Mother Bears

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter Three: Fires by Day

Jendara followed Tam's light, feeling the cave's blackness like velvet pressing against her skin, her nostrils. She wanted to run outside before the cave smothered her. But she couldn't stop thinking of that horrible wail. It wasn't Kran—he could make a few sounds, but none so loud or carrying. She reminded herself of that fact again and again.

It still made her skin crawl.

"Remember," Tam called over his shoulder. "Keep an eye on the person ahead of you. The floor of these places isn't always—"

His voice cut off in a scream and his light disappeared.

Jendara darted forward. "Tam!"

"Jendara, stop!" Vorrin shouted.

She froze. By the glow of her lantern, she could see the sudden drop Tam hadn't. The tunnel opened into great mouthing darkness that her lantern barely began to light. "Are you all right?"

"My arm's caught." Tam grunted. "Caught bad."

Vorrin knelt beside her. "I can wrap a rope around this bit of stalagmite, lower you down. Be some work getting the two of you up again, but I can manage it."

Jendara held her lantern over the cliff’s edge, getting a glimpse of Tam's red hair about seven feet below her, just above the floor of what must be a vast cavern. The cliff broke up into long fingers of rock at the bottom, and he hung from the crotch of the two tallest. Jendara shook her head. "Damn, that's ugly. Let's do this fast before he loses an arm."

Somewhere in the darkness, the wail sounded again. Jendara felt gooseflesh prickle as she passed her length of rope to Vorrin.

"Make a good knot when you join those."

He brushed his fingers down her cheek. "The best."

She didn't watch him tie the two ropes together or wrap the rope around the rock, just moved her lantern out of the way and rubbed dirt into the palms of her hands. She didn't need any sweat to make climbing harder.

Vorrin wrapped the rope around her waist and tied it tight. She clambered over the cliff edge, and after only a moment's climbing could hear Tam's pained breathing below her. He was too much the islander to groan or whimper—the raw rasp of his inhalations was as bad as a scream. But there was no way to climb faster. No light, no ladder, just her fingers and toes searching out purchase on the cracked rocks.

Suddenly Jendara's palms went sweat-slick. Her fingers slipped off the narrow handhold, and for a sickening second she swung from the end of the rope, her face scraping the cavern wall.

"Jendara!" Vorrin yelled.

Then her foot found a hold, a rock spur of some kind. "I'm okay!"

And wished she'd been quiet as a frenzied barking sounded out in the darkness.

"Gods," Tam groaned. Jendara could see what he saw, a brightening in the distance like flickering torchlight. She thought of the goblin dog scat on the boat and climbed faster.

The bottom of the cliff came as a surprise. Now that she was down, Vorrin's hands were free to hoist the lantern, lighting up Tam and the rocky ground.

The goblin dog's snarl echoed off the walls of the great cavern. Jendara loosened the rope from her waist and stretched on tiptoe to work it around Tam's. His breathing was just tiny gasps now. Every ounce of his body hung from the pinned arm.

Jendara locked her arms around his thighs, grunting as she lifted him up out of the vise. A horrible squeak choked in his throat, and the big man went limp. "Damn it," she whispered. She could only hope he'd regain consciousness soon. She couldn't get him back up that cliff on her own.

Pressing herself against the rock that had gripped him, she pushed off again, getting a little higher. Tam coughed and wriggled. Suddenly all his weight was on Jendara and she staggered.

"Vorrin, he's free!"

"Islander, pirate—but most of all, mother."

The light disappeared, and after a second some of the weight came off Jendara.

Behind the rocks, the goblin dog shrieked. Jendara stiffened as she heard a sound she knew only too well, the dry scrape of air moving in a throat that had never spoken. Kran's strange laugh.

"Kran!"

She pushed Tam back against the cliff face, propping him against the wall. She could smell the blood seeping from his scraped and mangled shoulder. "Be right back, friend."

Then she was off. She wished for her own lantern, but guttering torchlight guided her forward, as did a cacophony of sounds: the hollow wailing, a clatter of stones, the hideous sounds of goblin speech.

A goblin dog lay twitching on the cave floor, the end of a very familiar pocketknife jutting out of its eye socket. Its rider had rolled free, and swung a torch around its swollen gray head to block the volley of rocks Kran lobbed at its face. One goblin, alone. Jendara grinned to herself and felt for her belt axe. She could handle one goblin scout and a dead dog.

The belt axe soared through the air. The wet thud of it sinking into the goblin's skull was like music.

Kran dropped his rocks and ran to the dead dog. He jerked his knife free and began to cut at the black pack on the dog's back, which wailed and wriggled. Jendara reclaimed her axe and jogged to his side.

It was no pack, she realized. The glossy black hide belonged to a bear cub, a cut seeping blood along its side. She held its paws as Kran struggled to cut the last of its ties. The white blaze on its nose triggered prickles on the back of her neck.

A grizzly rampaging last night. An island under attack this afternoon.

A goblin scout here right now.

"We've got to get out of here." She tucked the bear cub under her arm and grabbed Kran by the hand, racing for Tam and the only way she knew out of the cave.

"Vorrin! Hurry up!" she bellowed. She didn't wait for him to begin pulling. She slapped Kran on the butt and urged him up the cliff, scurrying behind him. One-handed, weighed down by the bear, she still made it up before Vorrin finished hauling Tam.

They worked together to half-drag Tam out of the tunnel and down to the beach. By the time they hit the sand, they could see the goblin torches flickering at the mouth of the cave, brighter than the faint orange of sunset over the sea.

"How did you know there were more?" Vorrin asked.

"The bear," Jendara grunted, shifting Tam's weight against herself. "The goblins must have scared it last night when they took to the caves. The attack on Black Bay Island was a distraction."

Oric jerked awake from his post on a washed-up log. "Wha—"

But Jendara cut him off. "Run back to your village. If there's trouble, let us know."

His eyes were huge as he nodded and dashed away.

Jendara could already smell smoke. Her stomach sank as they rounded the headland. Flames stained the sky. Oric stood frozen, staring at his burning village.

Behind them, goblin riders whooped and cheered.

Jendara passed her son the injured bear cub. "Kran, run to the Milady and arm yourself. Help the crew protect the docks. And take Oric!"

The boy looked pale, but did as he was told. Jendara smiled up at Tam. "I sure hope you can fight left-handed."

He gave a weak laugh and took up a fighting stance. Jendara felt heat course through her veins, the ice that gripped her all day melting away. She rubbed the tattoos on the backs of her hands and chuckled to herself.

"Little bastards don't know what they're in for."

∗∗∗

Jendara stood beside the mound of goblin dead and waited for Vorrin to pass her the torch. Her arms ached with exhaustion, but she felt proud: proud of herself and the people she'd helped defend. A group of women stood close by, and at least one smiled at her. She'd forgotten that, whatever other duties the women of the islands might have, they could still fight. They weren't so different, she and them.

A great roar came up from the docks as the villagers cheered for their returning kin. But many minutes passed before Jendara made out the shapes of the returning war party, and even in the moonlight, she could see a grimness in their approach. The man in front led a shorter figure on a rope.

Oric jumped up from his seat beside Kran. "Father! You're home!" He dashed toward the men but stopped as the torchlight revealed the scowl on his father's face.

"What happened?" Morul growled. "Smoke fills the sky above the island. We found this filth looting the tavern on Black Bay. And all the village gathers here to make a bonfire?"

Vorrin handed the torch to Jendara, and she held it a moment above the goblins. "Not just any bonfire. While you fought the fires on Black Bay Island, the main goblin troop prepared to attack your village under the cover of darkness. They would have succeeded, too, if not for our sons and their furry friend here."

Kran hugged the bear cub, who made a sleepy grumble.

"Bears? Boys? I don't understand."

The wise woman stepped forward. "Know that we only lost one building—the meeting house—and have only two wounded. Jendara and her people helped greatly."

Morul tugged the rope lead hard enough to send the small, dirty man at its end sprawling. "And what of this trash?" Gorg groaned from the sand, but didn't move.

Jendara smiled. "I have an idea." She beckoned to Morul and, when he joined her beside the bonfire, murmured quietly for a moment.

He looked from the cowering Gorg to the villagers to the pile of dead goblins. And then to Jendara. "You truly are Erik Eriksson's daughter, aren't you?"

She laughed and lit the bonfire.

∗∗∗

Vorrin watched Jendara finish tucking the blankets around a sleeping Kran and a snoring baby bear. He waited for her to close the cabin door behind her and join him on the deck. The night was clear and the stars brilliant.

Jendara could tell he wanted to say something—something meaningful and true about the day, about helping the village women fight off the goblins, about finding Kran, about everything they had done. But he knew better. Instead, he settled for standing with her and grinning as they watched a small boat row out of the harbor. "Nice of Gorg to chip in like that. Glad he didn't have any hard feelings after that beating we gave him."

"You'd think he'd need his ship, but it was thoughtful of him to leave it to the village for rebuilding materials." Jendara laughed, then sobered.

She reached out to the grizzly fur, still sitting on the deck. "You know, it's funny how this bear saved so many people. If the goblins hadn't driven her out of the caves, she would never have lost her baby or attacked Yul's sheep. Kran wouldn't have followed his ears down into that cavern. Right now, we'd be sailing for the mainland, and a lot of people would be dead."

"That's some bear." Vorrin studied the moon a moment. "Are you disappointed that we missed the tide?"

She shook her head. "No. Not one bit. It felt nice tonight. Like being part of someplace. Like having a home."

He reached for his pipe and lit it, puffing until the coals glowed red. "You know, when we get done selling this load, maybe we should come back here. It'd make for a nice summer harbor."

Jendara looked sideways at him. "You saying we should tie up for summer?"

He puffed the pipe again. "There should be a place we can take the ship for repairs and supplies. A place to let Kran get his land legs. What do you think?"

She nodded, and felt herself begin to smile. Behind his pipe, Vorrin was doing the same.

Neither of them had used the word "home." But for two retired pirates, it was a pretty good first step.

Coming Next Week: Scaly adventures in the Sodden Lands in Ari Marmell's "Hell or High Water"

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of short stories in such anthologies and magazines as Armored, Way of the Wizard, Rigor Amortis, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. She is a regular contributor to inkpunks.com, and can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Florian Stitz.

Mother Bears

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter Two: Ill Tide

"Where's my son?" Jendara's voice rumbled like a great beast's growl. Vorrin gripped her elbow, hard.

The boys stared back at her for a second, then bolted.

"Come back!" Jendara yanked her arm, but Vorrin kept his grip.

"They won't talk to you," he snapped. "Hell, you scare me."

Yul chuckled. "You're right, mainlander. The boys will run home to hide. We'll go door to door. I know their fathers."

But as he led them deeper into the village, a hunting horn blew a long blast, then two short. Yul stiffened. "That's the call to town meeting. The emergency signal."

"We'll come," Vorrin said, and tightened his grip on Jendara's arm. She could feel her heart pick up its beat. An emergency, and Kran missing...

The narrow walkways filled with people, all chattering in high, tense tones. Everyone hurried toward the peak-roofed structure at the center of the village, the only building unclad by turf, and painted in dizzying shades of reds and blues. The church and meeting house. Jendara's family had practiced no faith, but town business was serious religion for anyone in a small town. She'd spent plenty of time in her own village's meeting hall. Just looking at it made her feel smaller and younger.

But her shoulders stiffened as she stepped inside. An elder in a wise woman's black kirtle and chemise stood beside a bandaged man, who alone sat on a wooden bench. The right side of his beard was blackened, in some places singed to the skin. The woman offered him a mug, and he sipped at it with a grimace.

Yul leaned to whisper at Jendara and her friends: "That's Birn, the chief's son from our neighbormost island. Their best fighter."

The cold prickling on Jendara's neck intensified. Instinct told her that whatever trouble had beset Birn somehow touched her son.

Another man stepped onto a podium. His red cloak proclaimed him a leader of some kind, and his craggy face bore more than a passing resemblance to Yul's. "Grave news, my friends. A goblin raiding party attacked our neighbors. Birn here rowed an hour to bring half a dozen wounded children to be treated by our wise woman."

Birn looked up, unflinching as the woman in question tightened a bandage around his right hand. "Most of our warriors are away, on a trading expedition. Our women and older children even now fight the fires the creatures have set. Our own wise woman was ripped apart by their dogs."

Jendara shook her head. This was bad news. With the benefit of surprise, a crew of goblins could wreck an entire village. Those people needed help. But she didn't have time to go on a rescue mission. She had a son to find. She began to turn away from the speakers, but paused as her eye caught movement at the front of the room. A towheaded boy hurried toward the man in the red cloak. She would have recognized him anywhere.

She tugged Yul's fur vest. "That's the one who stole my boy's tassel."

He frowned. "My nephew, Oric. We'll have to wait for the meeting to finish before we approach my brother."

Jendara shifted on impatient feet, listening as the warriors around her suggested and discarded course after course of action. Several of the women spoke quietly to the wise woman and then hurried off to their duties: preparing the warriors' fighting gear, gathering medicine, darting over to the wise woman's cottage to tend the injured children. Even if this was her home village, Jendara knew she wouldn't be joining them. She had taken on a warrior's life when she joined the pirate crew, closing the door on such domestic fellowship.

Yul caught her attention and they pushed forward through the crowd. His brother had neatly divided the group into parties, and now he clasped wrists with each of the men he'd commanded to lead. For a moment, Jendara pitied the goblins. These men knew battle, with their seamed faces and silvered scars. Most islanders practiced trade as the seasons turned, but in a land of quick tempers and fierce pride, everyone brought their shields and belt axes to the trading table.

"Yul." The leader clapped his brother on the shoulder. "I thought you'd stay with your wife. Her belly is fit to burst."

"Ayuh, her time is near." Yul leaned closer to his brother's ear. "I didn't come to volunteer, Morul. I came to ask you about your boy. I fear he brought harm to a visitor, the son of my new friend Jendara."

"Islanders give little credit to a mainlander like Vorrin."

The light-haired boy crept back into the shadows behind his father. Jendara narrowed her eyes at him.

Morul grunted. "There's a boatload of injured here to tend, and a second to follow. There are goblins on Black Bay Island and no idea how they got there. I've got a war party to lead and defenses ready. I've no time to talk about children."

"I'll help with your goblins if you help with my boy," Jendara interjected. "Just need a word with your son, that's all. Get my boy back safe."

Morul looked Jendara from head to toe. He could be Yul's twin, he looked so much like the craggy farmer, and a sharp intelligence flared behind his blue eyes. The islanders followed him not just for his brawn, but his brain. "Why are you so worried about your boy, woman?"

She set her jaw. "He's a mute. Plenty of folks reckon that's reason enough to give him trouble."

Morul nodded. "Ayuh, that's reason to worry." He glanced at her belt axe. "You any good with that thing?"

Vorrin spoke first. "I served beside her in many battles. She's faster and meaner than any man I've ever sailed with." Beside him, Tam nodded.

The leader of the islanders looked unimpressed.

Jendara tried not to shift impatiently. Her father would have never taken Vorrin's word, either. "My father led the men of his island in twenty-five battles and never lost a one. He trained me like I was his son, and kept me at his right hand for six trading parlays."

"And his name?"

"Erik Eriksson the White."

Both Yul and Morul looked pleased. It was not a great or famous name, but well traveled. Like her abilities with axe and sword, trade was in Jendara's blood naturally. Everyone knew Erik Eriksson the White.

"A fine man and long missed. I will accept your offer of help against the goblins." Morul turned to the boy. "Oric is a boy for pranks. Come here, lad."

The tow-headed boy slunk toward them, his hands twisted behind his back.

"Show me the tassel," Jendara snapped. Kran would have been familiar with the steely tone.

Oric put out his hand, the yellow tassel sitting on his palm. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Morul cuffed the side of the boy's head. "An islander speaks with pride even if he fears his punishment."

"I'm sorry!" Oric barked, stiffening his spine.

Jendara took the tassel. "Do you know where the mute boy—my son—went?"

Oric nodded. He cleared his throat. "Some visitor men on the pier told us you were a pirate. So we told Kran he ought to visit the pirate caves at the end of the island. That's all."

Jendara glanced at the tassel and raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, we took his hat and we messed around with it. And we told him he was nothing but a chicken liver if he didn't go down to the caves and come back with gold to prove he'd been there. But that's it! He even took his hat back." He looked up at her, then added in a mumble, "He gave my cousin a black eye."

Jendara felt a moment's pride for her boy, quickly overrun by anxiety. "Caves?"

Morul's lips thinned. "I doubt he went too far in, but it's an extensive network. Oric, take the visitors to our home. Get lights and rope."

Jendara nodded. "We'll join you as soon as we can. Thank you for your help."

She followed Oric out of the meetinghouse, the others following behind. Yul tapped her shoulder, his face troubled.

"I must go home to my wife now, but I wish you luck in your mission."

She thanked him for his help, and clapped him on the arm before hurrying after the others. Oric moved swiftly, gathering supplies from the family storehouse and then leading the rescue party down the beach. The sun's rays cast long, pale fingers of light across the sea, their touch failing to ease the chill in Jendara's heart. Goblins to fight, her son exploring in the darkness—it all felt like bad omens.

They rounded the headland of the beach, and she could see the caves cut into the cliffs at its end. There were multiple openings at different points in the rock face, and for the first time, her own fear touched her, freezing her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She was a child of open farmland and open sea. She had never been in a cave before.

"Kran!"

Tam shook his head. "Spare your voice, lady. The way the waves echo in there, ain't no point shouting." He turned to Vorrin. "You mind if I lead? I grew up playing in caves like these."

Vorrin happily agreed.

Tam stopped a moment to light the lanterns Oric had brought for them. He smiled at the boy, who looked anxious. "Why don't you be our lookout, lad? If we need help, we'll shout for you, and you can run back to the village."

"I can do that, sir."

"Great. Then let's go into the first cave. It looks like it's right at the water line and the easiest to get into."

Jendara eyeballed the rocks flanking the cave's entrance. They looked rough and slick, the waves spitting up foam that clung to their dark flanks. One misstep, and a boy would tumble into the water. A boy or his mother, she reminded herself. She was glad she had a good sense of balance after working on ships all these years.

The yellow glow of Tam's lantern lit up the dark hollow of the cave, and as Jendara followed behind him, her own light redoubled the glow. It wasn't much of a cave, just ten or twelve feet gnawed into the cliff wall. A battered rowboat bobbed on the waves, as if sheltering peacefully while waiting for its owner.

"What's this?" Tam murmured, peering inside. He jumped back, nearly toppling off the rock he'd been balancing on.

"What is it?" Vorrin asked.

But Jendara could see for herself the still figure at the bottom of the boat, the long white hair and singed black cloak. The wise woman from Black Bay Island.

Tam leaned over again, his nose wrinkling as he pointed out a smear of dung on the gunwale. "I'm not sure, but this looks like goblin dog to me."

Jendara balled her hands into fists. The sliver of ice burning down the back of her neck had been a true warning, not the trite discomfort of an overprotective mother. There were goblins on this island, and given goblins' love for dark holes in the ground, the little bastards were probably exploring the same damn cave her son was.

"Well, whatever it is, one thing's for sure," Tam said slowly.

"What?" Jendara growled.

"No one's in this cave."

They picked their way out of the lowest sea cave and stared up at the other entrances. The cave mouths looked far above the beach, dark and unwelcoming. The sun sank another degree lower in the sky.

"Time to climb." Jendara slung her length of rope over her shoulder and reached for the first handhold in the cliff face.

Somewhere above, something wailed, its voice hollow and unbearably sad.

Coming Next Week: The stunning conclusion of Wendy Wagner's "Mother Bears."

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of short stories in such anthologies and magazines as Armored, Way of the Wizard, Rigor Amortis, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. She is a regular contributor to inkpunks.com, and can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Florian Stitz.

Mother Bears

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter One: Waking the Bear

Kran tapped his slate, louder this time, and Jendara gave in, looking up from her ledger. The boy's blue eyes gleamed as his chalk squeaked, underlining the word "please" a second time—his equivalent of begging. Jendara's lips moved as she read the note.

"You want to play marbles on the beach? With some village boys?"

He nodded his head, making the yellow tassels of his cap dance. The tip of his nose was pink from the cold sea air.

She grunted. "Just don't take too long. Captain Vorrin wants to catch the outgoing tide, and that means all packed up by sunset."

He swiped his slate with his sleeve, scribbled a thanks, and then darted down the gangplank. Jendara's eyes followed him along the pier until he cut over to the small strip of beach. She trusted Kran more than most mothers trusted their eight-year-olds, but she liked knowing where he was. He didn't get social invitations very often. There weren't many on the islands who could read, or who'd go near a god-touched boy with no speech.

She realized she was holding her quill too tightly, and put it down. Anyway, someone was approaching the ship-turned-market square: a big man with the dung-crusted boots of an island farmer. He reminded Jendara of her father, and she tried not to smile at him. Bad enough being a woman in this business; it wouldn't do to look soft.

"You got something real heavy in that pack of yours." She cleared the ledger and writing case off the table to make room for his wares. She'd been buying lots of ivory and whalebone this trip—always in high demand on the mainland—but whatever he carried in his pack looked soft. Furs, maybe.

"Ayuh. It's a load alright." The man dropped his bag with a thud that made the table creak. He undid the knotted ties and the sack slid open, revealing a pile of deep brown furs.

"What did you catch?" The fur felt sleek and oily beneath her fingers, the hairs coarse.

He didn't answer at first, working with the bag. Now Jendara could see that this great mass wasn't a stack of pelts, but one magnificent hide, and her heart quickened. This could be worth a lot of gold to the right buyer.

He began unfolding the hide. "It's big."

"Grizzly?"

"Ayuh." He shifted on his feet, frowning as he recollected. "It was in with the sheep, killing anything that moved. Had to protect my stock."

A paw hit the ship's deck, and she could see claws longer than her own hand. She couldn't imagine facing something so huge gone on a killing spree. "How'd you kill it?"

"Arrow through the eye. Then I jumped on its back and cut its throat." He'd uncovered the head, well cured and massive, but marred by a white patch of fur like a lightning bolt down the nose. "Woulda kept it, but the wife said it was probably unlucky, way it was acting. Figured you'd give me a fair price for it."

Jendara mentally calculated a few figures. It was a good pelt, and she knew a dealer in Magnimar looking for quality winter furs. She named her price, and the farmer grinned hugely. He spat on his palm and stuck it out, just as her father had done every deal he ever struck. She spat on her own and shook as fiercely as he did.

"We should drink. This deal is good for both of us."

"Yul is a typical islander—gruff and hard, but kind all the same."

She looked out at the docks. No one else approached, and the sun was already low in the sky. She doubted anyone further would be looking to trade with her. "All right."

Someone laid a hand on her shoulder. "You two mind a little company?"

Jendara shrugged. She hadn't heard Vorrin behind her, but wasn't surprised by his sudden appearance. Her husband, Ikran, had asked Vorrin to look after her and Kran as he'd lain bleeding out on the deck of a captured caravel. She couldn't hold it against either of them, much as she wanted to.

"You have a name, Bear Hunter?" Vorrin put out his hand. "I'm Vorrin, captain of this ship."

The farmer's lips thinned as he took Vorrin's measure. Vorrin's close-cropped black hair and thin mustache were a strike against him here on the archipelago. His accent, city-fine, didn't help. The farmer hooked his thumbs in his belt, a conspicuous rejection of the hand. "I am Yul."

"Lead us to the nearest ale, friend." Jendara stepped between the two men, hurrying Yul down the gangplank. She could feel Vorrin's eyes on her back, and could easily imagine the irritated expression. He abided the Ironbound Archipelago because she wanted to do business here, because he loved his nephew and believed in keeping his word. But he didn't like this cold, rough land.

The crunch of gravel beneath her boots made Jendara smile. It had been one thing to leave the islands for the man she loved, but she'd never felt right when she was away. Here the stone lay just beneath the tough heath, and the beaches were long stretches of gray rock and gravel. Even the land was hard here. It went without saying that the people worked hard, fought hard, and grew hard as frozen leather under the wind's cold buffeting.

But business had been brisk in this town, and the wind a constant reminder that she had a trade route to finish before the winter sea grew too rough for Vorrin's ship, the Milady. Jendara hadn't taken a moment to visit the village. It wasn't so different from the place where she'd grown up. The steep peaks of the house roofs stood out from the green turf climbing up the walls, the houses themselves snuggled down into the earth. They could withstand any storm, stay warm in any gale—little tough houses for big tough people.

A donkey huffed at her as they passed a lean-to where animals could wait out of the weather. Jendara patted its shaggy head and then hurried to catch up as Yul pushed opened the nearest door, releasing the pungent tang of peat smoke and spilled ale.

Jendara stepped inside and was struck by the realization that she had been here before. She could remember sitting at the little bar, rubbing oils into the backs of her still-itching hands, tossing back drinks that burned her throat but eased the fresh sting of the tattoos. She touched the back of her hand, the now-old ink covered by fingerless gloves. She could easily imagine the black jolly rogers beneath the wool, puffy and peeling as they had that night. So it must have been the end of her first pirate tour, pockets loaded and a lust to prove herself filling her heart.

Yul nodded at the barkeep, a shaven-headed man as broad as Yul and just as bearded. The man filled three tankards in quick succession, sliding them down the bar without a word. Jendara drank a long pull of the foaming stuff.

"Well, well, if it ain't the famous Jendara. I thought the rumors of you turning respectable were gullshit, but look at you out here, drinking with the farmers."

Jendara put down her tankard with deliberate softness. She turned to face the voice—one of those nasty, thin voices she'd come to associate with cowards. There was no point ignoring it: men like this only responded to intimidation. She folded her arms across her sheepskin vest and let her ice-blue eyes speak for her.

A short and dirty man stood in front of the nearest table, where a knot of men sat drinking. The little man sneered. He wasn't a native—the brown hair and narrow jaw, far too small for all his yellow teeth, proved that. From the waves of fish stench wafting off his layered sweaters, she imagined him a very minor pirate who made ends meet by fishing.

The worst kind of pirate. The jolly rogers on the back of her hands felt suddenly hot, as if Besmara, chief bitch and goddess of all pirates, agreed with Jendara's pronouncement.

She peeled off her gloves slowly, letting everyone in the bar see the tattoos.

"Jenny, Jenny, Jenny." The weasely man took a swig of beer and grinned down at her. She remembered him now. He'd once asked Ikran for a position on their boat, and she'd had to throw him overboard when he didn't like Ikran's answer. Gorg. That was his name.

Gorg's grin grew wider as he leaned toward her. "You still watching over that mute brat of yours?"

The jolly roger seemed to laugh as her knuckles connected with Gorg's face, splitting the skin over his cheekbone with the force of the blow. He screamed and dropped to his knees—not incapacitated, but going for his boot knife. Jendara lashed out with her heel, launching the man backward across the room.

She hadn't paid attention to other men at the table, but they must have been Gorg's friends, because they exploded up from their seats, snarling. Men screamed. Knives hissed free of their scabbards. Jendara laughed and slipped her axe free of her belt.

The weapon's haft shook with its own mirth as she brought the blunt end down on a man's skull, then jerked her arm backward, slamming the handle's butt into another man's solar plexus. Both sailors dropped. Jendara looked around for more, but Grog was already draped senseless across a chair, and the last of his companions was currently dangling from Vorrin's fist, toes not quite touching the floor.

The tavern door flew open, the low light of afternoon like a lighthouse beam cutting through the thick air. A man stood framed in the doorway. Jendara recognized him as Vorrin's first mate. Silence filled the room.

Vorrin released the man he'd been holding up by the sweater-front. The sailor crumpled to the ground. "Tam? Something the matter?"

"Ayuh." The word reminded Jendara that Tam was a fellow islander. He hesitated in the doorway.

"Well what, man?"

"It's the boy." Tam stepped inside, bobbing his head uncomfortably. "I saw a whole group of lads come racing up from the beach, laughing like loons. But Kran weren't with 'em."

Jendara felt her knees go soft, and she put her hand down on the bar to steady herself.

"Looked down the beach, but there weren't no sign of the boy. Figured we ought to go look for him."

Jendara sheathed her axe and moved toward the door. Vorrin clapped his hand on her shoulder. "Don't go off half-cocked."

She shook his hand loose. "I've got to find my son."

"No purpose going by yourself," Yul warned. "Folks don't tolerate strangers around here."

Jendara's lips thinned. She knew it was true—knew the close-knittedness of islanders—but resented it anyway. "He isn't like other boys. There's been trouble other places."

Yul didn't ask for details, but opened the door. "I'll help you look for him."

Jendara nodded curtly, rage boiling her veins, some of it residual, some of it the goddess's, and most of it for anyone who might hurt her child. Beyond Yul's shoulder, a knot of sniggering boys huddled under the lean-to where the donkey had waited. A growl bubbled up in Jendara's throat.

"You don't know they've done anything wrong," Vorrin whispered.

But she did, just from their wicked laughter, their covert glances. She did know, from the hush that fell over the little group as they saw the strangers coming their way. A shiver of cold warning ran down her spine.

One of the boys held a yellow tassel between his fingers. A yellow tassel just like the ones she'd sewn onto Kran's hat.

Coming Next Week: A mother's fury in Chapter Two of Wendy Wagner's "Mother Bears."

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of short stories in such anthologies and magazines as Armored, Way of the Wizard, Rigor Amortis, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and more. She is a regular contributor to inkpunks.com, and can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Florian Stitz.

Blood and Money

by Steven Savile

Click here to read this story from the beginning.

Chapter Four: Death in the Family

Blind optimism wasn’t a particularly useful trait for an assassin. Isra was neither blind nor optimistic. He knew full well that Faris could not be trusted, no matter how generous an offer his own skin was.

Isra knew people, be they the rich and greedy of one tier of society or the guttersnipes and backstabbing thieves of another. He lived in both worlds. He was surrounded on all sides by the best and the worst, and the worst always outnumbered the best. That was just the way of things. He knew full well his sister's husband wasn’t going to be true to his word. Nevertheless, he had decided to give the weasel a chance to prove him wrong. He owed Sana that much. Still, he was angry with himself for giving Faris the opening in the first place. He had known he couldn’t trust him with his secret, but had desperately wanted to believe he could. The old adage held that blood was thicker than water, with family being blood. But Faris was not blood. He was scum.

Had Faris been anyone else in the world, he would not have left the fortune-teller’s tent alive. That Isra had allowed Faris to plot murder and walk back out into the Nightstalls without sporting a second smile cut into his throat from ear to ear was testimony to the fact that Isra was as capable of being willfully naive as the next man.

But that didn’t make him stupid.

He followed in shadows, slipping between stalls and tents. When their cover ceased to be available, he climbed higher, working his way onto another roof, never letting his traitorous brother-in-law out of sight for even a moment on the long walk back to the home the man shared with Isra’s sister.

Faris kept glancing back over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. The movements were nervous, scared. But like a fool, he never looked up. This was not the behavior of a man grateful to be given his life and about to keep his end of a bargain. Far from it. This was the furtive, shiftless behavior of a man who trusted no one because no one had reason to trust him. It was the circle of lies. Faris was afraid for his life because, in Isra’s position, he would have been planning the exact moment to slip the knife in between his brother-in-law’s third and fourth ribs, ending his problem. So right now, even as he pushed and bullied his way through the crowded streets, Faris would be scheming, trying to find an angle, a way to gain some sort of advantage even as he ran for his life. That was just the nature of the beast.

Isra had to give Faris credit, though—he was at least doing his best to make shadowing him interesting, slipping into a hovel and out the back door, climbing garden walls and cutting through one of the bathhouses. Had he just looked up he would have saved himself a lot of sweat and trouble, given the baking sun, but as it was dark stains ringed the loose white shirt that clung to him as he moved, while Isra matched him step for step.

From his rooftop vantage, the assassin could see everything, Katapesh laid out like a doll theater beneath him. The height of the midday sun meant that he cast no shadow down onto the streets below.

Faris showed no sign of being in a hurry to go home. Rather, he was making a tour of the city, visiting certain establishments, very particular houses and places of business. These were all places where messages could be left for the kinds of people who do not want to be found easily, those magicians and alchemists who did not wish to treat with the masses, but dabbled in unsavory concoctions to gain whatever effect they so desired.

He was going to have to be on his guard for whatever nasty surprise Faris in mind.

Another hour of this, and then Isra realized that Faris had retraced his steps, returning to a shop that had already benefited from his patronage. Only it wasn’t a shop, it was a pesh den. The one where he had first slipped out through the rear door and made off over the wall. And suddenly it all became clear: the fool still thought he was being followed, but that the eyes watching him belonged to a bigger fool than him. His little detour was supposed to have gone unnoticed, with Isra tricked into thinking that Faris had been inside losing himself in some narcotic haze all this time. Perhaps the revelation of Isra’s second life hadn’t been enough to dispel the illusions he’d woven around his first one after all?

He watched Faris walk tall, happy to be seen on his journey back to his home.

The man was whistling.

He deserved to die just for that.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Every face is a mask."

Night fell fast. That was the twin curse and boon of living in a desert land.

Isra visited the house he had bought for his sister and her family. He was an unwelcome guest. He had never resented the gift, nor even considered it an act of generosity. She had married for love instead of money, and that had always made him happy.

The bargain he had struck with himself was simple enough: if Faris treated her well, then he would make sure sufficient money came in from investments for them to live well. And despite his duplicity, Faris at least loved and cared for her and wanted to provide for his family, just like any man would, even if no amount of money would be enough.

They weren’t going to be on any boat tonight, meaning Isra was about to make a widow of her. For all his arguments to the contrary, Faris was right in one thing: Isra was quite capable of being a cold-hearted bastard.

Under cover of darkness, Isra wore yet another mask, this one transforming him into the Nightwalker.

In the unlikely event that he was seen, people would walk away. That was the beauty of being one of the most renowned and feared men in a city. Even though the chances that he was hunting them were slim, no one was willing to take the risk when the alternative was to run and live.

Faris would be waiting for him. That was inevitable. Isra could only hope the man had the good grace to do it somewhere private. He had no wish to kill the merchant in front of his sister, and especially not the boy. The trauma of watching his father die would scar Munir for life, turning him into the real victim tonight. No, Isra wouldn’t let that happen.

The house was larger than they needed, the gardens far more ornate than was practical, with a huge fishpond that looked like a knife scar in the moonlight. The main house was three stories high; the top floor taken up with the sleeping quarters, the middle floor with Faris’s study and work rooms, and the ground with kitchens and artisanal spaces. The huge gabled roof was weighed down by overhanging eaves.

From his hiding place, Isra could see Faris pacing back and forth before the study window. He appeared to be alone, but Isra wasn’t about to risk taking anything at face value. He made sure his mask was in place. Appearances could always be deceptive.

He had a decision to make. Or, more accurately, he had the first of many decisions to make. He couldn’t go into the house through the front doors, that was a given. He had already planned out a relatively simple traverse up and across a vine-covered wall that would take him up onto the roof. From there he’d swing down again, coming into the house though the open window of the room where Faris had chosen to make his stand. There was every chance that Faris was both hoping and expecting him to enter the house by that route, and had planned for it. Poison on the windowsill, a needle in the shutter to deliver it straight into his bloodstream, or a crossbow bolt lined up ready to punch through his heart and push him out of the window to a tragic death... or any of many other scenarios. But the truth was any other way could be just as dangerous, if not more so, because they entailed having to move through the house from room to room without dragging his sister and her boy into the middle of things.

Of course it all hinged on whether Faris had decided to make his stand or not.

∗ ∗ ∗

Faris was ready for him; he must have heard Isra's footsteps on the roof.

There was a moment when Isra was vulnerable, as he slipped in through the window. Faris could have lunged then—he had a dagger gripped in his hand—but something made him step back.

He waved the knife, motioning for Isra to stay back. It was as though he’d completely blocked the death of his two bodyguards from his mind. Perhaps it was a coping mechanism?

“I've decided to stay,” he said.

The mask covered Isra’s disappointment. “Unfortunately, that isn't your decision to make. I was quite clear when I told you what would happen if you tried to stay here. We both know you can’t be trusted, and you’ve had all the choices I’m ever going to offer you. You made the wrong one. And now I won’t trust you with anything, least of all my sister.”

“Trust!” Faris spat. “You talk about trust when all you do is lie? Everything about you is a lie, Isra. You pretend to be one thing when you’re really another. You offer me everything I want, but without actually giving anything away. You are a liar, plain and simple. I could kill you now and no one would blame me.”

“No one?”

“Look at where you are, who you are. You’re not my brother-in-law here; you’re an assassin. You’re the Nightwalker. You've broken into my home. I don’t know it’s you beneath that mask, Isra. I have a right to protect my family.” His grin was cruel. In his headl, he was already making all of the excuses he would need to cover himself with the Pactmasters.

“I didn't want to have to do this,” said Isra, closing the gap between them.

Before he could get within striking distance, Faris hurled a high-backed chair into his path.

Isra danced back a step, staying out of reach.

“What's the matter?” called a voice from the other side of the door. Sana.

Isra wanted to call out to her, to tell her not to come in, but he knew her well enough to know that that would only bring her into the room. She was contrary like that.

“Quickly,” Faris cried, a fake note of panic in his voice. It was ludicrous pantomime, and no one in her right mind would have been taken in by it. His eyes were bright with bitter mirth. There was no smile.

Sana didn't get help.

She opened the door just as both men knew she would.

“What’s wrong?” she started to say, but then caught sight of the Nightwalker standing by the window.

Isra held out a hand, trying to calm his sister before she could panic, but he knew the sight of him there, in her house, was a terrifying one. He should have left then and there, just taken two steps back and jumped out of the window. But he didn’t. Instead, he remained rooted to the spot, while she moved closer to her husband.

That solidarity cut deeper than any knife possibly could. Even though there was no way that she could recognize him, it hurt Isra that she would go to this snake for protection.

Instead of pushing her behind him, though, Faris put her between him and Isra, using Sana as a human shield.

It took her a moment to grasp that all was not as it had seemed, and then a note of genuine fear crept into her voice. “What are you doing?”

Faris ignored her. “Put down your knife,” he said.

“This is between you and me,” Isra said flatly. “There’s no need for her to be dragged into this.”

“Please Faris,” Sana cut across them. “What’s this about? What’s happening? Who is this man?”

“So many questions, dear wife,” Faris rasped in her ear. “All you need to know is that this is the man who wants your husband dead.”

She wasn’t satisfied. Panic was slowly being replaced by anger. The fear remained, kept in check by some very basic survival instinct. “You’re hurting me, Faris.” She didn’t try to break free of his grasp.

“He will not attack a woman. He only kills those he’s paid to kill. He’s honorable like that. He won’t kill someone who simply gets in the way. Don't you know who he is?”

No. Please, no. Don't tell her. Isra gritted his teeth. He could only make the plea in his mind. She would recognize his voice. Maybe not instantly, but it would come to her eventually. He didn’t want Sana to know what he had become. The extent of his folly was driven home in that one moment of clarity.

“Do you want her death on your hands Nightwalker?”

Mute, Isra remained motionless, fighting every single muscle in his body as they tensed, ready to explode with brutal force.

Any lingering hope that this might resolve itself peacefully died then.

This wasn’t going to end well for Faris.

“Do you know where I’ve been today, Nightwalker?” Faris raised an eyebrow. His ugliness seemed to become more physical with every breath he took, as though the blackness inside was manifesting itself on his skin. “I have been to see the alchemists, apothecaries, and every practitioner of tainted magic I could track down. And can you think why?” It was a rhetorical question. “No? Then let me tell you, brother.” Isra winced, hoping Sana would miss the familiarity in the taunt. “I’ve coated the runnels along the edge of this blade with a poison so toxic that I need only touch the steel to flesh for it to take effect. It’s a very particular poison. It will paralyze in moments, but not kill. That will only happen if I break the skin. There is no antidote. Nothing that can be done to reverse the process. Do you take my meaning, Nightwalker?”

Until that moment, Isra hadn’t noticed that Faris was wearing gloves, but now it made sense. The man held the blade only inches from Sana's throat. His words had the desired effect: she stopped struggling against him. The first tears broke and ran down her cheeks as her world was turned upside down. She was a feisty woman, always had been, but she wasn’t physically strong enough to free herself. Certainly not without her bastard of a husband touching the poisoned dagger to her cheek. She knew it and he knew it.

“Better not cut yourself, then.” Isra said.

“This blade was meant for you, Nightwalker.”

“Did you really believe I’d let you close enough to prick me with it, Faris? You’re a bigger fool than I took you for. Put it down and let her go. It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“Oh, but it does,” Faris said.

There was movement on the other side of the door. Both men heard it.

Faris’s grip around his wife’s throat tightened, an element of panic stealing into his face as the boy, Munir, appeared in the doorway. “Father?”

The boy caught sight of Isra then, but rather than being frightened by the black-clad assassin, he didn’t seem to be concerned at all. Isra remembered the moment back at the ball when he thought the boy had seen him. Did he know? Or was he just too young to understand what was happening here?

“Get out of here, Munir. Back to bed. Now.”

“You’re hurting her.”

“Don’t argue with me, boy. Bed.”

Faris turned his head. It was the smallest of movements, but Isra sensed this might be his only chance to end this well. He closed half of the distance between them before Faris realized he was on the move.

A look between rage and disbelief flashed across the merchant’s face. Then, coldly and deliberately, Faris yanked Sana’s head back and drew the blade across his wife's throat.

Arterial blood pulsed, the first spray describing a huge arc that spattered down Isra’s face and chest, the second and third smaller, until the blood barely bubbled from the wound.

“I might not be able to fight you, brother dearest, but I can take someone you love.”

Rage like nothing he had ever experienced surged through Isra. It was thunder in his blood. Lightning in his veins. It was a desert khamsin inside his skull, pounding relentlessly against his temples, trying to shatter the plates of bone. It was a djinn whipping up sand to blast his skull to dust.

Isra had never killed in rage. Ever. The Nightwalker was always in total control of mind and body. Death was clean and swift, delivered with one eye on escape. Control meant no mistakes, no unnecessary suffering.

But Isra wanted Faris to suffer. He wanted him to scream and beg and plead for his life. He wanted to break him and every bone in his worthless body. A thousand cuts could never be enough. He wanted to flay the skin from his back, to shred the flesh as he peeled it away from his bones. And he wanted Faris to feel it all.

He pulled twin daggers from the sheathes on his hips, blades flashing in a blur of motion. He cut high, across Faris’ cheek, and low across his belly, opening the gut up. Faris dropped the poison-tainted blade, falling to his knees and clutching his stomach as a rope of intestine slowly began to unravel through his fingers. He tried desperately to force his guts back inside his body. He was dead, but didn’t realize it.

Isra could have left him then. It would have taken days for the murderer to finally die.

But that wasn’t enough.

Faris’s screams curdled in his throat as Isra opened a second cut on his face, matching the first. “Smile,” the assassin said coldly, and cut again, scraping the knife across Faris’ forehead. Blood streamed down into the man’s eyes.

The assassin walked around the dead man, grasping a tangle of hair and wrenching his hand back, scalping Faris. It was brutal and ugly. His hands were slick with his brother-in-law’s blood, but it was his sister’s that burned him.

He pushed the man to the floor. Blood soaked the boards.

Isra walked around him again, then pulled Faris over onto his back and went to work once more.

Faris’ body was so far lost to shock that he almost certainly couldn’t feel a thing.

Isra didn’t care.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the bottom stairs. Two men, Faris’s help, came rushing up the stairs, too late to save anyone.

The assassin’s blades peeled away layers of skin and meat, scraping down to the ribs. He reached in, snapping two of the bones so that he could reach in and tear out the heart. Isra wanted to feel it stop beating in his fist, but Faris was already gone.

Isra was so blind to his surroundings that he missed Munir bending to grip the poisoned knife in both hands. The first he heard was the slap of bare feet on bloody floorboards as the boy ran at him, blade gripped thrust out before him.

Isra looked up a fraction of a second before the boy could plunge the knife into his throat and reacted instinctively, slapping the boy’s wrists so hard his hands sprang open and the poisoned blade spun away, clattering to the floor. The force of the blow sent the boy sprawling through his parents’ blood. Isra picked up Faris's knife and plunged it into the man’s corpse.

It was over.

The footsteps pounded reached the top of the stairs, dragging him back to the present.

He had to get out, and quickly.

Isra snatched up his knives, and with one backward glance to check on the boy, slipped through the window again just as two men burst into the room. They were muscle-bound thugs built for intimidation, not for running across rooftops, and they knew it. Neither made a move to follow as Isra leaped from the window ledge and disappeared into the night.

∗ ∗ ∗

Half an hour later, he was cleaned up and changed into his normal attire, and had the reek of alcohol back on his breath; he was Isra the merchant prince once again, though today all the cares of the world had come home to roost. He would never be the same again. He was grateful that he could enter his sister's home by the front door this time.

There was no need to climb the stairs. He knew what was up there.

He was shaking as he listened to the bodyguard describe what had happened, and how he had caught a glimpse of the bastard Nightwalker disappearing through the window. The man made himself sound like a hero. He had given chase, but the assassin had used black spells to throw him off the roof and he’d barely escaped with his life.

It was all rubbish. Isra didn’t care. Let the man pretend.

“I’ve sent word to the Pactmasters,” the bodyguard said, “but there’s not much they can do for Master Faris or your sister. Do you want to see the bodies?”

Isra shook his head. “No.”

“Young master Munir is in his playroom. I fear he saw everything.”

“I’ll take him with me. Then, when I’m gone, I want you to burn this house to the ground. I don’t want him to have to see it ever again. Will you do that?”

“I don’t think—”

“I’m not asking you to think. I’m asking you to do one thing for me. I’ll see you are well paid for it. Can I trust you?”

The man nodded.

“Good. Trust’s so important.” Isra meant it on levels the bodyguard couldn’t possibly grasp.

He went through to the boy’s playroom, hesitating at the doorway to put on yet another mask, though this was the most difficult one of all to draw down. He had just made the boy an orphan. He didn’t know if he was going to be able to look the child in the eye and lie—or worse, if he wasn’t going to have to. He wasn’t sure what he would do if the boy knew... But he’d find out soon enough.

He knocked once on the door and opened it.

Munir lay on a cot-seat, his face turned away from the door. Isra wondered if Munir had consciously chosen to lie facing his parents’ bodies on the other side of the wall, or if it was coincidence.

He sat on the edge of the bed and rested a hand on Munir’s arm.

The boy didn’t react.

Isra made a promise to himself and to his sister in the room beyond: he would take the boy under his wing and be the father he deserved.

He spoke softly, saying anything that came into his head, but the boy didn’t seem to hear any of it.

The one thing Isra didn’t say was that everything was going to be all right.

Isra gathered Munir into his arms.

“Is there anything you want to bring? A toy? Something special to you?”

Munir didn’t answer. He pressed his face into Isra’s chest.

Isra could feel their blood on his skin. No amount of scrubbing had been able to cleanse him. Surely the boy could smell it on him? Surely he knew who Isra was? What he had done?

Munir didn’t fight him as Isra carried him out of the house for the last time.

Tomorrow it would be a ghost, just like the boy’s parents.

The only ghost Isra had ever intended to create was the Nightwalker’s. But something else had happened in that room. Instead of dying, the Nightwalker had become immortal.

That side of him, the killer, would live forever.

Coming Next Week: Ghouls and goddesses in a sample chapter from James L. Sutter’s new Pathfinder Tales novel, Death’s Heretic!

Steven Savile is the internationally best-selling author of almost twenty novels and many more short stories, set in both original worlds and those of Primeval, Stargate SG-1, Warhammer, Torchwood, Dr. Who, and more. He won Writers of the Future in 2002, has been a runner-up for the British Fantasy Award and short listed for the Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel, and won the Scribe Award for Best Young Adult Original Novel. For more information, visit his website at www.stevensavile.com.

Illustration by Florian Stitz.

Blood and Money

by Steven Savile

Chapter Three: Fortune Favors the Dead

For Isra to claim that he was a master of disguise was akin to saying cash was king down in the Nightstalls, capable of buying everything from rare strains of poison to souls, either figuratively or literally depending on which gossip you listened to. It was well known that commerce was the only god worth praying to. That was the essence of the Golden City.

It went without saying.

But it was also wonderfully understated.

Disguise wasn’t simply an essential talent given the Nightwalker’s line of work; it was something the assassin took peculiar delight in. Isra Darzi had always been fascinated with masks, and how a man might be one thing and appear quite another. The greatest mask of all was the one he wore every day when he pretended to be himself, and that one required no mask at all.

Passing himself off as the would-be assassin had been deceptively simple. All he had needed to do was switch animal heads and adjust his gait slightly. It was the most basic of physical theatrics, but people were easily fooled, especially when they saw what they expected to see. Faris expected his brother-in-law to be the one doing the dying, so Isra gave the man what he needed. He made sure his brother-in-law caught a glimpse of him making his escape, then discarded the mask and moved quickly to retrieve and dispose of the body he’d thrown from the balcony. It suited his purpose for Faris to believe that his assassin was still alive. Isra was confident, almost arrogant as he walked through a room, because if he didn’t already own it, he almost certainly could if he so desired. The new walk gave the impression of someone with far less confidence and a more furtive nature.

Part of him still refused to believe that Faris was behind the contract. After all, they were close.

Friends.

Isra dredged his memory for things that had transpired between them, trying to recall any possible slight, but coming up with nothing. Was it money? Jealousy? Some half-assed notion of prestige? Did Faris expect to inherit everything—the house, the businesses, the network of contacts and traders spread out across the kingdom—after his brother-in-law’s death?

Isra barked out a bitter laugh. Faris was going to be in for one hell of rude awakening when the will was read and named the boy, Munir, as Isra’s heir, with Mirza as his agent, acting as trustee to ensure his interests were looked after until the boy was of an age to assume control himself.

The assassin had never expected this to be a permanent arrangement, assuming that he would have a son of his own eventually. He had wanted to ensure that the family wealth would not only remain within the family, but be tied to it by blood, rather than by something as ephemeral as lust.

Isra’s head was full of treachery as he walked through the bazaar.

The Obari winds blew unfettered through the tents and stalls. The sea breeze offered blessed relief from the hot winds that had been blowing in off the Mwangi Expanse.

The bazaar was full of bustling life. Everything they said about the Emporium was true: everything was for sale here, no matter how esoteric or exotic. Isra made his way to a less familiar part of the tent city, the air rich with heady spices that in no way masked the redolent tang of narcotics. Open pitches and overflowing tables spilled out into the narrow allies between the traders’ tents. Many of the merchants had traveled far from Katapesh to bring back the toys and trinkets of distant lands. The further, the rarer, the most costly.

Representatives of the trade guilds walked the aisles, making sure that their pay masters weren’t being cheated out of their due. More often than not they looked like grubby-faced urchins and downtrodden souls. Without official emblems, their affiliations were impossible to tell.

Over the belling tops of the tents, one of the many minarets of Katapesh pierced the clear blue sky. This one was part of Abadar’s temple. It was also the tower from which Hashim Rakhman’s guard captain had taken his swan dive.

A shock of white hair cut across Isra’s path, the sharp-nosed Garundi turning to look him straight in the eye, then turning away. There was a moment, when their eyes locked, that Isra thought the Garundi was another one of his brother-in-law’s pets, but the man seemed to realize he was staring and broke eye contact without so much as twitching, never mind reaching for a hidden blade. Isra was tempted to ask for directions, just to prolong the man’s discomfort, but decided against it, primarily because he didn’t fancy removing the scarf from his face. Why increase the risk of being recognized just for a little sport? His intention was no grander than anonymity. He wanted people to see a man lost in the maze of stalls and tents. Thousands of people a day passed through the bazaar, making the chances of being recognized slim. Pulling away the scarf, even for just a moment, took that slim possibility and raised it. How high, he had no way of knowing, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

The hook was baited. He had sent a message to Faris, supposedly from his hired knife, despite the fact that her corpse could quite happily rot in its current resting palace for months without ever being found. He didn’t need months, he only needed hours. The message had said simply: “Bara the Fortune-Teller’s tent. Sunset.”

Isra arrived early and paid the fortune-teller off, buying the tent for an hour with enough coin to almost certainly buy the pitch outright. He didn’t want to be disturbed. He had a feeling things could quickly turn ugly, especially if his brother-in-law didn’t come alone. Isra had long since learned to trust his gut instincts.

Faris sent his two bodyguards in first, then entered the tent himself.

Isra stepped in close and grabbed the first guard, twisting his wrist until the man cried out in pain, then twisted some more, pushing hard on the elbow and breaking the man’s arm in one swift, precise movement. He cast the man aside, ramming an elbow into his temple as he stumbled. The guard’s legs buckled and he went down. He wasn’t going to be getting up in a hurry.

The second guard had no more luck, despite the fact that he had drawn his knife and lunged towards Isra. The assassin’s instincts saved his life. He stepped aside from the blow, grasped the bodyguard’s arm at wrist and elbow, and turned the blade back on its wielder. The curved knife sank deep into the stunned man’s chest. A blood-red rose blossomed on his shirt. The moment of shock was all it took for Isra to finish him.

Isra hadn’t wanted this; death had never been his intention.

“Their deaths are on your hands,” Isra spat. “I hope your money’s good in the afterlife.”

"Not even family comes between Faris and profit."

Faris turned on his heel, looking to flee, but Isra hooked a foot out and dumped him on his face. The man went down with a grunt, reaching out for the tent flaps of the door to stop himself from falling and nearly pulling the entire construction down on top of them. With all the noise, there was no way the other stallholders could have failed to hear what was going on, but discretion in this case was the best way to keep trouble from their own door. The bazaar lived on a basic premise: it’s always someone else’s problem.

“Money?” Faris snapped, only hearing the one word and ignoring the rest as he blustered and struggled to rise. “You've had your money, and I've still no proof that the bastard is dead. Without his body, I cannot claim his place, so you can forget all about money.”

So, when it came down to it, this was all about money after all.

Blood and money.

Isra removed the scarf from his face. He savored the shock and fear as it crept over Faris’s own.

“How...?” The man sank back down. He looked, quite literally, as though he had seen a ghost, which of course he had. “You’re dead... I saw...”

“The question isn’t ‘how,’ brother, it’s ‘why.’ Why would you want me dead? Why did you think that you’d be able to take my place? If you had asked me for anything, I would have given it to you. Anything at all.”

“Give?” Faris spat. “I don't want your charity! I want more than that. I deserve it!”

Isra was torn. He wanted the best for his sister, Sana, and for his nephew. They were the innocents in all of this, but they were the ones that were going to pay the highest price. Killing Faris would destroy them, even if they never knew who was behind his death.

“There’s only one thing you deserve, Faris,” he said slowly. “But fortunately for you, I love my sister more than I hate you. So there has to be away out of this—some way we can both get some sort of satisfactory resolution that doesn’t involve spilling your guts all over this tent.” He thought about it for a moment. “You want to be in charge? You want control over the family interests? You’d consider that a victory?”

“Of course,” Faris said. “But that’s not going to happen now, is it?” He gestured to the two dead men.

Isra followed the direction of his movement, but his mind was elsewhere.

This was the moment. It all came down to this.

Could he trust Faris? What would happen if he gave the man the opportunity to play the part he wanted so desperately?

Suddenly, Isra wanted to laugh. They were in the middle of a fortune-teller’s tent, dead men left and right, and he was trying to look into the future. He might as well look into the crystal ball now and ask the mists to part...

“What are you thinking, Isra?” Faris suddenly sounded like Isra’s brother-in-law again, rather than the man who’d paid money for his death. “Talk to me.”

And then, as Isra knew it would, came the question he had hoped his brother-in-law wouldn’t ask.

“Where did you learn to fight like that? How did you manage to overcome...?” Faris didn’t quite finish the thought. He didn’t need to.

“The assassin you sent to kill me?” Isra said bluntly.

Faris nodded.

Isra made a decision. “I have a secret, Faris. I’m going to tell you something now that will change the course of your life, and mine; a secret that has been gnawing away at me for a long time now. It is an itch that needs to be scratched.” He locked eyes with the man on the floor. “You might say that I’m two people. There’s the Isra you know—or think you know—and there’s the other me, the other Isra that’s now consuming my life. Making money offers no thrill. There’s no pleasure in a deal well struck. Not compared to my other life.” He crouched down so that the two of them were on the same level. “You see, I am the one they call the Nightwalker.”

The cogs whirred away behind Faris’ eyes. “You? No...” The fear returned, yet as quickly as it came, a look of cunning stole in to replace it.

“Here’s what I’m thinking, Faris,” Isra said. “If you want to be the head of the family so desperately, then why not? I could disappear. It wouldn’t be difficult. I haven't been seen since the party, and it's not such a huge stretch of the imagination to pretend that your assassin succeeded.”

Faris thought about it for a moment. “What would you do?”

“I would be free of the bonds that weigh me down, free to do something that I get satisfaction out of. Something more challenging.”

“Killing people?”

“Or just starting fresh without the expectation of being a drunk with too much money and too little sense. I’m tired of this life, Faris.”

Faris looked incredulous. “And you would be out of our lives for good?”

Isra wasn’t going to lie. “No. Not for good. You’d have control of the day-to-day things, but I’d still want a hand in decisions that affect the business. You would be the public face of the family, the man everyone dealt with.”

“I’d be your puppet, you mean?” Faris’s lip curled.

“That’s not how I’d choose to see it.”

“How you’d choose? Your words are slippier than a sand eel, Isra. I’d be your puppet, dancing to whatever string you decided to pull.”

“Think about it, Faris. It's the best I can offer.”

Faris laughed. “Oh, I shall think about it. Long and hard, brother. I shall think about nothing but, but I shall bide my time. Decide in haste, repent at leisure, as they say. I have much to consider. Perhaps I should just reveal that our beloved Isra, patron of flophouses and pesh dens, is the fearsome Nightwalker? Let’s see what becomes of you then. You think you have enemies now... imagine what it’ll be like when half of Katapesh finds out you’re responsible for the death of a friend, or family member, or employer. Go on, imagine—think about what you’ve done, how your crimes have impacted their lives, and the ripples of them spreading out from person to person. Imagine how much they hate you.” Faris smiled grimly.

“I wouldn’t make threats if I were you,” Isra said.

“You wouldn't? I don’t believe that for a minute. You’re a bastard, Isra.”

The man they called the Nighwalker looked at the huddled merchant in front of him, seeing him properly for the first time, and realized that he may have made the biggest mistake in his life by sharing his secret.

It had to end here, one way or another.

“I tried to offer you a way out of this, Faris, but you’re a bigger idiot than I gave you credit for. I’m going to make you a promise now, and I want you to think very, very seriously about it before you say anything. If you so much as think the word Nightwalker, I will make sure you’re dead before the thought can reach your lips. I offered you a way out because I love my sister, not out of any kindness I feel toward you. You’ve mistaken love for weakness. Instead of taking me up on my kindness, you’ve proven I can’t trust you. So here is my final offer: leave Katapesh and live, or stay and die.”

“Leave Katapesh?” The merchant’s eyes were wide, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly,” Isra said, and stood. “Take you wife and son and start a new life far away from here, Faris. Get on the first boat out of the city and start fresh somewhere else. Be the head of your own family, out of my shadow.

“Because if you’re still in Katapesh when the moon rises, I will find you. And I will kill you.”

Coming Next Week: A death in the family in the final chapter of "Blood and Money."

Steven Savile is the internationally best-selling author of almost twenty novels and many more short stories, set in both original worlds and those of Primeval, Stargate SG-1, Warhammer, Torchwood, Dr. Who, and more. He won Writers of the Future in 2002, has been a runner-up for the British Fantasy Award and short listed for the Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel, and won the Scribe Award for Best Young Adult Original Novel. For more information, visit his website at www.stevensavile.com.

Illustration by Florian Stitz.

Blood and Money

by Steven Savile

Chapter Two: The Masquerade

The fact that someone wanted him dead was a bitter pill for Isra to swallow, but not a particularly surprising one. Act like an idiot long enough, splashing the cash and taking it as gospel that every woman in the city had been put there for your pleasure, and you were going to incur a certain amount of jealousy. That was just part of the image he had cultivated to hide the Nightwalker from prying eyes. And he was good at it. No one in their right mind would suspect Isra Darzi was capable of anything beyond getting drunk and making passes at the lithe, long-legged ladies.

Of course there was the risk that went along with the kind of women he chased—or rather the husbands of these beautiful creatures, who had the nasty habit of thinking they owned them. But that was all just part of the game.

And Isra was rather fond of the game.

No, the thing that disturbed him was the fact that, of all the assassins in the city, the Nightwalker had been hired to carry out the kill. The Nightwalker was by far the most sought-after killer in Katapesh. His contracts commanded vast sums of money because they were always completed. Always. Like death and taxes, the Nightwalker was one of the few things that could be relied upon. Which of course made this whole thing slightly farcical. How was he supposed to kill himself and uphold the legend of the Nightwalker without actually killing himself?

At least three people knew his services had been retained: the client, his agent Mirza, and him. Mirza wouldn’t talk—it wasn’t in his interest to slay the legend, not when he lived off the commissions it brought in. So that left the client.

When someone wanted a man dead, it usually went one of three ways: One, they blustered and shouted about it drunkenly in a tavern, making idle threats. Two, they made some half-assed attempt themselves and generally botched it. Or three, they got serious about it. And the Nightwalker was very much part of option three.

So the question was twofold: who wanted him dead, and of that long list of jilted lovers, cuckolded husbands, and bankrupted merchants he’d left trailing in his wake, who could afford the price?

He felt reasonably sure he could discount the traders, given that when he was through with them they were invariably too poor to rub two coins together.

Katapesh was a thriving city. Anything and everything could be and was traded, no matter how exotic or expensive. In any mercantile hub there were rich men—lots of them. Where one man could profit at the misfortune of another, it was assured that the rich and powerful would cluster around like vultures waiting to pick off the dead and dying. Isra had rivals. He wasn’t naive enough to think otherwise. Two or three were certainly wealthy enough, but they were also the closest things he had to friends. Not that friendship meant they could be ruled out. How many times had one friend stabbed another in the back?

Then there were the jealousies that went hand-in-hand with being family. His own brother-in-law, Faris, married to his sister, Sana, made no secret of his envy. But Faris was a coward. He was the kind of man who chose option one, getting drunk and blowing hot air, listing all of the tortures he’d visit on Isra’s skin. But once the drink had worn off Faris would crawl back under his stone. Isra had very little time for the man, but his sister seemed to be taken in by his “charms.” They had a young son, Munir, who thought his father could do no wrong, though the boy’s affection was not always returned. Invariably when Isra went round to play the favorite uncle, Munir would end up with his arms wrapped around the assassin’s legs, begging him not to go.

But if it was one of this select group of suspects—friends and family—then from what he knew of them, they were all more than capable of carrying out the killing themselves, and would quite probably have enjoyed it. They certainly weren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty. So that would have put them squarely in the option two category. It all came down to means, motive, and opportunity. He couldn’t control means, but the client certainly had them, as well as a motive. What he could control was the opportunity.

Isra already had the first inklings of a plan coming together in his mind. He needed to draw the knife for his would-be killer.

It would need to be carefully orchestrated. But if he could manipulate his enemy into attacking him, and make sure it happened in front of a whole host of witnesses who would willingly testify to the seemingly unprovoked assault, full of outrage and shock that one of their own could go bad, he could kill three birds with the one proverbial stone.

Well, kill one bird—the client. Safeguarding both his identity as the Nightwalker and the assassin’s untarnished reputation were more like protecting the other two birds, if you were going to be picky about it.

Of course it would have been a lot easier if he knew who wanted him dead.

∗ ∗ ∗

The social scene was such that two days was not considered to be too short notice for a party; exclusivity demanded a certain amount of secrecy, after all. Lavish banquets could be brought together in a matter of hours. But then, with the market stalls filled to overflowing with every treat imaginable—and many unimaginable—Katapesh was a gourmand’s paradise. The cost was of no concern. Wealth necessitated a certain extravagance as far as Isra’s carefully cultivated reputation was concerned.

Invitations had been dispatched to the great and the good, the rich, the devious, the powerful and the influential—in short, anyone who was anyone in the city received the enigmatic card with the time, the date, and Isra Darzi’s crest. He liked the simplicity of it, treating the invitation as a summons rather than a request. It appealed to his sense of importance in terms of the social structure of the city. He was fairly certain that whoever wanted him dead would be there, blindly oblivious to the fact that they were the guests of honor.

Knowing the way the mind worked, Isra was fairly safe in thinking that anyone who failed to attend could be ruled out. Hosting the party—and a masquerade at that—was effectively painting a target on his own back. The masks assured a level of anonymity that would make it so much more difficult for any would-be killer to resist the chance to wield the knife himself.

It all came down to managing the opportunity. Isra had to ensure that each of his suspects had equal chance, not only to slit his throat, but to get away with it—hence the masks. They offered the illusion of facelessness, and in his experience cowards were braver when they didn’t think people could see them.

The notion of a masked ball appealed to Isra’s sense of humor. On the morning of the masquerade he had a second package delivered to each of the four men he suspected of wanting him dead: animal masks. There was a different one for each of his would-be killers, each reflecting his own thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the recipient’s personality: a calopus, a jackal, a lizard-skinned razorscale, and a mongrel dhabba in turn. It amused Isra to take the joke a little further, and along with each mask was a note assuring the guest that his host would be donning an ass’s head.

In fact, Isra had no intention of actually being at the gala for more than a few minutes, and certainly not in the guise of an ass. Yet such was the expectation when it came to Isra Darzi, ever the joker, and the deception could only help with his shell game. In reality, Isra would be far up above the party, lurking among the rafters or in the shadows of the eaves. Watching. He had tethered his proverbial goat as bait, now all he had to do was wait and see who came for it.

∗ ∗ ∗

"An assassin cannot afford mercy—nor expect any for herself."

Isra donned his mask. He had chosen to be a great black-feathered bird. Guests were still arriving, and the chatter as they mingled was at first muted, the music of the string orchestra swelling to fill the domed chamber, its echo giving the notes a haunting quality as they swam around the animals below.

Dragon danced with camelopard, lion with janni and sand eel. Robbed of their features, every woman was more beautiful simply by the grace of her movement, the curve of hip and thigh, and the suppleness of her limbs as she moved across the dance floor. Each man, on the other hand, seemed to take on the persona of his chosen mask, the bulls pushing through the crowd, the pugwampis skirting the edge and watching the women, the calopi prancing and the peacocks preening. Human behavior never ceased to amaze Isra, and here, playing out beneath him on the dance floor and around its skirts, was a perfect encapsulation of city life and the social strata of Katapesh. The pig and the boar, he saw, gravitated to the food, eating with their hands.

The music changed, the tempo picking up. It was reflected on the dance floor with the animals moving gracefully from partner to partner, taking hands, bowing heads, drawing bodies close in the anonymity of their masks so that they might push up against each other in ways they never would have dared without them.

The ass moved through the crowd, tossing his head back and braying every now and then, before leading a swan onto the dance floor. The ass assayed a bow, and then began a crudely amusing courtship dance. For five minutes he was very much the center of attention. Isra took the opportunity to slip down from the rafters, moving swiftly and surely to the balcony, then from the balcony down into the press of bodies below. The mask was snug. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, mingling with the stitched feathers to make a heady musk.

Isra moved freely amongst the assembled guest without actually getting involved in conversation with anyone. After all, everyone knew the ass was the host. No one wondered or cared about the great bird flitting through their midst. He kept visual contact with his doppelganger, never letting the ass’s head out of sight. He hadn’t prepped his stand-in beyond telling the man to make sure he was seen, to play the gracious host, to flirt outrageously with the women, and to carouse and make merry—meaning the actor had no idea quite how much danger he was in. As long as he remained the centre of attention he’d be relatively safe, though of course more than one assassin used the sheer exposed nature of public gatherings and the press of the throng to cover his actions. But those were professionals. Isra was dealing with ruthless businessmen here, not ruthless killers, though they did share certain instincts. It was when Isra gave the signal for the ass to move out onto the balcony, out of prying eyes, that things could turn interesting.

Isra slipped out through the balcony doors. He had driven three metal spikes into the wall to make a ladder. Success or failure came down to preparation, and that meant controlling every variable he could possibly control. He climbed them quickly, pressing his back to the sandstone. He was gambling that any would-be assassin wouldn’t look up. It was a safe bet. The killer would want to drive the knife home and get off the balcony fast. Anything over a few seconds out there would increase the chance of discovery.

The ass’s head lingered with a small group of women for a while before making his excuses. The balcony doors opened, and the man came through. He leaned on the balcony rail, taking the night air. It was a blessed relief to be out here in the cool, and for once Isra found himself hoping it would take the killer a while to pluck up the courage to do the deed, just so that he could enjoy the relief from the sweaty heat of the ballroom.

No one else came through the doors for five minutes, and then the only visitor was a woman intent on getting him alone. She came up behind the ass’s head, wrapped her arms around his waist and whispered something into his cauliflower ear. The decoy brayed out a laugh, slapped the woman on her own ass and sent her scurrying back into the ball.

Isra’s muscles began to cramp, but he’d spent hours in worse situations. It was all about discipline and keeping the blood circulating. He flexed and relaxed his thighs, working the individual muscles one at a time.

He lingered a few minutes more, and with nothing happening was about to give up on the fishing expedition and send the decoy back inside, ready to believe that he’d been wrong, when the unmistakable head of the black jackal peered in through the balcony arch. His brother-in-law, Faris.

Isra didn’t move. He willed Faris to announce himself, to come out onto the balcony and slap the ass heartily on the back, all good friends together.

Any hope Isra still maintained was dispelled by Faris’s single furtive glance. The jackal gave a signal to someone else behind him, then disappeared back into the crowd of revelers. The music swelled again, then lowered, partygoers whooping and cheering as the belly dancers began. The bells on their hips and toes and wrists replaced the strings, creating an entirely new melody.

A woman, wearing the head of a meerkat, slipped out through the door and onto the balcony. There was nothing seductive about her movement, and she clearly had no intention of flirting with the ass. It took Isra a heartbeat to realize Faris’ game: he had bought another assassin with him.

Isra slipped down from his perch without so much as a whisper from the fabric of his clothing, and half-stepped, half-stumbled deliberately into the meerkat’s back, pushing her off balance, then grasping at her as though to hold himself up, just a moment before her blade would have plunged into his stand-in’s back. The meerkat cried out in surprise, losing her balance, but before she could react, Isra swept her feet out from beneath her and dropped onto her back, driving his knee into the base of her spine, hard. He cuffed her around the temple with the hilt of his knife with enough force to leave her reeling, and then looked up at the confused decoy.

“She's drunk,” Isra said. “I will take care of her. You’ve done well, but you can go now.”

The ass nodded, maintaining the silence he’d been paid for, and went back inside to enjoy the gyrations of the belly dancers. It was the way of things. He had done what he had been paid for, no more, no less, and no explanations were needed. After all, he had no idea that Isra been playing the part of guardian angel, nor how close the assassin’s blade had come.

Isra slipped his hands beneath the meerkat’s mask and pulled it off to get a proper look at the woman. He didn’t recognize her, but her pale complexion marked her as an outsider. The fear was only evident in her eyes, and she was quickly mastering that.

Isra bent down so that his face was only inches from her ear, and whispered, “Do you know who I am?”

The woman didn’t try to move—not that she could have with his weight pressing down on her.

“I am Isra Darzi,” he said, slipping the blackbird mask from his face. He placed it on the floor next to her mask. He saw the momentary realization flicker through her eyes. He was the mark, and she’d been fooled into showing her hand.

“Yes,” he whispered, nodding. “But I am also so much more than that. You might know me by another name. They call me the Nightwalker.”

The woman struggled desperately, wriggling around like a worm beneath him, but no matter how fiercely she fought him, she couldn’t free herself from the pressure of Isra's knee in the base of her spine.

She tried to cry out, but the assassin pressed her face so hard to the floor that she could barely spit out a muffled groan, and that was more than drowned out by the cheers for the belly dancers.

Isra grasped a tangle of the woman’s hair, yanking her head back, and then leaned in close, like a lover, wrapping his free hand around her neck and up beside her jaw. He didn’t say a word as he released her hair and brought his hand around to cup her other cheek. He gave both a sharp twist. She twitched, dead nerves giving one last command to her muscles, bucking beneath him, and lay still.

He had been taught the technique as a child, killing chickens for the kitchen table. There wasn’t much different between the physiognomy of the species when it came to their necks and the damage breaking them caused. Killing, done properly, was about ending life, not enjoying the suffering of the victim.

Isra slipped the bird mask back onto the dead woman and picked up the discarded mask that she had been wearing.

Faris would be looking for her to re-join the festivities, and despite the obvious biological differences, Isra and the woman were actually a similar build, so if he moved quickly there was every chance he might pass for her as he slipped back into the crowd of bodies.

But first he had to dispose of the corpse.

He pitched the dead woman off the balcony, wincing at the crash it made as it landed in the bushes, and turned to go back inside.

Isra caught the briefest glimpse of someone rushing away from the balcony doors. Someone who wasn’t supposed to have been at the masquerade. Someone that may well have witnessed everything. Someone who, more tellingly, might well have heard everything...

That in itself wouldn’t have been cause for undue concern. Loose ends could always be tied up. But Isra knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. He couldn’t believe the damned fool Faris had brought Munir—his own son, and Isra’s nephew—with him to the party.

Isra really didn’t want to have to kill the boy.

But, all things considered, he would happily wring his brother-in-law’s neck.

Coming Next Week: Threats and promises in Chapter Three of "Blood and Money."

Steven Savile is the internationally best-selling author of almost twenty novels and many more short stories, set in both original worlds and those of Primeval, Stargate SG-1, Warhammer, Torchwood, Dr. Who, and more. He won Writers of the Future in 2002, has been a runner-up for the British Fantasy Award and short listed for the Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel, and won the Scribe Award for Best Young Adult Original Novel. For more information, visit his website at www.stevensavile.com.

Illustration by Florian Stitz.

Blood and Money

by Steven Savile

Chapter One: Nightwalker

It was well after midnight in the garden. He was not alone. Aphids crept and crawled across his bare skin, and a hot wind blew in from the desert. The unseasonal sirocco was an excuse for madness. Men would use it as a rationale for particularly savage beatings, claiming the wind had driven them to it. Isra had no patience for weak men or liars. He did, however, appreciate the beauty of the well-tended garden.

The topiaries of Hasim Rakhman's palace were legendary, all manner of fabulous beasts carved out of the shrubbery to stand guard over the merchant’s equally legendary maze. Isra stood in the shadow of a leonine predator. The scent of jasmine was thick in the air, overpowering other, far subtler musks from the many more delicate plants in the garden.

He hadn’t moved so much as a muscle for more than a quarter of an hour. In the landscape of shadows, even the slightest movement, a finger moving to scratch an itch, was exaggerated and could so easily betray him. Despite the fact that Rakhman had a dozen men patrolling the gardens, none of them had marked Isra’s presence—but then, he was good at what he did. Even so, Isra was well aware that the longer he waited before making his move, the greater the chance of him being discovered became. It wasn’t magic, just was simple mathematics. Probability. He used the skill in his other life, when the sun was up and the Nightwalker didn’t exist. It was the kind of thinking that had helped make him rich.

But with the sickle of moon high in the sky, he was very much the Nightwalker now, and his instruction had been clear: kill Hasim Rakhman on this night. The client was very particular about the timing. It had to be tonight. He would make sure Rakhman was vulnerable, and it was up to Isra to exploit that weakness and get the job done.

And the reason his client could assure him the principal would be vulnerable? He was captain of Rakhman’s personal guard. The price of loyalty? About half a year’s salary. That and a shapely woman eager for said guard captain to take her overweight husband’s place in bed. Permanently.

It was always the same. No matter how complicated clients believed their motives to be, they always came down to lust. Be it for money, power, or sex, it was always about craving more.

But that didn’t explain why there were so many guards in the grounds tonight. Sweat trickled down into the bay at the nape of Isra’s neck. Still he did not move.

He hadn’t stayed alive this long by walking blindly into traps, and this was some kind of trap. He harbored no illusions about that. It would have been easy to slip away into the night and leave them to whatever game it was they were playing, but he had an obligation. The contract was open. He was the Nightwalker. He was the killer who never failed to execute a contract. He breathed in deeply, savoring the heat in his lungs. He could understand why the heat of the night drove men to thoughts of passion and murder. People were simple creatures at the best of times. The constant heat robbed them of the ability to think, reducing them to the most base of instincts. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t stain their hands with the blood, they craved it just the same. Who was he to deny them? There would be blood tonight, he promised himself.

He studied the marbled facade of Rakhman’s palace, his eye drawn to the veranda that led into the merchant’s study, and caught a glimpse of his employer, the regally handsome captain of Rakhman’s force pacing back and forth within. He was huge, and more than capable of snapping a weasel like Hasim Rakhman in two like a brittle twig—a corpulent, sweaty one, but a twig all the same. But his hands had to be clean. That he was here rather than in some public place making the kind of spectacle of himself that would ensure he had an alibi only added to Isra’s sense of unease.

Again the thought of simply slipping away into the darkness and leaving them to get on with whatever petty little game they were playing at occurred to him, but again his damned professional pride got in the way, killing the notion in a heartbeat. He had been paid to do a job, and he would do it to the letter of the contract. And if it wasn’t what his erstwhile paymaster wanted, well, it would serve him and his dead master right.

Hasim Rakhman came out onto the veranda, alone. He had a cup in his hand. Isra could see the wraiths of steam curl up from the hot drink. The fact that he was dressed rather than in some silk nightgown was another telling detail that betrayed his trap. Rakhman wiped his brow with a large white handkerchief. The temperature had dropped several degrees in the time Isra had taken up his vigil, which meant that it was fear rather than heat that was causing the fat merchant to sweat. And the longer Isra made him wait, the more jittery he was becoming. It would have been a mercy to put him out of his misery, but the Nightwalker was not in the business of mercy.

Isra broke away from his hiding place and ghosted through shadows. So complete was his mastery of his own body that he didn’t displace so much as a single leaf on any of the many plants and bushes he crept past. Rakhman’s men continued their patrols, oblivious to his presence.

Isra was within six feet of the fat man when he decided to spring the trap. Still it took Rakhman a moment to get through the shock of disbelief before the alarm was raised.

“Seize him!” Hasim Rakhman cried, waving his handkerchief above his head. Isra smiled coldly, enjoying the soon-to-be dead man’s frantic signaling. He could flap about to his heart’s content. No amount of it was going to save him. The guards were ready to slam shut the steel jaws of their trap, but Isra only needed a second to close the gap.

The captain of the guard rushed out of the study, sword drawn, but did nothing to prevent his employer's death, so perhaps there was at least a grain of truth to the lie Isra had been sold? The Nightwalker didn’t hesitate. He had his knife out, already balanced in his hand. Hasim Rakhman screamed in panic, flapping about all the more desperately now as he tried to protect his face, but left his stomach wide open for the assassin’s curved blade. A single slice of the cruel knife quickly stained the man's shirt red. His hands clutched at his stomach. He howled in pain. The Nightwalker granted him one last scream before he drew a gash across his throat—deep, from ear to ear—and silenced him once and for all.

With the deed done, the captain chose his moment to close the gap between them, calling, “To me!” as he did. In that moment Isra grasped just how many snares had been set within that initial trap. The captain had never intended his master to survive the night. The fat man had trusted him, and that had cost him his life. Isra did not trust anyone.

“Time to make peace with your god, assassin,” the captain rasped. His grin was every bit as cruel as Isra’s knife. His eyes darted left, betraying the rush of the first of his guards. Isra dropped his shoulder and thundered his elbow into the trachea of the man on his left. The guard went down clutching his throat. Isra spun away from the captain, sweeping out his right leg to dump the second running guard on his backside. He stamped on the man’s face, driving his heel into his nose and rupturing it.

Isra gave the fat man a final glance, to be absolutely sure that he was beyond saving, and launched himself upward, using the great earthenware pot that housed a lemon tree to push himself to within grasping distance of the balcony railings above. He swung his legs up as the first sword sliced through the air, missing him by inches. The lemon tree teetered, then toppled, the great pot shattering and the noise creating the moment of confusion Isra had hoped for. The Nightwalker hauled himself up over the balcony rail as the sword clattered against the marbled wall. He moved quickly now, grasping the trailing vines that grew up around the balcony doors, trusting them to hold his weight as he scaled the side of the palace. He risked a glance down over his shoulder. The captain wasn’t about to give up his prey, not when he needed someone to pay the metaphorical price of his master’s death. He was stronger than Isra, but the assassin was more agile. In a fair fight the assassin wouldn’t have stood a chance, but there was nothing fair about a moonlit chase across the rooftops of Katapesh when death was on the line.

Isra bounced on his toes and pushed upward again, reaching for the roof. He broke his cardinal self-imposed rule of climbing by stretching a few inches beyond what was comfortable. Off-balance, he worked his fingers into a crack in the masonry. Isra swallowed the panic instinct, forcing himself to breathe evenly as he lifted himself carefully upward, gradually taking all of his weight on three fingertips. Then he drew his right leg up, keeping his body pressed flat to the marbled wall, until his instep dragged over another crack, this one barely a wart across. Again, it was just enough. Between fingertips and toes he had the leverage he needed to boost himself up high enough to grab the gable. He slapped his right hand flat on the clay tiles and for a sickening moment he hung there, forty feet above the ground, clinging on by his fingertips. He kicked out, scrabbling for purchase until the tarred sole of his shoe gripped something on the wall, and then he was over the top and lying on his back looking up at the sickle-shaped moon.

He didn’t have time to catch his breath. Isra rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up.

Had the captain been as thorough as Isra would have in his place, the assassin would be dead now—he offered his silhouette to the moon as he ran across the rooftops. All it would have taken was one well-placed archer. But the captain wasn’t as good as Isra.

The assassin moved fast, circling the domed roof. He was light and nimble, his trade relying on guile and speed over brute force. The man following him was anything but. Isra noted the grating slip and crash of tiles behind him with grim satisfaction as the captain of the guard lost his balance. The captain’s sheer muscle mass made him far less dexterous than the assassin, which was exactly what Isra was banking upon.

With luck, the man would either fall, ending his pursuit the hard way, or give it up the easy way. Either worked just fine for Isra—but then, given his position, beggars could hardly be choosers.

He found what he was looking for on the far side of the roof: the flag post flying Hasim Rakhman’s family standard. He didn’t need to peer down over the edge. He knew his city well. The market lay beyond the wall of Rakhman’s property with its mismatch of colorful tents all squashed together. He smiled grimly, thanking Norgorber once more for looking out for his favorite son. Miracles, in Isra’s experience, had no need to be any more miraculous than a well-positioned flagpole in a time of great need. He had practiced leaps like this a thousand and one times before. He started to run, lengthening his stride to use gravity to the full, and launched himself off the roof into the air, kicking out.

"The Nightwalker always finishes the job."

It felt like flying, even though it only lasted for a heartbeat.

Isra snatched at the flagpole just below the trailing ropes of Rakhman's fluttering standard. The assassin swung through a quarter-circle before releasing his grip, completely changing the direction of his fall. As he came down fast, he reached or his knife. The blade was still slick with the dead man’s blood. Isra didn’t have time for the luxury of philosophy—the blade had taken one life and was about to save another. That was just the way it went.

He hit the silk roof of one of the trader’s pavilions hard, tumbling head over heels as he bounced and slid from the roof of the tent. Moving instinctively, Isra stabbed the blade into the fabric, using its resistance to arrest the speed of his fall. It wasn’t so much that he allowed himself a glance back to the roof of Rakhman’s home as the geometry of his fall afforded him one, but either way, the captain of the guards was nowhere to be seen. Only an idiot or a hero would attempt to follow him down this way, and it was clear the captain was neither.

Isra didn’t allow himself the satisfaction of thinking he was away, not yet. He moved fast, running between streets to a low point amid the garden walls and narrow stinking alleys and scaled the side of one of the hovels, moving from wall to window ledge to overhanging tree limb to rooftop in a series of gambits, and then took off across the roofs, leaping and scrambling from house to house. This was his city, up here. No one knew the high paths like he did. Finally he felt safe enough in his escape to take stock of the mess.

He had been set up. There was no other way of looking at it. He had been hired because he was the target. They wanted to lure him into the jaws of their trap and spring it closed on him.

No, he corrected himself. He wasn’t the target. The Nightwalker was. There was a subtle difference, in that no one knew he was the assassin.

So someone wanted the Nightwalker dead. Well, that was going to make things interesting from now on. Perhaps it was time to lie low for a while, just concentrate on being Isra, the lecherous wastrel squandering his family’s hard-earned fortune on wine, women, song, and more women. There were certain benefits that went along with the role, obviously—there was nothing so expensive or exotic his money could not buy it. But man could not live on such frivolities alone. For now, though, that was a bridge he would have to cross when he came to it.

A tile slipped traitorously beneath his foot. The shift beneath him sent Isra skidding precariously close to the edge. He teetered there, arms windmilling wildly until he caught his balance. He cursed himself. He had been careless, and it had almost cost him dearly.

It had also saved his life. A single rooftop away, he saw the unmistakable shape of the damned captain charging like a bull across the tiles, bearing down on him.

Isra spat a curse, and in a heartbeat was running again. This time there was an element of fear in his blood. The captain was relentless. Isra was going to have kill him, but he had no intention of going toe-to-toe with the warrior. He needed to use the terrain to his advantage—after all, this was his city. The captain belonged in the world below, not up here.

He cast about, looking for somewhere narrow and preferably precarious. There were dozens of obvious locations that suited his purpose. Katapesh was littered with minarets and sharp-angled rooftops. Isra ran for the nearest, racing along the crest of a great hall, using the spine of the watershed as a path. The captain came crashing behind him, clay tiles crushing beneath his heavy boots.

“You really don’t have to do this,” Isra called, gasping for breath as he swung himself up onto another rooftop. He wanted the man to think he was running out of ideas as quickly as he was running out of breath. His plan depended upon it.

The captain planted his hands on his knees, doubling over as he battled to catch his own breath. When he looked up Isra was already on the move.

A wooden stair coiled around the outside of the minaret. Isra hit it running, the captain not far behind him. The captain didn’t waste his breath on words.

And then they were at the top, a few feet between them, the captain moving menacingly toward the assassin. It was a long way down. The platform was precarious, the wood rotten in places. It creaked and groaned beneath the big man’s weight, but it wasn’t about to break. Isra wasn’t going to be that lucky.

“We can go our separate ways, never see each other again,” Isra offered, doing his best to sound reasonable.

“I don’t think so,” the captain said. He drew his sword.

The sun was beginning to come up behind the captain, giving him wings of fire.

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t offer,” Isra said flippantly. “Shall we dance?” He extended a hand, goading the big man to come at him.

The big man did.

Isra waited until the very last possible moment, danced back, and then pretended to stumble. As the captain launched his attack, the assassin went to ground, crying out to mask the fact that the fall was an act. As the captain came in for the kill, Isra swept his right leg around in a tight arc and took the big man’s feet out from under him.

For one agonizingly long moment, the stretched-out silence between heartbeats, it looked as though the captain might save himself.

Then he was falling. Unfortunately for him, those wings of fire didn’t help him fly.

Isra turned his back. He had no desire to watch the man die. His secret was safe. That was all that mattered. He climbed slowly down the wooden stairs. It was time to go home, get some sleep, and in the morning go back to being the good-for-nothing merchant prince squandering his family fortune.

But first, time to do what the night’s dead men had failed to do: put the Nightwalker to sleep once and for all.

There was a drop box hidden away in a deserted part of the city. It was where Isra collected his assignments from Mirza, his agent, and when necessary left messages. The assassin worked blind. Mirza had no idea of his identity. He didn’t need to. He was there to filter hits and provide a layer of safety between Isra and his Nightwalker identity.

The pair had long ago established a signal to denote that the assassin was laying aside his knife: a black pearl. Isra wore one on a string around his wrist. As he reached the drop box, he snapped the string and opened the lid, ready to put an end to the game. He’d almost gotten himself killed tonight, and he was in no hurry to repeat the experience. What was the old adage? Go out on top before you go out in a box?

He dropped the pearl into the metal box and closed the lid.

Isra was three steps away before he realized that the pearl hadn’t made a sound as it hit the bottom—meaning that it had fallen on something soft. He took a deep breath and went back to the drop box. Isra opened the lid again and reached inside.

There was an envelope. Another job. It would be the last, Isra promised himself, tearing the envelope open.

Inside was a single slip of paper with a name written on it.

Isra Darzi.

It was an impossible assignment. No matter how legendary the Nightwalker was, there was no way he could complete the kill.

Isra Darzi just wasn’t the suicidal type.

Coming Next Week: Masks and masquerades in Chapter Two of "Blood and Money."

Steven Savile is the internationally best-selling author of almost twenty novels and many more short stories, set in both original worlds and those of Primeval, Stargate SG-1, Warhammer, Torchwood, Dr. Who, and more. He won Writers of the Future in 2002, has been a runner-up for the British Fantasy Award and short listed for the Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel, and won the Scribe Award for Best Young Adult Original Novel. For more information, visit his website at www.stevensavile.com.

Illustration by Florian Stitz

A Passage to Absalom

by Dave Gross

Chapter One: Mulled Wine

The first blush of dawn cast the Imperial Shipyards into stark silhouette, a forest of black cranes and masts standing on the eastern docks of Cassomir. Along the strand, gulls vied with ravens for the shellfish buried beneath a thin blanket of midwinter snow. The lapping waves left a sensuous border of sand at the edge of the snowfall, like the impression of a woman's lips upon a crystal goblet. Soon the tide would recede, and the Sea Lion would set sail for Absalom.

The cost of passage on the converted freighter had been dear, but I felt anxious to return to the City at the Center of the World. Among its hundred wonders was the Grand Lodge of the Pathfinder Society, to whose secret masters I would soon report. Our expedition to Ustalav had met with mixed success, but now I returned with an unforeseen treasure: a copy of the lost Lacuna Codex. Within its pages lay magics so fell that even the Whispering Tyrant had feared their discovery.

A return to Absalom might also assuage the disappointments of our visit to Greengold, where traders and diplomats treat with the elves of Kyonin. There I had hoped to employ a craftsman to repair my beloved Red Carriage, the sole legacy from my elven father. After days of fruitless negotiations with the sheep-faced bureaucrats, I realized my half-elven heritage was no advantage to gaining entrance. Thus I entrusted my vehicle to storage and chartered a riverboat to Cassomir, where I secured passage to Absalom.

Beside me, Arnisant sat as still as a gargoyle. The stone of the quay must have been cold beneath his haunches, but the Ustalavic wolfhound was proving an obedient guardian. I sensed his gaze on me but did not return it. It was his part to look to me for instruction without expectation of reward. It fell to me to dispense those rewards when they would serve to reinforce his training, not simply to cultivate his affection.

My own seat was scarcely more comfortable than Arnisant's. The entrepreneur who had established this refreshments pavilion for departing passengers warmed his guests with enormous coal braziers, but the furniture consisted of the rough benches and communal tables one might expect in a barracks. To deter others from sitting too close, I repositioned our luggage on the seats beside and opposite my own. Only my most precious satchel, that containing my spellcasting materials and the Lacuna Codex, remained by my side.

Radovan returned from the serving cart with a cup in either hand. One smelled of strong tea. From the other rose the scent of cheap wine smothered in clove and cinnamon. He set the latter on the table and glanced back to wink at the buxom barmaid, who returned his leer.

"How much time we got, boss?"

"Insufficient for dalliance."

Radovan sighed, but I doubted his sincerity. No doubt he wished to maintain his reputation as a ladies' man, but I sensed an air of melancholy about him since we departed Caliphas. There he had left behind a Varisian hedge-witch for whom I suspected he harbored a lingering devotion.

The morning air had already cooled the wine, which filled barely more than half of the glazed clay cup. I peered at Radovan, who had lately assumed an inappropriate custodianship of my consumption of wine and spirits. Considering the other evidence, however, it was equally likely that the vendor employed a stingy ladle. My first sip of the sour wine confirmed my expectation that, despite the high prices, it was the cheapest available.

"Dreadful stuff, isn't it? At least it's hot." A corpulent man from a nearby table toasted me with his own cup before draining it. He winced, his chins wagging as the dregs hit the back of his throat. I took him for a merchant, noting that the high quality of his furs and jewels belied his coarse manners.

So did the woman at his side, who sat with the poise of a Qadiran cat. Whatever beauty age had stolen from her she had won back in elegance. Her high cheekbones and thin nose marked her as a descendant of an old Taldan family. If she were wed to the merchant, I deduced that theirs was yet another expeditious marriage between ambitious wealth and impoverished nobility.

Lest I appear uncivil before the lady, I raised my cup to return her husband's salute. The wine was less disagreeable on second sip, more for the wine's fortification than for its quality. I drained the cup, careful to avoid the sediment, and signaled Radovan to fetch me another.

"Hot this time," I said. "And full to the brim."

As I turned to give him the cup, Radovan pretended to study the ceiling of the tent. I knew at once I'd caught him at mischief. Arnisant's drooling jowls confirmed my suspicion.

"How many times must I tell you not to feed my hound?"

Radovan shrugged. "Somebody must have dropped something on the floor."

I saw Arnisant swallow before resuming his stoic posture, which I now realized was a ruse born of natural cunning rather than the fruit of my instruction.

"It is imperative to his training that I alone dispense rewards, and then only—"

"Looks like last call," said Radovan. "Better hurry." He returned to the wine cart, where the barmaid greeted him with a lascivious wetting of her lips.

I checked my impulse to scold Arnisant. Negative reinforcement is effective in the short term, but it would only muddle the more potent accumulation of reward-for-behavior training. Still, I disliked the notion that Arnisant might divide his loyalties. I was the dog's master, not Radovan.

I showed Arnisant the sign to lie down. When he obeyed, I bade him roll over, rise, stand, and return to his seated vigil. Only then did I reward him with a sliver of beef liver sausage from a pouch among the many in which I had secured my riffle scrolls.

Wiping my hands upon a fresh linen handkerchief from my sleeve, I saw the merchant rising from his table. For a moment I feared he might introduce himself, but instead he bustled past me to visit the wine cart. On his way he stumbled into a young Qadiran woman whose snug winter clothes failed to conceal the rich curves of her figure. I wondered how she had escaped Radovan's attentions until I saw the barmaid's finger hooked into my bodyguard's collar, pulling him close to whisper in his ear.

I resigned myself to the prospect of another cup of tepid wine.

The sun had risen high enough to reveal the details of the harbor. Across the bay to the north, the triple towers of Harbor Watch stood vigil over the docks. Ballistas, catapults, and trebuchets fairly bristled on their many platforms, promising doom to any vessel so rash as to assault the shipyards. A great rusty chain descended into the water from the southernmost tower, but I had read more than one report suggesting this hull-breaking chain had never been completed, its appearance merely a stratagem to deter ambitious armadas.

"Quite a sight, isn't it?" The young elf pacing the perimeter of the pavilion blew at the steam rising from his cup. His sallow complexion and nervous gaze lent him the aspect of a scholar. Upon his shoulders he bore a tall woven backpack that sagged with the weight of its contents. I knew him at once, not as an individual but as one of a breed of optimistic youngsters I had encountered year after year via the Pathfinder Society. No doubt he dreamed of traveling Golarion and uncovering ancient secrets, beginning his apprenticeship in Absalom.

As I turned to speak with him, however, the boy shied away like a colt. If that was the extent of his spirit, his over-stuffed pack would seem all the heavier for his disappointment when he was turned away from the Grand Lodge.

The remaining occupants of the wine tent were a pair of dwarves. They were obviously traveling companions, one scowling as he observed the porters loading crates onto the ship, the other distracting his companion with jests at the expense of their fellow passengers. When his gaze fell upon me, the jocular dwarf sketched a bow that seemed more friendly than insolent. I returned the courtesy with a scant nod.

"Pretty or not, she needs to keep her
hands off other people's purses."

The merchant's wife favored me with a bright smile, which I returned with as little encouragement as possible. Her expression faltered somewhat as she understood that I wished to be left alone, but she masked her disappointment with the practiced grace of noble breeding.

The shadow of Grayguard Castle crept toward us by the time Radovan disentangled himself from the barmaid, who clutched his coins with more ardor than she put into her smile. Yet perhaps I do him an injustice. Despite his infernal ancestry, Radovan's knack for enchanting women verges on the uncanny.

That was an interesting thought. Among the benefits of his tainted blood were an ability to see in total darkness and a certain resistance to the effects of heat and flame, which lately seemed to have evolved into a remarkable transformation triggered by great fire. Unfortunately, he rebuffed my proposal to study his metamorphosis. A few simple experiments might determine whether heat or flame was the true catalyst, and whether time or tranquility caused him to revert to his half-human self. Was his unlikely charm another quality of his unusual condition?

The woman fell upon me before I could react. By the time I heard Arnisant growl a warning, she clutched at my neck and shoulder. My own arms instinctively encircled her body, pulling her close to prevent her head from striking the table. For an instant I thought it was the merchant's wife who had tripped over the satchel at my feet, but it was the young Qadiran woman.

Her momentary struggle before settling on my lap evoked an involuntary reaction that she could not fail to notice. In the private company of a gentlewoman of certain charms, I should have welcomed the phenomenon. Yet we stood exposed to the public eye, and she was no lady.

The young woman smothered a giggle with her gloved fingers.

"I beg your pardon," I said, although I was hardly responsible for our collision.

"That's quite a tower you've erected." She did not refer to the luggage.

Not six feet away, the talkative dwarf guffawed. Behind him, his companion frowned at the disturbance, while the young elf ceased pacing, frozen and staring like a startled hare. Near them, the merchant's wife covered her blush with a lace fan, while her husband bit his knuckles to stop his own laughter.

"Nice try, sister." Radovan pulled the woman from my lap. She struggled to escape, but he held tight to her arm while slipping a hand beneath her cloak. Before she could scream, he removed his hand and dangled my purse before her eyes.

This time the merchant could not help but laugh. "That's very good, don't you think, my dear?"

His wife nodded, but her eyes lingered on Radovan as he favored the pickpocket with the lopsided leer he calls "the little smile."

"What's your name, sweetheart?" Radovan asked.

Her hesitation was almost imperceptible. "Shadya."

"What are we going to do about this little incident? If I call the guards, we're going to miss our boat."

Shadya slipped out of his grip. She raised a defiant chin and glared back at him, rubbing her arm where he'd bruised her. "What do you want?"

Quick as an adder, Radovan slipped an arm around her waist and bent her low for a kiss. She struggled briefly while his fingers explored every contour of her body.

The merchant's wife was the first to turn away. A moment later, she prodded her husband with the fan, and he cast his gaze to the floor. The elf and the cheerful dwarf stared, one gaping, the other grinning. The dour dwarf cleared his throat.

I could bear it no longer. "That is quite enough, Radovan."

He released the woman and returned to my side. She retreated, her expression wavering between confusion and outrage.

Radovan returned my purse. "That's all she got."

While no doubt he enjoyed the pretense of collecting a kiss, I knew its true purpose was to search the woman for any other items she might have stolen.

"Passengers aboard!" the burly captain bellowed from the edge of the gangplank. The ship's mates arrived to transfer our luggage to our cabins.

As a spindly sailor approached to take our bags, I noticed that the leather latch on the most precious of my satchels lay unsecured. I opened it, my heart racing. What I feared had occurred.

The Lacuna Codex was missing.

Coming Next Week: A classic tale of theft and suspicion as Radovan and Jeggare attempt to recover the Lacuna Codex in Chapter Two of "A Passage to Absalom."

Dave Gross is the author of numerous Pathfinder Tales novels and stories. His adventures of Radovan and Jeggare include the novels Prince of Wolves and Master of Devils, the Pathfinder's Journals "Hell's Pawns" and "Husks" (published in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path and the upcoming Jade Regent Adventure Path, respectively), and the short stories "The Lost Pathfinder" and "A Lesson in Taxonomy." In addition, he's also co-written the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham.

Art by Florian Stitz.

Master of Devils Sample Chapter

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

by Dave Gross

In Master of Devils, Dave Gross takes Pathfinder Venture-Captain Varian Jeggare and his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan into the distant land of Tian Xia in search of a magical pearl, where things quickly go awry. Trapped in the body of a devil, Radovan finds himself held hostage by the legendary Quivering Palm attack and fighting on behalf of a mysterious master.

Chapter Sixteen: Phoenix Warrior

The basilisk slithered through the streets of Khitai. Now and then it lunged, always at a child or a pretty girl who froze in place. The monster’s orange eyes bore down until its victim shrieked. Then it shook green and yellow scales out of its mane and danced away.

Children gathered the scale-shaped leaf wrappers and ate the sweet bean cakes inside. The eight-legged basilisk moved along to the next throng of children, its painted silk skin rippling at every turn. The bare feet of the men inside the monster slapped the pavement in time with the festival drums.

I was the opposite of the basilisk, a monster hidden beneath the silk cover of a man.

Even without Burning Cloud Devil’s magic, it was a good enough disguise. Unless someone got close, I could have been another of the big northern barbarians who’d come south looking for mercenary work. I was glad I’d picked up a black rice hat with a brim so low it had an eye slit in the front. I felt like a kid playing at knights in armor, but at least no one had run screaming when I came into town.

Burning Cloud Devil was still holed up at the inn. I’d wandered off to find a smith to repair my big knife. As an afterthought I asked him to make a new one just like it, only big enough for my devil hands. We negotiated until I got tired of pantomime. I showed him the big smile, and we had a deal.

The rest of the day I figured I’d take in the sights. There was no point telling Burning Cloud Devil where I was going. After our long journey back from the western mountains, and a hundred failed attempts to teach me his Quivering Palm technique, he said he needed to catch up on his sleep.

After the business with the Moon Blade Killer, we’d both had some rough nights. More than once I’d woken from nightmares of the boss writhing inside a dragon’s belly. Across the fire, Burning Cloud Devil twitched in his sleep, soaked with night sweat. I figured he dreamed of Spring Snow in the same damned place.

Despite the nightmares, I wasn’t buying his “need some sleep” excuse. He’d been wound up tight since I showed him the silver sword. He said he didn’t believe I’d seen Spring Snow, but I could tell it was gnawing at him. I’d seen it a thousand times before with the boss.

Burning Cloud Devil wasn’t slipping away to rest. He was off to get stinking drunk.

Weeks ago I’d figured out that most of the joints he called “tea houses” were really taverns. Let him drink, I figured. At least it spared me more lessons on clarifying my soul or maintaining the perfect nature of my body or some other airy stuff. When he wasn’t full of wine, he was full of bad poetry.

Since I’d seen her face, I had a hard time picturing Spring Snow with this guy. She struck me as a good kid, full of life at one time. She had to have been a lot more fun than he was. Burning Cloud Devil didn’t deserve someone like her.

The way I saw it, he was responsible for the deaths of the family back at the restaurant. Sure, it was me the Moon Blade Killer had come to kill, but Burning Cloud Devil knew it would happen. He’d tricked me into burying the wrestler’s head. He might as well have murdered those boys and their father himself.

Anyway, it had to be his fault. Otherwise, it was mine.

I couldn’t stand to think that.

Among the festival crowd, a woman dressed as a warrior caught my eye. Her golden scale armor glittered in the sun. She held one of those long-bladed glaives, sort of halfway between a spear and a sword. Where its grip met the blade twined a golden phoenix.

Something told me she hadn’t dressed up for the festival.

Most people in town hadn’t given me a second glance, but this woman stared in a way that made me think she could see through the brim of my hat. In other circumstances, I’d tip her a wink, but she was the one who threw me a fetching smile.

Normally, that’s all the encouragement I need. Instead of taking her up on the invitation, I walked away.

Until Burning Cloud Devil released my body, I was in no fit shape for a cuddle. And yeah, I knew that probably wasn’t what her smile meant, but it was what it made me think about.

Likely she wanted a whole different kind of trouble. Without Burning Cloud Devil around to slap me up with the fight whammy, there was nothing in it for me.

She called after me in Tien. “Face me, devil.”

I kept walking. A few steps later, a wave of nausea rolled through me. She’d thrown a spell on me.

I ran down a narrow lane between a block of townhouses and a spice shop. Waiting for me at the other end was a woman dressed identically to the first, except she held a scepter with a golden phoenix on its head. She looked exactly like the other woman.

Twins, of course.

Under other circumstances, I’d have been tickled. With their thick jaws and thin noses, they were no beauties, but they were all right. Later there’d be time to imagine the scenarios that could have been, assuming I survived this little tryst.

She pointed the scepter at me. Its wings began to move, its feathered breast glowing red.

I didn’t wait to see the result. I pulled a little juice from inside the core of my spirit and jumped from the ground to land on the roof of the spice shop.

No matter how many times I did that trick, “flying” never got old. Burning Cloud Devil said it came easily to me because of my abundant ki. Sometimes I wondered whether I’d still be able to do it when I got back to my regular body. It’d be a useful trick, not to mention one hell of a lot of fun.

My first step crunched through the roof tile. I weighed a lot more these days, so I stuck to running along the beam lines. A few more tiles clattered away behind me, but I made it to the other side without falling through. I leaped down onto the next lane, heard a cry, and looked around to see who I’d startled.

There was no one in the street except the armored woman. She lunged, twirled the glaive, and stepped back. I realized she’d already hit me only when the front of my rice hat fell off, revealing my face.

She gave me a smug smile and turned her blade so the reflected sunlight light dazzled me. I shaded my eyes until she turned the blade again, showing me the opposite side.

On the metal was etched a familiar symbol. I’d seen it in Minkai. It was the mark of Shizuru, goddess of ancestors and honor. This woman wasn’t just a warrior.

She was a paladin.

Her smile vanished as she advanced, whirling the long blade. I turned to run, but there she was on the other side, this time with the golden scepter.

“Xifeng.” The one with the scepter saluted her sister. “The honor of first attack is yours. Smite the evil beast!”

Xifeng returned the salute. “I thank you, Dongmei. I accept your charge and—”

“Listen, ladies, thanks all the same, but no smiting today. Despite my looks, I’m not actually evil.”

Hey, I’m entitled to my opinion.

“It says it is not evil,” said Dongmei, translating my devil-speech to Tien. Good for her, I thought. Know your enemy. Speak the language. Maybe we’ll have a drink later.

“Impossible,” said Xifeng. “I see its aura. It is a fiend from Hell.”

“Cheliax, actually,” I said. Dongmei’s face remained blank, so I did boat-on-the-wave with my hand. “Far across the sea, on the other side of the world.”

Dongmei showed me her palm, two fingers up, thumb nestled to the side. She said a few words in the language of angels, which I never learned because it’s got no decent curses. A pale golden circle formed around us. Motes of holy light danced in the alley like dust under a bright window.

“Say it again,” demanded Dongmei. “Tell us you are not truly evil.”

“I’m not— I’m actually a perfectly— The thing is—”

I couldn’t say the words. Her magic turned them to dust in my mouth.

“You condemn yourself!” cried Dongmei. “Not even a devil can tell a lie within the Circle of Truth.”

Xifeng’s slipper scuffed the ground behind me. Even in armor, the woman was quick. She damned near succeeded where the Moon Blade Killer failed. I moved just in time to make sure it was only the rest of my hat that fell onto the street.

I jumped back to the roof. Xifeng vaulted up behind me. I let her chase me across a couple more buildings while I searched for an escape route.

No dice. Dongmei had already cut me off, running up steps of air on the other side. I’d seen that trick before. It meant a god was listening to her prayers.

I was fighting both a paladin and a priest. If there’d ever before been a question of my going to Hell, it was answered now.

I tossed a handful of darts to keep her occupied. She covered her face with her arm, but the little blades glanced off an invisible barrier a few inches from her skin.

A crunch on the roof tiles warned me of Xifeng’s attack. To make sure I knew it was coming, she added a battle cry. “Shizuru, guide my hand!”

I leaped away. The roof exploded in yellow light inches away from me. Sharp tile fragments bit into my face and neck.

Xifeng’s battle cry was mighty.

I feinted a forward roll and swept her legs with a kick. Xifeng fell for it, and then she fell for it—right off the side of the roof.

It’s always funnier when something like that happens to a paladin.

	Illustration by Florian Stitz

I grinned as I turned to face Dongmei. She had just finished calling down a spell, her arms raised to heaven to receive it.

It landed on me, a pillar of roaring flames. I threw back my head to laugh—fire doesn’t bother me when I’m cloaked in Hell—but out of my mouth came a howl of pain.

The holy fire was hot and cold and something else I can’t explain. It hurt far more than the burning I feel just before fire turns me big. My hair floated up like I was underwater. My clothes rustled but didn’t so much as smoke.

My grin turned into a snarl.

“All right, sister, you got my attention.”

Dongmei’s eyes widened. She ran and leaped to the next building, once more walking on an invisible stair. I sent a pair of darts after her, putting one just above her shoulder blade. She faltered but didn’t fall.

The gap was wider than those I’d jumped before. I pumped my legs, my clawed toes tearing divots in the burning roof. I threw myself across the street and landed hard on the opposite roof, leaving the burning building behind me.

Dongmei’s fingers sketched another spell. She babbled holy words.

I charged across the tiles, diving into a tumble to come at her from below. My palm caught her on the breastbone. I let my fingers do the spider-crawl strike Burning Cloud Devil taught me. I sealed them with the final blow.

Dongmei recognized the attack. Her face paled. She slapped at her sternum, gasping as I raised my fist and squeezed it tight.

I felt no invisible strings between my fingers and her heart. I still hadn’t got the knack.

Her color returned. She raised her scepter.

I shot her a fast one in the breadbasket. My knuckle spurs pierced her armor.

She pressed her hand against my forehead. I felt her pulse fluttering through her palm. The last few syllables of her spell came out in blood, but she pronounced them well enough for her goddess to hear.

The goddess replied.

Holy fire erupted out of my brain. Hot tears poured down my face, so thick I feared they might be my melted eyeballs. Dongmei showed me a pained smile of triumph as her face blurred from my vision.

My thoughts melted away next. All I had left inside my head was hatred. My hand found the grip of the big knife. I brought it up hard and low, through Dongmei’s belly and up into her chest.

She didn’t scream. The only sound was the scrape of my blade across her metal armor and the bone beneath. I lifted her up, twisting and jerking the blade to tear her heart to pieces. The cloud over my vision drifted away.

“Sister!” Xifeng screamed from the edge of the roof.

I turned to show the paladin what I’d done with her sister. Dongmei’s blood was on my face, running down my lips and across the long, ragged teeth of my big smile.

Across my shoulder, Dongmei stretched a feeble arm toward Xifeng. For an instant, the gesture plucked at something that had slipped down deep inside me. It was something important, something I used to value. I couldn’t think of its name.

Whatever it was, I didn’t need it anymore.

Xifeng stood at the edge of the roof. She raised her hand toward her sister’s.

Dongmei’s weight lifted off of me. Her body faded away, but the ghost of it floated toward her sister. As their outstretched hands touched, the image of Dongmei vanished. Xifeng stood alone, her sword-glaive in one hand, the phoenix scepter in the other.

She tucked her sister’s weapon inside her belt and assumed a fighting stance.

“You want some of the same?” I said.

There was no one to translate, but she was done talking. She came on like a storm.

I drifted back and tried another kick, but she set the butt of her weapon into the tile and blocked me. The dark wood was hard as steel. There’d be one hell of a bruise on my instep.

She attacked with both the blade and the spiked butt of the glaive. She was strong as a bull, and fast. It was all I could do to bring up my arms to protect my body. The blade hit hard, but it couldn’t cut the sleeves of my enchanted robes. Xifeng noticed and redirected her blows to my hands, face, and feet.

Her limited targets gave me breathing room. With the big knife I gave her a good shot in the shoulder, hard enough to bloody her golden scales. The wound barely slowed her.

I followed up with a knee to the belly, but she faded back and stepped to my right. She’d gulled me!

The blade creased the back of my skull. The bone cracked, and I felt a cool rush of air slip inside. I rolled away, expecting a finishing shot to land where my head had been.

Xifeng anticipated that, too. The butt of her glaive slammed into my mouth. I choked on blood and the shards of my teeth.

Something came apart inside me. It felt as though some enormous hand had grasped my spine and cracked it like a whip. Everything I saw turned the color of blood. I clutched and clawed, kicked and raked, snarling and spitting like an animal.

It didn’t matter what I touched. I ripped it in my hands, shredded it in my ruined teeth. Shattered tile, metal, and flesh filled my mouth. At last I felt a hard kick on my ass, and I fell off the roof and face-first onto the pavement.

I came up spitting fragments of paving stones.

Mocking laughter rained down from another roof across the street.

“The gods punish you for starting another fight without me,” said Burning Cloud Devil. His voice was equal parts amusement, irritation, and wine.

He sat cross-legged on the edge of a bakery roof. Cradled in his legs were a steam basket and a wine jug. He’d brought refreshments for the show.

The sun exploded behind me. That’s how it felt, anyway.

I turned, shielding my eyes from the radiance. On the roof stood the silhouettes of both sisters, each holding her weapon. They stepped forward. Each was bloodied, but Dongmei’s wound now appeared little more than a deep cut.

They hesitated at the sight of Burning Cloud Devil. He laughed at their reaction.

“The Phoenix Warrior! I meant to seek her out, but only after you had mastered the Quivering Palm.”

“Maybe you can give me a hand,” I said. Even in devil-speech, my words came out a mushy mumble through my broken teeth. “Which sister you want?”

“Which sister?” He juggled a hot dumpling one-handed. “There is but one Phoenix Warrior.”

I figured he meant Dongmei, then, since she carried the phoenix scepter. I pointed at her. “Almost got that one.”

Dongmei scoffed. “Burning Cloud Devil, let us see what fiend you have summoned to plague our town.” She touched the butt of Xifeng’s glaive to wet her fingers with blood.

My blood.

She blew it like a kiss onto a strip of white parchment and read the words that formed there. “Radovan Virholt Norge kel Zogreb Dokange the Flaying Tongue Fell Viridio ...This is not a name!”

In her hands, the blood turned her parchment completely red before trickling down her fingers. She cast it away like a filthy thing.

Burning Cloud Devil choked on his dumpling. “So many!”

Dongmei and Xifeng raised their arms to the sky and bathed in healing radiance. I’d have to start all over.

“Bitches cheat,” I said. “Come on, Lefty. You can take the little one.”

Burning Cloud Devil lost his smirk and glared at me. All right, I admitted. That was a little mean. But if he hadn’t come to fight, he could use all the encouragement I had to offer.

Dongmei ran down her steps of air to stand twenty feet away to my left. Xifeng hit the ground on the right. They raised their weapons and closed in toward me.

“It is a pity you were not a more diligent student,” said Burning Cloud Devil.

Before I could ask what he meant by ‘were,’ Xifeng made a flourish with her glaive. Despite my tough robes, I was shy of that blade, but I was tired of running. I sidestepped, but her attack was only a feint. On the ground between us, Dongmei’s shadow swallowed up mine and kept growing.

I leaped aside just in time to avoid her massive fist. It struck the ground like a boulder, and I kept rolling away. She’d grown taller than me, bigger than an ogre.

On the roof, Burning Cloud Devil laughed. His voice echoed through the streets and shook the shutters. He wrote on a sheet of paper on his knee.

“Take your notes later!” I shouted.

Xifeng came for me in earnest. Her glaive smashed a hitching post where my legs had been an instant earlier.

It was time to get away. I ran up the street and skidded to a halt. The city guard had arrived. They formed a barricade of pikes and shields. I turned to run down the street, dodging the giant Dongmei and her smaller but still vicious paladin double. Beyond them, another phalanx of guards appeared.

I looked around, but every path was closed. There were archers on the rooftops, and every door and window had shut.

“A little help!”

Burning Cloud Devil washed down the last of his dumplings with a huge swig of wine. “Very well,” he said. “But only if you use the Quivering Palm.”

“I can’t—” What the hell. I could give it a go. “Fine!”

“Put them close together.” Burning Cloud Devil’s voice whispered in my ear. I heard it as clearly as if he’d stood behind me, but he remained on the rooftop. He dropped the empty jug and steam basket and assumed a horse stance.

He let the giant kick me around a little while I focused on keeping Xifeng’s blade from my neck. At last, the spell that made Dongmei big wore off. I rolled toward a wall, ran three steps up the side, and flipped back to kick her in the face.

It was a heavy blow made worse by the claws on my toes. Four deep grooves cut across her face, and for a second I thought I’d taken out an eye. In an instant, the wound faded to half its depth. She whipped around to strike me with her glowing scepter. I leaped out of the way.

From the other side, Xifeng screamed as she lunged for me. I twisted aside and felt her blade slide across my shoulder blades. One glimpse of her angry face showed me she’d suffered half the kick I gave Dongmei.

“Now,” whispered Burning Cloud Devil. “Strike both at once.”

I crouched low and struck both women at once. My palms hit just below the breastbone. The fingers of my left hand traced out the pattern of a cage, or a net. I’d never thought of it that way before, but I knew it could capture a life.

Xifeng gasped.

The fingers of my right hand moved also, but too slow.

Dongmei slapped my hand away.

“Do as I do,” hissed Burning Cloud Devil.

For another second I tried to remember the moves he had made through my left hand. Then I gave up and just tried to feel them.

I struck again, hitting both women in the same place. My fingers moved, this time faster than Burning Cloud Devil could command them. They formed the same patterns, built the same cages. Xifeng and Dongmei cried out as one. Their bodies trembled and became translucent. They moved together, forming a single person holding Xifeng and Dongmei’s weapons in either hand. She fell to her knees.

I rolled back and stood. A cool calm washed over me, but underneath I felt the heat of anger. They—she—had meant to kill me, but now I was the one who held her life in my palm. I felt it trembling there, like a hummingbird.

“Mercy,” moaned the Phoenix Warrior. “Spare me.”

“Crush her,” whispered Burning Cloud Devil. “Prove what you have learned.”

“I didn’t come after you,” I told her. “You came after me.”

“Please.”

I needed another reason. “You broke my teeth.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could plead again, her courage returned to clamp her jaw shut.

“You have this coming,” I told her. I wanted to believe it, too.

I closed my hand. A bird-shaped flame leaped from her chest and flew away. In its wake, the buildings caught fire as the woman’s corpse fell onto the dusty street.

Purchase the whole novel here.

Coming Next Week: A brand new Radovan and Jeggare mystery on the high seas, courtesy of Dave Gross!

Dave Gross is the author of numerous Pathfinder Tales novels and stories. His adventures of Radovan and Jeggare include the novels Prince of Wolves and Master of Devils, the Pathfinder's Journals "Hell's Pawns" and "Husks" (published in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path and the upcoming Jade Regent Adventure Path, respectively), and the short stories "The Lost Pathfinder" and "A Lesson in Taxonomy." In addition, he's also co-written the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham.

Golarion Day: Field Guide Art Preview

Friday, July 1, 2011

In the buildup to our print deadline for Gen Con, we saw a fair amount of book schedules get a bit of "compression," with books that should be being worked on (and thus previewed) a month apart being separated by a few weeks. Or in this case... ONLY a week. Last week we previewed some art from Dungeons of Golarion, but the Pathfinder Society Field Guide is right on its heels! And what kind of field guide would it be if it didn't have a section that talked directly about the things eager new Pathfinders might face in the field? Challenges like daemon-spawning portals, angry dinosaurs, and vengefully violent six-armed animated statues?

Well... no one ever said that being a Pathfinder was easy, I guess.

Illustrations by Maichol Quinto and Florian Stitz

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Golarion Day: The Shoanti Shaman

Thursday, June 16, 2011

So sometimes, we're so eager to get new player options into print we kind of get ahead of ourselves and stumble over our own feet in our haste. This happened, alas, with the just-released Pathfinder Companion: Humans of Golarion, in which we present something called "totem domains" for the Shoanti but then forgot to quantify exactly how anyone can get access to these domains! Oops!

There are seven totem domains in all—one each for the seven Shoanti quahs (clans). Each quah's totem actually consists of several different related animals or objects. For example, the Lyrune-Quah (the Moon Clan) venerates the following totems: bats, cave bears, field mice, the moon, mountain lions, owls, rainstorms, stars, and wolves. Although clerics and druids who become Shoanti shamans venerate their totem, they do not abandon their actual religion. Instead, these totems are simply assimilated into the traditions of whatever deity (for clerics) or perhaps philosophy (for druids) the character follows. A full list of Shoanti totems, including the domains these totems grant, appears on page 16 of Humans of Golarion.

Shoanti Shaman (Cleric and Druid Archetype)

The Shoanti shaman is a very simple archetype that either clerics or druids can take (with GM permission, you can certainly adjust the archetype a bit so that other classes with access to domains can be a Shoanti shaman, but keep in mind that the Shoanti have a very specific flavor, and something like a Shoanti inquisitor is kind of weird...)—doing so allows the character to gain access to his clan's totem domain. A Shoanti shaman has the following class feature.

Totem Domain: At 1st level (for clerics) or upon gaining a domain as part of Nature Bond at 1st level (for druids—a druid who instead opts to take an animal companion cannot use the Shoanti shaman archetype), pick one of your Shoanti quah's totems. You can use an image of this totem you carry or wield as your divine focus in addition to using the normal divine focus you might utilize (such as a holy symbol). In addition, you add that totem's domain choices to the list of domains you may choose from when picking a domain. If you are a cleric, you must still choose one of your domains from those normally granted by your deity. If you are a druid, your totem domain options replace the standard domain options granted by nature bond.

Illustration by Florian Stitz

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Illustrations by Andrew Hou, Michael Saas, and Florian Stitz. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.

Goblins for All!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Because you asked for it, the following changes are coming to Pathfinder:

1. Introducing the next in our popular Players Companion line of products: Goblins of Purity!

   Goblins are popular. But they're not popular enough! With "Goblins of Purity," we're giving you what you've been asking for—the chance to fully embrace all of the madness and mayhem that is being a goblin—but in a way that allows you to still be a hero. This book is jam-packed with all manner of fun and exciting options for goblins dedicated to fighting against the rise of evil (as most often personified by greedy adventurers, slavering dogs, and those hateful horses with their sharp, sharp hooves and soulless eyes), all while maintaining the rip-roaring fun that being an arsonist or a baby-eater brings.

   Goblins of Purity includes:

   • Two dozen goblin archetypes, including the Dog Hunter ranger, the Friendly Picklechucker rogue, and the Peaceful Beachcomber paladin

   • An extensive discussion of brand-new goblin versions of your favorite deities

   • An exciting reworking of the alignment system that allows you to play arsonists and baby-eaters while still being good-aligned

   • A brand-new 20-level base class built especially for would-be goblin heroes—the Goblin Babysitter, a class that gets extensive use out of this book's new "innocent accident charts"

2. We're not there yet, but when we send the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook back for another reprint, we'll be adding goblins to the list of core player races. Now everyone can be a goblin!

3. Starting today, goblins are now mandatory for play in the Pathfinder Society. Every group must have at least one goblin in the party. I expect some awesome stories from your games this weekend!

4. Later this year, we'll release the Goblinomicon, a 64-page book that outlines the foes goblins confront in daily life—including true and accurate stat blocks for dogs and horses!

5. Spoiler:

   And... if you haven't figured out already, Happy April Fools Day!

Hyrum Savage
Marketing and Organized Play Manager

Golarion Day: They're Coming to Get You, Harsk!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

And just like that, Undead Revisited is shambling off to the printers! I previewed some of the art for this book a few weeks back, showing off how ten of the iconic heroes are doomed to meet grisly ends when this book hits store shelves. As with all books in the Revisited line, each chapter ends with a sample stat block—in the case of this book, a sample undead or new variant. Among those ten stat blocks we have a fallen Knight of Ozem and a fallen Hellknight, two undead dragons, a demonic mohrg and a daemonic devourer, a priestly lich and a kingly wight... and the following two critters from the entries on nightshades and the spectral dead—I'll let you all guess what exactly these are.

Illustration by Florian Stitz	Illustration by Francesco Graziani

All in all, ten fine and quite compelling reasons why those poor iconics are dropping like flies in this book! As for which of these ten undead got to Harsk... you'll just have to wait and see!

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Golarion Day: Return of the Sable Company

Thursday, January 6, 2010

Howdy, everyone! So, hot on the heels of the announcement of "Design Tuesdays," I'm here to unveil the first installment of "Golarion Day!" Every Thursday, we'll try to do a post that expands the world of Golarion in some small way. Sometimes, this might be a tiny new rules element. Other times, it might be a bit of lore. It could be a brief look into an upcoming product or an interview with someone who's worked on the world of Golarion. Or, as in today's case, it could be a quick update of older rules to the current Pathfinder RPG system. Let me know what you think, and if you have any special requests for future Golarion Days, let me know that as well!

So, back in the day in the Guide to Korvosa, we told you about a group of rangers called the Sable Company. Exported from my homebrew game (where they were known as Skyriders), these highly trained city guards patrol the skies above Korvosa on hippogriffs that they've bonded with. In Guide to Korvosa, we handled this bit of fun flavor by simply introducing a new feat: "Sable Company Marine," which let rangers select hippogriffs as an animal companion. And for a few years, all was well and good.

Then we went and did something unthinkable. We changed games. And in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, we didn't even bother to keep the poor hippogriff around. The griffin was there, sure, but no sign of his less cultured kin.

I'll be honest. I was a bit surprised to see the hippogriff become the most-missed monster from the Bestiary. I would have assumed something bigger and badder, like missing titans or nightwalkers or inevitables would get folks riled up, but I was wrong. So when it came time to do Bestiary 2, it was obvious what monsters we needed to include—chief among them was the hippogriff.

But the job still wasn't finished, because we'd also changed the way rangers get animal companions, and we'd even changed the way animal companions work.

So, until we actually get around to revisiting Korvosa's Sable Company in print (which, I bet, we'll do some day in the future), check out the following rules for allowing rangers to gain hippogriffs as animal companions. Note that we've changed the way you gain a hippogriff from a mere feat to a ranger archetype—this is because hippogriffs are pretty powerful creatures as far as animal companions go, and not all rangers have the right stuff to serve in the Sable Company. It requires the sacrifice of some traditional ranger training in order to master a bond with a hippogriff, in addition to being a member of the Sable Company itself. It's up to your GM whether the Sable Company is hiring. (Basically, you need your GM's permission to select this archetype, and your GM may require your character to perform certain duties as befits your responsibilities in the Sable Company.) In fact, if your GM's cool with it, you can adjust the adjustments and flavor of the archetype so that other classes can get access to hippogriffs as riding companions—you can even use these rules as a sort of template to open up "animal companions" for similarly powered magical beasts. Because who wouldn't want to play a halfling ankheg rider?

Anyway, here you go: Pathfinder-compatible updates for the Sable Company of Korvosa!

Ranger Archetype: Sable Company Marine

Illustration by Florian Stitz

You graduated from the elite hippogriff-riding school of the Endrin Military Academy. Not only can you ride a hippogriff with great skill, you have also formed a close bond with a particular mount. A Sable Company Marine has the following class features:

Hippogriff Companion: You can gain a hippogriff as a companion. This ability works identically to hunter's bond when used to gain an animal companion, but can only be used to gain a hippogriff (see below for rules for hippogriff companions). You gain a +2 bonus on Ride checks made when riding your hippogriff companion, and whenever you are within 20 feet of your hippogriff, it gains a +2 morale bonus on all saving throws made against fear effects. This ability replaces favored terrain and hunter's bond.

Hippogriff Companions

Starting Statistics: Size Large; Speed 40 ft., fly 50 ft. (average); AC +2 natural armor; Attack bite 1d6; Ability Scores Str 15, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 9; Special Qualities darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent.

4th-Level Advancement: Speed fly 100 ft. (average); Attack bite 1d6, 2 claws 1d4; Ability Scores Dex +2, Con +2.

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Illustration by Florian Stitz

Nobody Expects an Intro Set!

Thursday, September 30, 2010

This past Monday I spoiled on the Paizo Twitter feed that we're beginning the process of working on a Pathfinder intro set. Jason quickly retweeted it and it spread from there. So, what do we mean exactly when we say an intro set? First off we're not 100% sure of anything yet. What we do know is that it'll be useful for more than a couple of sessions, will be a great PFRPG teaching tool, and will help us get more people playing Pathfinder. It'll probably come in a box, it might have counters and/or tokens, probably a Flip-Mat or two, most likely cover a good range of levels, and have a handful of classes and a good collection of feats. Essentially it'll be everything you need to get people playing, and learning, the game. Because the more people playing, the more opportunity for gaming, and we can all do with more gaming right?

We're at the very beginning of this process and nothing is set in stone though. Getting some feedback would be really helpful, though, so what would you like to see in an introductory Pathfinder product?

Hyrum Savage
Marketing Manager

2 Many Monsters!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

This is the final week of editing before we ship the Bestiary 2 off to the printer and that means the whole office is neck deep in monsters. Since we've nowhere else to put them in the ever-more-crowded editorial pit, I thought a nice way to get them out from underfoot would be to exile a few to the blog. So here are a handful of beasties we no longer need immediately on hand. Enjoy!

Art by Damian Mammoliti	Art by Andrew Hou
Art by Florian Stitz	Art by Andrew Hou

Mark Moreland
Developer

New Art!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Paizo sure has been hiring quite a few new people of late. I came on board as a Developer at the beginning of the month, and we just announced yesterday that Hyrum Savage will be joining the team as Marketing Manager. The third new hire of the fall is none other than Andrew Vallas, who started after Labor Day. As Graphic Designer he's been a lifesaver, taking some of the workload off Art Director Sarah Robinson as she puts the finishing touches on Save Doctor Lucky. So far, Andrew's time has been taken up with last minute changes to the Bestiary 2 as we approach the finish line for shipping that to the printer, and laying out Pathfinder Player Companion: Inner Sea Primer and Pathfinder Module: The Godsmouth Heresy.

Andrew first found Paizo while using art from Pathfinder as mini-painting inspiration and through the Planet Stories line of fiction. He attended PaizoCon in June, where he not only played his first Pathfinder game after last rolling dice during the days of 2nd Edition, but he attended the art seminars and met with Sarah, and the rest is history.

And since Andrew works so hard in Paizo's Art Department, we thought it fitting to use his introduction as an opportunity to display some of the incredible art coming to your gaming table next month in Pathfinder Adventure Path #39: "City of Seven Spears"!

Illustration by Paul Guzenko
Illustrations by Florian Stitz

Mark Moreland
Developer

Illustrations by Florian Stitz
Illustration by Scott Purdy

Why Do That Juju?

Friday, September 3, 2010

There's a line when it comes to what sort of material we put in our products. We try not to tread over the boundary of what might be offensive, provoking, or generally beyond what you might see in a PG-13 rated movie. But every now and then we test those limits—or abjectly bound past them. In Pathfinder Adventure Path #39, the ol' "questionable content" line gets a little hazy; not because of sex or violence, or whatever have you, but because of religion.

There's no doubt religious elements influence the characters and plots of the Pathfinder RPG—clerics, paladins, monks, and witches are playable classes after all, and untold armies of cultists have fallen before legions of adventurers. But we've long danced around one religious tradition with a lengthy history of involvement in sword and sorcery fantasy: voodoo.

We've kept away from this topic—one I've personally wanted to cover since back in the Dragon magazine days—for several reasons, the primary one being that vodou is a living religion practiced and respected in several parts of the world, and no one here knows enough about it to judge what might be offensive. What we do know about, though, are films like The Serpent and the Rainbow and stories like Robert E. Howard's "Hills of the Dead" or "Black Canaan." We also know the "juju zombie," a toughened up zombie who's been in RPGs for years and years (with a name inspired by African fetish magic and in, coincidentally, Bestiary 2). So, motivated by the Advanced Player's Guide's presentation of the oracle, a divine caster who worships a pantheon of patrons and cultivates a host of strange abilities, now seemed like a perfect time to test our luck and take a swing at a new tradition of magic inspired not so much by real-world vodou but more by voodoo films, stories of bayou magic, and swamp and sorcery fantasy.

All of this comes together in Mike Shel's article in Pathfinder Adventure Path #39's "The Path of Juju." Now, oracles can look forward to a new juju mystery allowing them to tap into the mysterious secrets of nature's deadliest wildernesses, while casters of all types might create a host of strange new magical items, from soul trapping powders to the infamous ganji doll. It's all in there, ready for GMs looking to tell tales of swamp magic and mystery or PCs ready to challenge the cities of men with the true power of their ancient beliefs.

Wes Schneider
Managing Editor

GameMastery Guide Preview: Things Get Weird!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Let me let you in on one of the guiding philosophies of the GameMastery Guide. We didn’t make this book to let you run my game, or a “Paizo-brand” game, or any sort of game anyone here thinks you should run. We created the GameMastery Guide to give you the tools you need to run your game the way you want. For example, let me note a few entries in the index:

• Airships
• Evil Characters
• Extraterrestrials
• Gambling
• Magic Shops
• Parallel Worlds
• Ship Combat
• Space Travel
• Steam Power
• Space Travel
• Time Travel
• Undead Uprising

Definitely some unusual stuff in there, and likely several topics you’ll have no interest in including in your game. But if something on that list does strike your fancy, now you’ve got help on how to make it work. These discussions aren’t all meant to give you in-depth rules on how to do this or that: while several provide a host of new rules content—like ship combat and undead uprisings —others walk you through what you need to consider to include such elements in your game. And even if you’ve never thought about taking your game in an atypical direction, who knows what might inspire you? Maybe it is time to unleash an undead uprising on your campaign, or take your PCs where no one has gone before.

Play what your want: that’s the guiding message of this book. Heck, there’s even a section on personalizing published adventures to make them work better for you and your players. Also, rest assured that the topics presented above are some of the weird stuff—the parts of the book that take the discussions beyond the norm. There’s still plenty for GMs who never get tired of traditional sword and sorcery adventure. But how weird does the weird get? Well, I’ll let these crazy illustrations by Florian Stitz and Eva Widermann show you (at least I think those are the artists… Sarah’s out of town this week).

As for next week’s GameMastery Guide Preview: let’s just say that we’ve got some fantastically interesting toolboxes to open.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

The GameMastery Guide: Mascots & Masterpieces!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Aside from a metric ton of advice, new rules, charts, tools, and the like, one thing the GameMastery Guide has in spades is awesome new art! As you might have seen on the snippet from the credits page last week, a horde of fantastic artists contributed to this tome. We also did something a little unusual. Rather than illustrating every topic with our iconic heroes or scenes of battle or whatever have you, Andrew Hou created a host of murderously adorable little mascots. A host of murderously adorable little goblin mascots. So, guiding you through the ins and outs, the perils and the pleasures of the GM's art, you'll find these mischievous little menaces causing all sorts of trouble.

Illustrations by Andrew Hou

But the goblins aren't alone. We've got an entire gallery full of incredible art, with quite a few familiar faces, to preview over the coming weeks. For now, check out a few of our mascots' hijinks, along with a sampling of some of the GameMastery Guide's other full-body illustrations.

Illustrations by Eva Widermann	Illustration by Florian Stitz

Next week, check in for a first look at one of the things sure to get you GMs drooling, a preview of the GameMastery Guide's expansive NPC Gallery.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

Andoran, Spirit of Liberty Preview

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Andoran, Spirit of Liberty is due to arrive in January, and as the rest of the team is burning the midnight oil to get the next Pathfinder out the door, Wes deputized me to do a blog. Time for some preview art!

The patron celestial of Andoran is an avoral named Talmandor, and as there aren't avoral stats in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, we put their stats in Andoran—sort of a sneak peek for Bestiary II next year. The next picture shows that halfling paladins are just as badass as human ones—in this case the hero is Jamus Hainard, born to a farming family and inspired by the Eagle Knights to become a champion of freedom. Finally, a piece showing an Andoren general and his troops trying to cross a river.

Illustrations by Florian Stitz
Illustration by Craig J. Spearing

Sean K Reynolds
Developer, Pathfinder Companion