s throat before the priest realized they were done talking. Demascus pulled the scarf tight into a garrote. Tarsis’s eyes went wide. He tried to say something, but his air was already cut off. Demascus leaned back, and with his height advantage, lifted the priest an inch into the air. Tarsis kicked. The priest dug beneath the folds of the fabric constricting the blood flow to his brain, but to no avail. He twisted, worked his mouth, and bucked. Even though it was his own plan, and despite his assurance that he could be brought back from death’s far shore, Tarsis panicked.

The man’s demise had to look authentic.

The priest made one last frantic effort to live.

It wasn’t nearly enough, because the scarf was wound with an assassin’s precision. But just to be sure, Demascus pulled even harder on the free ends of the Veil, grunting with the effort.

Tarsis’s life whispered away. The man fell to the ground, eyes wide in surprise at finding so unexpected a death. They stared, empty, lifeless … accusing.

Merciful lords …

Don’t think about it, he told himself. He picked up the body and slung it over his shoulder.

He turned, and trooped straight to Landrew’s cabin. He passed several crew on the way, but a concealing shroud of shadow rendered him and his burden unseen.

He didn’t pause at Landrew’s closed cabin hatch; he merely stepped through it along the narrow lane of shadow that stretched beneath the door.

Landrew was there. The dark-haired dwarf had cleared away his cot to make room on the floor. He sat in a lotus position, eyes closed, humming a tuneless song.

“Landrew, I want in,” Demascus declared, and let his shroud of concealment whisper away.

The dwarf’s eyes slammed open. He took in the specter of Demascus standing over him in the too-close cabin, and lurched to his feet.

“What’re you—” Landrew began.

Demascus tossed the limp, purpled body of Tarsis on the splintered planks and said, “Did you hear me, priest? I know about your secret alliance, and I want to join it.”

“My … secret alliance?” The dwarf’s eyes swiveled between the body on the floor and Demascus, back and forth.

“Yeah. Fate’s decreed it.” Demascus pointed to the Veil, which he’d wrapped around his right forearm in wide strips.

Landrew cleared his throat. He said, “Your palimpsest of truth. It told you …?”

“That you’re actually an acolyte of Undryl Yannathar. And that I was working for the wrong side when I accepted a commission to root out the old Great Patriarch. I never ignore what the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge reveals because it deigns to communicate so rarely.”

“So, you … killed Tarsis? Why is that exactly?”

“To prove I was serious. So that you’d know, by looking at Tarsis’s cooling flesh, that I wasn’t dissembling. I’ve just shown myself to be an enemy of the Orthodox Church in the most fundamental fashion available to me; I’ve burned all my bridges. And I’ve done it all for one purpose—so you’ll bring me to Undryl and vouch for me.”

Landrew bent to his dead mentor. He rolled the man on his back and checked for pulse, breath, and spirit.

When he looked up, his manner was different. Demascus could tell by the set of the dwarf’s shoulders and the openness of his expression that Landrew believed him. The dwarf said, “You really killed him; strangled him, looks like. Amazing.”

“So what’s next?” said Demascus. He pushed the image of Tarsis kicking at the end of his coiled Veil from his mind.

Landrew smiled. The dwarf said, “Come with me tomorrow.”

Relief that he hadn’t killed the priest for no reason almost made him miss Landrew’s next words.

“I was planning on slipping into Airspur at dawn to secure horses and a wagon. We need to travel to an old shrine west of the city, up in the foothills of the Akanapeaks.”

“A shrine to Oghma?”

Landrew said, “No, hardly. Some old stone where hill orcs used to worship spirits.”

“It must be important to Undryl. He’ll be there, then?”

“The place is only important because it retains a residue of spiritual energy from centuries of spirit worship. And no, Undryl will most definitely not be there to meet us.”

A tremor of concern touched Demascus. He said, “Oh? But I thought—”

The dwarf’s mouth crooked in amusement, and he shook his head. “Undryl Yannathar started us down this path when he left the Church in Exile, that’s true. But he’s been out of the picture for a long time. He died, and we, his agents, took up the path Undryl set us on, though I think we went much farther down it than he ever guessed we could. And we’re about to reach our destination! We will—”

“Who’s we?” Demascus interrupted. It sounded as if the dwarf was working himself into some sort of fanatical sermon.

“We have formed a new group. We’ve broken away even from the Church in Exile. We are the Church of All Tomorrows.”

Demascus tried again, “And who makes up the Church of All Tomorrows?”

“Me, for one. Many others, though I don’t know their real names. But all of us are celebrants who wish to pledge themselves to a new understanding. Oghma had the right idea, but failed to go far enough. If you’re the god of knowledge, why restrict yourself to what’s already happened—why not peer into the future too, and access all knowledge? That is true power, and that is what our new faith offers!”

Because the future is uncertain and can never be known with certainty, Demascus wanted to say. To trust the future is to trust a changeable lie.

“And I know why you, Demascus, were drawn to us,” continued Landrew. “Why you’ve decided to foreswear Oghma, and join us.”

“Really?”

“I know something of your Veil of Wrath and Knowledge. It is an instrument of Fate. And to be so accurate, it must peer over the lip of now, and into the valley of what may be. Just as we propose to do!”

Demascus blinked. That was the second time Landrew had referenced his scarf, with a touch more familiarity than he should have possessed.

Time to move things along. Demascus asked, “Why come all the way across the Sea of Fallen Stars to move your new faith forward into this, what, ‘new phase?’ If all you required was a site still leaking residual magic, surely some hilltop or gravesite closer to Procampur would have worked as well?”

Landrew shrugged and said, “It was what Kalkan decreed. He was entrusted with finding the most suitable site, and Akanûl is where he chose.”

Demascus started at that name. He said, “Kalkan. I don’t think I know that name …”

The dwarf said, “Kalkan is new to the Church of All Tomorrows, but he possesses a remarkable ability to predict upcoming events. It’s almost like he can see the future, as if he has already become what the rest of us desire to be. Plus, the Voice of Tomorrow vouched for him.”

The dwarf waited, apparently to see if Demascus would ask who the Voice of Tomorrow was. Demascus kept his face studiously neutral and merely nodded for the dwarf to continue.

“So Kalkan was entrusted to prepare a place for the ceremony of transfiguration and joining. We will shrive ourselves from Oghma’s tutelage and move on to a god who offers so much more! We will pledge ourselves to the Voice of Tomorrow. And the time is nearly upon us. We are in Akanûl at the appointed time. Tomorrow we go to the appointed place, and have only to bring … suitable sacrifice.”

A degree of the animation went out of Landrew’s voice as he said the last, and he looked confused.

“What?”

“Kalkan said the only sacrifice that would do to launch us into the new realm of foreknowledge would be the offering of a powerful acolyte of Oghma to the god who will become our Binder of Tomorrow. I was planning on using Tarsis.”

“Ah. Had I known …”

Then the dwarf grinned and said, “But I suppose Brenwin will do!”

Demascus restrained himself from striking the priest. He said, “If you say so. So you know the way to the site?”

“I’m an acolyte of knowledge; of course I do. I have a map!” The dwarf reached into the fold of his robe and produced a piece of parchment.

“Show me,” Demascus commanded. The dwarf bent his head to the map. In that instant Demascus swept Exorcessum from his back. The runesword sheared through the dwarf’s neck, and Landrew’s head came off.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE FINAL STAND (1475 DR)

DEMASCUS SNATCHED THE MAP FROM LANDREW’S TOPPLING body before the spurting scarlet touched it. The corpse thudded to the boards.

He sheathed Exorcessum and heaved the loose form of Tarsis back onto his shoulders. He closed Landrew’s door behind him, then swiftly carried his burden to Tarsis’s cabin. He laid the man out on the cot, and closed his bulging eyes with gentle fingertips.

“If Oghma wills, your sacrifice will see you back into the realm of life, my friend. If not, your reward will be great in whatever life waits for you beyond this one.”

A reward forever denied me, he thought. When death claims me again, no matter my deeds, I’ll just pop up again somewhere else, almost completely ignorant of my past unless I take pains to prepare for the transition …

Which he should probably do. Because he shouldn’t have slain Landrew. In doing so, he’d given all the more impetus to a metaphorical ore cart rushing down the tracks. Things were accelerating out of control … A familiar feeling.

Demascus left Tarsis’s cabin and secured the door behind him as he’d done to Landrew’s. The ship was chartered by the Orthodox Church out of Procampur, and the captain had worked with Oghmanytes in the past, and was a trusted ally. But Demascus didn’t know how he would react upon finding two of his four passengers slain.

He let himself into his own cabin. He sat down at the small table and set the map he’d retrieved from Landrew before him. With a flicker of concentration, he lit a candle and studied the map until he had the landmarks memorized. Then he fed it to the candle flame.

Demascus went to his chest. He pulled from it a small strongbox of dull metal. It was decorated with a relief sculpture of skulls and flower petals, and he wasn’t sure of its provenance. However, it was a uniquely secure coffer, and had a knack for turning up again even after apparently being lost beyond all hope for recovery.

The deva slipped off his golden thumb ring and placed it into the strongbox. Then all his charms, untangled from his braids one by one, went into the cavity. All except for the scroll-shaped charm he’d received from Oghma’s avatar. It seemed fitting that it, of all his collected charms, should remain with him, regardless of the risk to himself. On the other hand, the Whorl of Ioun he wore on his thumb was the most important relic to keep safe—all the others were mere decoration compared to its function. Though each of his deaths might rob him of the specifics of each job he completed, the Whorl of Ioun kept safe the continuity of his abilities. Each time he retrieved it, the full weight and knowledge of all his fantastic power became his to wield again.

He deposited a few oddments of less importance, but that could also serve as minor remembrances, into the strongbox, then closed it. The eyes on the skulls glowed a moment, then lapsed back into somnolence. Then the coffer faded from the world.

Other than Oghma’s symbol, he had kept only the Veil and Exorcessum.

If everything went well and he concluded his contract over the next few days, he’d return to the ship and retrieve everything. If the worst happened, then this odd strongbox should one day find his next incarnation. He’d reclaim his set-aside treasures, as he’d always done, and so return to him all he had once been.

Next he penned a quick note to the captain of the chartered ship. The document explained that an assassin had come aboard, and killed two priests before Demascus had become aware of the intrusion. He described how he’d chased the assassin away, and now went to track the killer down.

The note was terse and not especially informative—about right for someone in a hurry to go after a killer, Demascus judged. He sealed the note, quit his cabin, and gave the message to the first crewperson he saw, with instructions to deliver it to the captain straightaway.

That’s when he remembered Brenwin. What would the lone remaining priest think when she discovered her compatriots murdered and himself missing? He didn’t have time to explain to the woman what had happened, nor was she likely to understand anyway. She would have to fend for herself, and Demascus would take care of Kalkan, and any other traitors to Oghma’s faith, alone.

He disembarked, and entered the city of Airspur.

As he trudged the steep switchback streets of Airspur, the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge glittered a rare command; it called on Demascus to set it aside for safekeeping before continuing on his way. The hair on his forearms stood on end as cool certainty washed through him—the Veil suspected his current incarnation was near the end of its thread. Whatever the situation was at the old shrine, it was more dangerous than he’d prepared for.

Wordlessly, he turned into a plaza he’d almost passed, and spied a pawnshop. He entered, and arranged for the portly shopkeep to hold his “scarf” in safekeeping until Demascus returned for it. He’d either be back for it in a few days … or maybe much longer.

The Veil or the skull coffer would find him, if he died and was reborn anew. It had always been thus before. But that was cold comfort. He feared death as much as any mortal. Perhaps more.

Then Demascus was back out into the press of the cliff city. He ascended all the way to the top and reached Airspur’s periphery.

He rented a riding horse from a solicitous stablemaster, then rode west from the city along a road that quickly degenerated into something little better than an animal crossing. If it wasn’t for Landrew’s map, he would’ve been certain he was on the wrong track.

A few hours’ ride put him up into the foothills of the Akanapeaks. He turned once to gaze back the way he’d come. Far behind him, Airspur glittered. From this great distance, the free-floating crystal spires drifting in the high air over the city, refracting the light into vibrant rainbow glows, looked like a crown.

Will I return down this track?

The Veil had thought not. A shudder brushed down his spine, and he turned to face his future. Did oblivion plan once more to send him hurtling down a frayed screaming path into his next life?

Horses hitched to wagons and not a few tents were scattered along the summit of a steep ascent. The sun was setting as Demascus drew closer, and its end-of-day light silhouetted at least a dozen people standing in and around a wide ring of old stone columns. Several obelisks leaned and some lay on their sides.

No one took more than a casual interest in Demascus as he rode up. Apparently, anyone arriving at the shrine was assumed to have received an invitation to do so. He dismounted and gave his horse a light thwack on the rump. It turned and cantered back the way it had come. In due time the horse, at least, would return to the genasi city.

Demascus stood at the edge of the ring and observed the small crowd of celebrants. No more than twenty people of mixed race and gender pressed close around an open-air altar at the circle’s center. Two figures stood at the head of the altar. One wore elaborate robes and a headdress that concealed both head and face. By the figure’s posture and the respect the others around the circle accorded him, Demascus assumed it must be Kalkan.

Demascus blinked—the other figure was the priestess Brenwin! He realized he hadn’t actually seen her on board when he’d left the ship.

The woman’s eyes were wide with fright, and she seemed well out of her depth; she was poised on the edge of flight like a deer surprised at a forest crossing. At least Brenwin wasn’t manacled to the altar. Yet. She must have been lured out there under false pretenses by Kalkan, and didn’t realize what her role was to be.

The hooded figure held up one gloved hand. Something was affixed there; oiled straps secured a pitted metallic disk flush to his skin. The disk contained a cavity, and some sort of dark fluid was visible within. The figure brought the disk close to its hooded face and sniffed.

Everyone murmured as if impressed, though Demascus didn’t see what amazed them so. That the figure hadn’t been overcome by the fumes of whatever was contained in the disk and pitched over dead?

Then the figure began chanting in a loud voice. Something about the Voice of Tomorrow and Oghma’s failures as a pretender-god of knowledge.

Demascus ignored the half-baked liturgy. It didn’t matter what lies Kalkan was spewing. All that mattered was that Demascus fulfill his contract, and if possible, survive it too.

He drew Exorcessum and ghosted over the press along the lane of shadow thrown by the altar itself. There was no clear place to stand, save the altar top, so that’s where he appeared, like an avenging angel.

He was face-to-face with the figure and the daylight illuminated what lay within its hood: a furred mask of hunger that bespoke sin so profound that it forever marked the body.

Shock like a crashing glacier froze Demascus in place, his runesword raised high for the killing stroke that never came.

“You’re a rakshasa!” said Demascus, his voice hoarse with the revelation.

The creature arrayed in priestly garb before him had once been like himself, an angel in mortal guise. But when a deva gives in to iniquity to become a fallen star, its soul is corrupted, forever. Like a deva, a rakshasa is bound to the world, and returns to it after each death, its soul freighted with more evil each time. But unlike a deva, a rakshasa remembers its former lives, branded forever with the knowledge of what it’s done.

Shouts of surprise went up from the surrounding crowd.

Kalkan threw back his headdress and bared his teeth in a horrible tiger grin. He said, “Right on time, Demascus. You’re nothing if not predictable.”

“You know who I am?” Demascus stuttered. “That … that I would come here?”

“What kind of disciple of the Voice of Tomorrow would I be if I didn’t know you were going to show up to disrupt our ceremony?”

A murmur of appreciation rustled through the gathered celebrants. But …

Oghma’s scroll charm still woven into Demascus’s hair trembled. Kalkan was lying!

That tiny revelation shattered the icy shock that immobilized him upon seeing Kalkan’s nature. The rakshasa knew him, and perhaps even had set a trap for him, despite how inconceivable that seemed. But the lie Kalkan just mouthed revealed that he was capable of being defeated. A lie was a shield used to hide one’s own weakness.

“A god requires your death and I am the Sword,” Demascus said, his voice sharp and loud as a ballista shot. He swept Exorcessum down at an angle that passed in through the rakshasa’s neck, down through his sternum, and out through the creature’s ribs on the opposite side.

Kalkan staggered backward a step and fell to the ground. The celebrants that had gathered close uttered a squall of surprise and distress as they scattered like autumn leaves.

Demascus jumped down. His shadow stretched long over his stricken target.

Kalkan coughed, and blood darkened the fur around his mouth. The rakshasa gasped out, “You surprised me, Demascus. I … didn’t expect you to regain your wits so quickly. I wonder …” He coughed again, then continued, “Was it Oghma’s charm that saved you? The Binder has proved an uncommonly sagacious distraction … Usually it’s all you can do to blink your eyes in stupefaction when you see me. During which time, I spit you like a pig for the fire.”

“Usually?” The world seemed to tilt, and threatened to spill Demascus to the ground next to the dying rakshasa. “What’re you talking about?”

Kalkan’s chuckle was interrupted by another bloody cough. When the fit passed, he rasped out, his vowels bubbling, “Only that I’ve seen you before, Demascus, even though you do not remember. So many times I’ve lured you, hunted you, and achieved my divine directive … so many I’ve lost count. And I’ll see you again.”

Then Kalkan died. The creature’s hood flared with blue light, so bright Demascus was forced to look away. When he looked back, the hood, the odd disk, and Kalkan’s body were all gone. All that remained was a mound of gray ash.

Demascus sank to his knees next to the pile.

Merciful lords, he thought, what has Oghma gotten me into?

No, that wasn’t right—Oghma was only Demascus’s latest divine patron. If Kalkan’s words were true, the rakshasa had hunted Demascus through myriad incarnations. But how could that be? No hint of it had ever reached one of his new incarnations—

Then he understood. Each time the rakshasa had surprised and killed him, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to specifically imprint the memory of the creature into his ring. While the Veil was useful for triggering the odd recollection, and for relating cryptic snippets of fact when it wanted, the banner of Fate fell far short of stitching the continuity of his mind between incarnations. It was his gold ring, the Whorl of Ioun, that preserved the thread of his existence from body to body. The ring had always come back to him, one way or the other. It did not retain the details of the many jobs he’d taken at the behest of the gods, for which he was grateful. But when he specifically imprinted an important memory into it, the Whorl faithfully passed on the memory.

But if a killer came upon him suddenly and slew him, he’d never have the opportunity to fix that particular experience into the golden band. Which meant that while he had a continuity of existence, that weave was interrupted at the end of each life with a blank nothing; a gap.

A gap Kalkan hunted.

But he’d survived this time! He’d turned the tables, thanks to Oghma’s divine payment. When he returned to the ship, and summoned the strongbox containing the Whorl, Kalkan would become part of his continuum of consciousness.

“I’ll never forget you again, you sin-shrouded devil.”

Cool metal transfixed him. Something long and metallic protruded from his chest. Red fluid glittered on its cruel edges.

Damascus fell on his side, next to Kalkan’s dust.

Brenwin had come up behind him. She stood over him as he’d stood over Kalkan. She looked scared but resolute.

“You too, Brenwin?” he said.

The symbol of Oghma chimed like a bell, and a voice like the avatar’s whispered in his mind, The knowledge I give to you is this memory, for know this: your nemesis is a disciple of my nemesis.

Exorcessum groaned as its penultimate purpose was triggered, and Demascus whispered elsewhere. As his spirit fled for its timeless sojourn, his body tumbled into a familiar tomb.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

BURNING DOMINIONS!” DEMASCUS YELLED INTO THE tatters of the dissolving vision. His shout bounced between the close walls of the mausoleum. His mausoleum, according to the fragment memory of Oghma’s charm. In the years since Demascus had come to Faerûn, more than one incarnation’s body had apparently washed up in this silent tomb.

“What?” said Chant, his voice tight with concern. The man was a few steps farther away than when Demascus had taken up the sword.

An image of himself stripping his hair of all the godly tokens came unbidden, and an unsettling thought chilled him: Serial killers keep trophies. What were all those tokens of payment from the gods if not that?

He bent over, afraid he might suddenly be sick.

Riltana said, “What … what do you remember?” Her voice trembled with as much anxiety as the pawnbroker’s. Or perhaps it was fear, that he’d become someone different upon discovering his previous self. But he wasn’t any different. He’d only recovered a shard, albeit a large one …

Demascus straightened and rubbed his eyes. He said, “I remember Kalkan. He truly is my nemesis. He’s killed me many times over. I’m the first to realize it, thanks to Oghma.” He rubbed the scroll charm between his thumb and forefinger. It flashed yellow in the magical candlelight.

“The first?” asked Chant.

“The first incarnation of myself. Apparently, I stored my … continuity in a relic called the Whorl of Ioun. Except every time Kalkan killed me, that particular memory failed to be specifically imprinted. None of the previous versions of myself knew anyone was stalking them. Despite that they possessed the strength of lifetimes worth of knowledge and god-given relics …”

“Sharkbite,” commented Chant.

“The last me managed to turn the tables and kill Kalkan four years ago, but one of his underlings murdered me before I’d gotten my bearings.”

“Wait, you killed Kalkan?” said Riltana. “I don’t think so, because—”

“He’s like me,” Demascus interrupted. “He reincarnates. But he’s a twisted monster, corrupt beyond description, surpassing even a devil in his depravity.” He shuddered. “And he never forgets his previous lives. A … rakshasa cannot be washed of its sins by forgetting them.” As I can, he thought. Though the Whorl provides continuity, it apparently did so only for selectively chosen memories. Which had to have been a mercy for his incarnations who took it up fresh each time.

So, where was the skull-carved strongbox? He peered around the chamber with narrowed eyes.

“Hey, tell us what you’re looking for, and we’ll help,” said Chant. He leaned over the sarcophagus and gave the body in it a closer look.

“You won’t find your box,” a new voice called from the tunnel exit opposite the shallow pool. “I’ve already looked for it.”

Kalkan stepped into the room. The flickering candles threw his shape like a nightmare across the wall, and the stomach-curdling odor of rotting flesh assaulted Demascus’s nostrils.

His fingers felt suddenly nerveless. Just as when his last incarnation faced the rakshasa at the shrine, his muscles froze up. And he was so much less than his former self. Merciful lords, Kalkan was going to kill him again!

His friends seemed equally paralyzed by the intruder’s appearance.

Kalkan said, “Do you know what I am, Sword?”

“You’re Kalkan,” Demascus finally forced out. “Why have you hunted me? And why didn’t you just kill me in front of Chant’s shop when I showed up to retrieve the scarf—why manipulate me through this convoluted path?”

The rakshasa cocked his head. The curling horns threw obscene shadows on the wall. He said, “How do you know I’ve hunted you?”

“The pictures on the wall,” Riltana blurted. Demascus glanced at the thief. “Only a crazy person would pay such homage to one person. Or a killer studying his mark.”

“Ah. I suppose that was sloppy of me. Or not—since you still don’t have your ring, do you? Not that you probably even know what I mean. Of all the times I’ve killed you, Demascus, this is the first time you’ve been so uniquely vulnerable.”

The rakshasa slithered forward a pace.

Demascus brought Exorcessum in line with Kalkan, despite the fact that the creature was still across the pool. He said, “Vulnerable for what? And you didn’t answer my question—you’ve predicted everything I’ve done; you could have killed me the moment I appeared. Why didn’t you? What’s your game?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to eat you,” said Kalkan, and cackled. He came closer, sidling around the pool.

Desperate, Demascus tried again, “How have you been able to predict the future so well? Who is the Voice of Tomorrow?”

Kalkan glanced at some kind of contrivance he wore on the palm of his left hand. Demascus recognized it from the recollection vouchsafed him by Oghma’s token. Then the rakshasa stiffened and jerked his gaze back to Damascus. He snarled, “You … you remember me! How?”

Demascus raised the charm. “My retainer from the god of knowing. Because you’ve mixed yourself up in Oghma’s domain, you’ve become the one I must kill to fulfill my contract to the Lord of Knowledge.”

It was hard to tell in the candlelight and on a face that was more beast than human, but Demascus thought a flicker of uncertainty swept the rakshasa’s features.

He wasn’t going to find a better opportunity to survive. So he let the charm fall as his causal perception accelerated, rendering everything else as slow as dripping molasses. He gathered a length of shadow like a shroud. Just as he’d done below the Motherhouse, he extended a waving end of the immaterial shroud across the space between himself and Kalkan. It undulated like a black ribbon in a cold wind, then settled across the rakshasa’s form.

Through it, he saw Kalkan redefined as a series of bright nodes, each one blazing with power so strong Demascus almost had to look away. The point of light on the crown of his head, between his horns and twitching ears, was like a lotus flower of a thousand petals and plots folding open. The bluish pulse on his brow was like a third eye.

A sphere of light blazed on Kalkan’s right hand, where the odd device was strapped. Its light outshone all the others. It was almost like an awareness in itself, or the channel for one that led away in a direction he had no name for. Could it be what allowed Kalkan to see the future? It would explain much.

And other gleams shone too, across the silhouette of Kalkan’s body like stars. So strong. So bright.

But even stars eventually go out.

Demascus glided forward, one with the gloom of the mausoleum.

Kalkan’s third eye, blazing through the filter of his shroud, blinked, and time snapped back to its normal flow. The rakshasa reared back and swept an oddly curved blade from the air itself, and parried Exorcessum even as it descended out of shadow.

Demascus tried to salvage the motion of the deflected blow by cutting at his foe’s stomach. Kalkan twisted aside, and brought his own blade round in deadly response.

Only the tatters of his fading temporal acceleration saved him from being disemboweled in turn.

A flight of crossbow bolts screamed through the air at Kalkan, forcing the rakshasa to take a step back. One grazed the creature and drew blood. Not that Kalkan paid any mind.

Then Riltana dropped out of the air behind Kalkan and shoved her short sword into the creature’s back. Or would have, if the rakshasa hadn’t suddenly become as shadowy as Demascus himself, and slipped to the side like a dark breeze.

Burning dominions, Demascus thought, turning just in time to lift Exorcessum in defense. He only partially deflected Kalkan’s sword strike that would have otherwise split his head in two. As it was, the blow sent him spinning.

His free hand snagged the Veil. He pulled it loose from where it wrapped his opposite arm, but his foot caught the lip of the pool and he toppled in. Damn it!

The ice-cold water was only a foot deep, but he got a mouthful anyway. He convulsively coughed as he tried to surge back out of the water.

Kalkan flung himself atop Demascus, mouth wide and hot with saliva and teeth. The creature landed on him, almost forcing his head underwater a second time. Demascus thrust his hand holding the Veil toward the beast, but Kalkan batted it aside and brought his mouth down to tear out Demascus’s throat.

He released Exorcessum—it was too large a weapon to use in close quarters—and caught the rakshasa’s horns as Kalkan’s head descended. Lords of shadow, Kalkan was strong! Demascus was cognizant that he wouldn’t be able to hold the thing off for more than a couple heartbeats. He struggled, gasping, coughing, and choking as every breath he took sucked more water into his lungs.

Kalkan whispered, his breath a slaughterhouse, “Do you remember killing the priest of Oghma? That death stains your soul, deva. The means do not justify the ends. And this time around, you’ve done nothing to absolve yourself of the crime, despite it being the very first vision you had upon waking to this new life.”

Oh, lords of shadow, was that why the vision had been vouchsafed him? So he could seek forgiveness? If so, he’d done nothing … Because he hadn’t understood! Burning dominions, it wasn’t fair!

“Which means,” continued Kalkan, “when I take your life this final time, you shall return as I, and remember all. Then—”

Riltana’s steel-toed boot appeared out of nowhere and smashed like a forge hammer into Kalkan’s forehead.

The rakshasa cried out and Demascus finally managed to thrust the creature away.

Chant plunged in the water with them. He leaned over Kalkan and tried to haul the creature back.

Demascus whipped a loop of the Veil around the rakshasa’s neck like a lasso. The fabric, as if waiting for just such a cue, animated. Its opposite end pulled from Demascus’s grip, then whipped around and around Kalkan’s neck.

The rakshasa sprang out of the water, raking Demascus and Chant with the razor claws on its unshod feet in the process.

Demascus sat up, still coughing so hard that his vision seemed scratched with ragged white streaks. His fingers were numb from the cold pool, but he felt around until he came up with Exorcessum.

Light, he thought. The white runes on the sword blazed in answer, as glorious as sunrise.

Kalkan writhed near the wall, scrabbling desperately to get his oddly jointed claws beneath the self-tightening coils of the Veil.

Perfect! Demascus charged the rakshasa; but Riltana was faster.

She spun out of the air like a whirlwind, slashing with her blade. She landed a few telling blows, painting lines of blood on Kalkan’s arms and chest.

The rakshasa abandoned the noose tightening around his neck and grabbed the thief with swiftness far quicker than a cat’s. He hugged the windsoul, and she screamed, more in rage than fear. Then his mouth went wide and he took a savage bite out of the side of the woman’s neck.

“No!” Demascus yelled. Riltana’s body jerked as if in seizure before going limp.

Kalkan grinned, his mouth covered in gore. He let the woman’s body fall to the ground.

Demascus hurled himself at the rakshasa.

But Kalkan’s legs buckled before Demascus arrived. The fiend reflexively put one hand back to the Veil still wound around his neck, but it was far too late. The relic fabric had twisted itself so tightly around the creature’s neck that it was a wonder the head hadn’t popped off.

Like the suicide warriors who screamed across the Elf-harrow, pledging their life’s end to the spirit tree Cuivanu, Kalkan had deliberately allowed the Veil to kill him in order to savage Riltana.

But no, Demascus realized, there had been no sacrifice. Even as the light of life faded from the rakshasa’s eyes, he understood the all-important difference.

No matter how many times Kalkan was killed, he would never, ever die.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

AIRSPUR
THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

THANKS TO CHANT’S LAST VIAL OF LIQUID GRACE, THE TERRIBLE wound on Riltana’s neck closed over, and the unconscious windsoul breathed easier. Demascus closed his eyes in relief. She was out of the worst danger. If she’d died, no reparation would have been enough.

The pawnbroker said, “She’ll require further tending or clerical magic.”

Demascus rubbed Oghma’s charm between his thumb and forefinger. He mused, “My former self had dozens of these divine tokens, given for services rendered. I bet one of those would heal her to full health with a thought.”

“But they’re in some kind of strongbox, along with the, what’d you call it, the Whorl of Ioun? Which has your …?”

“Which contains the lion’s share of my memories I thought important enough to fix forever into it, yeah. Apparently, it’ll eventually appear out of nowhere, a gift from myself.” Although, based on what Oghma’s charm had revealed, he was surprised the skull-decorated coffer hadn’t already turned up.

“When?”

“It’s overdue,” he admitted.

“I’m sure I don’t know what constitutes as overdue for a magically time-traveling strongbox,” said Chant.

“Yeah. Me either.”

Demascus looked at Kalkan’s mounded gray remains for the hundredth time. The rakshasa’s body had just sort of fallen in on itself, collapsing to ash in moments, as if the weight of a thousand years had descended on the body in one go. Except for the hood and the odd disk, which had disappeared in a brief blaze of blue light.

He supposed that meant the hood and disk had been pulled to some hidden resting place akin to his own—

Riltana gasped and opened her eyes. “The rakshasa!” she said, her voice thin.

“Easy,” Chant said. “He’s dead. And you’re hurt, but you’ll be fine if you take it easy.”

Riltana tried to say something else, but all that came out was a rasp. She raised a trembling gloved hand and managed to work her fingers in a weak approximation of a snap. A healing draft appeared in her palm.

“You’ve been holding out on us!” said Chant, laughing.

A fragile smile lifted Riltana’s mouth. Demascus popped the cork on Riltana’s vial, and she drank.

Silvery vitality chased away her dull gray pallor, and she propped herself up. She was still weak, and a ragged, half-healed scar yet marred her throat, but Demascus judged the windsoul was definitely out of the woods. She really is tough as nails, he thought.

“So, Demascus, was this shit all part of your last incarnation’s plan?” she asked. Her voice was stronger too.

“Hardly,” he said. “The only reason Kalkan didn’t kill me is … because I had the help of you and Chant. And Oghma’s charm, with its snippet of memory to guide me. Sorry you were hurt. I—”

She punched his shoulder, not hard. “Stop it. I knew the risks. And look, we’re alive, and the rakshasa is gone.”

“What did the rakshasa mean,” said Chant suddenly. “When it said that you would return like it?”

Demascus let his breath out. His mouth went dry, and his palms clammy. He debated whether he should claim ignorance. But he spoke his shame, “To accomplish my last contract, I had to convince a sect of Oghmanyte betrayers I was one of them. I had to do that so convincingly that they’d take me into their confidences without question. I …” He shook his head. “I may have exceeded the limits of my code.”

“Which means what, exactly?” pressed Chant.

“If I cannot find absolution for what I did, there’s a chance my next incarnation will wake in flesh as twisted as Kalkan’s,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact.

Riltana put a hand to her mouth and her eyes narrowed.

“But Kalkan’s a liar, a fiend, and every word it spoke was probably a deception,” Chant replied. “Right?”

“Sure, but—”

“But nothing,” Chant said, and clapped him on the back. “We’ve just met, but I feel like I’ve got your measure. Yes, I was rattled when I realized you drew a portion of your strength from shadow. Yet you obviously draw the balance from light—I saw the radiance blaze from your sword. I don’t know about devas or fallen angels, but I sincerely doubt your soul is in danger of tipping over into unredeemable evil.”

Riltana gave a hopeful nod of encouragement.

“What if I’ve made many such choices over my career as an executioner for the gods? Maybe I’ve always walked the edge.” For instance, something about that woman who had appeared when he claimed Exorcessum …

“Leech-piss,” said the thief. “You sure know how to push the river, don’t you?”

“I …” He laughed. “I guess I do.”

They met the queen again a day later. Rather than assembling in her bower, they joined Arathane and her forces beneath the ruined Motherhouse. The queen was personally overseeing a sweep of the surviving substructure, commanding a sortie of elite peacemakers and Firestorm Cabal regulars that were free of contamination by Murmur’s abortive cult.

The day before, they’d sent a courier to the queen describing what they’d found beneath the Motherhouse. Of how they’d rooted out the cult of the Elder Elemental Eye, and destroyed the oddly manipulative nightmare demon that had used Leheren’s body as a host. They’d included in the report their inference that most Cabal members brought into the cult were tricked, and thus were hopefully not irredeemably compromised.

Demascus gawked at the queen when he saw her standing at the edge of the droning pit.

The gown of their first meeting was gone. Today Arathane wore sturdy leather armor scuffed and scarred from past action. Only the fragile silver circlet flashing at her brow bespoke her queenly station. A cloak flared on her back, half-alive with defensive enchantments, and a crystalline spear nestled in the crook of her arm with easy familiarity. You only carry a spear like that, thought Demascus, if you know how to use it.

Here we go again, he thought, mooning over a queen.

He told himself the woman was a monarch, untouchable in her role as leader of her people, and probably trothed to marry some foreign king or prince. But that didn’t lessen his reaction to her. He imagined that his original angelic self, that being lost behind so many reincarnations that the personality was long gone, would find Arathane equally divine.

She was directing one of the peacemakers as they came into the subterranean chamber. Arathane continue speaking, even as she became aware of their presence. She raised an amiable eyebrow at his single-minded regard, and he managed a friendly smile in return despite how his heart was suddenly punching his ribs.

When the queen finished explaining to the peacemaker that he was to make one last sweep of all cells in the complex, she turned to them and smiled.

“Thank you for joining me here,” said Queen Arathane. “It’s easiest for me to deal with this situation personally rather than let it become a project for the Four Stewards. Especially since I know I can count on your expertise to help me. I owe you all a great debt for putting down this threat to my rule, and the safety of everyone in Airspur.”

Chant bowed, as did Riltana and Carmenere to different degrees. Demascus cleared his throat and said, “We’re happy to help you however we can, Your Majesty.”

Then, so quickly he must have imagined it, Arathane winked at him. It took several heartbeats for him to focus after that as he tried to sort out whether he’d really seen it.

The queen went on, “As soon as we finish here, I plan to set aside an endowment to rebuild the Motherhouse. I’ve already sent rumors circulating that the Firestorm Cabal came under attack by an enemy of Akanûl, and that only the sacrifice of those who wear the red prevented a far greater evil from visiting the genasi of Airspur.”

“Which, from a certain point of view, is true enough,” Chant said.

Arathane gave the slightest of nods, and said, “To rule, a queen must be adept at seeing many points of view at the same time. And the Cabal, despite its shortcomings, is a weapon in my arsenal I’d rather not lose. The borders remain uncertain, sightings of Xxiphu over the Sea of Fallen Stars have increased markedly, and news out of Tymanther and Chessenta seems especially troublesome. But I won’t burden you with those details, at least not today.”

Chant said, “But such details sound fascinating, Your Majesty.”

“I’m sure. In any event, for today at least, the citizens of Airspur are safe from this particular threat. I think a reward of some sort is in order. And who knows—perhaps Akanûl, and I, will need your services again.”

“All you need do is ask,” Demascus said. His mouth seemed to have a life of its own, but he didn’t much care to stop it.

“Well, then—my first question: how shall we deal with these insects?” She used the spear tip to gesture into the pit. “My peacemakers tell me it’s some kind of swarm entity.”

“They’re right,” said Riltana. “The nightmare demon said the bugs in the pit were its ‘sibling’ and called it Scour. That leech-son fed people to …” She shivered and closed her eyes a moment, then continued, “It thought it could wake Scour up, whatever that means. Nothing good I’m sure.”

Carmenere put a hand on Riltana’s shoulder.

“So, an extermination, before it comes to its senses?” said the queen.

Demascus nodded. “We should have dealt with this earlier. We’re probably lucky it hasn’t already gained consciousness.” He didn’t volunteer the reason they’d left the bugs to fester was because they’d had to chase down Kalkan.

Riltana said, “Hey! I know where to find a few casks of lamp oil. Through there. We could burn the bugs out.” She pointed to the arrow slits where the cultists had monitored the chamber.

In short order, they produced ten kegs of lamp oil from the guardroom. Arathane pitched in, as if rolling casks filled with sloshing flammable liquid was common fare for a queen.

Everyone took a place around the pit: Demascus, Chant, Carmenere, Riltana, and Arathane, as well some Cabal regulars and peacemakers the queen selected. Everyone also prepared a smoldering torch, dripping with fresh tar.

“On my mark!” said Arathane. Then, “Mark!”

Ten casks smashed down into the pit, sending the insects into a frenzy of perturbed buzzing.

When the torches followed, a whoomp of fire and black smoke punched out of the cavity, forcing everyone back several feet from the heat and throat-scratching, acrid odor.

After that, it was just a matter of letting it burn.

Demascus stared into the pit as if the curling flames were from an oracle’s brazier. Black smoke from smoldering carapaces billowed up from the cavity. The smoke would have filled the chamber if a couple windsoul peacemakers hadn’t applied their heritage to direct it out of the chamber in a braided column of black.

A handful of gray moths escaped the pit before the inferno took hold, though not before being singed. They flopped around on the cavern floor, vainly struggling to take wing.

He briefly considered stomping on the survivors, but it seemed obvious the winged insects were doing the bug-equivalent of gasping their last. Scour was dying. Just as the insects in the pit had eaten so many innocents, now the fire was eating it.

Scour almost ate me, he thought. Or … had Kalkan planned for me to get free of Murmur and the pit all along, as part of his crazy scheme? And who in the name of all the lords of shadow did Kalkan answer to? Why did Kalkan want him to embrace his dark side, and become a rakshasa? What evils did his complete memory contain that—

Demascus lifted his jaw. No. He was done with wondering. He’d allowed himself to fall into Kalkan’s power, and he’d learned much from that lesson. He was forewarned about the threat, and he didn’t have to be a victim anymore. He wouldn’t allow it again.

I almost died, he thought. Worse, so did people I’ve come to think of as friends. He glanced at the faces of his companions, and the queen’s too, lit by dancing orange flames.

If I perish, he thought, I’ll forget everything all over again. But whether I remember or forget, one thing is sure: Kalkan is coming back. He will remember everything. And he will hunt me down again.

He recognized that the time had come for him to seize control of his own fate. Kalkan could come back in four years, or for all he knew, four months. Either way, he had to be prepared.

So … he had to stop agonizing over what kind of person he might have been—he needed his full identity and abilities returned, no matter what he once was. He had to retrieve all his lost artifacts, especially the Whorl of Ioun. He had to take charge of his destiny before his destiny took charge of him.

How long would it take for Kalkan to reincarnate? It took Demascus four years last time. Maybe that was long, and Kalkan could pull off the return trick in just a quarter of that time.

One year, then. Fine.

That should give him enough time to be ready.

The world was a mosaic of colors, of sounds, of smells, and tastes. Countless tiny moving windows revealed textures and experience, and the occasional hot, orgasmic sensation of food. Time was meaningless. All was just the infinite, now of teeming existence.

Something changed. Something registered as … interest? A new morsel, bigger than any that had come before, and richer too, squirting hot ichor and life energy every which way. But none escaped the hundred thousand tiny bodies, each with a mouth, proboscis, a stylet, or pair of tearing mandibles.

As each tiny bite was digested across the swarm, a hundred thousand heartlike organs, each pumping according to its own internal rhythm, came into sluggish synchrony.

What’s this? it thought. So good. Tastes like life itself. Like …

Peels of knowledge tightened and closed together into a whole, its own memories as well as those skimmed from the food that had thought of itself as a being called Murmur.

And I am Scour, it thought.

All it had known of its home fossil dimension, of the attempted ritual that was foiled a world away, and the darkness that followed, Scour knew. And as it finished off the flesh, mind, and soul of what had been its sibling, everything that Murmur once knew became Scour’s too.

It was still integrating itself a day later, assessing its power and potential, plus Murmur’s experiences and abilities, when the casks of lamp oil dropped onto it, followed by the throng of flaming torches.

Then Scour knew only pain.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Demascus (da-MASS-kus)

Demascus is the apparent victim of a demon-summoning ritual gone wrong. Though he apparently survived the ritual that left everyone else for dead, his memory of all previous events in his life is absent, save for dramatic flashes. In most of these visions, Demascus owns a pale scarf, a golden ring, and a sword.

Chant Morven (CHANT MORE-ven)

The proprietor of a pawnshop in the city of Airspur. Besides selling the hopes and dreams of Airspur’s desperate and destitute, Chant also heads up a network of informants that keep him apprised of events in and around the city. Chant is a portly human.

Riltana “Rilta” (ril-TAHN-ah)

Riltana is a windsoul genasi who makes a living stealing from Airspur’s elite and wealthy visitors to the city by night, and as a messenger in the Airstepper’s Guild by day. Four years ago, she took a commission from a foul-breathed fellow named Kalkan to steal Demascus’s scarf.

OTHER CHARACTERS

Brenwin (BREN-win)

A follower of Oghma, someone Demascus remembers from a fragment memory.

Carmenere (kar-men-AIR)

An estranged friend of Riltana, and a relative of Queen Arathane. Carmenere is a disciple of the moon and a respected silverstar in the city.

Chevesh (Cheh-VESH)

A slightly insane fire mage. Unflattering rumors paint Chevesh as someone without remorse. One of the more powerful personages in Airspur, he’s no one to cross lightly. Chevesh spends his days in his laboratory, experimenting with magic beyond even his understanding.

Master Raneger (RAN-neh-gur)

The eladrin owner of the Den of Games. Many suspect Raneger is a powerful crime lord in Airspur.

Jaul (JAHL)

The estranged son of Chant Morven. Jaul is aged 18 winters, and to show his independence from his father, has taken up employment with Raneger, the owner of the Den of Games.

Jett Var (JET)

Important genasi in the Firestorm Cabal beneath the deputy commander of the organization. He serves on a task force headed by Lieutenant Leheren that was formed to look into a rash of monster sightings and related deaths around Airspur.

Garel Komar (GAH-rell)

A Firestorm Cabal member who serves with Jett on the task force headed by Lieutenant Leheren, which was formed to look into a rash of monster sightings and related deaths around Airspur.

Kalkan (KAL-kin)

Someone who knows a lot more about Demascus than Demascus himself can remember, and who apparently bears Demascus ill will.

Landrew (LAN-dru)

A follower of Oghma, someone Demascus remembers from a fragment memory.

Lieutenant Leheren (leh-HAIR-en)

An important figure in the Firestorm Cabal who answers directly to the deputy commander of the organization. Lieutenant Leheren was tasked with getting to the bottom of the spate of demon sightings and related deaths around Airspur. Leheren is a stormsoul genasi.

Murmur

A demonic entity from a fossil dimension with the capacity to possess the dreams of its victims, and send nightmares roving in the waking world.

Scour

A demonic entity from a fossil dimension with the capacity to animate swarms with a single purpose.

Tarsis (TAR-sis)

A follower of Oghma, someone Demascus remembers strangling to death with his scarf from a fragment memory.

Queen Arathane (air-WRATH-ah-nee)

Akanûl is ruled by Queen Arathane (in partnership with the Four Stewards). Arathane is considered a just ruler by the genasi she rules. In addition to dealing with important matters of state, the queen finds herself besieged by suitors and potential matchmakers. The queen is approaching her fourth decade of life, and the question of succession causes a great deal of gossip. Yet the iron-willed Arathane doesn’t consider it to be a pressing issue since her mother, Queen Cyndra, and her grandmother both bore a child late in life.

Voice of Tomorrow

Enigmatic divine force that can apparently see the future laid out as easily as the past.

Yuriel (YOUR-ee-al)

A watersoul genasi Firestorm Cabal member pledged to the secret cult serving the Elder Elemental Eye.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Greg Bilsland, Bart Carroll, Dee Westman Cordell, Torah Cottrill, and Erin M. Evans for their insightful and supportive writing critiques; to Matthew Sernett, Brian Cortijo, and Matt James who penned the series of amazingly helpful Explore Airspur articles; to Jan Nield for sewing the fabulous “cover of covers”; to Evalyn Sroufe for being my most enduring reader; and to Susan J. Morris for her Elemental Editorial Eye.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce R. Cordell has authored several novels and short stories, including Plague of Spells, City of Torment, and Key of Stars. Besides writing, Bruce is interested in martial arts, science of all kinds, and an eclectic brew of other activities. Befriend Bruce on Facebook at http://facebook.com/brucecordell.