Guns of Alkenstar

by Ed Greenwood

Chapter Six: No Safe Haven

The point-blank stream of bullets took the front of the High Shieldmarshal's head off as it drove him back, a loose-limbed, dancing dead puppet, until Gelgur plucked him out of the line of fire.

And stared over the limp, heavy body at Ralice, who was biting one knuckle hard to keep from screaming.

There was another, lower klack as the last firing triggered the clockwork that started the next battery of gun-barrels, and the gunfire started to pan sideways.

Gelgur flung himself over on his back with Kordroun's body on top of him, but before they'd bounced to a halt, the next battery had kicked in and the hail of balls were tracking back in the other direction. Ralice flung herself away, kissing the floor in her haste.

Then the firing ended, so abruptly that its echoes rang in their ears. They could smell scorched gunpowder, but see nothing beyond the dark doorway.

The dim light they were working in came from far behind them; a fixed gas-jet that was high up, out of reach.

It shed just enough radiance for Gelgur to make out the fear on Ralice's face, and that she was silently mouthing, "What now?"

He pointed at her and back the way they'd come, then slid free of Kordroun and pantomimed crawling.

When she nodded and obeyed, he tore a strip off the tail of Kordroun's jerkin, and crawled after her.

Twice he held up a hand to halt and listen, but there came no sounds from the doorway or the cellars they'd come through.

Gelgur wanted Ralice to climb on his shoulders and light the jerkin-scrap in the gas jet, but she gave him a disgusted look and ordered, "You climb on mine, old man."

He shrugged and obeyed, coming down with a flame that would light their way for not all that long, by the looks of it.

They split as far apart as the passage would allow, and went back to the door. Gelgur tugged off one of Kordroun's boots, dropped the flaming scrap into it, and tossed it through the doorway.

A portable frame had been set up inside the door, and on it were mounted half a dozen trap guns, clockwork rows and clusters of gun-barrels connected to tripwires; the sort of weapons that guarded the most important Gunworks vaults.

The tripwires were running everywhere. One battery pointed limply at the ground, and was spewing faint curls of smoke—obviously the one that had killed the High Shieldmarshal. Most of the rest were still loaded.

Gelgur picked up the heavy, faceless mess that was Kordroun. Hefting the larger man up in front of him as a shield, he staggered forward, right through the doorway.

Soon enough a second battery started up, and he flung himself at the floor, not caring where Kordroun's body fell, reaching up with his knife to try to jam the clockwork or force the barrels upward.

He managed the latter, murdering the ceiling loudly as he fought to sever the triggers leading to the last two batteries.

After some furious sawing of wires, succeeded.

His improvised lamp had gone out, and he went on working by feel, wresting barrels from mounts and shaking out balls and wadding, scooping some of them into his pockets.

Then he kicked the frame over and flung himself back out of the doorway, in case the frame itself was trapped.

Nothing happened.

Ralice was peering at him suspiciously. "We'll need another light; more cloth for the gas-jet. Get him back out of there—and I'll be having his gun."

Gelgur obeyed her wordlessly, handing her Kordroun's revolver and powder-pouch before looking for anything else useful.

The sword, of course, and the marshal's cloak—Ralice shuddered at its gory state, but Gelgur wadded it up for carrying—then Kordroun's coin-purse, a nasty little boot-knife and a matching saw, and a second, smaller gun—a single-shot flintlock.

"Here," he said to Ralice, holding it out. "Lighter. Easier for you than the revolver."

Her look of dismissal was withering.

She was still giving it to him, with enthusiasm, when they heard the first faint marshals' shouts, from the cellars they'd come through.

Wordlessly they rose and rushed through the dark doorway, past the trap-gun frame and on.

∗ ∗ ∗

It seemed they'd been fleeing forever, rushing through near-darkness, up stairs and through doors and across darkened rooms. The heart of the Gunworks never slept, but its extensive storage warrens were another matter.

They were stumbling-tired now, and the shouts and bobbing lanterns were getting closer.

As they plunged into a new passage, Gelgur changed direction again, and Ralice hissed, "Where are you going?"

"Trust me," he breathed, plucking at her shoulder and whirling her through a doorway right beside the one they'd just emerged from. " I know these ways well from years of patrols. I'm doubling back into the Works, to try to throw them off. They think we're trying to get out, and are heading for the routes we'll have to take, yes?"

"Yes," Ralice hissed wearily. "I just hope you know your way bet—"

Gelgur's hand clapped across her mouth, hard and heavy.

Enraged, she opened wide to bite—and froze.

"The two we're looking for," said a deep, drawling voice that couldn't have been much more than six paces away, on the far side of a wall of stacked crates, "are Bors Gelgur, an old drunk and retired shieldmarshal who may still have his uniform, and a kitchen wench by the name of Ralice Morkantul, who looks more like a big, burly lad. Gelgur knows the Works well, and is probably trying to get out the wagon-port nearest the Oldcogs and Tankard tavern. I've men waiting there already, but if we can catch the two of them between us and those doorguards, we can prevent them doubling back, and save having to hunt them the length of the Gunworks. So through here, and all eyes alert!"

A door creaked, and booted feet shuffled. Gelgur and Ralice waited, immobile and silent, for what seemed a very long time before Bors took his hand away.

"Sorry," he whispered gruffly. "You recognize the voice?"

Ralice shook her head.

"Trademaster Daerold Loroan."

Ralice frowned. "He's not a marshal, and never has been."

"Yet the marshals are obeying him," Gelgur said grimly. "This runs as deep as we feared. Come."

Without a word of protest, Ralice followed him into deeper darkness.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Where are we now?"

"Where they keep acid to etch inscriptions in gun barrels. The damage the spills do are why this is deeper than the storage cellars."

Ralice waved at the many large, round lids set into the floor. "Is that what these...?"

Gelgur nodded, and pointed. "That mark means acid—larger is stronger—and that one is acid-quench, to turn acid into harmless but reeking water. Avoid them all. We have to get—"

He waved at a far, dark corner of the room.

Out of which promptly stepped a man. Their guns came up—and wavered.

The man gave them a tight, pain-filled smile as he came toward them, hands empty. High Shieldmarshal Ansel Kordroun.

Battered but whole again, as if they'd never seen him killed in front of their eyes, his face blown off. So unless all they'd ever been told was wrong, and magic did work in Alkenstar, this must be a shapeshifter.

Unless the Kordroun who'd brought them together and led them through the Gunworks had been an imposter.

"Gelgur," Ralice said quietly, her gun—the revolver that had been Kordroun's—coming up again, "this can't be Kordroun."

Gelgur stared into eyes that were Kordroun's, yet couldn't be, and remembered seeing Kordroun firing at him in the alley and then another Kordroun joining him just after that. He tried to remember what he'd heard about shapeshifters—creatures called doppelgangers, yes. One had once been unmasked in the Duchy, long before his time...

Kordroun was striding steadily nearer. Dropping the little gun he'd scavenged from Kordroun's body into a pocket, Gelgur went to meet him, stepping into Ralice's line of fire.

	"You can tell he's a doppelganger because he's slightly uglier than Kordroun himself."

"Ansel, old friend," he said firmly, putting a smile on his face as he slid his other hand into his other, already bulging pocket. They'd never been friends, old or otherwise.

The high shieldmarshal's smile widened, and he nodded.

"Oh, it's really him, all right," Gelgur said over his shoulder, to Ralice.

"What?" she exclaimed. "Gelgur, are you mad?"

"No," he replied calmly. "Not mad. Just close enough."

And he was. To fling a handful of balls from the clockwork trap-gun batteries into the shapeshifter's face, and a second handful under its feet.

It fell hard, and Gelgur game down on top of it, knife out and slicing hard.

Across the throat, and back again, deeper, blood that was the wrong hue spurting, sawing hard, beheading the thing.

Kordroun's mouth yawned in pain, stretching impossibly wide, as the head rolled away. It was going pale, the hair melting back into the whitening flesh. The rest of the body convulsed under Gelgur, limbs going long and thin and white.

Ralice fired twice into the rolling head, her face twisted in disgust. Gelgur calmly slid a vat lid aside with one foot, and kicked the shapeshifter's body into the acid. When Ralice lowered her gun, he added its head, too.

Sliding the lid back into place, he took the gunhunter by the arm—she was as pale as the doppelganger, her eyes wild—and led her away.

∗ ∗ ∗

The badge Bors had stolen from the real Ansel Kordroun got them past the gate guards, out through the wall and into the wildlands.

It was a cold, windy night, brightly moonlit when dark and ragged clouds weren't in the way, and Ralice peered this way and that, eyes still wide.

Gelgur led her around a hill, out of sight of the guards. "What ails you?"

Ralice gave him an angry glance. "I've never set foot outside the Gunworks before. Where are you taking us?"

"Out into the Mana Wastes," Geglur told her. "It's that or be killed, with Loroan hunting us, and Irori alone knows who all else in it with him. Blasts and bombards, the Ironmaster herself could be in this!"

"Kordroun briefed me," Ralice said slowly, something strange rising into her gaze. "He told me you and the Ironmaster were once..."

"Lovers, yes," Gelgur growled. "I didn't always look this bad, lass."

"Ralice."

"Sorry, lass: Ralice. That was a long time ago. So I hear I'm owed an old debt by the Morkantuls, and have accepted as payment a medicine to cure a mysterious ailment that has hold of me—a medicine you, la—Ralice, can make me, if you can get certain herbs out in the Wastes. Which is why you've been granted leave from your kitchen duties to depart the Gunworks, and Alkenstar altogether."

Ralice gave him a wry grin. "I believe I know that tale." Her grin faded. "So I walk right out into where monsters roam and magic rages."

"Yes," Gelgur said simply. "I believe it's called 'adventure.' As opposed to staying here, which would be called 'a swift and messy death.'"

Ralice nodded, slowly, and extended a reluctant hand. "Then let us have a promises. Hear me: I will not be your bedmate."

"And I'll not do the cooking, until you teach me how not to poison us both."

The grin came back. "Done."

They shook hands, and walked on, into the night.

Gelgur knew better than to walk the Wastes without looking back often—but neither he nor Ralice ever caught sight of the lone figure skulking after them.

Which was probably a good thing. It would have been tiresome to have to kill Ansel Kordroun twice in one night.

Coming Next Week: A special sneak preview of the upcoming Pathfinder Tales novel Plague of Shadows, by Howard Andrew Jones.

As the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood is one of the most famous RPG designers of all time. In addition to his game work, with such notable setting products as the Volo's Guides, Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, and City of Splendors, he's also written more than twenty Forgotten Realms novels (many dealing with his signature character, Elminster) and ten independent novels, the most recent of which is Falconfar.

Art by Colby Stevenson.

Guns of Alkenstar

by Ed Greenwood

Chapter Five: Death, Mystery, and an Ironmaster

"Rather a lot of people seem to want us dead," Gelgur growled, as they plunged down yet another dark Gunworks stairway, the cracks and whines of gunfire finally fading behind them.

"We're outgunned, all right," Kordroun grunted, short of breath from hastening down flight after flight of stairs. "We'll have to go through the cellars—the slower way—if gunfire's going to welcome us at every door and balcony."

"The cellars," Gelgur echoed thoughtfully, as they rushed through another door in a rattle of the high shieldmarshal's keys, into utter darkness. Kordroun flung out his arms to stop his two companions, who heard him, as he panted, feeling around high up to their left.

"Why not," Gelgur suggested slowly, "abandon trying to get to the streets for now? Go down deep, instead, and take the Long Tunnels?"

A hand-lantern flared, and in its light Kordroun stared at Bors. "To talk to the Ironmaster," he said flatly, his face going grim.

Gelgur nodded. After a long moment, the high shieldmarshal nodded too.

Then they both turned to face Ralice.

Who was pale, and busily swallowing hard. "The Ironmaster," she said at last. "Well, why not? Days I spent, asking and watching, pondering and prying—and ever since the three of us have been together, it's been all running and being shot at and more running."

Gelgur gave her a mirthless grin. "We're gunmarshals, lass, not gunhunters. We shoot and confront more than we watch and think."

Ralice tried to smile, and failed. "You said it," she agreed darkly.

"Come," Kordroun commanded, aiming his lantern down a long, low-ceilinged passage. Handing them another lit lantern each, he beckoned them to follow. "It's a good long plod to Ironmaster's local chambers."

Two descending stairs and a lot of walking later, they stopped at a metal wall-box.

"Privy," the high shieldmarshal said, pointing, as he busied himself at the box, keys jingling.

Ralice frowned. "I don't—"

"Privy," Kordroun repeated sternly, giving her a glare.

Gelgur stepped between them, advancing on the gunhunter until she was forced to give way. As he backed her a good six steps, he murmured, "Whether you need a warmseat or not—and wise gunhunters never miss a chance—Kordroun needs you where you can't watch what he does at that box. He needs to extract a key to get us through a door ahead."

Ralice nodded a little wearily, and obediently went through the door Kordroun had indicated.

"Are we ever going to get to the bottom of this?" she asked, when she reappeared.

Stepping past her to take his turn, Gelgur shrugged. "I don't think we'll have to, if we plod along slowly enough. Those involved are killing each other with such enthusiasm and rapidity that they'll soon be down to a few wounded survivors."

"That's when we'll move in," the high shieldmarshal said dryly. "This way."

He unlocked a counterweighted metal-bound door with double frame-latches. The short passage beyond ended in a metal door so wide and heavy that it took all three of them to budge it—after he'd unlocked it, using two keys in unison.

It opened to reveal lanternlight, bobbing in the distance. Kordroun shuttered his lamp and hissed at Gelgur and Ralice to do the same, then hustled them a few steps toward the lanterns and down a side-passage. Unlocking a door in haste, he ushered them through it, then turned to hold it just ajar in the darkness, murmuring, "Ground your lanterns and keep hold of them. Be very quiet."

They waited for what seemed a long time before the lanterns drew near, amid the sounds of many booted feet and low mutters of conversation.

Then light swelled and a dozen-some men strode past, looking neither right nor left. Six lanterns, everyone in uniform—heavily-armed Parliamentary guards—except the richly-garbed, bearded man who strode in their midst. He never looked in their direction, but the three watchers all knew him: Drael Kammantur, High Chamberlain to the Grand Duchess of Alkenstar.

One guard turned to look back as the great door swung closed behind the party, but Kordroun had gently pushed their own door almost closed by then. He remained unmoving for seven breaths that weren't as slow as they should have been before cautiously easing it open again—onto utter darkness.

Unhooding his lantern, he rose and muttered, "Come on."

"The High Chamberlain, here in the cellars of the Gunworks? What's he doing here?" Ralice hissed, as she unhooded hers.

"Coming back from doing what we're trying to do, most likely," Gelgur told her grimly.

She looked from him to Kordroun.

And saw on two tight-lipped faces the same war between fury and despair.

∗ ∗ ∗

Kordroun opened another door—and stopped dead.

	"The Ironmaster is as beautiful as she is deadly."

There was no place to hide this time, not from all the lanterns in the room ahead, and the armed bodyguards holding them. No uniforms beyond identical dark leather jacks—and the person in their midst was the Ironmaster of Alkenstar.

She was standing over a body sprawled on the floor, that trailed fresh ribbons of blood across the smooth-worn stone underfoot.

Many guns flashed as they were drawn, as Kordroun raised his lantern so its light fell on his face, and said briskly, "High Shieldmarshal Kordroun, with two sworn agents. Ironmaster, we were coming to confer with you."

The cold-eyed, beautiful woman who wore half a dozen holstered revolvers on cross-belts down the front of her black bodice gave him the faintest of smiles, ignoring Gelgur and Ralice. "Kordroun, I may have more work for you."

She waved at the body. Kordroun advanced to look at it, pretending not to notice all the guns now trained on him.

It was Parliamentary Minister Prostor Blaklar. By the looks of him, he'd been riddled with bullets. Very recently. His face was a mask of blood, bullet holes, and frozen staring horror, his hands raised in claws to try to fend off death. Vainly.

"I fear any confidential discussion you may have hoped to have must wait," the Ironmaster added. "Show me your weapons. Slowly, of course."

Wordlessly Kordroun set down his lantern and drew out his guns, holding them between thumb and forefingers, and keeping them pointed at the floor. Watching him, Ralice followed suit. Gelgurs spread empty hands.

That earned him a prompt, ungentle search from five of Vryle Summairtar's bodyguards, as more of their fellows strode to take and present the proffered guns to the Ironmaster.

Who waved them back to their owners.

"Obviously the wrong sorts of weapons to have slain the Minister, here," she said coolly. "Leave this place, and return whence you came. I'll send for you when I've time for discussions."

"Vryle," Bors Gelgur asked then, keeping his voice as cool as hers, "can you tell us why Daerold Loroan might be entering the Gunworks at this time of night?"

The Ironmaster crooked an eyebrow, allowing mild surprise to appear on her serene face. "Trademaster Loroan? That's very curious. Did you see him enter the Gunworks?"

"We did, Ironmaster," Kordroun said stolidly. "It was the Trademaster, without a doubt. We all saw him."

"Ah," she replied lightly, sounding almost bored. "I did not."

And with that, the Seneschal of Security for the Grand Duchy of Alkenstar turned away, black-hued armor gleaming momentarily—almost mockingly—from one shapely shoulder.

"I trust you'll get to the bottom of this smuggling problem soon," she added over her shoulder. "And that when you do, you'll report promptly to me. And only to me."

Without waiting for a reply she departed through a far door, her agents clustering around her with guns still drawn, six of them watchfully facing the high shieldmarshal and his two companions as they backed away.

The door closed, leaving them alone with Blaklar's body.

Ralice looked down at it, then back up at the door the Ironmaster had vanished through. "What—?"

That was as far as she got before Kordroun clapped a hand across her mouth and Gelgur plucked at her arm to start leading her back the way they'd come.

"Hurry," was all the high shieldmarshal said, once they'd closed the door on the dead minister and started back along the passage.

Three doors and two rooms later, he asked, "This one?"

Gelgur shook his head. "The next one on was better. We can strike from both sides."

Ralice gave them both a frown, but held silent.

Then they came to the cellar room where Gelgur pointed to an alcove and then stepped into another across from it, dragging Ralice with him.

"Keep very quiet," he whispered in her ear, closing a painfully tight hand on her shoulder to reinforce his order.

"Is this because of the Ironmaster?" she dared to whisper back.

"She was as purringly calm as always," Gelgur muttered in reply, not seeing—or pretending not to see—Ralice's shiver. He drew forth one of the icewine flasks, then his knife, and held them ready. Then he and Kordroun pinched out all the lanterns.

Darkness fell like an abyss around them.

To Ralice, her own breathing seemed like a loud, panting storm, but she couldn't hear her two companions at all.

Unmeasured time passed.

Something dripped once, far off, throwing out the faintest of emphatic echoes.

Then she heard something closer. A moment of grating. The door at the far end of the room.

Another soft, brief sound—movement, but just what, Ralice couldn't identify—and then there was a sudden flurry in the darkness, a scuffle and a grunt and three heavy thuds, Gelgur vanishing from beside her.

Then silence again, that was ended by the skritch of a flint striker.

Kordroun's lantern flared, and she saw a man sprawled on the floor, face down and senseless, between Kordroun and Gelgur, who were both kneeling.

"Bring the lanterns," the old gunmarshal hissed at her.

Ralice obeyed, peering. She was sure she'd never seen the man before.

"Dead?" she asked.

"Not yet," Gelgur said grimly. "Come." He handed her back her lantern, lit again, and they hurried on, back through the Gunworks cellars.

When they reached the wall-box again, Kordroun halted them. "Well?"

"She's in on it," Gelgur replied. "That was Pelkur. One of her personal agents; a Bloodsworn."

The high shieldmarshal stared back, pale-faced. "Yes, but is she with Loroan? Or against him?"

"What I don't understand," Ralice asked, trying not to sound as small and frightened as she felt, "is if the Ironmaster is mixed up in this, why'd she gather us together to investigate? Why not forbid us—and every last gunmarshal—to pry here or ask there?"

Gelgur gave her a tired smile. "She wants scapegoats. I suspect all Alkenstar is going to learn that we three dastards are responsible for something dark. Soon."

Kordroun nodded, let out a gusty sigh, and growled, "This way. We hurry again, of course."

"Of course," Gelgur agreed sardonically.

They hurried.

∗ ∗ ∗

"These... shouldn't be here," Kordroun said grimly, crouching to avoid scraping his back on the low, arched stone ceiling of the tunnel. Seven sturdy and all-too-familiar gun crates, clearly branded with the Gunworks mark, were ranged on trundle-sledges down the greased center of the tunnel, hooked together with cables and ready to be dragged out. "Smuggling work, I think."

Ralice gave him a dubious look. "Why would they leave anything here, where someone is bound to find it?"

Gelgur looked back the way they'd come. "Trap or warning—or they just don't care who sees, because they're all in on it. Shouldn't we just get gone, and leave the back-patting and jaw-scratching for later? There are marshals everywhere—and I need a drink!"

Kordroun's presence had got them past five challenges so far, but if the Ironmaster was caught up in this somehow, a high shieldmarshal's presence wouldn't grant free passage forever.

Ralice gave Gelgur one of her glares. "Just a moment. Or two. Surely your thirst can last that much longer."

"They could be trapped," he muttered.

She sighed. "So they could. However, I'm a gunhunter. I investigate things. Dangerous or not." And she undid the latches of the nearest lid.

They all hunkered down as she slowly and gingerly, with the barrel of her revolver and listening for the clicks of springs or triggers, lifted the lid.

Nothing happened.

After a moment or two more of tense silence, Ralice rose cautiously until she could peer in.

Her face changed, and she sank down again.

"Either of you care to identify who it is?" she asked tonelessly, swallowing. "The... the head's got turned around."

Gelgur stood. The corpse in the gun-case had been dismembered—somewhere else, because the case wasn't full of blood, and long enough ago that the gore had dried—and its severed head was lying sideways-up. "Eldel," he said flatly, after one look.

"Anything underneath him?" Kordroun asked.

Gelgur looked again. "No."

The high shieldmarshal nodded and undid the latches of the next case. When he levered the lid up—using the butt of his revolver, and raising it on the side facing away from him—a faint ticking began.

Hurriedly but gently he lowered it again and sprinted after Gelgur and Ralice, who had hastily scrambled back out of the tunnel, back into the Gunworks cellar they'd entered it from.

"This way," Kordroun said grimly, rushing across it. "We'll take the other way out. Up a level, then three cellars that way—they're all linked—and out down by Oldcogs."

Nodding, Gelgur and Ralice ran with him.

∗ ∗ ∗

"They must've grown too bold and successful to care overmuch if they're discovered," Kordroun muttered, as they panted in near-darkness in front of a closed door, trying to get their breath back after a seeming eternity of running. "Where we found Eldel—that's a tunnel duty marshals check often. If I were a smuggler, I'd steer clear of it, and use this way we're taking now. No patrol would find me or what I was smuggling down here."

"Eldel was meant to be found," Gelgur reminded him. "That was a trap."

Kordroun nodded. "Yes, but if a blast damages that tunnel, shipments up to Cloudreaver will have to use this way, unless they're planning to put them on mules and take them in the open! It makes no sense to—"

Finding the right key on his ring, he unlocked the door, swung it open to reveal utter darkness, and reached confidently into the unknown.

"There's a catch, just here, to unlatch the portcullis and give us light, too, and—ah! There!"

There was a klack. Triumphantly, the high shieldmarshal stepped back.

And kept on backing, dancing involuntarily, as a harsh, clattering hail of gunfire spat out of the darkness into his face.

Coming Next Week: Revelations and decisions in the final chapter of Ed Greenwood's "Guns of Alkenstar."

As the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood is one of the most famous RPG designers of all time. In addition to his game work, with such notable setting products as the Volo's Guides, Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, and City of Splendors, he's also written more than twenty Forgotten Realms novels (many dealing with his signature character, Elminster) and ten independent novels, the most recent of which is Falconfar.

Art by Colby Stevenson.

But Wait... There's More!

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

	Illustration by Colby Stevenson

If you've been following the free weekly web fiction, then you've probably already noticed that today brings you the fourth installment of Ed Greenwood's "Guns of Alkenstar," a mystery set deep in the steaming, clanging depths of Alkenstar's legendary Gunworks. The fourth installment—but not the final one.

That's right—while web fiction stories are normally broken into no more than four parts, in this case we couldn't help ourselves. In addition to being written by master world-builder and storyteller Ed Greenwood (who you may remember as the creator of the Forgotten Realms), this story was just too big an adventure for its original run of four weeks. Rather than cut it down, we thought it best to relax our guidelines and give it room to breathe, using the extra space to continue its cascade of corruption and gun smoke in a so-far-relatively-unexplored nation.

"Guns of Alkenstar" will continue for two more episodes, reaching its conclusion two weeks from now. And lest you think that we can't possibly keep up the barrage of awesome, it's my pleasure to officially announce that this story will be followed by a sneak preview of Plague of Shadows and a new four-part story by no less than Monte Cook, one of the other masters of modern gaming. (What can I say? We aim to please.)

So check out the latest episode of Ed's Alkenstar odyssey, and as always, hit us up on the comments thread and let us know what you think!

James Sutter
Fiction Editor

Guns of Alkenstar

by Ed Greenwood

Chapter Four: Blasts and Spatterings

"Don't shoot!" a fear-filled, breathless voice squeaked from the far side of the door—which stopped moving when it was ajar about the width of Gelgur's hand. "I'm alone, and come in peace!"

Kordroun waved frantically for Ralice to crouch down. She obeyed, but still made a large, hard-to-miss bulk behind the table.

"Drop your gun—drop all your guns—and come in!" the high shieldmarshal snapped.

"Kordroun?" the voice asked, sounding almost tearful with relief.

"Drop the gun," Kordroun barked, "Now! Or I'll start firing!"

They heard the click of a hammerlock being applied, then the sharp, heavy thud of a gun landing on floorboards.

The door opened a little more, and the gun—one of the smallest, newest sorts of revolvers, blued and gleaming—was kicked a little way inside their room.

Then the door slowly swung wide, propelled by the boot of a lone man who stood with his hands raised. Empty hands.

They all knew that face, though none of them had ever before seen it so pale and sweating, the eyes so large with terror.

It was Aldegund Toablarr, Purser to the Parliament of Alkenstar.

"Help me!" the purser blurted, almost leaping into the room and whirling to slam and lock the door behind him. "Kordroun, someone's trying to kill me! I need you to hide me, and—"

His panicked rush of words died away as he saw the high shieldmarshal's gun trained on him, and the stern, set face above it.

Ralice had her gun trained, too, but Kordroun cut through her rising hiss of anger with a coldly snapped question.

"How did you find us here, Toablarr?"

Toablarr looked genuinely startled. "Uh—ah—the doors you came through, to reach this place; unlocking any of them rings a chime in the Gunworks duty guardroom... wires, I think—"

"And you were in the guardroom why?"

"Th-the duty marshal took me there, to help me track you down. He—"

Whatever else the purser had been going to say was lost forever in the loud, wet explosion that blew him apart.

∗ ∗ ∗

Everyone's ears rang, watery eyes making the wildly swinging lantern's light blaze up like so many swimming golden moons.

The blast had spattered the upper half of the purser all over the room.

Left with nothing atop them, Toablarr's legs spasmed, took two wild steps, and toppled. Their thudding landing sent a grisly wave of blood across the floor.

Ralice greeted it with helpless, racking vomiting as she backed away, slipping in gore. She passed the shattered-pumpkin ruin of Toablarr's head without noticing it.

Gelgur saw that much through a mist of blood half-blinding him. Wiping it away with an impatient hand, he ran to the still-open door, past walls dripping wetly all around him.

Kordroun was right behind, slipping and cursing.

"He was alone, I'm thinking," the high shieldmarshal growled.

Gelgur nodded in grim agreement, Toablarr's blood dripping off his chin. The passage beyond was dark and deserted—and in the distance, from the floor below, he heard the distant thunder of booted feet hurrying nearer. Duty marshals, responding to the explosion.

"That was no self-killing," he growled.

It was Kordroun's turn to nod. "He was carrying a bomb—but didn't know it. I'd swear to that."

"We need to find out who he was last with!" Ralice said excitedly. "His wife will know, or his servants..."

Her voice trailed off under the weight of two withering looks.

"The purser has never wed, and may spend his evenings in many places," Kordroun informed her coldly. "You did investigate him, did you not?"

"If I were meeting a man I wanted to trick into taking a bomb from me," Gelgur added, while the young gunhunter was still flushing crimson and working her open mouth in a silent struggle to find a reply, "I'd not be thick-skulled enough to go to his house and try to do it in front of all his servants, as witnesses. I'd invite him to my choice of meeting-places, where I could control matters. Now I'll grant that if you were trying the same thing, I'm not so sure you'd have simple wisdom enough to—"

"Enough," Ralice snapped furiously, finding words at last. "Consider me schooled, long-jawed veterans, and answer me this: What now?"

She started to pace, wagging one finger as she thought aloud. "We're getting close, or there'd be none of these shootings and killings. Toablarr was working with someone, and didn't want me—us—to find out more."

"Someone he had a falling-out with," Kordroun agreed. "Eldel's the only one of his cohorts still alive."

"Of those we know about," Gelgur pointed out. "It could be anyone else—even Parliamentary Minister Blaklar or Trademaster Loroan. Or both of them. They were public rivals, yes, but..." He waved his hands in a flourish of futility. "We just don't know enough."

"Come," Kordroun said with sudden urgency. "I don't want a dozen marshals and Irori knows who else seeing your faces. We'll take the back stair down, and then the bridge into the South Safestorage, and out of the Gunworks that way. Shield your faces as we go!"

They went.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Ugh," Ralice hissed, as they came out on a balcony and ducked their heads against the cold. The usual icy night breeze was blowing down the great river gorge; its chill would have long since driven inside others who might be out on rooftops or balconies, giving them some measure of privacy. "We're covered with... Toablarr. We're going to stink soon."

"We are," Kordroun agreed cheerfully. "Which means the sooner we get to the bottom of this, the sooner—"

Gelgur slapped the high shieldmarshal's forearm sharply for silence, flourished his other hand, still dripping, in their faces, then used it to point down into the night.

Keeping low, Kordroun and his newest gunhunter ducked around tables and benches and sped to the balcony rail, to peer down.

Only to straighten, long breaths later—time Gelgur spent vainly peering all around to try to espy anyone out on a balcony or at a window, watching them—and trade grim looks.

"Trademaster Daerold Loroan," Kordroun said in a hard voice. "Who should have no business inside the Gunworks at this time of night—and even less success at getting past the guards to get inside."

"Whereas they didn't even slow him as he strode right in, yes?" Gelgur asked, looking at their faces. That gave him his answer even before their glum nods.

"High Shieldmarshal," he said then, "I know it's not my place here to give orders, but hear me... why don't the two of us wait here while you go back down through the Gunworks and see where Loroan goes, then return to us? I'm wondering if he's dropped by to see if he—or someone he's working with—managed to silence the purser. Not that he'll admit as much, but if it seems to you that he is, it justifies us in considering him someone to follow, and lean on."

Kordroun stared at him, then gave Ralice Morkantul a long look.

"I'll do that," he said flatly. "While I'm about it, why don't the two of you ponder what little we know of who might be part of this, and how we might find out more? Oh, and have a try at working together, the two of you, without, ah, open hostility."

He left those biting words hanging in the air and vanished back through the door, leaving Gelgur and Ralice alone together for the first time.

They glared at each other long and silently, as the rising night wind blew down the great canyon of the Ustradi River, rushing endlessly past them with chilly claws in its haste to howl on into the rest of the Mana Wastes.

"Well," Bors Gelgur said at last, "we may as well see—"

His voice sharpened, rose and became louder and firmer, to continue in nigh-perfect mimicry of the high shieldmarshal. "—if the two of us can have a try at working together without, ah, open hostility."

Ralice's mouth fell open, her face twisted as if she was afflicted with sudden pain, and then she burst out laughing, great hearty roars of laughter that her large hands, hastily clapped over her mouth, did little to stifle.

After a moment, Gelgur executed a sardonic bow, which turned her laughter into helpless snorts.

Grinning at Ralice, Gelgur rose and started to pace the balcony, thrusting aside all thoughts of her, Kordroun, and the man whose lifeblood he was still drenched with, and thought instead about the living. The suspect living.

	"You'd think that someday I'd learn. You really would."

Haun Eldel, Toablarr's sole surviving crony, was clever, but no fighter. Probably not much of a swindler, either. Haughty and prissy about details, rights, and being in the right, he was more the sort of man who would work within the rules, changing laws rather than bending or breaking them. He wouldn't be hiring killers.

Unless someone else they didn't know about—which of course meant most of Alkenstar—was behind the smuggling, that meant Toablarr and his two longtime foes: Prostor Blaklar and Daerold Loroan. Either of those two would hire or coerce anyone and anything to get their own way. They went after power and coin like starving dogs, both of them... and behold, here was Loroan, turning up suddenly where he had no proper business being.

Yet did it end with Loroan? Somehow, he seemed more follower than leader to Gelgur, though any trademaster could work a swindle well enough. Was he working with Blaklar? Or someone else? Or should that be and someone else?

Bah! They had almost nothing to go on, short of catching Loroan in some quiet room without guards and breaking fingers and toes until he talked. That was how many a marshal had done things in the old days... back before every second man in Alkenstar had taken to strutting around with bodyguards, armored in friendships and "special understandings" with officials and those in Parliament.

These days, there was only one person who could break fingers and toes legally: the Ironmaster.

Gelgur's onetime superior and sometime lover.

Vryle Summairtar, the first woman to ever hold the post of Seneschal of Security for the Grand Duchy. Head of the gunhunters, faceless eyes, and special agents who stood behind the gunmarshals. Sometimes they stood there because a gunmarshal needed to be fed steel from behind.

The one person who could investigate anyone, kill anyone in the name of Alkenstar, and had to anticipate all perils to the Duchy, keeping track of all known ones, and constantly taking stock of who was up to what, why, and with whom. The guardian of Alkenstar.

The best Ironmaster Alkenstar had ever known, they rightly judged her, even when they said so with fear and loathing. A cold woman who let you learn from her only what she wanted you to. She'd changed from the calm, superb manipulator and sharp-witted diplomat Bors remembered, gone colder. These days she'd probably break any number of fingers, toes, necks, and entire households without the slightest hesitation, to find and bring down the murderers of her lover Orester Steelshrike.

"Marshal Gelgur," the large lass beside him dared to say then, with a newfound note of civility, "we are supposed to be discussing this matter of smuggling and murder. You're the veteran here on this balcony; have you any suggestions as to how we should best proceed?"

"Yes," Bors Gelgur said firmly, giving his grin sudden fangs of malice. "We're going to talk to the Ironmaster."

Ralice swallowed. "And how," she asked softly, "are we going to manage that?"

"Oh, she'll see me," Gelgur replied, watching the door Kordroun had disappeared through. "Now, will you humor me in something, gunhunter?"

Her stare held suspicion. "What?"

"Get down flat on the floor. To give anyone a much harder shot at you. Right now. Try to make it look as if you're sagging down, wounded or swooning."

She gave him a defiant look, then slowly obeyed.

"And you?" she snapped, once she was lying flat. "Are you somehow invincible?"

"I prefer the word 'expendable,'" Bors replied, his eyes on the door and his hands on a table.

When he saw the door swing open and got a glimpse of the high shieldmarshal, Gelgur went down fast, tipping the table up like a shield.

As Kordroun shouted and grabbed at his gun, two shots caromed off the tilted tabletop and whined away to crack off stonework higher up on the Gunworks walls.

"Who—?"

Muzzle-fire blossomed in half a dozen places in the surrounding night, and an enthusiastic volley spat and cracked all around the balcony.

"We can be dead," Gelgur called to Ralice, "or we can be inside! Move!"

Ralice moved.

Then the night really came alive with gunfire.

Coming Next Week: Blood and thunder in Chapter Five of Ed Greenwood's six-part novella, "Guns of Alkenstar."

As the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood is one of the most famous RPG designers of all time. In addition to his game work, with such notable setting products as the Volo's Guides, Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, and City of Splendors, he's also written more than twenty Forgotten Realms novels (many dealing with his signature character, Elminster) and ten independent novels, the most recent of which is Falconfar.

Art by Colby Stevenson.

Guns of Alkenstar

by Ed Greenwood

Chapter Three: Up From the Kitchens

Guards were shouting now. Shouts that were getting rapidly nearer.

Kordroun listened to them, then nodded as if satisfied and strode on into the steam, passing along a line of propped-open windows it was billowing from.

Gelgur tried to peer through the clouded panes into the busy, noisy rooms below. He caught distorted glimpses of gleaming pots over flames, hurrying smocked cooks, and a forest of pans and ladles and long-forks all hanging like so much laundry from overhead racks.

The High Shieldmarshal stopped abruptly, and pointed.

Gelgur stared, then went up to Kordroun's back and looked right along that pointing arm, to make very certain.

He was staring at a scullery-wench, a ruddy-faced young woman as tall and burly as a big lout of a man, with a hard face and big chin to match. By the swell of her ample bosom, she had to be female, but with that face and those large red hands...

She was dumping steaming cookwater out of a pot of just-boiled redflesh tubers, looking both bored and displeased at having to do so.

"Her?" Gelgur hissed.

Kordroun nodded, then rapped a stern finger across Gelgur's lips.

Well, this was the last bent bullet and then some, and Gelgur started to say so—whereupon the high shieldmarshal caught his latest recruit by the throat, lifted Bors clear off his feet, and rushed him back out of the steam-choked alley into the street.

Where Gelgur's furious kickings led him to set the older man down and receive the drunkard's fury, snarled right in his face. "A wench from the Gunworks kitchens?"

Kordroun sighed. "We've lost a lot of gunhunters."

Gelgur sighed. "So now it's my turn for the grave, is it?" He spat on the cobbles in disgust and turned away, shaking his head. "A kitchen lass..."

"She's more than that."

"Oh, to be sure! She's an idiot babe you're serving up to slaughter, with her eyes still afire with the excitement of being an intrepid gunhunter who knows secrets and is important and is saving all Alkenstar! I believe I've found one of the cruel murderers we're looking for—and he's standing right here beside me! Since when did high shieldmarshals recruit children? Lumbering lumps of lasses, to boot?"

Kordroun clamped a hand down on Gelgur's shoulder—the ill-healed one, of course—snatching all breath for words away in sudden agony.

Dragging him by that iron grip, the shieldmarshal marched his hissing-in-pain recruit a little way down the street and around another corner.

"Be still, unless you want to doom us all." Kordroun set a brisk pace along a darkened sideway, not relaxing his grip in the slightest. "We'll be meeting her soon, and you can hearten her with your cheerful judgments then. Until then, shut your maw!"

"Let go, or you won't have a partner for your hapless gun-lass," Gelgur managed to rasp out. "Unless she likes corpses!"

Kordroun freed Bors abruptly, halting in mid-stride to wait through Gelgur's inevitable fall to his knees, followed by groaning and rolling about clutching his shoulder, trying to master his pain.

"As I was saying," the high shieldmarshal remarked in a casual, conversational manner over the hunched and moaning old man, "she's more than just a scullery-wench. She's the last Morkantul."

Gelgur looked up blearily. "The what? Blazing bombards, Roun, what other surprises are you keeping from me, you blast-assed yelp-dog? She wouldn't happen to also be the secret bride of an Arclord of Nex, would she? Or a shapeshifted linnorm, dwelling here because she loves the reek of exploding gunpowder?"

The Morkantuls had been a foremost family of the Duchy in the long-gone days when such houses had been numerous and feuding. A Morkantul had been high minister to three grand dukes, and to this day, all Alkenstar knew one Felnadar Morkantul had been the tireless sponsor of the Great Maw of Rovagug, seeing it forged and finished despite fierce opposition from ministers wanting less metal used in just one weapon. Though still notable, the family had slowly dwindled away over time—down to this one last wench, it seemed.

"Never mind her bloodline for a moment," Kordroun snapped. "She was all I could find who might not be... tainted."

"In on the smuggling," Gelgur interpreted in a despairing whisper, and shook his head again. "A child, Roun."

Kordroun shrugged. "I... a different approach was necessary. We were using our best, our veterans—and they were failing. Our cleverest, one after another... falling in a string of traps and, ah, deft murders. All of which indicate that the slayer, or the hand directing them—presumably the head gun-smuggler—is someone highly-placed and powerful in the Duchy."

"So you went to your most raw recruit," Gelgur growled, rolling his eyes. "I hope I'm going to be mightily impressed when I meet her."

Kordroun sighed and looked away.

∗ ∗ ∗

Ralice Morkantul was even less attractive in person. Wasp-tongued and sullen, she obviously believed anyone who had even a single white or gray hair was a witless dotard. After a few sharp exchanges past Kordroun's candle-lantern, she and Gelgur faced each other with glares of mutual disgust.

	"Some people make up for homeliness with a winning personality. Not Ralice."

They were in a dusty ready-room somewhere high in the Gunworks, on a floor of deserted bunkrooms used only in times of war, when extra staff were taken on and the veterans ordered to work and sleep on the premises, in shifts. Kordroun had used seven keys on as many doors to reach it, and relocked them all behind himself, his gunhunter, and his new, eldest-in-years recruit.

Inwardly, that white-haired old man was despairing.

Ralice knew she was an orphan, and though she seemed to be good at her job—trained as an herbalist, she was a food seasoner and concoctor of "remedies" in the Gunworks kitchens—she freely admitted she was utterly bored with it.

Boredom that, as Gelgur knew well from years of police work, was on the verge of plunging into malicious, vengeful hatred of authority and those more successful and wealthy.

Right now, she was afire with her new importance as a gunhunter, and aching for all Alkenstar to know it. Word of that getting out would be her death writ, of course, though she didn't seem to want to admit that, even to herself.

And unless she was hiding some great skill from him, she was exactly what he'd feared she was: a silly youngskirts not beautiful enough for anyone to desire or molest, nor smart enough to accomplish much of anything.

Not to mention the last living Morkantul. Which meant she'd been named the city's latest gunhunter because someone wanted her dead so they could seize her family wealth and properties—shrunken greatly from earlier days, but still substantial. All hers, every house and gun and coin of it. Entailed until she was of age, of course, but that would mean nothing to an older hand reaching out to seize them.

So had Kordroun picked her? Or the Ironmaster? Or someone higher?

Gelgur was almost certain it had been Kordroun's decision to look up Bors Gelgur to guard this youngling's back; he and Roun had never liked each other much. Well, he'd damned well show up this fool of a high shieldmarshal—Kordroun as High Shieldmarshal? That alone shouted to all Golarion how far Alkenstar had fallen!—by keeping Ralice Morkantul alive.

"If it comes to be that you must follow the smugglers' trail out into the Wastes," Kordroun was muttering, his scowling brows bent low over the lantern's glow, "your tale will be that Bors Gelgur, retired shieldmarshal, is owed an old debt by the Morkantuls, and has accepted as payment a medicine to cure a mysterious ailment he's in the grip of—a medicine you, Ralice, know how to make, but only with herbs you must procure fresh, that can't be had anywhere in the Duchy. So you've been granted leave from your kitchen duties by senior Gunworks cooks to go out into the world and do this—in return for procuring herb-seeds on your journey that can be grown here in Alkenstar, and making trading contacts the Duchy can use to ensure ready new supplies of particular herbs and foodstuffs."

Gelgur rolled his eyes. "You think anyone will believe all that?"

"They will if you both set about doing it," Kordroun said sharply.

Through the last word of that rebuke, Ralice promptly spat at Gelgur, "Were you really a shieldmarshal? Did you bribe someone to get the post?"

Gelgur ignored her. "Suppose our gunhunter furnishes us with her report," he suggested to Kordroun in a flat, neutral voice. "Of what she's accomplished so far, of course."

"I've given my report to the high shieldmarshal," the youngskirts snapped across the table, her glare flaring hotter. "And thus far, you'll no doubt be pleased to know, I've learned very little. However, my investigations led to my being chased and shot at, more than once, and I managed to trace some of my pursuers back to one man: Aldegund Toablarr, Purser to the Parliament. High Shieldmarshal Kordroun and I have been discussing how to proceed, given his... high office."

Bors nodded, recalling his own handful of meetings with Toablarr. A coldly vicious man who enjoyed using his importance like a weapon, and didn't care to conceal either his own arrogance or his willingness to lash out at others. Capable he might be, but no real loss to Alkenstar if he went down.

Meaning there were plenty of other clever but malicious coldhearts where he'd come from.

Yet could Toablarr really be smuggling more than a few pieces picked up in the open markets, or stolen or privately purchased by a loyal servant or two?

After all, the offices of Ironmaster, the Lord Armorer, and High Chamberlain had all been established in opposition to each other, as watchdogs each upon the other. All three positions had been carefully filled with individuals who cordially hated each other, replaced with successors even more carefully chosen for their hatreds, to make very sure there was no collusion that would mean coins went missing, or worse abuses of power. Murder, for instance.

Yet murders there now were.

So had the unthinkable happened? Were some or all of these high officials working together?

Bors regarded Kordroun. He thought he knew his old rival well enough to read him, most of the time. Right now, for instance. Young Ralice wasn't troubling to hide anything—or didn't know how. Their faces told him clearly they'd thought the same question he'd just asked himself. And not yet found an answer.

Well enough. Time for him to start earning his pay.

"Toablarr's never been much liked in Parliament, nor by any who work with him," he offered slowly, musing aloud, "but he's always been untouchable, thanks to his three cronies."

Kordroun nodded. "They worked together very... shrewdly. But only Eldel's left now. Toablarr's advantage over his two worst rivals is gone."

"What?"

"You've been... away from high Duchy gossip just a little too long, Bors. Steelshrike and Hammerlees are dead. Murdered."

Gelgur couldn't keep his jaw from dropping.

Orester Steelshrike had been the current Ironmaster's lover. No wonder she'd given Kordroun permission to haul an old drunkard back into harness.

"Yes." Kordroun was smiling grimly at the astonishment Bors knew he wasn't managing to keep off his face. "You probably didn't know Hammerlees was one of us, either. A gunhunter, our little spyhole into the heart of the dirtiest Duchy politics."

Big, bluff Jarack Hammerlees—secretly a gunhunter? Gelgur was glad he was sitting down, and had a solid table to cling to. Godspittle and dragonspew, what else?

From across the table, Ralice Morkantul was regarding him with malicious amusement.

A key rattled in the lock of their room's lone door.

Kordroun and Gelgur sprang up and raced for the corners of the room, the shieldmarshal snatching out his revolver as Gelgur palmed one of his icewine flasks, ready to hurl.

The gunhunter was a little slower, but she had a revolver out, too, by the time the door started to open.

To the clacking accompaniment of a gun being cocked outside.

Coming Next Week: Further death and disorder in Chapter Four of Ed Greenwood's six-part novella, "Guns of Alkenstar."

As the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood is one of the most famous RPG designers of all time. In addition to his game work, with such notable setting products as the Volo's Guides, Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, and City of Splendors, he's also written more than twenty Forgotten Realms novels (many dealing with his signature character, Elminster) and ten independent novels, the most recent of which is Falconfar.

Art by Colby Stevenson.

Guns of Alkenstar

by Ed Greenwood

Chapter Two: A Shot in the Dark

The ball cracked off the stones not far from his head, spitting stone chips in all directions. Gelgur flung himself over a heap of refuse after it, skidding chin-down onto bare cobbles and flinging his arms and legs wide, getting as low as he could—and then sliding to a stop and holding himself still.

As he fought to make his breathing shallow and quiet, a second shot whanged off something discarded and metal in the refuse not far away. Then a third sang past, sailing the length of the narrow alley to smack into distant stone at its far end.

Someone had overheard the Ironmaster's orders, all right.

Someone who had a pistol, and knew how to fire it. A good workaday Gunworks sidearm, one of hundreds of nigh-identical long-barreled flintlock "roaring-maws," the older and heavier war-pistols almost every elder of Alkenstar had handled, or still owned. And which could easily hit a scrambling rat the length of an alley away, given a clear shot.

Not that matters were anywhere close to "clear" here, yet. Smoke was still swirling, as dust and the smaller, lighter particles of the blast-rain sighed down. No one would be taking clear shots at anything near here. Yet.

Gelgur kept still, trying to breathe as silently as possible. His chin hurt, and one of his elbows, but pain had been an old friend for years now, thanks to several-times-broken legs and a shoulder that refused to heal around the cluster of three balls still buried in it. Those balls were the heart of a maze of crisscrossing bullet-holes that had torn through him in a few burning breaths of agony, that had left one arm and shoulder nigh-shredded...

He'd told Kordroun the truth. He was too old to be doing this.

He had some assets, of course. The badge, two small metal flasks of icewine—one a weak and sour vintage, the other the most potent fire he'd yet tasted—and a knife with a dash-skull pommel riding in its sheath in his right boot. None of which made it anywhere near prudent to stand up and challenge—or even make much noise fleeing, no matter how fast he went—someone with a service pistol, firing down an alley too narrow to miss anyone in it for long.

It wasn't near enough to nightfall for either Gelgur or the shooter to dare wait for darkness—and the shieldmarshal patrols—to try to cloak what they did. That blast would bring someone to investigate; there were distant shouts already. Whoever was trying to kill him wouldn't have much longer to gun him down.

This time.

A door banged open somewhere ahead, and Gelgur's would-be slayer fired again, the ball cracking off the unseen door and causing a startled, profane shout.

Another door crashed open, toppling over a rusty metal rack in the narrow alley and causing a deafening clatter.

Gelgur used the din to scrabble across the bare patch and around behind a splayed heap of brown-rusted sheathing-plates, so he was facing back the way he'd come, and had some cover.

He peered out through the rusted brown tangle into the drifting smoke, seeking the shooter who wanted him dead.

Someone was in the narrow alley and moving toward him, he could see that much. An upright shape—a man, or a tall woman—in the eddying smoke and dust.

Then the unpredictable smoke rolled aside, just for an instant, and Gelgur found himself peering at a gun with its tamping-rod still down the barrel. Above it was a face he knew, glaring in his direction: High Shieldmarshal Ansel Kordroun. Looking as unruffled as if the blast that had hurled the still-settling dust had never happened.

Their eyes met. Kordroun snatched out the rod and aimed the long-barreled weapon right at Gelgur—and the smoke rolled back between them like a blinding gray shield.

Gelgur flung himself back and aside, not caring how much noise he made.

The gun roared.

Its ball splanged off the rusted plates and sang past Gelgur's ear. Kordroun started tramping nearer through the refuse, and Gelgur whispered out fierce curses as silently as he knew how.

Someone fired in his direction from the far end of the alley, where Gelgur had started from. The shot cracked off the alley wall near Kordroun, causing him to crouch down hastily.

"Gelgur?" Kordroun called, his voice sounding farther away than it should be. "Are you—?"

Gelgur kept silent, lying right where he was in the stinking refuse, very much wanting a gun.

Well, no. He'd never been all that good a shot.

Make it six or so grenades. One to toss right in Kordroun's face, and the second about three strides beyond, so that if the man survived the first blast and fled, he'd run right into the second. Yes.

That would be good, right about now. Then Bors Gelgur could forget all about foolhardy investigations, and spend the contents of his heavy new purse on icewine.

Except for the little matter of his no longer having a home, thanks to a bomb thrown by someone who was still out there and wanted him dead.

The more distant shooter was at it again, another shot ringing off something metal and causing a sudden churning din in the nearby refuse as someone—Kordroun, presumably—decided the alley was no longer healthy to inhabit, and took himself elsewhere, fast.

Not past Gelgur, though the din had ended. Which meant the man had climbed one of the alley walls or opened a door.

Hmm. Climbing wasn't something high shieldmarshals were known for, but opening doors closed to others, now...

From a distance, starting right outside what had been Gelgur's front—and only—door not all that long ago, came the unmistakable sounds of someone wading cautiously through the alley refuse, heading closer.

Gelgur stayed where he was, not knowing what else to do. He was still lying sprawled, feigning death or insensibility, when the someone he'd been hearing stepped cautiously out of the thinning smoke with a drawn gun in hand—a marshal's revolver, one of the smaller, newer ones—and came over to him.

"Gelgur?"

It was Kordroun—a wild-haired Kordroun, with blast-blackening all over his face and the soot and grit of a Gunworks street coating his armor and breeches. No pristine looks, no long-barreled commoner's weapon in hand or belt, and his armor scarred from a good bounce or two on hard cobbles. A Kordroun who'd been caught in the edges of the blast that had almost caught Gelgur.

He was wearing a worried frown as he bent down, reaching out...

Were there two Kordrouns? Did the man have a double Gelgur had never known about, or was someone impersonating him?

This was Ansel Kordroun, all right, right down to the faint reek of his sweat. If Gelgur hadn't seen the face of the man shooting at him...

Yet if Kordroun wanted him dead, why wasn't he emptying his revolver into Gelgur's face right now?

Blasts and bombards, wouldn't it have been easier to just do the shooting back in the room? No one would have cared, after all. Any investigating gunmarshal—if one even bothered—would never suspect a shieldmarshal.

Besides, there'd been the distinct sound of his window breaking, just before the blast—and Kordroun had been with him, not outside the wall with the window, in the right place to hurl a bomb.

Wouldn't it have been easier for the high shieldmarshal to bring a bomb into Gelgur's room, perhaps tucked into the purse, and then depart in a hurry? Or at least run and get himself well away, to let the bomb pulp one man rather than two?

"I'm alive," Gelgur said roughly. "Was that you, shooting at me?"

Kordroun's frown sharpened.

	"If Kordroun's an assassin, then somebody went through a lot of effort to kill a decommissioned old drunk."

"No. I shot at whoever was trying to kill you. I don't think I hit him, but he got a door open fast after my second shot—I don't know how, seeing as it has no handle on our side, just a heavy plate. I don't think he wanted to get caught between us."

He was still reaching down a hand to haul Gelgur up. Trying not to hesitate, Gelgur took it. "You know it was a he?"

Kordroun frowned. "No, I didn't see him well enough. I just..." He shrugged.

Gelgur nodded. Marshals of Alkenstar had to assume a lot of things, and sooner or later, doing so became a habit. "What now? Got any icewine?"

Kordroun's frown became a scowl. "No," he said shortly.

Fresh shouts arose at the far end of the alley. The high shieldmarshal jerked his head in their direction. "Let's be gone from here before marshals come crowding around. I'd rather we weren't..."

Gelgur gave him a smile as bitter as he felt. "Seen together?"

"Let's go," Kordroun snapped, grabbing at Gelgur's arm.

Gelgur let himself be hastened away. Behind them rose the din of several men hurrying down the alley toward them.

Kordroun started to really hurry, and it took all Bors's breath just to keep up.

Along a street, down another alley, through a door, along a passage and through another door, into darkness. Then up a dank stair by feel, through another door, and along one of the many enclosed flying bridges that joined building to building above the settlement's streets. Then down again and along several darkened hallways, in a building that echoed with emptiness and the faint scuttling of rats.

"Where're we—?" he panted, as Kordroun stopped so suddenly in front of a half-seen door that Gelgur blundered into him.

The shieldmarshal turned and muttered into Gelgur's ear, "Gunhunter."

The door opened into more darkness, but anyone familiar with the Gunworks could tell by the sound their boots made as they strode along the passage beyond that it was another enclosed bridge, taking them over another street into yet another building.

One that stank of recent paint, hot oil, and forgework. They descended an enclosed stair, and at every step the crashes and clangs of nearby work grew louder. Sounds that were punctuated at regular intervals with deep, ponderous impacts that were more felt than heard. The stamping mill.

They went through a door at the bottom of the stair, past two guards who snapped to attention as Kordroun stepped between them, and out into a dark alley roofed in squealing, oil-dripping, gigantic toothed cogs, where they were met by the full, familiar, nigh-deafening noise of steady forgehammer crashings, overlaid with irregular metallic clatterings as things were dropped or raked out in haste for sorting or cooling. Gelgur knew immediately where they were, just as anyone living near the Gunworks would: the "metals in" rooms.

The cobbles underfoot were slick with oil from the cogs turning endlessly overhead. Sparing them not a glance, Kordroun led Gelgur to the left, out into a wider street whose roof was a maze of pipes and enclosed bridges thrusting out of the Works walls to run at various angles into the walls of buildings across the street. That was the seldom-seen, ever-changing rear of the main factory, where assembled weapons were oiled, fitted with grips, and "finished"—a building that sprouted new steampipes and drive-chains every month.

They turned another corner, leaving some of the din behind, and on their right was an alleyway spilling out light and steam. The billowing curls held pleasant cooking odors and a whiff of scorched pans and burnt food.

The Gunworks kitchens?

As they went closer, a shot rang out from somewhere above and behind them, spinning Kordroun around and spilling him into a cursing heap at Gelgur's feet.

Gelgur flung himself down and clawed at the high shieldmarshal, trying to drag him against the wall, but Kordroun kicked free, his revolver out as he peered up into the darkness.

When the second shot came, he fired back instantly—and nodded in grim satisfaction at the shrill, high scream that followed, a despairing wail that ended in a grisly crunching. The cogs started squealing more loudly, and blood pattered down to the cobbles.

As the cogs returned to their usual clatterings, Kordroun staggered to his feet, shaking off Gelgur's helping hands.

"I'll live," he snapped. "Armor caught it. Come. Before another gunman tries his luck."

He stepped into the alley that held the light and curling steam of the kitchens, and Gelgur followed.

The next shot out of the darkness found only empty cobbles.

Coming Next Week: Introductions and incredulity in Chapter Three of Ed Greenwood's "Guns of Alkenstar."

As the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood is one of the most famous RPG designers of all time. In addition to his game work, with such notable setting products as the Volo's Guides, Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, and City of Splendors, he's also written more than twenty Forgotten Realms novels (many dealing with his signature character, Elminster) and ten independent novels, the most recent of which is Falconfar.

Art by Colby Stevenson.

Guns of Alkenstar

by Ed Greenwood

Chapter One: Too Old To Be Running Down Alleys

"I thought you'd be eager," Kordroun said coldly. "You were more than a good shieldmarshal, once. You were one of the best."

Bors Gelgur nodded, took another long, sweet quaff of ice wine, and went on gazing at the cracked, soot-caked wall. "Once."

"So you don't care what happens to Alkenstar?"

The retired shieldmarshal looked up with obvious reluctance. He was drunk, but not nearly as gone as Kordroun had often seen him in recent days.

"Does Alkenstar care what happens to me?"

"Yes, as it happens," Kordroun snapped, striding impatiently across the drunkard's squalid room—it only took two steps—and then back again. "We need you."

"I retired."

Kordroun nodded. "To sit here," he observed flatly, "waiting to die."

Gelgur shrugged and took another sip from his flagon. Seemingly surprised to discover that he'd emptied it by doing so, he peered into its depths, as if to see if it held some secret compartment.

Kordroun waited, while a fresh bank of the ever-present Gunworks smoke drifted through the open window and curled around them, but although the usual muted clanging could be heard from inside the foundries, inside the room silence stretched.

Gelgur wasn't going to rise to that goad. Time to try another.

"If the walking dead of all Geb flood through Alkenstar, there'll be no more of that wine you're so fond of."

"And likely no more Bors Gelgur to drink it," the old man growled back. "So? How will my putting on my badge again stop an army?"

Kordroun went to the window and tried to force it closed. The rusty metal frame squealed in protest.

"Leave it," Gelgur snapped.

Kordroun kept on shoving. With a long shriek of protest, the window closed. "We mustn't be overheard."

Gelgur rolled his eyes. "By half the spies of Golarion listening at my window, when we're four flights up? I think not."

High Shieldmarshal Ansel Kordroun prowled toward the old man like a hungry wolf, head lowered between his shoulders as he snarled, "Gelgur, it won't be your window much longer if you don't find some coin! You owe more than you can ever repay, no one will lend you more, and you're down to your last—" He waved at the shelf above the bed, and the forlorn little net that hung there. "—two onions and half a roundloaf. And as I can only see empty bottles under the bed, you're probably about out of your precious ice wine, too."

"Get out," Gelgur said dully, looking at the nearest wall.

"How would you like three years of a shieldmarshal's pay? All at once, in your hands?"

"Get ou—who is going to approve handing anyone that much?"

"The Ironmaster," Kordroun breathed in Gelgur's ear, shaking a heavy, clinking purse and setting it on the old drunkard's shoulder, so he could feel its weight. "If you undertake this for Alkenstar. Plus a good heavy purse—this one—to cover expenses, as you work."

He left the coins draped over Gelgur's shoulder as he went back to the door and leaned against the wall beside it, arms crossed.

The retired shieldmarshal went on staring at nothing as the clanging and hammering of the Gunworks went on outside the closed window, but Kordroun noticed those old and hairy-backed hands—still strong, by the look of them—starting to tremble.

"I'm... my legs, the old wounds... my shoulder, blast it... Roun, I'm too old to be running down alleys and climbing walls to fight young murderers—or the ghouls of Geb, for that matter!"

"You won't have to. You'll be working with a young, strong, fast gunhunter. Who needs your wits and your experience—and will obey you."

Gelgur gave Kordroun a long, expressionless look.

Kordoun knew that the old man had never liked gunhunters—most shieldmarshals didn't—but by his own admission, had more than once found them useful.

"Let's go see this gunhunter," Gelgur said flatly.

Kordroun held up a quelling hand. "After I tell you what this is all about."

The old man let out a long sigh, waved an arm, promptly winced and clutched at that shoulder, and growled, "Someone's smuggling a lot of guns and powder out of the country and into Geb, right?"

Kordroun stared, mouth almost falling open before his eyes narrowed. "You know?"

"I'm a bumbling old drunk, Roun," Gelgur replied testily, "not an idiot."

He flung the empty flagon in the direction of his bed and watched it clang off the wall. "What else could it be? What else does Alkenstar have that wider Golarion wants? Out by means of mercenaries, to Nex or Geb, and it's Geb you've been mentioning, so..."

Kordroun went on staring hard for a long and silent time, but Gelgur just rested his grizzled chin in his hand and stared back, uncowed. Growing a sour smile.

Eventually Kordroun sighed and shoved off from the wall to stride across the room again. "You have it right. Someone's smuggling guns and powder out into Geb, and has been doing so for a long time. A lot of guns and powder."

"So you come to me. Old brokenwing Gelgur, friendless and unfriendly, who's busy drinking himself to death."

The old man got up from his stool to stare up at Kordroun. "Don't you trust your fellow shieldmarshals, and the Ironmaster's best gunhunters? Or are you running out of both?"

Kordroun nodded curtly. "I ran out of trust a long while ago. And yes, we're losing gunhunters."

∗ ∗ ∗

A gunhunter was an investigative agent of Alkenstar—a spy for the Ironmaster, Seneschal of Security for the Grand Duchy—usually sent out into the wider world to be the eyes and ears of Alkenstar. On rare occasions they worked inside the Duchy, but shieldmarshals who learned of such deployments tended to be furious and fearful, for it could only mean one of their own was under suspicion.

Shieldmarshals were the senior gunmarshal officers responsible for policing the Duchy and internal discipline among the gunmarshals they commanded, and tended to be hard, shrewd, and capable. So gunhunters were usually all of those things—and bold, ruthless, and far-thinking to boot.

Kordroun did not have to tell Gelgur that someone highly placed and powerful in Alkenstar must be behind the smuggling. If gunhunters were being murdered and news of that wasn't all over the Duchy already—and it wasn't; one thing old and idle drunkards had more than enough time to do was follow the free amusement of daily street gossip in the outer yards of the Gunworks, most of it born of alley whispers in the city of Alkenstar that seemed to fly upriver faster than the swiftest message-birds—the killers were good. Very good.

The gunhunters would have been sent forth to try to find and follow the trail of stolen weaponry back to the Duchy, while Kordroun and any other shieldmarshals assigned to this did their prying in the city of Alkenstar, and from there back here to the alleys and slums of the warehouses and firing-yards surrounding the Gunworks, where maimed old foundry workers and retired shieldmarshals like Gelgur lived out their last days...

"What've you managed to find out?"

Shieldmaster Kordroun shrugged. "Nothing. Our investigators have all disappeared before they could report anything back."

"I see." Gelgur dragged the fat, clinking purse from his shoulder and hefted it. "Nice to know my life is worth this much." His sarcasm was as open as it was heavy, but Kordroun didn't bother to wince.

"Three years' pay—"

Gelgur cut him off. "If I live to collect it, which sounds less than likely."

The old man dropped the purse inside the front of his stained jerkin, heedless of the obvious bulge it made just above his belt, fetched out some well-worn boots from under the bed, and stamped them onto his feet. "So where is it all? My shiny new badge, the sword and the cloak?"

"I can get you an old blade and a forgeworker's weathercloak, not shieldmarshal's gear. No badge, Bors. You'll be working... unofficially."

	"A shieldmarshal's badge can open doors all over Alkenstar—sometimes with a bang."

Gelgur regarded Kordroun without any expression at all, for long enough to scratch his ill-healed shoulder thoroughly, then nodded.

"So I am. The Ironmaster know you came here?"

"The Ironmaster sent me," the shieldmarshal said shortly.

"Who else knows?"

Kordroun shrugged. "Your recruitment was discussed, but I doubt many of my fellow shieldmarshals thought the Ironmaster would agree to it. No one was standing handy to overhear her orders to me."

"Do you think you're being watched?"

"Not that I've noticed, and I've been looking, but..." Kordroun shrugged again.

Gelgur nodded. In crowded Alkenstar, just as here in the smoke-eddying stone labyrinth of streets around the Gunworks, with balconies and flying bridges everywhere overhead and the ever-present forge-din and noise of boots on cobbles, prying eyes could be anywhere, missed by even the wariest shieldmarshal.

And beneath every eye could be a loaded, ready gun.

Of course Kordroun was being watched.

Which meant...

"Get out. Now. I'll be right behind you." Gelgur slapped at his visitor, pawing the taller, younger man into turning around and moving for the door, almost bludgeoning him with a whirlwind of clutches and slaps and pushes. "Meet me on the roof of the Old Pump at moonrise. Bring the sword and the cloak and enough wind to tell me all you know. And be ready to take me to see this gunhunter of yours."

"I—she—"

"You can tell me the Ironmaster's secret orders then," Gelgur snarled, shoving the shieldmarshal at the door. Let the man in good back-and-breast service armor take the first bullet. "Move!"

"But why the sudden haste—"

"I have fits that come on, and I feel penned in! Can't breathe, look you! Must walk, must get striding along, must—"

It sounded like babbled nonsense even to the old man spewing it, but it got Kordroun out the door and into the squalid alley beyond in a stumbling hurry, allowing Gelgur time to give the shieldmarshal a good shove in the back to propel him one way, while he scrambled down a narrow, smoke-spewing side-cleft.

He heard the crash of his window shattering before he'd run seven panting strides, breathless in his fumbling urgency to clamber over old rotten barrel-staves and the long-discarded rusting skeletons of old forgework.

At the sound, he left off hurrying and plastered himself against one rough, slimy alley wall.

The blast came a moment later, smiting his ears like heavy fists.

The shriek of rending metal was like a tortured woman's scream. That would be his stout metal door becoming a flesh-shredding cloud of whirling metal plates and shards, and starting to hurtle full-tilt down the alley he'd sent Kordroun along.

Gelgur felt himself slammed against the wall, or the trembling wall slamming him. His teeth rattled and there was bruising pain as the cobbles under his boots heaved and then sank down again, and the din set his ears to ringing, and then thankful numbness, so the screams and shouts that rose all around were Sarenrae-blessedly faint. But his hasty embrace of the stone wall had saved him from real harm—masterful mighty hero that he was.

Feeling ill—running fast and hard was never wise, with too much wine aboard—Gelgur peered vainly back behind him.

He could see only roiling smoke. Small shards of stone—and his bed and stool and pitifully few belongings, no doubt—were starting to come down now, in a spattering rain like the last sigh of a winter hailstorm.

This, here in his cleft, was only a side-waft. He hoped the shieldmarshal had found sense enough to get himself far from Gelgur's room, and then been wise enough to fling himself flat rather than whirling to stare back.

It was doubtful, but then the man had seen sense enough to come seeking Bors Gelgur when Alkenstar needed trouble clawed out of its own innards.

Or no... the Ironmaster had been wise enough. Kordroun had come unwillingly, under orders. Her orders.

Which meant that the bomb meant to slay him and Kordroun had come from someone who'd overheard those orders. A shieldmarshal or a gunhunter or someone else of high enough rank to be skulking around the Ironmaster's citadel beneath the city of Alkenstar, that handful of hidden rooms citizens called Irondoors or more formally the Vault of Secrets, where the gunhunters trained and dwelt and took their orders.

He was up against the authority of Alkenstar, all right.

Gelgur put a hand over his mouth and nose to keep out blast-dust, leaned back against the reassuringly steadfast stone wall, and drew in a deep breath.

It might be the last moment of leisure he got for a long time.

With his other hand, he felt in the front of his jerkin for the small, useful thing he'd filched from Kordroun just before the blast.

Finding it, he slid it by feel down past the purse, into the little slit-pouch on the inside of his belt. He wasn't stupid enough to pull it out where it could be seen, even here amid all the drifting dust and smoke.

Thin, slightly curved, and—he ran his thumb over them, feeling them clearly—embossed with a divided shield adorned with the crossed flinthammer longrifles.

A shieldmarshal's badge.

The authority of Alkenstar, that gave him the right to enter and search, to give orders, to arrest and detain.

Was Kordroun still alive enough to miss it?

About then, the first shot came at him out of the smoke.

Coming Next Week: Friends, foes, and the hazy distinctions between the two in Chapter Two of Ed Greenwood's "Guns of Alkenstar."

As the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood is one of the most famous RPG designers of all time. In addition to his game work, with such notable setting products as the Volo's Guides, Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, and City of Splendors, he's also written more than twenty Forgotten Realms novels (many dealing with his signature character, Elminster) and ten independent novels, the most recent of which is Falconfar.

Art by Colby Stevenson.

Lord of Penance

by Richard Lee Byers

Chapter Four: Under Siege

For a moment, nothing made sense. Then Sefu realized that he and Leyli were lying twitching and entangled on the floor. She looked sunburned in spots and patches, and bits of her robe were smoking.

His spastic, helpless shuddering subsided, and to his relief, hers did too. "Are you all right?" he croaked.

"I think so."

"Stay down." Following his own advice, still shaking a little, he looked around for Olhas. The gillman was drawing himself to his hands and knees. Behind him, the window frame was gone, and little flames danced around the splintered hole where it had been. There was a similar hole in the ceiling.

"Lightning bolt," Olhas groaned.

"I know," Sefu said. He'd seen the effects of such spells during naval combat, when mages tried to blast each another's ships to pieces.

Plainly, Domitian and his followers had somehow tracked Leyli, Olhas, and him to the tenement. Spotting his quarries through the window, the rakshasa had hurled the thunderbolt. Fortunately, since he was on the ground and the flop was on the third story, the angle was bad. The lightning hadn't hit any of its targets squarely.

"Can Domitian throw another one?" Sefu asked.

Olhas shook his head. "I don't know."

Sefu turned back to Leyli. "How many ruffians does Domitian have working for him altogether?"

"Maybe a dozen?"

"We shouldn't stay here," Olhas said. "That door won't keep anybody out for more than a moment."

"I know," Sefu said. "Give us some cover."

Olhas faced the remains of the window and rattled off a rhyme. On the final syllable, he flicked his fingers like he was flinging drops of water. Thick gray fog puffed into existence in the center of the space.

"Now, up there." Sefu pointed at the hole in the ceiling.

Olhas flashed a grin. "Right." He jumped, caught hold of the ragged edges, and hauled himself up. Sefu lifted Leyli up to his friend, then jumped and clambered through the hole himself.

At the moment, this flop was unoccupied. Good—they had enough to worry about without a terrified tenant demanding explanations.

"They'll know where we went," Leyli said.

"But they'll need a moment to think about it," Olhas replied, "and during that moment, they'll be vulnerable. Step back from the hole."

Sefu hurried to the door and pressed his ear against it. On the other side, rushing footsteps thudded on the stairs, and then something crashed. Someone had kicked in the door to the room below.

Behind Sefu, Olhas whispered. After all the battles in which they'd stood together, Sefu understood what the gillman had in mind. At the moment their foes gathered underneath the hole and peered up, he'd step up to the edge and drop an attack spell on their heads. It would work if his timing was good.

Meanwhile, Sefu drew his sword, eased open the door, and stalked down the stairs toward the third floor landing. When the screaming started, he broke into a run, bounding down the remaining risers three at a time.

He burst back into the flat he and Olhas had rented to see that Domitian hadn't ascended the stairs himself, nor had he sent every ruffian at his command. The first wave consisted of five half-orcs. One was on his knees shrieking with his hands clapped over his eyes. A second was rolling on the floor in an effort to extinguish the yellow flames leaping up from his clothing.

That left Sefu to contend with the other three. The first one was easy enough. He was still turning around when the Wave Rider dropped him with a cut to the head.

But Sefu wasn't fast enough to kill the others before they came on guard, and as they did, he recognized Red Eyes and the Runt. Maybe they'd volunteered to break into the flop because they wanted to finish what they'd started on the Avenue of the Hopeful.

"Come on, then," Sefu said, retreating toward the landing. If he made it out the door, the half-orcs would have to come at him one at a time.

But they didn't let him get that far. They bellowed and rushed him.

The deceptive, evasive footwork, alternately gliding and explosive, that was a mainstay of many a swordsman's game and had served Sefu well in the Irorium was impossible here. The flop was too cramped. Fortunately, he'd learned a less elegant but still effective style of fighting on the decks of pirate ships, squashed in among dozens of other frenzied combatants with scarcely room to shift an inch. He parried Red Eyes's head cut with his blade and, not caring if he cut himself, grabbed the Runt's scimitar just as the latter was starting his attack. He snap-kicked Red Eyes in the knee, and the larger half-orc stumbled backward.

The Runt pulled on the scimitar. Sefu had to let go, otherwise the edge would have sliced his fingers to the bone or severed them entirely. But he cut while the ruffian was still yanking his weapon backward. The broadsword sheared into the Runt's chest. The half-orc's knees buckled, and he collapsed.

By then, Red Eyes was limping forward again. Sefu met him with a feint to the flank that drew a sweeping parry, then slashed his throat. The half-orc fell backward.

That should have been the end of it. But amazingly, the ruffian who'd been rolling on the floor had succeeded in putting himself out, and he was still game. He rushed Sefu with an axe raised high. Sefu half-severed the half-orc's weapon hand with a stop cut to the wrist, then braced himself to keep his foe from knocking him over when they slammed together. He succeeded in bulling the tough backward instead, and dropped him with a cut to the flank.

Making sure they were all really dead or incapacitated, Sefu took another look at the half-orcs. Then, blood dripping from his off hand, he strode back out onto the landing. Nobody else was coming up the stairs, not yet, but after a moment, Olhas and Leyli hurried down.

"Your hand!" his sister said.

"It's nothing." Sefu looked at Olhas. "That was a good start. But there are still only two doors in or out of this building, and you know Domitian's watching them both."

"So what do you think?" Olhas asked.

"Take the fight to them. Before they realize the lightning bolt didn't do any serious harm to either one of us, and that we killed the first troupe of clowns they sent in after us."

Sefu grinned. "We're still outnumbered and have no idea what other tricks the rakshasa can play. But those petty quibbles aside, I like it."

"Let's go, then."

"Wait." Leyli scurried into the flop and returned with a dirk, no doubt pilfered from one of the fallen half-orcs. "I know I don't know how to fight," she said, "but just in case I have to."

"Just try to stay away from them," Sefu said. He led his companions down the stairs.

He half expected more foes to intercept them before they reached the ground floor, but nobody did. "Front door or back?" he asked.

"They may be expecting the back," Olhas said, sliding a scroll from his sleeve.

"The front it is, then. Start reading, and I'll yank it open."

When he did, no one was in view. But when Olhas recited the final syllable of the trigger phrase, the two half-orcs who'd been pressed against the exterior wall to ambush whoever stepped through both flopped to the ground, overtaken by magical slumber. Sefu stabbed one of them in the chest as he rushed outside.

A voice bellowed, "They're here!" The call almost covered the clack of a crossbow, but not quite. Sefu threw himself to the ground, and the quarrel whizzed over his head.

He cast about, spotted the half-orc who'd shot at him, scrambled up, and charged. Realizing he couldn't cock and reload in time, the ruffian drew his sword. Sefu beat it out of line and cut to the chest. The half-orc dropped.

Sefu looked for the tough who'd shouted, and found him just as Olhas's darts of green light plunged into his torso. The half-orc fell, and he was the last foe in sight. Sefu wondered if he and his companions might actually be able to get away without any more fighting, and then, summoned by their comrade's cries, more enforcers ran around the corner of the building.

Sefu saw with a pang of dismay that there were at least half a dozen. Leyli's estimate had been low.

Despite the magic he'd already expended, Olhas proved to have enough left for at least one more potent attack. A red spark flew past Sefu into the midst of the half-orcs. There it boomed into a burst of flame that tore one of the men apart and flung two more through the air with their forms ablaze.

The rest faltered, and unwilling to let them recover their nerve, Sefu went for them. As he moved, he felt a sort of tingling rawness in the air around him, and caught a smell like the advent of a storm.

	"In Domitian's case, two heads just means twice as ugly."

He leaped to the side. Another lightning bolt blazed past him while he was still in the air. Standing with his arm outstretched at the thunderbolt's point of origin, Domitian popped into view, the charm of invisibility that had hidden him until this moment dissipating with the force of his attack.

Sefu slammed down onto the ground. Hot pain burned his skin, and his muscles jumped and clenched. Refusing to let that stop him, he floundered to his feet.

"Get Domitian!" Olhas called. "I'll handle the others!" He chanted words of power at the top of his lungs, drawing the half-orcs' attention, making sure they understood he was about to cast a spell.

Sefu lunged for the rakshasa.

He half expected Domitian to throw a third lightning bolt, but perhaps that magic needed a moment to renew itself, or maybe the rakshasa had simply lost faith in his ability to kill this particular foe with magic. For instead, he lifted his scimitar into a high guard and dropped his mask of humanity.

With its bared fangs and four glaring, slit-pupiled eyes, Domitian's true form was even more hideous than Sefu had imagined. But if the rakshasa expected the sight of it to make him falter, he was doomed to disappointment. It only made Sefu angrier.

He sensed Domitian's mind trying to pierce and twist his own, but that didn't work either, not anymore. It never had, really, and now it was just an annoyance, like a buzzing fly.

Sefu plunged across the distance and cut at the cat head on the left. The broadsword rang and rebounded from an invisible shield. Domitian's curved blade whirled at the Wave Rider's midsection. Still in the lunge, Sefu parried, then cut at the rakshasa's groin. Again, an unseen something interposed itself between the sword and its target.

Sefu gave a snarling cry, more expressive of determination than frustration. He recognized this magic as something Olhas sometimes used. And so Sefu understood that the conjured defense wasn't impregnable. It could be penetrated just like the guard of a common warrior.

Recovering forward, he feinted high, then low, then slashed at the cat face on the right. This time, the shield failed to jump in the way.

Unfortunately, it didn't have to. A stroke with all Sefu's strength behind it, a blow that should have sheared through bone to cleave the brain inside, merely sliced a shallow gash on Domitian's low, broad brow and skipped aside.

Domitian riposted with a chest cut. Sefu just managed to parry, then slashed at the rakshasa's extended sword arm. The broadsword tore the creature's sleeve but glanced off the skin beneath without leaving any mark at all.

Domitian laughed, his mirth ghastly in the high, inhuman voices of the cat heads. Then, perhaps deciding that he'd now taken Sefu's measure, he came on the offensive.

Though competent, Domitian wasn't as able a swordsman as his foe. But with his invisible floating shield and his innate resistance to harm, he didn't need to be. Screeching and spitting, contemptuous of anything Sefu did to try to stop him, he attacked relentlessly.

Sefu had to retreat one step, then two, then another, while rage burned hotter and hotter inside him. He would not let this loathsome creature win. But he also had no idea how to prevent it.

The scimitar flashed at his lower leg. Sefu jumped back, but a hair too slowly. He felt a sort of thump and fell on his side.

Domitian yowled and raised his blade to deliver the killing stroke—and went rigid instead. As Sefu scrambled to his knees and jerked his sword into some semblance of a guard, he saw Leyli behind the rakshasa, and the hilt of her dirk protruding from the creature's shoulder. Though it had by no means delivered a deathblow, the knife had penetrated the thing's hide.

Sefu's mind raced. Sailors' tales were full of mythical monsters that could only be killed in certain ways, or by specific types of weapons. Despite his own strength and a career soldier's barrage of pricey charms, his broadsword had done nothing—yet Leyli's dirk had bit through.

Well, if the edge of his blade couldn't slay a rakshasa, maybe the point could do the job.

Domitian whirled toward Leyli. She was too close for him to use the scimitar, so he raked at her throat with the talons of his off hand. She flung herself backward. The claws missed with barely an inch to spare.

"Get away!" Sefu gasped. "I can take him!" He heaved himself to his feet.

He discovered at once that his wounded leg didn't want to bear its fair share of his weight. He was going to limp.

He was also going to be using his heavy blade in a manner for which it was ill designed. A broadsword was a cutting weapon. Many warriors never used the point at all, except to administer the mercy stroke to a fallen, helpless foe.

But to hell with all of that. He now knew how to kill his adversary, and that was the only thing that mattered.

Trying to look like he could barely stand, Sefu exaggerated his hobble. Domitian took the bait and cut. Sefu parried; the blades clanged together, and the jolt shivered up his arm. He feinted low, then extended and exploded into a lunge.

The tip of the broadsword pierced Domitian's chest, at the spot where a human carried his heart—and, if the gods were kind, a rakshasa did, too. Then something clipped the underside of the blade; it was the rim of the invisible shield, which was jerking upward in an effort to knock the sword away. Pain stabbed up Sefu's lead leg—the wounded one—as his foot came down on the ground, and he toppled sideways.

But neither Domitian's attempt at defense nor the loss of balance mattered, because the broadsword drove deep. Once Sefu finished falling and lifted his head to look, he saw the rakshasa sprawled motionless with the blade sticking up out of him and swaying slightly from side to side.

That meant it was safe to look around the rest of the battlefield. Just visible in the dark, a half-orc was running away down an alley. The other ruffians lay dead or incapacitated with Olhas standing in the center of them. Sorcery alone hadn't been enough by the end. The gillman held his own bloody sword in his hand.

"Are you all right?" Olhas called.

Sefu inspected his leg and clamped a hand over the gash. Leyli came scurrying to help him, tearing a bandage from her robe. "I need a healer," he gritted, feeling the gnawing pain in a way he hadn't before, "but I'll live. What about you?"

"Fine." The gillman grinned. "No thanks to you. You did notice that there at the end, I was heroically fighting twenty foes while you diddled around with one."

Sefu snorted. "'Twenty?' I suspect it'll be a hundred, the next time you tell the tale. Why don't you make yourself really useful and go hire a litter? Or at least borrow a wheelbarrow."

"A wheelbarrow?" Olhas laughed. "Who do you think you are, the Primarch?" Positioning himself beneath one of Sefu's shoulders, he directed Leyli to take the other, and together they lifted Sefu until he was standing precariously on his good leg.

"Come on, soldier," Olhas said, "let's get out of here before anyone starts asking questions."

Together, the three of them limped down the road, and off into the night.

Coming Next Week: A long-awaited sample chapter from Winter Witch.

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson

Lord of Penance

by Richard Lee Byers

Chapter Three: The Temple By Night

The waning moon had passed its zenith and was slipping westward, and although a city like Absalom never entirely slept, only a few scattered lights glowed amid the darkness, while the perpetual background drone had subsided to the faintest of hums.

Olhas peered down the silent street that led to Domitian's manor, rolled tension out of his shoulders, and said, "Ready?"

"If you are." Sefu hesitated. "You know, you don't have to do this."

Olhas raised his eyebrows. "Are you planning to work the magic yourself? That should be interesting."

"I mean, maybe I can bring her out just by being stealthy."

"And then what? Look, I understand all the ways this can go wrong. We could get killed breaking in or end up with the Graycloaks hunting us afterward. But if we stick together, we should be all right."

"All right, then. I owe you."

The gillman grinned. "You certainly do." He pulled up the black scarf around his neck to mask the lower half of his face. The rest of his clothing was just as dark and thus well suited to housebreaking.

Sefu tied on his own improvised mask. Then he and Olhas crept down the street toward Domitian's manor.

Olhas raised his hand for a halt, drew a vellum scroll from his sleeve, and unrolled it. Like the Wave Riders' somber clothing, the parchment repository of magic was something they'd purchased specifically for this enterprise. Though Olhas was a competent sorcerer, his innate power had its limits, and he wanted to conserve it to cleanse Leyli of Domitian's influence.

Eyes that could see deep underwater could also make out a trigger phrase even in the gloom, and Olhas read it in a whisper. The ink made a tiny crackling sound as the magic bound in the words discharged, and the writing crumbled into powder.

Meanwhile, Sefu peered at the window under the gable. He couldn't see the lookout at all, let alone discern whether or not the half-orc had succumbed to the spell. "Is he asleep?" he asked.

Olhas rerolled the scroll and slipped it back into his sleeve. "I guess we'll find out."

They sprinted toward the wrought-iron gate. Sefu didn't hear anyone shouting an alarm, and when they climbed over into the courtyard, it took them out of the lookout's field of vision. He hoped that when the half-orc woke, he'd imagine he'd simply drifted off naturally.

Keeping low, the Wave Riders crept on to the front door. Olhas squatted and whispered into the keyhole. The lock clicked, and the door swung ajar.

Sefu peered through. The foyer was unoccupied and, with the oil lamps extinguished, even darker than the night outside.

He and Olhas prowled up the stairs. They were proceeding on the assumption that Domitian's followers slept in the bedrooms, although Sefu actually wouldn't have been surprised to discover that the god-to-be kept his poor abused flock in the cellar.

It turned out that he didn't, although he apparently required them to lie on the floor instead of in the beds. The worshipers tossed, jerked, twitched, and moaned in their sleep. Squint as he might, Sefu often found it impossible to make out their features in the gloom, but he trusted Olhas to recognize Leyli when they came to her.

	"Olhas may not be the most attractive Wave Rider around, but he's a good man to have on your side."

A floorboard creaked. Sefu pivoted. A half-orc was leading a woman—Sefu thought it was the cultist who'd been made to pull her own teeth, though he wasn't sure—down the hall toward him, Olhas, and the room they'd just finished inspecting.

Sefu nearly snatched out his sword before realizing the ruffian wasn't showing any sign of agitation at the Wave Riders' presence. Apparently, thanks to their black garments, he's mistaken Sefu and Olhas for two of his fellows.

Sefu gave him a little wave. Then he and Olhas stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind them. He hoped it was an unremarkable thing for one of the half-orcs to do.

Apparently it was, because the tough didn't come in after them or shout for help, either. Footsteps padded by, and then, farther down the corridor, another door opened and closed. Sefu suspected it was the one that he and Olhas had decided likely led to the master bedroom.

As they moved on, he tried not to imagine all the special degradations to which Domitian might be subjecting the woman in his private chamber in the middle of the night. Then a pair of high, perhaps inhuman voices began to yowl. The eerie cries echoed through the dark house, but if they woke any of the cult leader's followers, Sefu couldn't tell. Perhaps the magic that trammeled their minds kept them from hearing.

"By the Eye," Olhas whispered, sounding unsettled for once, "what is that? What's he doing to her?"

"I don't know," Sefu answered. "But our task is still to find Leyli and get her out of here."

And eventually they did find her, after climbing up to the third floor. Leyli lay sleeping beside another female cultist in a room that had evidently once belonged to a child. Ghostly in the trace of light shining through the open casement, clowns juggled, ropewalkers balanced, and bears danced in the mural on the wall.

Whispering, Olhas cast a second spell of slumber to make sure Leyli's roommate didn't wake. Then Sefu picked up his sister and set her on her feet. The gillman's magic had taken hold of her as well, and she slept on obliviously. Sefu supported her with one hand and covered her mouth with the other.

"Ready?" he asked.

Olhas removed the preserved tongue of a serpent and a bit of honeycomb from a hidden pocket in his belt. "Go."

Sefu shook Leyli. Meanwhile, holding both magical foci in his left hand, Olhas swept them through an S-shaped pass and whispered sibilant words of power.

Leyli stiffened in Sefu's grasp, then started to squirm and struggle. Olhas reached the end of his incantation and said, "Listen! Domitian sent us. He wants you to go with us and cooperate with us in every way."

Leyli stopped fighting. Sefu cautiously uncovered her mouth, and she didn't scream.

"Let's get out of here," Olhas said. He smiled at Leyli. "Quietly, please. Domitian doesn't want us to disturb the others."

She nodded slowly, in a dazed way that gave Sefu a pang of guilt. He'd come to restore her mind, not add yet another level of confusion and compulsion. But Olhas had assured him the effect was only temporary, and it really was the easiest way to sneak her out.

They all crept back down the staircase into the foyer. With the door to the outside world in view, Sefu felt himself relax at least a little.

Then a shaggy lupine beast stalked through one of the doorways on his right.

Sefu was more familiar with the creatures of the sea and coast than those of the forest and plain. Yet his instincts shouted that the creature was something more than a dog or even a wolf, and an instant later, it proved them correct by speaking.

"What's this?" it snarled.

The beast was a worg, then, a man-eating predator of near-human intelligence. And if it was serving as Domitian's watchdog, that was yet more evidence—not that Sefu needed any—that the god-to-be was a dastard of the vilest sort.

What Sefu did need was a way past the brute. Maybe he and Olhas could bluff it like they'd bluffed the half-orc in the hallway.

"Somebody wants to play with this skinny bitch," he said, trying to sound as coarse as any half-orc ruffian. "The Reaper knows why, especially at this hour. But he sent gold, so Tsadok and me have to deliver her."

The worg grunted, then snuffled. Sefu realized it was taking his and Olhas's scents. But before he could do anything about it, it lifted its head and howled.

Sefu whipped out his sword and rushed it. The worg broke off its cry to spring back and avoid his first cut. Maybe, if the Wave Riders were lucky, that bit of ululating wailing had blended in with the yowls still issuing from Domitian's bedchamber, and no one had noticed it.

In any case, Sefu had to deal with the beast, and quickly. He slashed at its head, but it sidestepped the stroke, then sprang.

Its front paws slammed into Sefu's chest and smashed him to the floor. Slavering jaws plunged at his throat.

Behind him, Olhas rattled off a word. Darts of green light stabbed into the worg's muzzle and shoulders, and it faltered at the shock. Sefu let go of his sword's hilt and grabbed it partway up the blade, so he could stab with it at close quarters. He thrust it between the creature's ribs.

Blood spurted. The worg shuddered, then collapsed on top of him. He lay panting under its rank, dead weight for a moment, then rolled the carcass to the side.

Leyli blinked. If she truly understood that a fight to the death had just taken place, no one could have told it from her demeanor. "Did you call me a name?" she murmured.

"No," Sefu said. He rose and yanked his sword out of the worg's body.

"We need to go now," Olhas said.

They boosted Leyli over the wrought-iron gate, and then the three of them hurried away down the street. Sefu kept glancing over his shoulder. As far as he could tell, no one was in pursuit, so after a time, he and Olhas took off their masks. There was no point in looking like thieves to whomever they might meet along the way.

Of course, he couldn't do anything about the worg's gore staining the front of his clothing, but fortunately, he and his companions didn't have far to walk. He and Olhas had rented a flop in a tenement just a couple blocks from the manor. The flop was a squalid little room, with a dank smell hanging in the air and roach droppings crunching underfoot, but it was a place to go to ground while the gillman did his work.

The flop contained a sagging cot with a no-doubt-flea-infested straw tick and a single rickety chair. Olhas set the latter in the middle of the floor and motioned for Leyli to take a seat. "Please," he said.

She sat.

The gillman murmured a rhyme, crooking and uncrooking his fingers all the while. Then he walked around and around Leyli, peering at her from every angle.

After what felt like a long time, Sefu asked, "Are you doing anything?"

"I'm learning everything I can about what Domitian did to her, so as to have the best possible chance of undoing it. If I'm working too slowly to suit you, my abject apologies."

"I just want you to get it done before the spell that's making her biddable wears off."

Leyli slowly rubbed her temple with her fingertips. "What? A spell?"

"It's nothing," Olhas said. "Just relax." He looked at Sefu. "I believe I'm ready." Shifting his hands from side to side like he was placing stones in an invisible mosaic, he chanted a longer incantation in a language Sefu didn't recognize. On the final syllable, he planted his right hand on her forehead.

She gasped and bucked at his touch. Then she went limp.

"Did it work?" Sefu asked. "Is she all right?"

"Let's ask her," Olhas said. "Leyli, how do you feel? Do you understand what's been happening to you?"

Blinking, she looked up at her rescuers. Then she jumped up and threw her arms around Sefu. "I'm sorry!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry!"

"It's all right," he said, patting her back. "I know you weren't in your right mind."

"And the Graycloaks need to know it, too," Olhas said. "If they understand that Domitian uses magic to enslave his 'followers,' they'll move against him." He grinned. "As opposed to arresting your brother and me for breaking into his house and killing his dog."

"But I don't know if the Graycloaks can stop him," Leyli said. "I don't know if anyone can."

"I can understand why the man seems powerful to you," Olhas said, "but—"

"You don't understand," Leyli said. "He isn't a man. I know because sometimes he let me see him as he truly is, to terrify me, and then made me forget it later."

Sefu frowned. "Then what is he, really?"

"A demon! He has two heads, each the head of a cat, and his hands are twisted around on his wrists."

"That's why we heard two voices crying out," Sefu said. Imagining the creature Leyli described forcing himself on the woman the half-orc had taken to his bedchamber made him feel sick to his stomach.

"Yes," Olhas said, "but he's not exactly a demon. He's a rakshasa."

"A what?"

"An evil spirit given flesh," the gillman said. "A kind that takes particular pleasure in degrading and defiling people. The backward hands are a giveaway. And actually, this is good. The Graycloaks may not like to interfere with actual religious leaders, even unscrupulous ones, but they'll certainly—"

The world blazed white.

Coming Next Week: Strange fiends and desperate measures in the final chapter of "Lord of Penance."

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson

Lord of Penance

by Richard Lee Byers

Chapter Two: The God-To-Be

Unlike most of the gods-to-be, Domitian didn't actually live on the Avenue of the Hopeful, or anywhere particularly near. Sefu and Olhas had to walk across a goodly portion of the Ascendant Court, passing such landmarks as the raucous wooden mead hall sacred to Cayden Cailean and the red limestone statue known as the Iomedaenne before reaching the quiet side street where the cult reportedly occupied a manor, at which point Olhas held up his hand to signal a halt.

"What?" Sefu snapped.

Olhas arched an eyebrow. "You might want to watch your tone. If that's how you snarl at a friend, how will you speak to Domitian?"

"Sorry," Sefu said. "I'm in a hurry."

"I noticed. But I want to talk before we come under observation. When we're about to head into the charlatan's presence, I'm going to cast a spell. Something that may give us some insight as to why Leyli holds him in such regard. It would be nice if no one noticed me casting it."

Sefu nodded. "I'll make a distraction. Was that all you wanted?"

"Except to recommend again that you hold onto your temper. You're still glowering like you want to kill somebody."

"Because I do."

Olhaus sighed, but resumed walking.

Domitian's manor was a large three-story house built around a central courtyard, a fitting residence for a prosperous merchant or aristocrat. Perhaps a worshiper had donated it. Black bunting painted with obscure white symbols draped the facade, marring the structure's otherwise handsome appearance.

"Apparently a fellow can make a good living off misery and guilt," Olhas murmured. "Notice the lookout in the window under the gable?"

"Yes." The sentry in question was a half-orc watching the street.

"Maybe you're not the first brother or father to pay a call with murder in his heart."

Yet even if Sefu wasn't, Domitian didn't have an armed ruffian tending the wrought-iron gate that opened on the courtyard. That duty had fallen to another black-robed worshiper, a skinny, unwashed wretch with a receding hairline and the eyes of a dog that spent its days tied up and ignored.

As with Leyli, though, that appearance of dull-witted suffering was in one respect misleading. The gatekeeper proved himself capable of judgment and decisive action when he studied the visitors and then said, "I'm sorry. The Lord of Penance isn't receiving petitioners today."

Staring the gatekeeper in the eye, Sefu unbuckled the pigskin pouch on his belt, took out a silver weight, and held up the coin for the man to see. "I recommend you accept this offering and let us in. Otherwise, we'll come in anyway, and give you something new to regret."

The cultist swallowed. "Wait here." He retreated into the house.

Sefu waited as long as he could bear it. Then he said, "To Hell with it." He gripped the top of the gate and lifted his foot to climb, and then the door on the far side of the courtyard opened again. Somewhat to his surprise, it was the gatekeeper who emerged and not the household guards.

The functionary conducted them into the courtyard, a garden of sweet-smelling red and yellow roses with a gurgling white marble fountain in the center. Bees droned among the flowers.

Sefu glanced at Olhas, and the gillman gave him a slight nod in return. Sefu clapped his hand to his neck and shouted, "Ouch!"

Startled, the gatekeeper jerked around. "Sir?"

"Something hit me!" Sefu snarled.

The balding man cast about and drew the obvious conclusion. "There are bees. Perhaps one of them—"

Sefu lunged and grabbed him by the front of his shapeless, grubby garment. "Or perhaps one of you idiots is throwing stones."

"Sir, I swear, no one would do that. Our master has agreed to see—"

Sefu interrupted by shouting in the other man's face, and on every beat of that cadenced bellowing, he gave him a bone-rattling shake. "I do not be-lieve you!"

It unquestionably riveted the gatekeeper's attention. Sefu hoped it was holding the interest of any other observers as well, so no one would notice Olhas hurriedly whispering his incantation.

He kept up the bullying for another moment, and then the sorcerer gripped him by the shoulder. "Stop," Olhas said. "I saw it. It was a bee."

Sefu grunted like he was reluctant to let the matter drop. That wasn't so far from the truth, even though the rational part of him knew the gatekeeper wasn't to blame for Leyli's predicament. But he shoved the man away and said, "Take us on in, then, and be quick about it."

Most manors had a great hall, and that was where the gatekeeper appeared to be leading them. As they crossed the foyer with its imposing staircase and lesser doorways, Olhas glanced around. The action looked casual, but Sefu assumed his friend was taking in every detail like the expert scout he was.

Sefu peered around, too, but saw nothing that seemed particularly revelatory. The space just looked like the entryway of any rich man's home. It sounded different, though. Somewhere on one of the upper floors, someone was weeping, and leather slapped flesh with a steady smack-smack-smack. Sefu told himself Leyli was still out begging. It wasn't her crying or taking the beating, either.

The great hall smelled of sandalwood incense, and there were votive candles burning. A pair of half-orc toughs flanked a high-backed, ornately carved wooden chair on a pedestal, and on this throne lounged an exceptionally handsome, muscular man with shoulder-length white-blond hair, vivid blue eyes, and a silver goblet in his hand. He was naked except for a red silk robe loosely tied with a sash of the same material.

To that extent, the place was pretty much what Sefu had expected. But the two worshipers who'd apparently been receiving their fledgling deity's personal attention constituted more of a surprise, and not a pleasant one.

A pretty, middle-aged woman sat cross-legged on the tile floor with a pair of pliers in her hand and several teeth lying in front of her. Bloody drool streaked her chin.

Across from her, a man even skinnier than Domitian's average worshiper slumped twitching and trembling at a little table set with a cup and a plate laden with apples, figs, grapes, and pears. He clearly yearned—and needed—to drink and eat, but wasn't doing either.

The acts of self-mortification brought an insult to Sefu's lips. But when he looked Domitian in the eye, the obscenity faded away unspoken, along with the spasm of outrage that had drawn it forth.

He'd noticed before that Domitian had the kind of good looks and commanding presence that no doubt helped a fraud dupe the vulnerable. But now, as though his eyes had just finished adjusting after coming into this shadowy place from the summer sunlight, Sefu felt like he was truly seeing the man for the first time. And what he beheld was a piercing kind of perfection. A flawless face radiating compassion and wisdom so profound that they might well partake of the divine.

Suddenly Sefu wondered what right he, a simple fighting man, had to barge into a holy place with malice in his heart and judge this noble spirit and his teachings. Maybe Domitian would pass the test of the Starstone someday. Maybe the path he offered, stringent though it seemed, was the way to peace and clarity for some. Maybe Leyli—

But the thought of his sister walking that path, going dirty and hungry, whoring, submitting to beatings and maybe doing even worse things to herself, brought him up short. Prompted by sheer instinct, he reached down through the confusion that had overtaken him to the anger still seething underneath and sought to feel it in full measure. Afterward, he realized he was breathing as heavily as he had after brawling with the half-orcs. But his thoughts were clear, and his resolve restored.

Domitian smiled sardonically, like a fencer might if an inferior but lucky opponent avoided an attack that by all rights should have scored. Or maybe he didn't. The expression, if had been there at all, came and went in an instant, and then his face was grave and kind.

"Sefu and Olhas," he said.

"Someone ran home and told you to expect us," Sefu said.

"No," the cult leader replied. "Nobody had to. I'm only a shadow of what I will one day become, but already I'm more than a man. I don't mean it to sound arrogant, but it's a fact. I have ways of knowing what others lack. Even you, sorcerer, with your magic poking and prying at me. Is it telling you anything you can understand?"

Olhas smiled. "I take it that despite our attempt at misdirection, someone spotted me casting a spell in the garden."

"No, but I don't blame you for assuming that. Darkness is false comfort, but until we're ready to face the light, it can be the only comfort we have."

"We didn't come here to listen to your gibberish," Sefu said.

"No," Domitian said. "You came to take Leyli away from the only source of comfort she's found since her life turned to grief and despair."

Once again, there was something in Domitian's gaze, and in his deep, rich tones, that eroded Sefu's certainty like waves washing away a drawing in the sand. What if—

No, curse it! No, no, no! He closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out the sight of Domitian's magisterial face with its expanse of forehead and long, narrow nose, and that made it easier to think.

"Her family can comfort her," he said.

"Clearly not," Domitian said, "or she would never have sought me out in the first place, and if you did somehow succeed in taking her away, she would only return at the first opportunity. Such being the case, surely it's better to leave her to the life she's freely chosen. That way, you won't poison the love she feels for you."

It made an ugly kind of sense. Sefu hated admitting it, but it did. He might even have said so, except that just then, with a sudden, spastic flailing, the man seated at the table overturned it. The cup clanked and spilled the water inside, and fruit tumbled across the floor. The cultist buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

Domitian turned to one of the half-orcs. "I believe Ioseph has tested his willpower sufficiently for one day. Help him back to his room, and give him his usual supper at sundown." He looked back at Sefu and Olhas. "Where were we?"

The interruption had startled some of the unaccustomed defeatism out of Sefu's head. He took a breath and exhaled the rest of it. "You were saying that if I took Leyli away, she'd just run back. But she couldn't if you refused to take her back."

"Why would I do that?" Domitian asked.

"Because I'll pay you. I have some savings, and my mother does, too. It won't be a fortune, but it will be more than Leyli brings in begging and... doing whatever else on the street."

Once again, if Domitian smiled a mocking smile, it was the merest flicker of an expression, too ephemeral for Sefu to be sure of it. "But I don't care about money."

"Then why send your followers out to get it?"

"Supporting the faith is a part of their purification."

"I don't believe you. You don't want to shut Leyli out because it might cause the rest of your victims to doubt you. Or because it gives you too much sick enjoyment to mistreat her."

	"Domitian may call himself a god, but nobody crosses a Wave Rider and gets away clean."

"I suggest, my friend, that it is you who have found joy in hurting others—first your opponents in the Irorium, and then the pirates you've hunted across the Inner Sea. I hope you understand that just because the latter task is necessary doesn't mean your motives for performing it are pure."

Sefu faltered, uncertain, but this time only for an instant. "Maybe you're right. Because I'd certainly like to tear out that lying tongue of yours and—"

"Enough!" Olhas said.

Sefu blinked. "What?"

"This conversation isn't serving any purpose," the gillman said. "The man is scum, but the Graycloaks have apparently decided he isn't breaking the law, and you evidently can't bribe him to force Leyli out. So she'll have to decide for herself that she wants to come home."

"Indeed," Domitian said, "and I promise she will when the time is right."

Sefu glared at him. "You—"

"We should go," Olhas said, and though he hadn't raised his voice, there was an insistence in it that made Sefu heed him and keep walking even when he thought he heard Domitian chuckle at his back.

"What was that all about?" he demanded once they were away from the manor. "Were you worried I was going to attack him and bring every ruffian and cultist in the place down on our heads?"

"A little," Olhas replied, "but I mainly wanted to get you out of there because of the notion that would inevitably have occurred to you after that one."

Sefu cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"Domitian asked if my magic was telling me anything, and actually, I did perceive arcane forces at play around him. But I already knew something unnatural was going on because I could feel him trying to tamper with my mind. Couldn't you?"

"I... think so. There were moments when I couldn't help being impressed, and feeling half persuaded, even though I had those two poor, suffering fools right in front of me to show what kind of bastard he really is."

"Fortunately, your anger armored you, and a sorcerer's will shielded me. But Domitian wasn't just trying to manipulate us. He was reading our thoughts. It's the only way he could have known my name. It was never spoken during our altercation on the avenue, and Leyli has never heard of me, has she?"

"No." Much as Sefu loved his family, he'd never been much for writing home.

"There you are, then. I needed to get you out of there before you hit on the idea that I knew would come to you. Your anger might have kept Domitian from seeing it in your head, but we couldn't count on it."

"The idea that you knew would come to me." Sefu shook his head. "Which would be... if Domitian uses magic to control his followers, then Leyli really isn't there of her own free will! And if we carry her off, you can use your own powers to restore her to herself!"

The gillman nodded. "It's at least worth a try."

Coming Next Week: The fine art of kidnapping in Chapter Three of "Lord of Penance."

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson

Lord of Penance

by Richard Lee Byers

Chapter One: Reunion

Sefu studied the gaunt, shuffling girl in the shapeless black robe, and when he was certain, he winced.

"Is that Leyli?" Olhas asked, his brown hair plastered to his long, narrow skull. Wary of the dehydration that could mean debilitation and even death to his race, the lanky gillman had just moments ago paused at a fountain to dunk his head and hands.

"Yes," Sefu said. She was horribly changed from the grinning, teasing imp of a little sister he remembered, but still, yes. "Maybe I should talk to her by myself."

"I wish you would," Olhas said, the ruddy slits in the sides of his neck dilating and contracting. "Nothing's more boring than other people's family problems." Which hadn't kept him from insisting on accompanying his friend on this particular errand.

Dodging camel-drawn wagons and a fat man bouncing along on an axebeak, Sefu headed across the Avenue of the Hopeful, named for the self-proclaimed gods-to-be who preached, worked dubious miracles, and generally made pests of themselves along the busy thoroughfare. Meanwhile, Leyli took up a position in front of a market stall offering religious medallions to worshipers of every stripe, from folk who venerated the Dawnflower to those who abased themselves before the Prince of Darkness. As her brother neared her, she held out her bowl to passersby and started chanting in a monotone for alms.

Just seeing her at a distance pained Sefu. Up close, it was worse. The raven hair she'd once spent endless hours tinting and curling hung lank and greasy. She had the yellow remains of a bruise on one sunken cheek, and seemed to stink not just of sweat but also of infection. Worst of all was the deadness in her eyes. For a moment, he wondered if she even recognized him.

Then she sighed. "Sefu."

"Yes," he said. "This..." He waved his hand at the begging bowl, her dirty winding sheet of a robe, and everything else. "I don't understand. What are you doing?"

"Didn't Mother tell you?"

It was at least a little encouraging that she realized their mother must have written to him and implored him to come home to Absalom. It meant that—despite her blank, somehow hollowed-out appearance —her mind was still working.

"She said you're worshiping one of the charl—I mean, the folk who claim that when they're ready, they're going to take the Test of the Starstone and become gods."

"Yes," she said. "Domitian, god of penance."

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, you can worship anyone you like. But you don't have to do it like this. Come home. Mother needs your help in the bakery."

"No, she doesn't, and I do 'have to do it like this.' All of the master's followers live in the temple. It's the only way we can undertake the rituals of atonement."

"What do you have to atone for?"

She stared at him. "Don't make me say it."

"You're going to have to if you want me to understand what you're talking about."

She grimaced. "All right, then. The deaths of my husband and unborn child."

He felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. "Leyli! Tell me you don't believe that. How could either of those be your fault?"

"I was greedy. I had spiteful thoughts. I lusted for other men."

"And you think the gods punished you for it by pushing Melaku off the scaffold and making you miscarry? If the world worked like that, there wouldn't be a person left alive." He put a hand on her shoulder. "You're not thinking straight, and small wonder after what you've been through. Come home for a day or two—"

"Hey," someone growled.

Sefu turned. Three tattooed half-orcs, with the burly frames, greenish hide, and protruding lower canines of their kind, were sneering at him. Intent on Leyli, he hadn't noticed their approach. Unlike her, they were dressed in decent clothing, but its somber color suggested that they too followed Domitian.

	"If Domitian's really on his way to godhood, why does he need half-orc thugs?"

Trying not to look obvious about it, Sefu shrugged back the short sea-green cape of his Wave Rider uniform, exposing the bronze sword pin underneath. He'd won it fighting in the arena when he was a foolhardy adolescent, and in his own estimation, it was a trivial thing compared to the honors he'd earned since serving in Absalom's sea cavalry. But to ruffians from the city's gutters, it might convey a good deal more.

It didn't cow the half-orcs, though. They looked like they still thought they were the intimidating ones. "You're keeping her from her work," said one with crimson eyes. "Drop a coin in her bowl and move along."

"Or, if you want her," said a second, whose badly broken nose resembled a swinish snout, "we can talk price."

Sefu's mother hadn't warned him that Domitian had turned Leyli into a streetwalker as well as a beggar, probably because she hadn't known. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm Leyli's brother," he said.

"That's all right," said the smallest and most human-looking of the three. "We don't judge." His companions laughed.

Sefu supposed it would be a mistake to start a brawl. He felt on the brink of launching himself at the half-orcs anyway.

Behind him, Olhas's pleasant baritone voice said, "Something's plainly funny. How about letting me in on the joke?" He gripped Sefu's shoulder, silently urging him to stay calm.

"You're going to be the joke," Red Eyes said. "You and your friend, if you don't run along."

"That's possible," the gillman said, stepping forward to stand beside Sefu. "I can do some funny things. Let me show you."

He murmured three rhyming words and swept his hand in a slow horizontal pass. His fingertips left a trail of gray vapor swirling in the air.

Hoping that the minor display of sorcery had daunted the half-orcs, Sefu said, "We are leaving. But Leyli's coming with us." Without taking his eyes off the ruffians, he reached out to her.

But she didn't take his hand. And the half-orc runt—who was nonetheless as tall as Olhas and as broad-shouldered as Sefu—said, "I'm going to be nice one more time. Go away. Otherwise..." He reached down and pulled a length of ash—a cut-down spear shaft, perhaps—from his boot. His companions produced their own clubs.

A cudgel could kill, and Sefu would have felt justified in drawing his broadsword. But those who'd paused in the midst of their own business to watch the confrontation might think there was a significant difference between a civilian's blunt hardwood and a soldier's sharp steel.

"Think about what you're doing," he said to the half-orcs. "There are people looking on."

"To Hell with 'em," said the Runt, and then he and his comrades charged. The gawkers scurried to distance themselves from the imminent violence.

Sefu sidestepped and hooked a punch into Red Eyes's kidney. The half-orc grunted, stumbled to a halt, and turned. Meanwhile, Sefu had time to see the other two ruffians spreading out to flank Olhas, who hadn't drawn his blade, either. There didn't seem to be any strange glimmerings, writhing shadows, or other telltale signs of magic around the gillman, but Sefu hoped his friend had managed to cast a charm of protection anyway.

Then Red Eyes came at him again.

The half-orc advanced more warily this time, feinting with his club—virtually a mace with an iron knob on the end—in an attempt to draw reactions and learn how his opponent preferred to defend. Sefu was sorry to see that. It was unfortunate that the cultist had a weapon, a longer reach, and, by the looks of him, superior strength. It was worse that the brute knew how to use them.

Red Eyes raised the cudgel as if to strike Sefu's head. Sefu lifted his hands as if to protect it. The half-orc made the same threatening action a couple moments later, then whirled the club down to smash his foe in the ribs.

And if Sefu had reacted as he had the first time, opening up his lower body in the process, the trick might have worked. Instead, guessing what Red Eyes intended, he lunged, and though the half-orc's arm thumped his flank, the club only cut through the air behind him.

He drove a punch at Red Eyes's throat. Red Eyes flinched, and the blow caught him on the jaw instead. Pain flared in Sefu's knuckles, but the cultist reeled backward, too.

As he did, Sefu caught another glimpse of Olhas's part of the fight. The Runt was floundering on the cobblestones, trying and failing to stand back up in the midst of a patch of glistening gray grease. Meanwhile, Snout drove Olhas backward. But as the gillman retreated, his mouth moved—reciting a spell, almost certainly. When it was done, he stopped retreating, and, caught by surprise, Snout blundered into striking distance. Olhas punched him in the chest.

The gillman wasn't much of a boxer. The art was useless in his undersea home, where water cushioned every blow. But magic must have compensated for his lack of skill, because Snout's knees buckled, and he collapsed.

Red Eyes recovered his balance, bellowed, and rushed Sefu. The club lashed back and forth in wide arcs that left him open at the end of every swing. As Sefu gave ground, he smiled. Anger had made the half-orc sloppy. He simply had to pick his moment—

Weight landed on his back and nearly pitched him forward into the Red Eyes's next blow. Arms wrapped around him, seeking to pin his own limbs to his sides.

Sefu threw himself backward and down. It kept the club from bashing in his skull and also slammed his new foe against the pavement. The arms around him loosened. He wrenched himself free, rolled away, and saw that it was Leyli who'd grappled him.

It amazed him that she'd actually tried to help someone hurt him, but he didn't have time to fret over it. He was on his knees, and Red Eyes was already looming over him. Hoping he could manage it before the club hammered down, he gathered himself to tackle the cultist.

"Stop!" someone shouted. "In the Chamber's name!"

The bass voice carried the ring of authority, and, furious though he was, Red Eyes backed away from Sefu. A few feet away, Olhas and the Runt, who'd finally escaped the patch of slippery ground, also stopped fighting. Everyone looked at the half-dozen guardsmen in the gray woolen cloaks, for of course it was their glowering corporal with his close-cut salt-and-pepper beard who'd shouted the order to desist.

Breathing heavily, Sefu drew himself to his feet. His knuckles throbbed, and he tried to shake the ache out of them. "I'm glad to see you," he told the corporal. "These bastards attacked my friend and me."

"That's a lie!" snapped the Runt.

Olhas waved his hand to indicate the ring of spectators. "Here are witnesses to say what really happened."

For a moment, no one seemed eager to do so. Then a boy with a satchel of rolled-up prayers for sale, prewritten supplications the illiterate could lay on altars, burn in ritual fires, or toss into the chasm surrounding the Starstone Cathedral, said, "The half-orcs started it." Other folk muttered in agreement.

"All right," said the Runt, "I admit that one of us may have struck the first blow. But only to defend this young woman. The Wave Riders meant to kidnap her."

"That's ridiculous," Sefu said. "Leyli is my sister."

"Whoever she is," said the Runt, "she's of age, and she didn't want to be dragged away. She even fought the Wave Riders alongside my friends and me."

The corporal looked at Leyli, who, like Snout, was picking herself up off the ground. "Is that true?"

Leyli looked down at the cobbles and swallowed. "Sort of. I told Sefu I didn't want to leave, but he wouldn't listen. And then, when people were fighting, I had to try to help my brothers in penance."

"Your 'brothers' who struck the first blow," Olhas said. "Your 'brothers' who fought with weapons while our hands were empty."

"You used magic," said the Runt. "That's a lot more dangerous than a couple sticks."

"All right," the corporal said. "I'm not going to arrest anybody. This time. But I want to see you Domitian people walk off in one direction and you navy boys go in the other."

"You must be joking!" Sefu waved his hand at Leyli. "Six months ago, she was healthy and happy. Normal! Look at her now!"

The Graycloak shrugged. "She says she's where she wants to be."

"Olhas and I serve Absalom, the same as you do—"

"That's why I haven't arrested you already," the corporal said. "Now, all of you, clear out."

The half-orcs grinned in a way that made Sefu's fists clench again. Olhas took him by the arm and hauled him away, past vendors of incense, idols, and other religious paraphernalia, as well as a god-to-be demonstrating his alleged divinity by eating fire and swallowing swords.

"Well, you tried," said the gillman after a while. "I suppose you'll need to spend some time with your mother before we head back to Escadar."

Sefu scowled at him. "This isn't over."

"My friend, I understand your feelings, but the Graycloak had a point. Leyli has a right to follow this Domitian if she chooses."

"She's not in her right mind! Grief already had her teetering on the brink of craziness, and then he or his cultists did something to push her over."

"Maybe. But still, if she won't listen to you—if she believes those stinking half-orcs are her real brothers—what can you do about it?"

"I can go see Domitian himself."

The sorcerer sighed. "Then I suppose that means I'm coming, too."

Coming Next Week: Arguments with a would-be god in Chapter Two of "Lord of Penance."

Richard Lee Byers is the author of more than thirty novels, including the first book in R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, and the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Young Adult series The Nightmare Club. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. For more information, visit his website.

Art by Colby Stevenson