Armored

by Stephanie Lorée

Chapter Four: No Love Like Gold

Sunlight dripped from a tiny window into her cell. Brea lay on her doublet atop the cold ground and tried to remember how many days had passed. Four? Seven? A dozen or more? She had seen no one, heard only the moans of distant neighbors, and received no nourishment of any kind. The dungeons of Deagan's Hold were not a place to keep prisoners for questioning or before a trial, but a place to forget they had ever existed.

The brigand's face flashed in Brea's mind. His words that the dungeon offered a death worse than a sword lingered in her ears. His hollow cheeks lifted in laughter, his sunken eyes watching over her. She could not shake his image nor the inescapable knowledge that without food or water, she would lose her mind shortly before she died.

But Brea had taken precautions. Months in encampments with limited supplies had taught her how to survive. And in his arrogance, Deagan had left her fully armored. Her cuirass lay against the wall of her cell, its curve deep enough to catch a dribble of water that snaked down the stone. Those few drops of moisture had kept her alive, hoping that an opportunity to escape might present itself. She'd stayed quiet and calm, tried to conserve as much energy as possible, but another sunset slipped below the window and nothing changed.

Hope became a fleeting, foolish memory. Like love.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Brea lifted her head as torchlight flickered along the dank dungeon walls. The light grew closer, and she squinted. The resounding steps stopped in front of her cell.

"It's me, Captain," Etrim whispered and settled her torch in a nearby sconce.

Brea pushed herself to her feet. She wobbled, but steadied herself against the wall.

"I brought food and water, sir," Etrim said and shoved a hunk of bread through the barred window of the door. "And keys, most importantly, I have the gaoler's keys."

Brea considered it might be a trap. Etrim might have been the traitor in her own ranks, reporting to Deagan on her plan to stage a coup. But the lure of food and water made Brea’s stomach grumble in protest to her thoughts, and she accepted the bread.

"How's that?" she asked. The bread made her mouth water with what little moisture remained in her body. She took a tentative bite, chewed, and tore into the rest with all the ferocity of a starving animal.

Etrim fumbled with the keys, testing each one on the heavy gaoler's loop, and cursing under her breath as each failed to turn the lock. "Things have been bad, Captain, ever since Lieutenant..."

Her words died as she peered through the small window, meeting Brea's eyes. Farnick was truly dead then. Her old friend, hanged by her lover. The bread turned heavy in her stomach.

"The squadron," Etrim continued, "it's mutiny, sir. The lieutenant's death was a clear violation of our contract. No trial. Not even the slightest evidence. There."

The lock clicked. She pulled the door open with a creak, and Brea stumbled out.

"Let me, sir." Etrim slung Brea's arm over her shoulder and grabbed her torch.

"Thank you."

Etrim managed to smile the same overeager grin she'd always had. Only now, in this wretched place, Brea found it comforting.

"So who planned my rescue?" Brea asked.

Etrim blushed. "I couldn't let you rot down here, Captain."

Brea squeezed the younger woman's shoulder as Etrim led them up and into Deagan's keep.

The great hall, which normally bustled with servants, sat empty save for the Blackjackets guarding the doors. They straightened as they saw Brea and saluted.

"Sir," one of them said, "Lord Callimedes has barricaded himself in his office with his personal guard."

Etrim helped Brea into a chair at a long, wooden table. A meager plate of jerky and parsnips was laid before her.

"How many?" Brea asked and reached for Etrim's waterskin.

"Four or five."

She nodded, nibbling on a bit of jerky. "And how many have taken arms against our lord?"

The man shrugged. "Maybe twice that. Most are staying out of it, sticking to the barracks or taverns until they see who wins."

"No doubt Deagan has sought outside help. He must realize he can't quell his soldiers on his own," she said.

"We've stopped any messengers from coming or going, sir."

Etrim's steafast loyalty outweighs her inexperience.

Brea considered as she finished her first meal in so many days. "He'll find a way, if he hasn't already. I need to deal with him quickly."

She struggled to stand, and Etrim helped her to her feet.

"Captain," Etrim started, but didn't need to finish.

Brea knew she was too weak to face him. And perhaps she had always been, too weak and blinded by feelings she should never have possessed. None of that mattered now. She would finish this.

Something in her eyes must have told Etrim that her Captain would not back down today, for the young trooper nodded and said, "I'll get your sword and armor, sir."

"No," Brea said. "Leave the armor in the dungeon where it belongs. My sword will be enough. I will no longer bear the blackjacket."

∗ ∗ ∗

The climb up the stairs to Deagan's office was longer and more arduous than Brea remembered, even lacking the weight of her armor. Her legs ached nearly as much as her heart.

Etrim and two other Blackjackets flanked her. They carried a portable battering ram, but Brea paused outside the double-doors to knock. It seemed ridiculous, to announce herself before breaking in, but she wanted to hear what her former lord had to say.

"Deagan," she called. "Open the doors and surrender. Your troops might yet spare you."

Silence greeted her.

She sighed and nodded to her soldiers. "Break it down."

The slam of the ram pounded in time with her heart. Whatever affection she had for Deagan had died with Farnick and rotted in that cell, but there was a sadness there, a remorse over losing the possibility of something better. When the doors finally gave way, the tearing of timber became the scream Brea could not herself release.

She stepped over the threshold. Deagan stood with his back to the window from which he'd watched Farnick swing. Four Blackjackets formed a semicircle in front of him, their swords drawn. Among them stood Soltez, sword in hand despite his injury.

Brea frowned. She wondered if his injury had been staged, purposeful so he might scout ahead and lead them to the hobgoblin trap instead of remaining among her ranks.

"It's over," she said. "Don't risk your lives for a lord who has used your brothers like fodder for a few coins. Lay down your weapons."

She approached warily, her sword held before her. The men guarding Deagan hesitated a fraction at her words. Their posture turned unsure.

For his part, Prophet Deagan Callimedes looked regal in his white robes and jewels. He also appeared shocked and scared. In all their time together, Brea had never seen him lose his composure. Now he seemed an arrogant child, unwilling to admit defeat.

"Kill her," he ordered his men. Their hesitation disappeared, and they charged.

Brea moved faster without the weight of her armor, but she was also exposed and weary from her time in the dungeon. She sidestepped the blow and twisted awkwardly to dodge another. She caught sight of Etrim and the others who’d accompanied her from the corner of her eye. They danced with their own opponents.

Brea lifted her sword to parry as Soltez advanced on her. The block was well timed, and the clash of steel rang down her arms. She didn't want to kill him, this brother who’d abandoned her to remain loyal to his lord. Her reservations and weakened state would cost her, she knew.

As she spun to avoid another thrust and place herself behind Soltez, pain flared hot and violent across her hip. He’d caught her, but it was shallow enough for her to ignore. She brought the pommel of her sword down on the back of his head.

Soltez staggered.

“Don’t do this,” she said.

The scout turned to face her, too slow by half. He swung his sword awkwardly, and Brea easily parried it.

“Our lord has betrayed us,” she said. She kept a low guard, waiting for the inexperienced soldier to make his decision.

“You’re the traitor.” Soltez’s words were slurred. He touched the back of his head with one hand as if to slow the dizziness her blow had delivered him. “The High Prophet will come, and he will reward my loyalty.”

Brea sighed. She almost admired his devotion. Years ago, she had been just like him, fanatical in her loyalty to the Kalistocrats. But war and sacrifice, love and betrayal had changed her. The Prophets were but men and women, nestled atop their piles of gold, sending their soldiers to die for scraps of power. They hid their bloodstained hands inside white gloves. Soltez was now part of their machinations, and his actions had caused her friend’s execution.

Soltez lunged at her. She stepped away with ease and drove her blade cleanly through the gap between his armor and lagging sword arm. It was precise, deep, and killed him instantly.

“I’m sorry, brother,” she said as he crumpled to the floor.

The other Blackjackets were occupied among themselves. She scanned the room for Deagan.

She would not have noticed him if it wasn't for the flash of golden embroidery trailing from under his desk. The hem of his robe peeked at her, beckoning her.

She marched around the desk and lifted his cowering form by his bejeweled lapels.

"Coward," she said, dragging him to face her.

He squirmed and tried to push her away. His hands were familiar, almost comforting, but his eyes shone with a cold fury.

"I am your lord," he said. "You can’t do this."

"You lost that title when you murdered my friend." She shoved him against the wall. The tapestry of the Prophecies draped overhead.

"You should have hanged me. If you couldn’t love me, you should have let me go," she said. “Instead you killed an innocent man. A good man.”

Something in his eyes softened. The sounds of battle around them melted. Deagan smiled, a small laugh escaping his lips.

"I did," he said. “For you. Had you but left then instead of attacking your lord...”

His voice drew her closer, the pain in his expression weakening her further. She could barely lift her longsword, and her muscles quivered with exhaustion.

"I loved you despite everything." He reached for her face.

A white-gloved hand cupped her cheek. She let herself fall into it, close her eyes, and sigh. In that moment, she realized he was telling to truth.

Brea turned her grip and thrust her longsword up through her lord's body.

"I loved Farnick like a brother," she said, watching his eyes widen in shock then empty of life. She followed him to the floor, slumping next to him and laying her head against his shoulder. His freehand released the dagger he'd palmed, and she watched it splatter into the pool of blood gathering around them.

Her hip throbbed. Her head swam from blood loss and exhaustion. But she could no more lie down and die now than she could've in her cell. She would survive.

"Captain?" Etrim stood over her, her hand extended in offering.

Brea grasped the young warrior’s bloodstained hand and staggered to her feet.

"No longer," Brea said. "I need to leave."

"I don't understand, sir?"

"Take what you can from his holdings and distribute it among our soldiers. Other Kalistocrats and their Blackjackets will arrive soon, and they'll claim whatever remains."

"Where will you go?" Etrim asked.

"I am a traitor. They’ll hunt me across Druma, and you will let them," she said, meeting Etrim’s gaze.

Hope glimmered in the young woman’s eyes. She recognized it from her own reflection, before Deagan, before the Goblinblood Wars.

"For all of this,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, “I am to blame. I’ll run until they find me, or I become too expensive to chase."

"I could go with you."

Brea smiled and shook her head. "I need you here, Etrim, to set things right. You're a fine trooper, and you'll make a fine Captain."

Even smeared in the blood of her fellow soldiers, Etrim's armor seemed clean. There were no golden etchings in the black, no magic from a lord to sully it. She wore her blackjacket with pride, and Brea hoped she would always keep her body armored, as well as her heart.

Coming Soon: An unexpected knight in an all-new Pathfinder Tales serial by Dylan Birtolo.

Stephanie Lorée is an author whose short stories have appeared in various anthologies and online publications, and in 2013, she was a finalist for Writers of the Future. She also works as a freelance editor. Visit her website at stephaniemloree.com.

Illustration by Dion Harris.

Armored

by Stephanie Lorée

Chapter Three: There Lies the Gallows

The pyre burned for hours. Its flames seemed to lick the sky, and Brea turned her horse and troopers away from the carnage. They rode for home, though she wasn't sure what that meant anymore. Smoke rose behind them, a dark reminder of her lord's betrayal.

Twenty-one cuirasses dangled along the flanks of the remaining horses. They would carry those and the blackjackets of their fallen to Deagan's Hold, a hollow shell of the soldiers who had died in their lord's service. The armor clanked and rattled like a discordant dirge.

"He betrayed me," she whispered to Farnick. "He betrayed us all."

Her friend grunted and shifted his weight atop his borrowed horse. "One hob's word and a few coins won't be enough."

"What will it take?"

"You speak of mutiny, sir," he said. "A clear violation of contract be needed for treachery."

"Yet the Prophets can be as perfidious as they like."

He was silent a moment, then said, "And now you speak blasphemy."

Brea sighed. "You won't help me."

It wasn't a question, and Farnick did not grace her with a response.

"How long then, how long until you brand me a traitor, old friend?" she asked.

"You have done nothing yet, sir. And when you do, I'll give you a day and a night to seek your proof." His voice was flat, but she read the sadness in the slump of his shoulders.

She didn’t know why Deagan had stooped so low as to hire hobgoblins. Was it to be rid of her? He would consider the deaths of her troopers acceptable losses, so long as his goals were achieved. She had witnessed her lord sacrifice soldiers and citizens in pursuit of a few leagues of land for his hold. To Deagan, they were but resources for him to manipulate, control, and do away with at his whim.

She had thought she was an exception.

"Why didn't he just have me hanged? Concoct some story. Why the deception?" she asked, almost absently.

Farnick shrugged. "I don't claim to understand the ways of Kalistocrats, but your squadron is loyal to you. I'm not the only one who remembers your deeds in the Goblinblood Wars, and many have served years under your command, sir. We would follow you."

"But not in mutiny."

"Aye." He paused, and then added, “Not yet."

She smiled at him and nodded her understanding. She would need to acquire proof beyond any doubt that Deagan had violated their contract. And considering how meticulous her lord was with his recordkeeping, she knew there would be something in his office. Some ledger or receipt of payment. Some scrap of paper where he signed away her squadron's lives.

The clatter of Blackjackets heralded their arrival. Soldiers on the battlements saw the empty cuirasses and nodded a sorrowful greeting. Citizens going about their daily chores stopped to stare. Brea's remaining troopers marched like a funeral procession. Nine of thirty: the numbers resounded in her mind alongside the faces of the fallen.

They rode straight to her lord’s keep and collected a crowd of onlookers who followed their bedraggled band. The commotion drew citizen and soldier alike, and Brea led them to the square below Deagan's balcony.

"My lord Callimedes," she called, loud enough for all to hear. She wasn't sure if Deagan would respond. Perhaps he might be too shocked that she yet lived. Perhaps he was too cowardly to face her in such a public display. Perhaps her audacity would see her hanged, her love be damned.

Two Blackjackets, whom Brea recognized as her lord's personal guards, stepped onto the balcony. They peered around and squinted knowingly at Brea below them.

After a moment, Lord Deagan Callimedes slid into view between his Blackjackets. Gold embroidery lined his elegant robes and sparkled in the afternoon sun. Jewels at his throat and fingers glittered. Though he seemed a bright star hovering above Brea's gloomy procession, she saw the dark cast of his features, the anger that hardened his eyes to chips of ice. Deagan's white-gloved hands gripped the balustrade tight enough she heard the wood creak.

Still, her breath caught at the sight of him, her heart giving a painful lurch.

"Captain." His voice rang across the square.

"An ambush, my lord. Twenty-one of your finest troopers taken at the hands of hobgoblins." She wanted all of the Mercenary League to hear of the dead, to know of their fallen brothers. Once she had proof, what was left of her squadron would not be enough. She needed every Blackjacket in Deagan's Hold to turn against him.

Her lord was silent a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, and Brea couldn't tell if the gentleness there was for her or for show.

"Then we mourn tonight," he said, "but we also celebrate the safe return of those who live to serve Kalistrade another day. Come, give your report Captain, and let us prepare a memorial for my fallen Blackjackets."

With that he turned and disappeared into his keep.

For Farnick, duty rises above all.

Brea sighed and dismounted her horse. She nodded to Farnick and whispered, "A day and a night, old friend."

He inclined his head, saying nothing. He led her soldiers toward the barracks, while she climbed the steps toward her lord once more and wondered if that would be the last she saw of Farnick. If in the morning he would brand her a traitor and hunt her down.

Perhaps, she thought, it was no more than she deserved.

∗ ∗ ∗

Hot water soothed her battered body. A page had intercepted her and instructed that she should make herself presentable. It seemed no one was too happy with the muddy bootprints she'd left on her last visit, least of all her lord. He'd lent her use of his own bathing chambers, though she'd seen no sign of the man himself since her arrival.

She relaxed against the porcelain tub. Every once in a while, a page would enter, remove a bucket of stale water, and pour fresh, steaming water into her bath. Jasmine and white rose petals floated on the surface, scenting the air along with her skin. A decanter of chilled wine and a glass were placed on a table nearby.

"It's good to be a Prophet," she mused.

Though she avoided the wine for fear of poison, least of all a dulling of her wits, she delighted in the comfort of Deagan’s chambers. If he intended to manipulate her before killing her, she might as well enjoy herself. And if she planned to peruse his office for proof of his treachery, then she would need to employ the same cleverness and subtlety of a Kalistocrat. She would need to use whatever love he once had for her as a weapon. He had said her heart would be his undoing, and Brea needed to make that prophecy come true.

When her olive skin turned pink from scrubbing, she wrapped herself in a robe and padded to the door that led to Deagan's office. She paused to listen and, hearing no one on the other side, opened it.

Leather-bound books and papers were stacked with care atop his desk. Gold trinkets and statuettes carved from ivory decorated his shelves. A tapestry woven with the Prophecies of Kalistrade hung above the hearth. They had once laughed with devilish delight at that tapestry, tangled together below it before the hearth.

Now the fireplace stood empty and cold. Not even the plush carpets warmed her bare feet as she moved to his desk.

Dates marked the binding of each ledger. Every paper was labeled in his intricate script. Deagan was a man who enjoyed details. He memorized the annual harvests of each province in the same meticulous way his fingers knew the delicate slope of her jaw, the column of her throat, and the slow curve of her hips.

She opened the newest ledger and scanned row upon row of transactions. Most of the accounts were lost on her, but she knew enough to understand Deagan's wealth was far greater than she'd expected. If he was conducting the amount and volume of sales the ledger indicated, then he was amassing enough power to draw the eyes of other Prophets, perhaps even the High Prophet himself.

If any of the Kalistocrats looked too closely, they would discover her relationship with Deagan. Because it was a violation of the Prophecies for a Kalistocrat to have liaisons that might result in illegitimate heirs, they would strip her of her blackjacket and Deagan of his title. It was a risk she and Deagan had known, but his hold had been beneath the notice of his betters, a small keep on the border of dwarven territory. Inconsequential, until now.

His efforts to stamp her out of existence suddenly made all too much sense.

She flipped pages, seeking anything that might indicate the hiring of hobgoblins or his attempt to remove her without sullying his own hands. She found nothing.

"Looking for something, Captain?" Deagan's voice sounded from the bathing chambers. He leaned against the doorframe, swirling a glass of wine.

Brea had no answer for him, no clever excuse that would spare her. She longed for the clarity of war and a simple sword in her hand, for an opponent whose eyes she could meet, for whom her heart did not ache. In that moment, she feared her lord more than any murderous hobgoblin.

"Come, I wish to show you something," he said and turned his back to her.

She had no blade hidden in her robe, and even if she did, she wasn't sure she could use it on her lord. She followed him into his chambers, her heart dying a little with every step.

He motioned to the foot of his bed, where her armor lay atop her doublet and clothes. It had been cleaned and polished, oiled to a fine shine that reflected the evening sun that blazed through his chamber's window. The gold etchings seemed brilliant on the dark armor, and she wondered if the magical blessings had also been restored. Her new gorget had been scrubbed. The scratch where it had turned the hobgoblin's blade and saved her life was no more than a dimple she had to feel with her fingers to sense.

"You'll want to be clean and in full regalia for the memorial service," he said. "Go on."

Brea had never been shy, not during the months in battlefield encampments surrounded by hardened soldiers, nor in the presence of her lord. Shyness was a trait for noble ladies and their handmaidens, of which she was neither. But now when she grasped the cinch of her robe, she hesitated.

"What game is this?" she asked, the words leaving her throat before she could stop them.

He shook his head and sipped from his glass. "Dress, Captain."

As she removed her robe, Deagan went to his window and stared at the setting sun. Brea slipped on her clothing and pulled her arming doublet over her head. When she began strapping down the plate armor, her lord came to her.

"Allow me," he said and knelt before her. His elegant hands fastened the buckles of her greaves with ease. As he rose to assist with her gorget, she met his bloodshot eyes.

"Why?" she whispered.

He did not answer. Leaving her gauntlets on the bed, he took her hand and led her toward the window.

"There is talk of mutiny in your squadron, Captain," he said.

So he knew, had known before he caught her snooping in his study. For the first time, Brea considered the possibility of a spy among her ranks. Someone new whom Deagan had paid to report on her. She didn't want to believe in such a betrayal, but if her lord could break her heart, one of her brothers could easily break her trust.

"Some believe I have violated my contract with the Mercenary League," he continued, standing behind her as she faced the square below. A gallows had been erected, and townsfolk were gathering around it.

"So this is it then," she said, thankful that at least he had allowed her to dress as a soldier. The weight of the armor that had long protected her would now drag her to a quicker death.

"I cannot have betrayal in my ranks, Captain. It must be dealt with swiftly."

"Did you ever love me?"

His breath warmed the shell of her ear. A black-masked executioner stepped onto the gallows, tying the rope securely between the uprights. Brea saw her troopers interspersed with the crowd, Etrim's blond head next to Soltez's dark curls. Both were young and stupid enough to be her lord's lap dog. They came to watch her die.

"An example must be made," Deagan said. "Your squadron must know I do not tolerate treachery in my officers."

She nodded. "I would have died for you on the field. This will only be a little different."

"Watch. And then you must go...go far away." His breathing was labored now, and he took a step back from her.

She furrowed her brow and did as her lord ordered.

From the keep strode two of Deagan's personal Blackjackets carrying a short, struggling figure between them. The bald head and missing ear of her old friend were unmistakable.

"Farnick?" She whirled on Deagan, her stomach roiling with sickness. "No, it's me you want. Hang me."

His eyes glimmered, his face lined with pain. "You understand nothing."

She lunged at him, knocking him to the ground. Her hands clamped on his shoulders and rapped his head against the floor. "Release Farnick!"

Her lord whispered a single word, and the gorget closed around her throat. She let him go to fumble at the clasp, but it would not open.

Staggering to his feet, Deagan coughed and said, "Someone must be responsible for the threat of mutiny. Someone must pay. But not you..."

Brea rolled on the ground, fighting for air. The world around her became fuzzy and disjointed.

"I'd hoped you would violate your contract,” he continued, “and leave after the brigands...and when you didn’t, I steeled myself and sent you to the hobs to die. But didn’t die, and I knew couldn't bear to go through it all again, to see you swinging from a rope." He laughed. "You keep coming back. My weakness. My albatross."

He crouched before her. Spots colored her vision, but she could see tears streaking his beautiful face. From the square below, she heard the crowd murmur before going silent.

Farnick's gruff voice boomed with his final words. "'Tis been my honor to serve with the finest soldiers, the finest Captain, I have known."

A crack sounded as the trapdoor under his feet opened and the crossbeam bore his weight.

Brea felt her own tears roll down her face, felt Deagan catch one with a gentle fingertip. Then the world disappeared.

Coming Next Week: A friend in need in Chapter Four of Stephanie Lorée's "Armored."

Stephanie Lorée is an author whose short stories have appeared in various anthologies and online publications, and in 2013, she was a finalist for Writers of the Future. She also works as a freelance editor. Visit her website at stephaniemloree.com.

Illustration by Dion Harris.

Armored

by Stephanie Lorée

Chapter Two: My Brother, My Blade

Farnick rode at her side, the squadron of troopers behind them. His head was cleanly shaved. No trace of stubble lined his chin. Brea's armor hung heavy on her shoulders, the gorget tight against her throat. All was as it should be.

"Goblins," Farnick spat. "There be no goblins this close to Prophet's Home and dwarven lands."

"Let us hope not," Brea said.

"I pray there are. My steel's sharp and overdue for a taste of goblin blood."

She smiled, remembering the moment their friendship was forged during the war. In truth, she had thought him mad when he dived in front of a blow that would have killed her and, instead, shattered his helm and left his ear a tattered mess. A stranger and a dwarf, willing to give his life for no other reason than she was his superior officer, and he'd been assigned to her command. Several days later, Brea had offered a daring tactic to route the enemy, and Farnick was the first to volunteer. His trust in her and her bold strategies had saved them both more times than she could recall.

There was no warrior she would rather have at her side.

"Eager for glory, old friend?" she asked.

"Aye, sir, been too little glory in recent years."

"Peace times are not the place for glory."

He frowned. "Nor soldiers, I fear."

The land was hilly and thick with scrubgrass. Mountains loomed before them like great shadows on the horizon. The closer they traveled to the Five Kings, the more the ground dipped and rose. She'd ordered a loose formation and doubled the eyes along either side of her squadron.

Brea had sent Soltez ahead of the group; despite his lingering injury he was her best scout. He would not need his sword arm if he remained unseen. And in truth, she had never needed his sword, considering how unskilled he was in battle, but his eyes were sharp and his intellect honed finer than any blade. She knew he moved somewhere in the distance, though she saw only the occasional wave of high grasses, which might have been the wind.

Thus far there had been no sign of unusual goblin activity. There were always some greenies, prowling in packs for wayward travelers. But no goblin warband would attack an armed squadron like Brea's. Goblins were crazy, but not entirely stupid.

"Will we see greenies today, Captain?" Etrim spoke from behind her. The eagerness in the younger woman's voice made Brea feel ancient.

"Perhaps," she said.

The fresh leather of Etrim's saddle creaked. She held the reigns of Soltez's horse and guided it alongside of her.

"It will be an honor to fight at your side," Etrim said.

Farnick chuckled. "Glory and honor both, then. ’Tis a good day for dreams."

Brea said nothing. Her glory had faded with the end of the war, and she'd sacrificed any honor she once had the moment she laid her heart bare for her lord.

The grasses beside her stirred. She reached for her longsword and had almost unsheathed it when she noticed the unmistakable cap of dark curls that belonged to Soltez.

"One or two leagues north." Soltez paused to salute her, almost as an afterthought. "A settlement in the clearing of some trees. Seemed empty to me."

"Seemed empty or is empty?" Brea asked.

"Is, sir. Abandoned."

She nodded and motioned to the extra horse that Etrim led. "Mount up, soldier. You've done well."

Brea knows all too well the price of royalty.

Soltez struggled to seat his horse one-handed, and Etrim paused to help him. They fell back in the formation, two other troopers seamlessly taking their places.

The scrubgrass gave way to thick underbrush and tall trees. Brea was about to call for a dismount to hack a suitable path for the horses, but Soltez assured her the clearing was just ahead. They picked their way carefully through the brush, mindful of the horses' footing. Then the trees parted like a lover’s welcoming arms.

"This is no settlement," Brea murmured as she passed a lonely, cold campfire. A few logs and thatches of leaves were scattered nearby that could have been the remains of crude shelters. But those had fallen ages ago.

"’Tis quiet, sir," Farnick whispered beside her.

She took a breath and let her ears register what was missing. The wind had died, and no birds chirped in the trees. Something foul and familiar drifted in the still air, the rank stench of an old enemy.

"Goblins," she said, drawing her longsword. "Ambush! To arms! Ambush!"

From the dark depths of the trees, the creatures emerged.

∗ ∗ ∗

They were losing. Brea could sense it in the ebb and flow of battle. They'd been caught unawares and had no time to form a defensive line. Blackjackets collapsed around her. For every trooper that died, several enemies went with him. Still, the hobgoblins poured from the shadows, seemingly endless in their numbers.

She spotted not a single goblin among the ranks, only hobs. Scarred, gray-skinned beings that stood of a height to her and fought with a brutal single-mindedness. Their arms and armor were not the scavenged mish-mash their shorter cousins preferred, but as finely made as those of any regiment of soldiers.

Of all the vile creatures in the world, Brea hated and feared hobgoblins the most.

To her left, she heard Farnick grunt as he cut down another hob, only to have a new one take its place. The rest of her troopers were scattered throughout the clearing, lost in the blur of battle.

"To me!" she called, slicing a hobgoblin in front of her across the throat and urging her horse to trample the next. "Form rank!"

Horses screamed and toppled, throwing troopers to the ground. Metal clanged, and soldiers wailed. The stink of hobgoblins and death filled the air.

One hob lunged at Brea's mare, and she batted his sword aside. The creature growled, cursing in its native tongue, and leaped. It caught hold of her horse's mane, attempting to swing itself at Brea and dismount her. She kicked it in the chest, but that only gave the hobgoblin pause. Her mount bucked, and she struggled to keep the mare under control as the hob wrenched the poor thing’s neck with one hand, while the other raised a sword to strike.

The hob’s blade descended toward Brea’s face. Unable to bring her sword up quickly enough to block, she managed only to shift her weight. The sword missed her face by a breath and landed squarely upon her throat.

The gorget sang with the screech of steel scraping steel. A spark hit her chin and sizzled. But the blade turned. Her head rattled from the impact, though it remained attached to her shoulders.

Brea rotated her too-slow parry into a slash and stuck the hob in the side. Blood splattered both her and her mare. The hob’s grip slackened, and the creature tumbled to the ground.

She didn't have time to check the gorget for damage or to murmur thanks to Deagan for his well-considered gift. Her old friend appeared at her side, a comforting presence as her troopers finally made their way toward her.

"Just like the old days, sir," Farnick shouted over the chaos. He laughed as he blocked a blow and kicked a hobgoblin in the head, sending the creature sprawling under his horse's hooves.

Other troopers gathered slowly in a loose crown formation with Brea. Surrounded by her brothers, she could think of no better way to die.

The hobgoblin swarm blocked them in, swiping at their horses. It was not the first time she and Farnick had been outnumbered by goblin infantry, and she smiled as a plan formed.

"Farnick, do you remember the battle along the Keld?" she yelled.

"Which one, sir?"

"The one we rode away from, rather than crawled."

A knowing grin spread across his face. He gave a whoop and spurred his horse. Though smaller than the other warhorses in Brea's squadron, Farnick's mare barreled through the hobs, parting them like water. Without hesitation, she followed in his wake, the other troopers behind her. They sliced a path through their enemy. Even a swarm of hobgoblins was no match for heavy cavalry.

When they reached the end of the hobs, they turned at the tree line. Farnick fanned to the left, and Brea went opposite. Another swath of creatures fell under their horse's hooves.

Finally, a horn sounded. It bleated for the hobgoblins’ retreat.

"Ride them down!" Brea ordered her squadron. Still, a few hobs managed to disappear into the woods.

When it was over, she counted her remaining people.

"Nine," she said. "Nine of thirty."

Farnick limped over to her, his horse lost among the carnage. Aside from the gouge across his thigh, he seemed unharmed.

"Three score of hobs, I'd wager," he said. He stepped on a body, and it grunted. He raised his sword to strike. "An ugly one here, still breathing."

"Wait." Brea dismounted and stood over the hobgoblin. Both of his legs were broken, and a jagged wound across his brow wept blood. She crouched before his hideous face, studying it.

"Is you," the creature said in guttural Common.

"Do you know me?" Brea asked.

The hobgoblin laughed, his eyes black pinpricks in a bulbous face. "The female captain. Said you would come. Said you were fierce."

She inclined her head, suppressing her surprise. "Who said?"

He grew quiet. Only his labored breathing and the movements of her soldiers as they gathered the dead echoed through the clearing.

Brea grabbed a broken leg and squeezed. The hobgoblin howled.

"You were waiting for us," she said. "Who sent you?"

"Gold man," the hob wailed. He reached for his belt, and Brea leaned on his leg.

"Stay still," she said and grabbed the pouch near his hand. She handed it to Farnick so she could keep her attention on the hob.

"Gold man," he repeated. "Please."

"Captain?" Farnick held out his hand.

A flash of gold drew her eye, and Brea turned to see bloody coins in her friend's palm. The face she knew too well, the lines she had traced with her lips and fingertips, stared back at her in mockery. Stamped clearly on each coin was the stoic profile of her lord, Deagan Callimedes, stained with her brothers' lives.

Coming Next Week: A room with a view in Chapter Three of Stephanie Lorée's "Armored."

Stephanie Lorée is an author whose short stories have appeared in various anthologies and online publications, and in 2013, she was a finalist for Writers of the Future. She also works as a freelance editor. Visit her website at stephaniemloree.com.

Illustration by Dion Harris.

Armored

by Stephanie Lorée

Chapter One: Wine Like Blood, Blood Like Water

The tip of her longsword carved a channel along the beachhead of Lake Encarthan. She dragged the weapon, held it listlessly in her hand. Hers were dark, dirtied hands that knew the weight of good steel, the heft of a man's heart. She remembered a time when she was clean, though she could not recall the feeling of pristine boot soles, nor of a soul unstained.

The slope of the sands made her stagger. To an observer, she might have appeared a poorly crafted iron golem, a lurching, jerky warrior inside a black-plated shell. As she reached the shoreline, she stumbled to her knees.

Rays of sunlight glinted off the lake. Ripples rolled slow and heavy around her calves. It was too beautiful a sight, too bright a day for what lay behind her, for what she and her squadron had done. But that was the way of Druma, to dress atrocity in finery and call it good business. She supposed the weather should be no different than the Prophets.

The surf whispered over her legs, soaking the padding underneath through the gaps in her armor. She stayed there as though in supplication to the lake, but did not pray to any god. For a servant of the Kalistocrats, there was no god above the High Prophet, and no one who cared to hear her pleas.

She breathed evenly to slow the thrum of her heart. The air tasted of fish and copper and death. It lay thick on her tongue like bad wine, but Brea drank it down, allowed it to fill her.

"I did this," she said.

The water washed the blood from her greaves. Tendrils of red slipped through the blue, snaking away from her like streamers in one of her lord's parades.

Her lord, Prophet Deagan Callimedes, would be home now, toiling behind his desk. She imagined Deagan's smooth, tawny cheek lifted in a grin. His wide-set eyes, bright as winter's sky and just as cold. White-gloved hands cupping her face, twined in her hair. The smell of jasmine and rose petals. The faint taste of blackberry wine. His mouth.

Brea unbuckled her mail. Each section splashed as it fell. The sword—forgotten by her busy fingers—sank at her side like an offering to a wishing well. When only the arming doublet remained, she slumped forward on her hands and watched the blood stain the rhythmic tide. The lives she had taken danced in the water's reflection. Her victim's pain echoed in the bruises yellowing her olive skin, in the burn of her muscles.

They'd overridden the so-called brigands at first light. Her heavy cavalry had crushed bone and spirit before she called the dismount and began the slaughter. She swung her sword like an automaton, slicing through meager armor and severing frail limbs. When her arms had wearied, Brea used her armored body as a weapon, trampling any in her path.

Segments of that mail lingered around her now. The black cuirass still glowed a pale gold with the dying embers of magic.

It, too, had started clean, gleaming fiercely with her lord's blessings. When she'd received her promotion to Captain, Brea had been honored to receive his gift. The cuirass comforted her, protected her. Through it, Deagan had finally demonstrated his love for her.

It was her blackjacket. Her albatross.

"I did this for you," she told the lake in place of her lord.

Behind her, a man cleared his throat. "Captain?"

Brea recognized Farnick's gruff voice. He had been her lieutenant since the Goblinblood Wars, where he lost an ear saving her life. Older than her by two score and half her height, Farnick was the only dwarf in her squadron and likely her only friend.

"He'll be pleased, sir." His round face drew down despite his words, and the ruddy stubble coating his jaw only darkened his expression. In spite of his heritage, Farnick kept his head and face shaved. Those whiskers were a testament to their hard march to Lake Encarthan.

"He is never pleased," she said.

Farnick grunted. "We're fortunate then, to focus on battle and damned the results. We'll be receiving his ire either way."

A slow smile fought its way to her lips. "How are the troops?"

For Deagan Callimedes, no god is above the High Prophet.

"Soltez was wounded, bucked from his horse by his own idiocy. He'll live. The rest are uninjured and gathering a pyre."

"Morale?" she asked.

He hesitated and shifted the helm he carried from one arm to the other. "As well as can be expected, sir. We've never run down peasants before, think they're not taking well to the idea."

"They're not alone." She pulled herself to her feet and stood before him, drenched and drained of will. They exchanged a look that said they understood one another as only those who have spilled blood together might. "I will speak to Lord Callimedes."

Farnick grunted again. "No, then I doubt he'll be pleased."

Brea nodded. Remaining in her soaked doublet and riding boots, she strode from the water toward her squadron, toward the silent dead. She did not witness the final magic fade from her blackjacket, nor hear the sorrowful sigh of its passing, but in her bones she felt it die among the waves.

∗ ∗ ∗

They arrived to silence, not fanfare. The procession of her bedraggled squadron was nothing for the citizens of Deagan's Hold to celebrate, for the dark armor of the Mercenary League heralded only death. Above them, the guards manning the battlements nodded in greeting. They, too, knew the cold will and hot lash her lord favored. Only the scent of baker's morning bread comforted Brea as she led her soldiers home.

"I'll handle the squadron," Farnick told her as they rode. He had gathered her discarded armor, dried it by the pyre, and strapped it securely to Brea's horse. Though the thought of wearing the blackjacket again didn't make her happy, she knew it was for the best.

Deagan would not tolerate such a disregard for his gifts.

"Have Etrim see to the horses," she said. "She has a way with them."

"Aye. The lass will make a fine trooper one day."

Brea unhooked her belt pouch and tossed it at Farnick. "Have both the soldiers and horses fed well tonight."

He weighed the pouch in his hand, then reached in to withdraw a single coin. It was perfectly round and stamped on the front with the profile of their lord.

"He looks nicer in gold," Farnick said. "Softer, almost motherly, aye?"

She laughed, but said nothing in response. He slipped the coin in the bag and stuck it under his breastplate.

"I swear I'll only buy a bit of ale, sir," he said. "For the horses, of course."

They rode the rest of the way in companionable quiet, only the clack of horseshoes sounding over the cobblestone street. When they neared the barracks, Brea split from her squadron and turned toward her lord's keep. She was dirty with grime, her doublet still damp and smelling of mildew. Her boots left muddy footprints on priceless rugs as she walked, uncontested, to Deagan's office.

He did not look up from his desk as she entered, but said, "Is it done?"

A strange sadness colored his voice. He stared intently at the stack of papers before him, but Brea noted a rim of red around his eyes.

"It is, my lord," she said.

His head lifted as she spoke, and for a moment an emotion she could not name flickered across his expression. Then a mask smoothed over his face, cold and calm and always assured.

"Brea," he said on a sigh. "Tell me."

She stood stock straight as she gave her report. "The brigands were found and dispatched. They were but ragged men and women, a few families. The wagon taken from your caravan has been returned, but its cargo is rotten. Food, my lord. They stole only food."

"Only food." He rose from his desk. "It is food that feeds my citizens; its sale pays my soldiers. Only food bought you that armor. Only food keeps my hold profitable."

She remained motionless as he approached. He touched her shoulder briefly and inspected his hand. The white glove showed wet and dirty fingertips. His mouth formed a hard line, which only made his beauty more severe.

"What would you suggest, Captain?" he asked. "That I let thieves pillage freely if they are hungry? Let them take what is rightfully mine out of pity?"

"They didn't need to die."

He raised a single dark brow. "I did not kill them, soldier. You did."

Brea closed her eyes, her chin dropping. The screams of the brigands echoed through her mind. They would not suffer the loss of their goods, spoiled or not, nor would they be taken under arrest. A man had shouted that the dungeons were a worse death than the sword. His face was clear in Brea's memory, thinned by starvation yet too stubborn to die. It was he who had drawn the first blade, incited his fellows, but it was her longsword that sank deep in his chest.

"We were under orders," she said to the floor.

"And if you do not like my orders, then violate your contract and leave."

Her heart lurched, her head rising to meet his pale gaze. No love lay in his eyes now, no indication that he had ever looked upon her with more than disdain. Then, he sighed and rested his hands on either side of her face.

"Brea," he whispered as his expression relaxed, the hard planes of his face softening into the features of the man she knew, not the Prophet she served.

"My lord?"

He wiped the soot and blood from her cheeks, ruining his gloves. "You are the best of my Blackjackets. My most loyal soldier."

Instinctively, she tilted into his touch. These were the moments she craved, the rare times when he reminded her of why she loved him. She said nothing, too afraid a word from her might freeze his sudden warmth.

"I shouldn't tolerate your insolence," he said without rancor. "But you are my weakness, you do know that? Your heart will be my undoing."

He kissed her slow, tasting of rich wine and promises he could not keep. She lost herself for a moment, forgot the blood staining her fingernails and the sweat of battle still clinging to her. When he pushed her gently away, she was unsurprised. He went to his desk again and opened a drawer. From it he lifted a gorget, black as her breastplate but too large for her by half. When he placed it around her neck and whispered a word, the armor shrank. It fit snugly against her skin.

"For you," he said. "To keep you safe when you leave in the morning for the Five Kings Mountains."

Brea caressed the sleek steel of the gorget, her brow furrowing. "My squadron's only just returned."

"And they should have a good night's rest before setting out at dawn." He moved away from her, placed his hands on his desk's marble top, and leaned over his papers once more. "There have been reports of goblin settlements. The Five Kings are too close to my territory for us to sit idly and do nothing. My caravans may be at risk."

"Of course, my lord, but there've been no instances of goblins living near our borders for years."

Deagan stared at her. The man disappeared, leaving only the Prophet in his white robes. "I suggest you clean up, sleep, and do not test my generosity again this day."

He dismissed her with a wave, and Brea wandered out of his keep. It was not her place to question, she knew, but she could taste blackberry wine on her tongue and feel the heat of his hands against her skin. She reached for the gorget and unclasped it. It fell open in her palms, still sized perfectly to her, and clean, so much cleaner than the hands that cradled it.

She walked toward the barracks, toward her troopers and the news that there would not be time to recover. They would march at dawn, and she would discover if this new gorget was another way for her lord to show his true affections for her—or if it was little more than a slave's collar.

Coming Next Week: Love and betrayal in Chapter Two of Stephanie Lorée's "Armored."

Stephanie Lorée is an author whose short stories have appeared in various anthologies and online publications, and in 2013, she was a finalist for Writers of the Future. She also works as a freelance editor. Visit her website at stephaniemloree.com.

Illustration by Dion Harris.

Winter's Wolves

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter Three: Up the Mountain

Jendara moved through the dense forest, following Irlu as the tracker floated through the bracken and brush. Jendara was an able tracker; the dark-haired Blackraven made her look like a novice. Despite the hill giant's size and ungainly burden—Lugh stood six and a half feet tall—the creature had left little spoor. It might be huge and ungainly, but the giant clearly knew the woods.

"Irlu will find him." Grotnir's voice was a soft rumble from behind Jendara. She glanced over her shoulder to see his face. She hadn't noticed the gray in his beard earlier.

Jendara watched the woman pick a flake of lichen off a branch and look closely at it. "She's a great tracker."

"The best I've ever worked with. And she doesn't give up. She'll comb these hills all night, if that's what it takes. He's Caul's brother, so he's as good as her own."

There's nothing natural about white wolves.

He caught the questioning look on Jendara's face. "Irlu's family was killed when she was just a little girl. She's never said what happened to them. A Blackraven patrol found her in the woods, surviving on her own."

No wonder Irlu had joined the prestigious border guard. And to have survived at such a young age in these woods—here, so close to the Irriseni border, where creatures like giants and white wolves were a constant threat—only made Jendara's admiration for the woman grow.

They moved through the forest in silence for a few minutes, crossing a stream at the bottom of a steep ravine and then climbing up again. They'd left behind any trace of loggers or hunters long ago: this was wild country, a rough and uninviting wilderness. Even the trees looked shorter here, their trunks twisted and wind-battered.

"I have a son a little younger than Lugh," Grotnir said, suddenly. He leaned against a tree for a moment. "He wants to join the Blackravens."

Jendara caught something in his tone. "And you don't want him to?"

He shook his head. "He's a good man, but no warrior. He'd make a fine smith or farmer, but I can't tell him that. Not after hearing Blackraven stories all his life."

Jendara picked a bit of moss out of the end of her braided hair. "I have a son myself. He's ten."

He reached out and caught her hand, pulling it close to study the tattoo. "And do you want him to follow in your footsteps?" He tapped the inked spot. "Besmara is a cruel goddess."

She pulled her hand away. "You know her sign."

He shrugged. "I've known a pirate or two. Bad men, all of them."

"We'll lose Irlu if we don't get a move on." She pushed past him without making eye contact.

He was right, of course. There were good reasons she wasn't a pirate anymore, and her boy was only one of them. But that didn't mean she'd apologize for it.

Irlu picked up her pace, and after a few moments, Jendara understood why. They were following some kind of game trail that snaked up the steep hillside. There was very little ground cover here, and bits of broken rock and debris marked the paths of long-ago landslides. The trail ran between little heaps of scree and dead leaves, looking well used.

Irlu hesitated and looked back over her shoulder. "I don't like this."

"What?" Grotnir asked.

"There's no sign of the giant anymore. I don't know how she lost us, but she has. We're only following the wolf."

Jendara frowned. "But the wolf didn't have Lugh."

"I think it does now." Irlu squatted. "I've seen a couple of scrape marks alongside the trail. I think it's probably Lugh's boots, dragging as the wolf carries him. I don't know when they switched off. Before they left the tree cover, certainly."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" Jendara snapped.

"I wasn't sure." Irlu paused to cough. This walk uphill after breathing as much smoke as she had—it couldn't be good for her. She cleared her throat. "They're planning something."

A sudden rumble made them all turn to stare up the hill.

"Move!" Grotnir bellowed. A massive boulder bounced down the rocky slope, stirring up clouds of dust.

Jendara grabbed Irlu's hand and pulled her off the trail. They skidded for a second before Irlu caught a scraggly brush and stopped their descent. The boulder careened past them, hitting a stony outcropping and exploding into shards.

"Merciful Desna," Irlu breathed. Then she doubled over in a coughing fit.

"Too much dust." Jendara fumbled in her belt pouch for a handkerchief and offered it to the tracker. "We can probably expect more of that."

Another boulder, much smaller, soared out over their heads, landing a few feet beyond the remains of the other. It bounced down the hillside and disappeared into the trees.

"Now we know where the giant went," Grotnir said. "How the hell are we going to make it up to the top of this hill? Except for this game trail, it's all rock ahead. Not a bit of cover."

Jendara studied the terrain, then pointed out a thin, tall larch that somehow clung to the steep rocks of the hill. The game trail ran away from the tree as it headed up the hill's soft flank on the other side. "There's a chimney in the rock about halfway up the slope. If I shinny up that tree, I can jump to it and make my way to the top. That's got to be where the giant is."

Irlu's eyes widened. "Climb that? You're crazy."

Jendara grinned. "I'm a sailor. Climbing is what I do." She eyed the vertical crevice again and took off her sword—she didn't want to risk getting caught in the narrow gap. "Just give me a few minutes' head start."

Keeping low to the ground, she ran to the larch and scrambled up into its branches, which were thin, weak, and few. Despite her bravado, she felt her stomach twist. It was one thing to climb a stout oak mast, but this tree wasn't much thicker than her ankle. She'd better hope her luck held.

The trunk narrowed and began to lean. Jendara bit down on the inside of her cheek and eyed the rocks. There was a sequence of ledges leading up to the chimney—she ought to be able to jump onto one. She closed her eyes for a second and leaped.

She caught the rock with her fingertips and felt her boots skid before she steadied. She grunted. It would have been a nervous shriek if she didn't know the giant was someplace over her head. But after a moment, she pulled herself up to the next ledge and slipped into the jagged crack. She was glad she'd left her sword behind. The rocks pressed tight against her body—but that actually helped her. She braced her palms against the rock and pushed herself upward.

A ribbon of sunlight ran down the narrow gap between the rocks. Jendara felt as if the light itself pulled her up the tiny space. She kept her eyes fixed on the glittering bit of sunshine, filling her mind with its brilliance and not her precarious position.

Suddenly, the ribbon of light went dark.

A guttural voice boomed down the tube. Jendara craned her neck. Something blocked the top of the crevice. The giant, peering down at her. She could smell its filthy stink. Her heart thudded in her chest.

The giant pulled back and Jendara climbed faster. Then suddenly the huge voice bellowed in pain. Jendara threw herself up out of the crevice just as volley of arrows peppered the stones. Jendara pressed herself to the ground. Irlu must have raced up that hill while Jendara was in the tree.

The arrow storm paused. Down below, a cold voice shouted. Jendara couldn't make out the words, but she knew that voice. They'd found the wolf.

The giant was peering over the edge of the hilltop once more. The ground here was wind-scoured rock, dotted here and there with lichen-dappled boulders and rocks—the perfect lookout for an ambush.

Jendara got to her feet and drew her handaxe just as the giant spun around to face her. An arrow jutted out of the creature's arm, but it didn't seem to notice anymore. Its piggy eyes narrowed and it roared in rage, then pulled back its leg and kicked a chunk of rock at Jendara.

She threw herself aside, but the rock still hit her shoulder, jolting her hard enough to make her teeth rattle. The giant snatched up another rock.

Anger boiled up inside her. She charged the creature, dropping low at the last second and chopping into its kneecap with a crunch. The giant screamed. Jendara wrenched the axe free and shoved against the thing's hip. It stumbled backward.

For a second, its arms windmilled and it balanced at the very edge of the cliff. Then it flew backward. There was a thud as it hit the ground, just missing Grotnir as he rushed the white wolf.

The wolf bit into his hand, and Grotnir bellowed in pain. He wrenched himself free and stumbled away. Arrows streaked toward the wolf, and the creature retreated beyond Jendara's limited view. She glanced around herself. She had to get down off this hilltop, and she didn't have time to risk the crevice.

A mound of dirt caught her eye, and she hurried toward it. This side of the hill wasn't half as steep, and she could see the giant's footprints in the dirt. She followed them down and around the hillside. A few feet ahead, Grotnir's green cloak stood out against the rocky outcropping he was sheltering behind.

Jendara sank down behind a larch sapling. A few dozen yards beyond Grotnir, Irlu was creeping uphill. Jendara followed Irlu's gaze up the hill, beyond the sprawled corpse of the giant. A dark slit stood out against the rocks making up the hill, a horizontal version of the crevice Jendara climbed up. That had to be the wolf's den.

If Lugh was still alive, he was almost certainly in that cave.

She sprang up from her cover and burst into a run. It wouldn't be expecting a head-on charge, not from her, and this would distract from Irlu's stealthy approach. She realized she was bellowing like a berserk raider, but couldn't make herself stop.

The wolf burst out of the cave, snarling. Its teeth flashed as it lunged toward her, and for a second she feared its ice breath attack, but her handaxe was already slamming down on its face. The blade bit into fur and meat. The creature twisted aside, ripping the blade free with a splatter of blood.

But Jendara hadn't lost her grip on the weapon. She rolled under the beast's counterattack, her knees grinding into the broken gravel of the cave's entrance. The white wolf shrieked in sudden desperate pain.

She didn't pause to wonder why, just pushed herself up, slamming into the beast's belly and sending it flying. It fell on the rocks beside the dead giant. Blood trickled out of its mouth, and an arrow jutted out of its ribs. Irlu crept toward it.

"Finish me, Blackraven," it gurgled. "Like you finished my mate."

"I'm no Blackraven," Jendara spat.

"But I am." Irlu jammed her knife into the wolf's blue eye. The wolf convulsed once and went still. Irlu grinned savagely, and then a coughing fit made her double up as well.

"Irlu! Are you all right?" Grotnir ran to her. His arm hung limply at his side, blood running down his fingers.

Jendara turned away from them and hurried inside the shallow cave. "Lugh?"

A groan answered her. She couldn't make out his face in the dim light, but the sound was comforting. "You okay?"

"My head hurts."

"At least you didn't hurt anything important." She found his shoulders and began dragging him out into the light. He chuckled once, then groaned with pain again. When he was out of the cave, his skull bloody and knotted but still intact, Jendara sat down beside him and stretched out her legs.

"You know," she said, "you have a lot more of this to look forward to once you become a Blackraven."

Lugh chuckled again, then touched his head. "Like you said, no one ever said my brain is my best feature."

"Still," Jendara said, "you have to admit this was more interesting than hunting a bunch of ducks."

At the entrance of the cave, Irlu laughed. "Jendara, are you sure you're not a Blackraven?"

Jendara grinned. She was pretty sure that was a compliment.

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Coming Next Week: Royal adventure in the sands of Osirion in Paizo Associate Editor Christopher Paul Carey's "Dune Runner"!

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Skinwalkers and the web fiction story "Mother Bears," both starring Jendara. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Armored and The Way of the Wizard, and in many online magazines. Wendy lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches writing for youth. An avid gardener and board gamer, she can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

Winter's Wolves

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter Two: Message in Blood

The hill giant stepped over the smashed remains of the trees. It wore a vest and skirt made of filthy hides, and a necklace of raccoon skulls dangled between its two drooping and half-covered breasts. Its hair hung in clumpy strands the color of dirt, damp and clinging to its jowled cheeks.

A dozen of the canvas and wood tent cabins stood between Jendara and the giant, and two men raced out of one of the structures, loaded up with gear and screaming. One of them shoved Jendara aside and barreled down the hill. Jendara ignored the other. Off to her right, Grotnir ran with Nola, headed toward the end of camp where the mule screams were coming from. She couldn't see his horse anywhere.

The giant bellowed something in its ugly language and swung a tree limb at the nearest tent cabin. The structure crumpled on impact.

What hill giants lack in intelligence, they make up for in brute strength.

Jendara unslung her bow and narrowed her eyes. A giant. She had only seen one once: While traveling on the mainland with her father, they'd seen one attack a shepherd and his flock. Her father had driven the giant away with only a hunting spear and a handaxe. Jendara had been maybe six or seven, but she'd never forgotten the ugly, stinking mass of the thing, or the pain that filled the shepherd's eyes as he struggled to breathe with lungs and ribs crushed by the creature. That shepherd was the first man she had watched die.

The giant wrenched a broken tree trunk from the ground and flung it. Jendara threw herself aside. The log crashed down in the logging road, just inches from where she'd been standing.

She felt the hot stirring of anger in her chest. She growled and readied her bow again.

She let fly her arrow. It sank fletching deep in the giant's floppy dug, and the creature shrieked. Then the giant ripped the arrow free and cast it aside. Jendara reached for another. She had to choose a better target—the creature's torso was just too fat for her arrows to hit a major organ.

The ground rumbled beneath her feet. A herd of mules thundered down the hill, straight toward Jendara.

A hand closed on her arm and she flew up in the air, her bow clattering to the ground.

"Get on!" Lugh bellowed. She scrabbled for a grip on the saddle and managed to get onto the horse's back even as it bolted away from the stampeding mules, racing leftward up a switchback Jendara hadn't noticed before.

Lugh slowed the horse. A couple of good-sized hemlocks stood between them and the camp, but Jendara could still hear the giant's laughter, low and rumbling and ugly. She sat up straight in the saddle. The black horse tossed its head, and she recognized it as Irlu's.

"We've got to stop this thing before it brings down the whole camp. Do you know where Irlu is?"

Lugh patted the horse's neck. "I saw her bringing wounded out of the biggest tent—must have been the folks the wolf hurt when it came through camp. Want to bet the giant and the wolf are working together?"

"I'll keep my money, thank you."

Lugh only laughed and urged the horse back toward the camp. Jendara gripped Lugh's shoulder tight with her left hand and drew her sword with the other. The giant stood in the middle of camp, fallen and shattered tent cabins all around it. The horse leaped over a toppled tree.

Then it suddenly reared up, hooves flailing. Something white burst up out of a fallen tent, snarling and roaring. The horse screamed as frost covered its hooves and coated its front legs. Jendara lost her grip on Lugh's shoulder and slid off the horse's back. She had the presence of mind to roll to her right, but she hit the ground hard. She pushed herself to sit up. Her ribs hurt, and her sword had fallen someplace. She felt naked without it.

The horse dropped to all fours and spun around. The white wolf lunged forward, but the horse lashed out with a rear leg and clipped the wolf in the muzzle. The creature toppled backward, but caught itself and shook its shaggy white head. Its glacial blue eyes fixed on the horse.

Jendara's sword lay just inches from the big white wolf. She eyed the distance between the creature and the sword. There was no way she could grab it and attack before the beast saw her.

A splintered door smashed down in front of her. She kicked the broken slab of wood away and jumped to her feet, but the wolf was gone.

Jendara ran to grab her sword. "Where is it?" she shouted. "Lugh, do you see the wolf?"

He stroked the horse's neck. It was calm now that the wolf had vanished. "I'm more worried about the giant."

"Forget the giant," Grotnir growled, appearing at Jendara's elbow. "Irlu and I have gotten most of the injured onto a logging skid. Let's grab the last of them and get these people down to Big Cascade before anyone else is hurt."

"What about the mules?" Jendara shouted, remembering the stampede. She sheathed her sword.

"Nola's rounding them up!" Grotnir beckoned her toward the biggest of the tent cabins.

Before she could move, part of the big tent's wooden frame collapsed. Flames whooshed suddenly up the back wall. The giant stumbled backward, shielding its face from the heat.

"Irlu!" Grotnir grabbed Jendara's arm. "She's in there!"

They ran into the smoky haze. On this side of the tent, the doorframe still stood, but black smoke billowed out the open door. Jendara covered her mouth and nose with her shirt. A deep whump shook the wall, and another section collapsed.

Jendara grabbed the back of Grotnir's cloak. "You can't go in there!"

He tried to shake her off. "I've got to get her out!"

Flames lapped across the sagging tent roof. Jendara threw her arms around Grotnir and heaved him away from the doorway. He wrenched at her fingers, but she stuck fast.

A hunched figure burst out of the doorway, enshrouded in smoldering wool.

"Irlu!" Grotnir shouted.

Irlu threw herself on the ground, rolling hard to smother any flames. She sat up and coughed hard, fighting for air. Jendara and Grotnir hurried to help her to her feet and away from the flaming tent.

"We've got to get out of here," Jendara warned Grotnir. "Where's the logging skid?" She couldn't see a thing. Her eyes stung with the black smoke choking the air.

"The road," he grunted. They staggered forward until their boots squelched in the road's deep mud.

Irlu sagged against Grotnir's side for a second, sucking up air. "A barrel of cooking oil," she croaked. "Exploded. I tried to get to the last man, but there were flames everywhere."

"Don't talk," Grotnir said. "You've breathed a lot of smoke."

Jendara blinked around herself. There was no sign of Lugh or Irlu's horse—and no sign of the logging skid, either. "I don't see Nola or the skid."

A black horse burst out of the smoke, riderless. Jendara's stomach sank. "Where's Lugh?"

A gust of wind stirred the smoke, and Jendara caught a glimpse of white at the edge of camp. She ran toward it. She could make out a voice—a rough, horrible voice, speaking a language she couldn't understand. The consonants clacked like rocks tumbling together, but the voice wasn't a giant's deep boom. She remembered what Grotnir had said about the wolves speaking.

The smoke eddied around Jendara, obscuring the world around her. She stumbled and fell into the mud, then pushed herself up to her hands and knees and looked back at what had tripped her: the still figure of a dark-haired woman in a brown coat, her cheek pink and blistered.

Nola. She'd come back to help her friends, and now she lay here in the mud.

The skull-and-crossbones tattoos on the backs of Jendara's hands—symbols of the pirate goddess she'd once revered—burned with rage. She reached for the axe in her belt. That wolf was going to pay. The giant may have crushed the camp, but the white wolf had to be the brains behind the attack.

Snarling, she jumped to her feet and ran toward the sound of the wolf's voice. The wall of smoke dissipated and she saw the white shape again, now moving into the dark forest beyond a broken corral, the giant close behind. The wolf turned to look at her. Its lip curled.

"Tell the Blackravens I took their partner." The creature made a noise in the back of its throat that might have been a laugh. "If they want him, they'll have to find him."

The giant's sides jiggled in merriment. It raised one hand and wiggled the fingers in a mocking wave. The other hand rested on Lugh's back, bent over the giantess's shoulder. His body was limp.

"Give him to me!" Jendara bellowed.

The wolf smiled broader. "Don't forget the message." It slipped into the trees without another sound.

Jendara ran forward—straight into the sudden swing of the giant's club. She managed to sidestep the full force of the blow, but it still caught her on the edge of her ribcage, spinning her around. She crumpled into the mud, her vision gray and bleary. She tried to sit up and saw a dazzling constellation of stars.

Someone knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. "Jendara?" Irlu's voice was raspy with smoke.

Anger pushed the pain out of Jendara's head. She sat up. "It thinks Lugh is one of you. A Blackraven. It wants you to come after him."

Grotnir squatted to meet Irlu's eyes. "So that's what this is about. It's the wolf the last patrol didn't finish."

"They wrecked this whole camp just to draw us in," Irlu growled.

"Fine." Grotnir spat on the ground. "If it wants Blackravens, we'll give it Blackravens.."

Jendara grabed his shoulder and pulled herself up. She felt terrible. Her head hurt, and her ribs screamed from the double insult of the giant's club and the fall from the horse. But at least she could think clearly. "This is a trap."

Irlu swiped soot from her face. "Of course it is. But I'll be serving on patrol with Caul for a whole year. Am I supposed to look him in the eye and say I let his brother get kidnapped by a white wolf and didn't go after him?"

Jendara nodded, then regretted the motion. "I'm going with you."

Grotnir's fist closed on her shoulder. "You're a brave one, but you're no Blackraven. Go down to Big Cascade and warn the townsfolk."

She knocked his hand away. "I promised Lugh's father I'd take care of him. I can't turn my back on him now."

Grotnir's lips pursed, but at last he nodded.

"Besides," Jendara added. "That wolf tried to turn me into a messenger girl." She grinned. "I'm going to teach it a lesson."

Irlu stood and moved toward the forest. "If you two are coming, then hurry up." Then she slipped into the trees as silently as the white wolf had.

Jendara had to admire the dark-haired tracker. The white wolf had killed two of her fellow border guards. Irlu was injured and didn't even know Lugh. But she hadn't hesitated to go after him.

Jendara tapped the handle of her belt axe. It had been her father's, once; he had used it to fight off that giant. If his spirit could see her holding it now, he would certainly approve.

Jendara followed Irlu into the forest. That wolf had no idea who it was dealing with.

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Coming Next Week: The icy conclusion of Wendy N. Wagner's "Winter's Wolves"!

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Skinwalkers and the web fiction story "Mother Bears," both starring Jendara. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Armored and The Way of the Wizard, and in many online magazines. Wendy lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches writing for youth. An avid gardener and board gamer, she can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

Winter's Wolves

by Wendy N. Wagner

Chapter One: Mud, Ice, and Blood

Jendara dropped onto a fallen log and eyed her companion. "Are you ready to give up?"

The young man's ever-present grin widened. "Already? We haven't shot anything yet!"

Jendara sighed and scrubbed mud off of one jolly roger-tattooed hand. She'd grown tired of the stink of mud over the past two weeks. She was used to the sea, to sailing on the trading ship Milady, or hunting on the wind-battered island of Sorind that she had come to call her home. But she and Vorrin, the Milady's captain, had both agreed that this summer they'd look for new stops to add to their trade routes, and old friends in Trollheim had convinced them to sail upriver for good deals on garnets.

Lugh squatted down so he could meet her eye. The boy—young man, she corrected herself—was nearly as big as a bear, and almost as hairy. "You've got your cursing-the-locks face on."

She sighed again. "I just can't believe we're still waiting for the damn locks to be fixed. It's bad enough having to sail up a river. Being stuck out here in the mud is just ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous is that we didn't find any ducks." Lugh stood up, stretched, and looked around himself. "The villagers said this marsh is packed with ducks and geese, but we haven't even seen a blackbird."

Jendara stood up. At her feet, a small stream ran by, hurrying toward the wide marsh she and Lugh had trekked around. If she squinted, she could just make out the headland separating the marsh from the solid ground the village of Big Cascade stood upon. Vorrin and the rest of the crew were probably drinking in the village's pathetic excuse for a tavern by now.

She turned back to Lugh. He was a new friend, a passenger they'd taken on as a favor to his father, who ran a canvas mill in the capital city of the Ironbound Archipelago. The Milady had too many sails not to curry favor with a man like that, and besides, he'd paid them well. Lugh's family was enormously proud of the fact that Lugh and his twin brother had been selected for a year's service in the Blackravens, an elite border guard here on the mainland. The brother had gone ahead while Lugh had been delayed several months by a leg broken during the testing, and now he fairly vibrated with his eagerness to catch up. The youth's boisterous good spirits irritated Vorrin, but Jendara didn't mind. The boy was no great philosopher, it was true, but she enjoyed practicing her swordplay with someone who could laugh about it afterward.

"I don't like this place much," she admitted. "Everything feels damp and smells musty. The clouds look so heavy, I can feel them weighing down my shoulders."

Lugh clapped her on the back. "Let's get you back to the village. The food might be garbage, but the ale will cheer you up."

The ale wasn't much better than the food, but Jendara knew he was trying to bolster her spirits. She gathered up her bow and quiver and led them back toward the rutted logging road that followed the edge of the marsh. The mud sucked at their boots, and she swore under her breath the whole way. Lugh chuckled as he pushed back a branch of a young alder and held it aside for her to step out onto the road.

As she did, a pair of riders rounded the corner. She waved at them, a neighborly gesture, but neither the man nor the woman looked like they could be the neighbor of anyone in Big Cascade. The villagers earned their keep via the locks, and were as soft as people got in the Linnorm Kingdoms. These newcomers were anything but. A battered but polished halberd hung on side of the man's saddle, and the woman had a fine bow slung across her back, along with an array of blades. Neither spoke as they passed by.

"Beautiful horses, weren't they?" Lugh asked Jendara. He looked after them wistfully. As methods of transit went, Jendara would always choose a boat over a horse.

The woman turned around in her saddle, dark eyes wide. "Caul?"

Lugh beamed. "You know my brother?"

She laughed. "Merciful Desna! Caul said he had a twin, but I never expected you'd be his copy." She dismounted and stuck out her hand. "Irlu Icewine, tracker and Blackraven. Caul's assigned to our patrol! "

A Blackraven is a force to be reckoned with.

Lugh's shook her hand with an exuberance that threatened to take her arm off. Jendara stepped forward. "Jendara Eriksson. Pleased to meet one of the Blackravens."

Irlu gave her a quick glancing-over, her eyes pausing on Jendara's belt axe and sword, then smiled. With her dark hair and dark eyes, she didn't look like the natives of the region—she could almost pass for Tian. But her face was open and friendly, and her handshake firm. Several dark feathers had been woven into her hair. "Just doing my part to keep the witches of Irrisen and their accursed beasts out of the Linnorm Kingdoms. But any friend of Caul's is going to be a friend of mine. Grotnir!" she called to her companion. "Come down here and meet these fine folks!"

The other Blackraven dismounted to join them. "I see you've found Caul's twin," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Did you get held up on your journey to Blackraven Hall? We heard the locks were down."

"You guess correctly," Lugh answered. "We've been waiting two weeks for the repairs to finish. Jendara and I escaped the harbor to try our luck at duck hunting."

Irlu eyed their muddy clothes and empty game bags. "It looks like your luck failed you."

"It was oddly quiet out there." Jendara said.

The two Blackravens exchanged glances. Grotnir's lips tightened.

"Do you know something?" Jendara's hand went immediately to the axe in her belt. Anything that upset two experienced Blackravens was bad news.

Irlu's face darkened. "We've been tracking a white wolf that's already killed two of our patrol members, and injured another. Caul's with our hurt man, maybe twenty miles back; he took him to the nearest healer. We're headed to the logging camp up this hill, because one of the loggers reported a sighting."

"A white wolf?" Lugh's eyebrows knitted. "How could a wolf kill two Blackravens?"

Grotnir shook his head. "Not an ordinary wolf, son. A white wolf. Nothing natural about those. They're bigger, smarter—they can even talk."

"And they can breathe ice," Irlu added. "They use it to stun their prey."

"We think it's been through here before," Grotnir said. "Another patrol passed through this area a few months ago and dealt with a particularly vicious pair of white wolves. One got away."

"It wouldn't have if I'd been on that patrol," Irlu snapped. "Their tracker ought to be ashamed of himself."

"Are the white wolves a big problem in this area?" Jendara asked. There weren't any such creatures on Sorrind. She knew this part of the Linnorm Kingdoms had more than its share of dangerous creatures, but this beast was one she'd never encountered.

"They're nomadic," Grotnir said. "But they're bad news. If that logger really saw a white wolf, the people of Big Cascade don't even know the kind of trouble they're in."

Jendara cocked her head. "We've been standing here talking for a good ten minutes. That's long enough for most birds to stop worrying about a person's presence. Why haven't we heard any?"

Grotnir's eyes narrowed. "You're right."

"Help! Please, help!"

Lugh stared up the road. "What the—"

A woman raced down the hill toward them, her brown jacket streaked with blood. She tripped on a rock and fell hard. With a little cry, she jumped back to her feet and kept running. "Help!"

Lugh raced forward and caught the woman as she stumbled again. "Are you all right?"

She gasped for air. Blisters dappled the left side of her face and the skin was puffy and pink, as if she'd been splattered with hot oil. "Something attacked the camp," she managed to say, although it clearly hurt to talk.

Irlu balled her hands into fists. "The white wolf."

The woman's fingers went to her cheek. "Its breath burns, it's so cold."

Grotnir was digging in his saddlebags. He tossed Lugh a container. "Ointment. Help her." He caught Irlu's eye. "We've got to get to that camp."

"Most of us are still in the woods—it's just cooks and them's too sick to work today. I'm not sure they can hold it off much longer." The woman winced as Lugh slathered the cream on her face.

Irlu swung up onto her saddle. She looked unhappy. "Looks like we caught up with it after all."

"Finally." Grotnir smiled without humor. "No beast brings down a Blackraven and lives."

"We'll help!" Lugh said.

Irlu frowned. "You're not a Blackraven yet, boy."

"We can tend the wounded," Jendara said. "If you've got supplies."

"Me too," the logger added. The presence of four armed warriors seemed to have calmed her. "The beast took us by surprise, but with you four..." She began marching back up the hill toward camp, her mouth set tightly.

"The white wolf is probably gone already. They prefer sneak attacks to drawn battles. I'll go ahead." Irlu urged her horse into a quick trot and raced past the woman.

"I don't like this," Grotnir growled at Jendara. "I should send you back to Big Cascade for reinforcements."

"Let's take stock of the situation, and if need be, I'll head back to town and organize a hunting party," Jendara told him.

He rubbed his beard and gave her a measuring glance. At last he said, "Well enough. Irlu's right—the beast's probably disappeared already. Let's go."

The hill climbed sharply away from the marshes and lowlands of the Rimeflow River valley. The country here was rugged, all craggy hills and steep ravines. The dense evergreen forest crowded down to the edges of the logging road, a muddy track cut out of the woods, just wide enough for a horse-drawn skid. When the locks were up and running, the road was probably much busier. Lots of barges and small craft went up and down the Rimeflow, and the towns and cities of the Linnorm Kingdoms were hungry for quality timber. These trees, no matter how dark and ominous they might feel to Jendara at this moment, were worth a great deal.

The woman from the logging camp gave Jendara a sidelong glance. "You're no Blackraven."

"No," Jendara answered. "Just a sailor out for some hunting."

The woman put out her hand. "I'm Nola. Good meeting you."

Jendara shook on it. Nola gave her a smile, and fell silent, lost in her own thoughts. As Grotnir's horse pulled ahead of the three walkers, Jendara peered into the woods. The late morning sunlight that dappled the logging road ended at its edges. The forest beyond sat in twilight gloom.

A thin, piercing howl split the air. Nola went pale.

"The beast!"

She broke into a run. Lugh tore after her.

Jendara walked faster, the hairs on her neck prickling. Everything felt wrong about this situation. The too-quiet forest, the attack on the logging camp, and now the wolf's triumphant call. She unslung her bow and pulled free an arrow.

The road went up one last switchback and then widened out into the logging camp, a cleared space filled with at least a dozen canvas-sided tent cabins. People darted from tent to tent. Someone screamed in pain. Over the top of it all, the panicked braying of mules added a cacophonous note.

Jendara stood on the edge of the madness, unsure where to go or how to even start to help. She couldn't see Irlu's horse or Grotnir's, and Lugh was nowhere to be seen.

The wolf's call resounded again, and the earth shook beneath Jendara's feet.

With a tremendous crashing noise, the stand of trees on the far side of camp burst into splinters as a boulder blasted through it. The massive stone bounced once, twice, and landed in the middle of the road, just inches from Jendara. Her heart lurched and she stumbled backward.

A club the size of a small tree smashed down on a tent at the edge of camp. Jendara stared at it.

"Hill giant!" someone screamed.

Somewhere nearby, the wolf howled again.

Want more Jendara?
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Coming Next Week: A deadly hunt in Chapter Two of Wendy N. Wagner's "Winter's Wolves"!

Wendy N. Wagner is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Skinwalkers and the web fiction story "Mother Bears," both starring Jendara. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Armored and The Way of the Wizard, and in many online magazines. Wendy lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, where she also teaches writing for youth. An avid gardener and board gamer, she can be found online at winniewoohoo.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

Hunter's Folly

by Josh Vogt

Chapter 4: Essence of the Hunt

At the warning cry, Aberny looked back and noticed the crude frame of branches that propped a large rock pile above the tunnel they'd emerged from. Even as he did, a scrabble of talons alerted him just before the beast burst upward, jaws snapping every which way. It clamped onto the ledge with one claw and swept the other out.

Ralynn jumped away, but the claw tore out the supporting branches instead, dropping the pile in a dust-raising crash and sealing off any escape. The chimera fell back to the floor, crunching Tali's bone sculpture beneath its feet as she scrambled for cover.

Ralynn leapt to the ground after it, whipping out a second sword. He kicked a skull at the chimera and ran in after, blades leading the way.

Aberny hurried to see if he could dislodge the rock fall and give them a chance to flee. He threw aside several smaller rocks, but realized the boulders would require massive effort to budge.

Tali's view of the hunt is nothing if not unique.

The chimera bounded all about the cavern, with plenty of room to maneuver despite its bulk. It flapped up to the far wall, clung there for a moment as its claws dug in, and then dropped to crush the fighter. Ralynn somersaulted aside, and the chimera landed with a boom that shook the whole place.

Aberny grabbed up a larger rock and lugged it to the edge. He took aim, and then flung it down at the chimera. He howled and raised a triumphant fist as the rock smashed into one of the beast's wings, preventing another leap-and-crush attempt.

Ralynn darted in, using the distraction to gouge the creature's flanks. Aberny went for another rock, as yowls rose from below. Right as he reached the edge a second time, the chimera lunged up, abandoning Ralynn to attack him instead. He threw the rock, but the dragon's head snapped it out of midair. At least now it couldn't spew acid in his face.

The other two heads drove forward. He fell back, grabbing for his weapons as fangs and horns strained inches from his feet. Then the chimera bellowed and fell back. Aberny leaned over to see what had happened.

Ralynn had hacked off a hind paw, and the chimera now hobbled after him while trailing a ragged, gore-soaked stump. The fighter grinned and flicked blood from his blades.

The chimera stumbled forward and Ralynn thrust for the kill. However, the dragon head rose and spewed a wide stream of acid. As Ralynn twisted desperately to dodge this, the chimera threw itself forward. A claw snagged Ralynn's leg and pinned him to the ground. The chimera leaned in, all mouths gaping.

Tali's voice rang out. "Ralynn, shut your eyes!"

The half-elf squeezed his eyes closed right before a flash of dazzling lights burst before the chimera's faces. It reared and staggered on its remaining hind paw.

Freed, Ralynn rolled up and raised both swords as the chimera dropped back in front of him. He brought the blades down on the neck of the nearest head—the goat. The head gave a gargling bleat as it was hacked off to splatter at Ralynn's feet.

A frenzied wing beat knocked the fighter back, while the lion and dragon roared and screeched in pain. The chimera hunched and launched itself toward one of the wider cracks in the cavern walls.

The crack must've been formed in soft earth, for it burst wide under the chimera's impact, raining roots and rock all about. The creature shoved most of the way out. Its hind leg gave a last kick to free itself, and then only its fading cries could be heard as it fled.

Tali emerged from her hiding spot behind an oversized ribcage, while Ralynn caught his breath and Aberny made his way to the chamber floor. By the time he got there, the half-elf and gnome were inspecting the paw and goat head.

Ralynn probed the head with the tip of a blade. "Poor trophy. Might as well have killed an oversized goat."

Aberny eyed the hole in the cavern wall. "Even if it survives that wound, I doubt it'll return to let you claim the rest."

"Just in case," Tali said, "maybe we should get out of here?"

The three climbed back to the ledge and began the arduous job of clearing the path out. Before they left, Aberny made sure to retrieve his sword, feeling an odd desire to never travel without one close at hand again. Ralynn grabbed up the paw and head, while Tali chose a few blood-speckled rib fragments.

Once they emerged into sunlight and fresh air, Aberny leaned on his staff, suddenly more weary than he'd ever been. "I've a proposition."

The two looked to him.

"Since our contract was hastily made and without the clearest of wits, what say we mutually dissolve it and let survival be its own reward? We can tell whatever version of what happened here that we wish."

Ralynn lifted the chimera parts. "So long as I keep these." He caught Aberny's eye. "I'm not as stuck on our original deal."

Tali glanced between the two, curious, but shrugged when neither was forthcoming. "Good enough for me."

Aberny smiled, pulled out the battered parchment, and tossed it back down to languish with the bones.

∗ ∗ ∗

Aberny entered the art gallery, double-checking the card delivered the previous day to make sure he had the right time and place.

Master Aberny,

It would be the greatest honor if you would attend the opening exhibit of "Horrors of the Hunt," under the patronage of the Gilvreau Gallery. We feature the finest paintings and sculptures ever to grace our town, being a testament to Whistledown's continued contributions to the pinnacle of society that is artistic inspiration and craft.

Sincerely,
Steward Feles, on behalf of the Gilvreau Gallery

He scanned the main room. Humans, gnomes, elves, and others crowded the hall, where at least a dozen paintings hung alongside another dozen sculptures and carvings. Some of the pieces even combined sculpture and painting, with molded bronze, steel, and silver interwoven with canvas to give the work a surprising depth and substance.

In one painting, a shadowy beast loomed over a trio of figures, framed against a background of vivid firelight. There, fighters engaged a chimera on the edges of a rocky pool. And there, random bones had been wired together to create a miniature model of a chimera skeleton, wings spread, looking ready to leap on viewers.

Never had Aberny seen such raw depictions of dread and violence. Not only had the artist captured the chimera's bestial qualities, but also the underlying terror and imminence of death it evoked. Many of the scenes even gave the impression of the hunters being the prey.

After perusing the selection for a while, he found Tali chatting in a ring of admirers. A month had passed since the ill-fated hunt, and her attire had taken a turn for the fashionable. Adorned with a gem-studded tiara, she wore a dress of blue and crimson. When she spotted him, she excused herself and rushed over to grasp his hand.

"Master Aberny! So glad you could make it."

He smiled and they exchanged pleasantries, such as her rise in society and how his sword-fighting lessons progressed. When they found a corner beyond the press of the crowd, he cleared his throat.

"I've been thinking a bit since we last saw one another. Reflecting on a few oddities of our time in the grasslands."

One of her emerald eyebrows twitched. "Such as?"

"Such as how the chimera tracked our scent so quickly. Why it took off with you when it had the upper hand with Ralynn. And how you knew enough of its nature—even its language—to appeal to its bestial vanity."

Her lips tweaked at the corners. "Quite strange."

"As I recall, a large portion of our first dinner went... well, not missing, but perhaps unaccounted for would be the better description. Now, I'm not one to doubt a voracious appetite, but for a gnome, such a repast would've likely split his or her stomach wide—if it was actually devoured at all. And then there was a particular item that would've drawn the creature's ear from a goodly distance."

He drew out the Whistledown charm she'd dropped when the chimera had taken her beside the pool. "A memento of our little hunt and congratulations for your success."

Tali licked her lips as she squirreled the charm away. Then she glanced about, no doubt looking for a particular half-elf.

"Are you going to tell him?" she asked.

He chuckled darkly, suspicions confirmed. "I haven't decided. He's not in town at the moment, either way. While the head and paw weren't exactly the trophies Ralynn wished, they worked well enough to boost his reputation—especially after an alchemist confirmed the chimera blood. He left two weeks ago with a band of treasure hunters."

Then he shed all mirth. "But I want to know how you managed to come to an agreement with the chimera."

Her nose crinkled. "Agreement?"

"How did you get the creature to act as a model for your art? An offer of safety in exchange for leading it to us?"

Her eyes widened. "No! I might've aggravated the situation a bit, but we had no dealings. It wouldn't have been real, if so. I had to live it. The struggle had to be authentic, or else it wouldn't mean anything."

"You understood it. Spoke with it."

"Languages are art, like I said. Each one I can converse in adds to my palette of comprehension."

"But why? What possessed you to tempt our deaths that way?"

"Oh! This, of course." She wobbled her head, indicating the gallery. "My art can now be infused with unparalleled passion and perspective."

"You got my men killed."

"We all accepted a certain amount of risk, didn't we? I faced the same dangers as everyone else."

"You could've told us. We could've set an ambush from the start."

"That would've been just as bad as if I'd collaborated with the beast. It would've undermined the reality I needed to experience."

He sighed, trying and failing to summon fury at the deception. Sadly, he understood all too well the lengths one might go to for personal advancement. Should he reveal the deal he'd struck with Ralynn? Or perhaps scrawl another debt in his ledgers?

Aberny rubbed his chin, as if pondering the virtues of the piece they stood before. "Perhaps Ralynn will never find out, so long as certain steps are taken. A favor paid, say, to avoid dark rumors besmirching the reputation of a promising young artist."

Tali squared up with him, thin arms crossed. "So! What's the bargain, then?"

He waved at the surrounding artwork. "Your work should be admired by lovers of art far and wide. I would... politely... request an exclusive contract as distributor and representative of your craft beyond Whistledown. Sole purveyor, receiving a significant percentage of every sale for my efforts."

Tali grinned. "Ah! I'll have to talk to the gallery owners, but I'll be as persuasive as possible for an old friend." She stuck out a hand. As his engulfed hers for a brief squeeze, she held it a moment longer. "Good fortune, Master Aberny. Of course, I say that hoping you'll funnel some of that my way in the end."

His laugh drew a few askance looks. "Be careful what you hope for, dearest Tali. In the end, fortune makes fools of us all."

Coming Next Week: Viking-style adventure and the return of Jendara in a sample chapter from Wendy Wagner’s new Pathfinder Tales novel, Skinwalkers.

Josh Vogt is the author of the Pathfinder Tales story "The Weeping Blade." His short fiction has been published in such venues as Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Shimmer. For more information, see his website at jrvogt.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

Hunter's Folly

by Josh Vogt

Chapter 3: Lures

The trio hiked along the base of a scraggly knoll under the midday sun. Tali had at least stopped complaining about the dirt soiling her dress, and now joined Aberny in eyeing the skies for any sign of their foe. Ralynn kept an easy, if steady, pace ahead, one blade always out as he scanned the wild brush and every dip and curve of the earth in case the chimera crouched in wait.

When the others weren't looking, Aberny wrung a pinky finger in either ear.

How did he still hear Whistledown's fluting charms in the distance? Even if they remained closed enough, normally they only played at night, when the lake breezes blew through the village. Had the chimera's attack jarred him more than he thought?

He tried to distract himself by scanning the rolling landscape, with its high grasses, occasional groves, and streams. How did such a verdant area host such a deadly creature? Where did it lurk? Chimeras often holed up in their dens between meals. Yet this stretch of land lacked any significant caves he knew of, having hastily studied a few maps before they set out.

Vicious hunger gleams in each set of the chimera's putrid-yellow eyes.

Not more than half an hour later, Ralynn crouched and touched a patch of earth. Aberny and Tali hesitated, checking all about until the fighter waved them closer.

"Sign?" Aberny asked.

Ralynn shook his head and displayed fingers stained with mud. "Water nearby."

Aberny nodded, but Tali pouted in confusion.

"Water," the merchant explained, "suggests a spot where animals might come to drink on a regular basis. Tempting for predators."

They crept forward, weapons in Aberny's and Ralynn's hands, a charcoal nub and parchment in Tali's. They crested a subtle ridge and found it sloped down sharply into a rockier area, where a stream funneled in and formed a wide pool ringed by crumbling earth and stones. The place appeared undisturbed, but Aberny well knew appearances deceived only the foolish.

Tali wriggled in delight. "Gorgeous. I must fix this place in my mind."

As she dangled bare feet over the ridge and outlined the geography, Ralynn shifted closer to Aberny, voice lowered.

"I think the beast is close, but waiting to catch us off guard again. How about we use her as bait?"

Aberny narrowed his eyes. "You're that desperate for the bounty?"

Ralynn raised both hands. "I never make a bet I don't intend to win. But I'm not saying we let her get eaten. We'll divert it before it reaches her."

The screams of Aberny's men briefly intruded on his thoughts until he shoved them back. He shook his head. "No. I'll go down with her while you watch our backs."

Ralynn shrugged. "Won't stop you."

Calling Tali to help him refill their waterskins, Aberny led her into the depression, trying not to skid too much on scree and raise a clatter. When they reached the pool, he set his staff down and kneeled to cup a palm of water. As he swallowed, he glanced at Tali's sketch, noting she'd expertly captured the rocky pool, but had added a few embellishments, including scattered animal skeletons and the chimera itself crouched among the bodies.

"Preparing a morbid masterpiece?" he asked.

She held the parchment out, eyeing it critically. "Hm. Are the bones taking it too far?"

He peered at the chimeric figure as she filled in various details. "Are you managing that from memory last night? Impressive."

She pointed with her charcoal nub. "Oh, no. It's right over there."

Aberny raised his eyes and met the triple gaze of the chimera as it stood from its hiding spot across the pool. Its tawny, dappled hide had blended in with the yellow earth and stones, and its goat and dragon heads emerged from where they'd been tucked under the wings until then.

Ralynn must've known it was there the whole time. It couldn't have eluded his half-elven sight that easily.

The chimera's dragon maw drizzled acid, while its goat teeth gnawed a scrap of flesh that Aberny hoped didn't come from any of last night's kills. It began prowling around the pool toward them. Its ears twitched, and it spoke through its lion head alone this time.

"What's it saying?" Aberny asked Tali.

Her tongue darted over her lips. "Oh... er... something about me not being more than a nibble, while you might make a few mouthfuls."

Aberny rose, taking up his staff and drawing his sword. He used the staff to pull Tali along with him as he backed away toward Ralynn's concealed spot on the near ridge. But before they took two steps, the chimera filled the area with a three-throated roar and a great beat of wings propelled it straight at them.

The first leap sent it splashing into the middle of the pool. The second brought it onto the bank before them, where it shook itself like a wet dog, whipping out a vortex of water. In the midst of that half-blinding spray, it rushed in.

Ralynn's yell resounded as he landed on the chimera's back, swords driving down to plunge into its lungs and heart. Its water-slicked fur, though, offered no firm footing. He slipped and what might've been a death blow merely scored across the beast's ribs. The chimera screeched and reared. Ralynn dropped one sword to grab a fistful of fur, holding on as he readied for another strike.

Aberny forced himself forward, spearing the staff at the lion snout while chopping the sword whenever the dragon head wove too close.

The chimera fell back to all fours, and its wings slammed back over Ralynn, briefly clamping the fighter against its back. Then the chimera threw itself into a roll. Ralynn cried out as the creature's bulk crushed him into the earth, and he dropped off to lie stunned in the muddy gravel.

The chimera flipped back to its feet. Fangs slavered drool and acid as it approached the stunned fighter.

Then a harsh keening filled the hollow, painful enough that Aberny almost dropped his weapons to clamp hands over his ears. The chimera's heads swung around to fix on him. The creature growled deep enough to make the waters ripple, and snarled in its own tongue.

Aberny braced as it loped for him. He lashed out when it neared, but a claw struck him across the stomach, throwing him aside. He lost staff and sword as he rolled and slammed up against the base of the embankment.

The keening cut off, followed by a shriek from Tali. Aberny's jarred vision cleared just as the chimera flung itself into the sky, Tali screaming and writhing in its lion's maw. He stared aghast as the chimera made off with their small companion, following the stream as it wound out of sight among the hills. Her cries dwindled into nothing.

The merchant pushed upright, groaning at a clench of pain where the chimera had struck him. His chest would be a mass of bruises, and breathing already proved strained. A quick inspection revealed four tears and shallow cuts across his torso. Seemed he owed Desna, the goddess of luck, a few prayers.

He struggled to his feet and limped to Ralynn, who lurched up, gasping and reaching for his weapons. The half-elf stilled as he realized they stood alone.

"What happened? It fled?"

Aberny gestured to Tali's parchment, abandoned when the chimera nabbed her. It had fluttered from her grasp and landed in the pool, already a pulpy mess. "Maybe it wants to work up an appetite before it feasts."

Ralynn grimaced and rose to retrieve his short swords. Then he grunted and bent over, hand pressed to his side.

"Damn it to Hell. Must've broken a rib."

Aberny rummaged through the satchel of food and supplies he'd brought. While several had been smashed in his tumble, one healing potion had blessedly survived. He considered his own minor wounds and chances for survival. Then he handed the vial to Ralynn, who nodded gratefully and downed it.

As the fighter recovered, Aberny went to where Tali had been standing and closed his eyes to whisper a prayer of protection. Desna smile on the gnome, and may she be lucky enough to live, despite all odds.

When he opened his eyes, his gaze fell on an item where Tali had been standing. He bent over to investigate and found... a Whistledown charm. The wooden carving formed a complicated spiral, the tip secured with a metal hook where it was meant to dangle from eaves or doorways. She must've had it altered to produce the music on command, rather than just at night. Had she brought it thinking to actually mesmerize the beast or use it as a distracting weapon, as she'd just done?

He tucked this into a pocket, inert for the time. Then he turned to Ralynn, who stretched and twisted to test his healed ribs. "We have to go after her."

Ralynn frowned. "Actually, I've been rethinking my rule about never backing off from a bet."

Aberny strode over and grabbed the half-elf's collar. Ralynn stiffened, but didn't draw a blade.

"You sent us straight into its grasp just now, and her potential death is on your soul. You want to leave this hunt a coward?"

Ralynn jerked out of his grip and brushed himself off. "Better a coward than dead! And since when have you cared about someone's fate unless they put coin in your pocket? Oh, don't look surprised. You act so friendly, buying us rounds all night long—but only because we're spilling gossip you can use to get better deals. I know how it works."

"That was... that was idle business. This is life or death!"

"Thought it was all the same to you."

Aberny threw up his hands and spun away, sick of them both.

Ralynn's voice softened. "Look, there's no shame in knowing when to cut your losses. The biggest payoff doesn't mean a thing if you aren't alive to collect it. Even if we find wherever it's hauled her off to, we'll be walking straight into its territory. And it has a hostage."

Aberny stared into the water as if it might offer a solution. Then he focused on his reflection and realized he still had certain resources available. Best use them.

He turned back to the fighter. "I'll make you an offer."

Ralynn eyed him in suspicion. "Like?"

"Help me rescue her, and the bounty, plus a thousand from me, is yours. You don't even have to kill the chimera. Just as long as she lives."

The half-elf blinked. "You're serious."

"Entirely."

Ralynn scowled, looking like a trapped beast himself, sleek figure coiled as if ready to sprint for freedom. Then he sighed and straightened. "Fine. You've got a deal."

Relieved, if slightly, Aberny pointed out the direction the beast had flown. He and Ralynn followed the river, finding it broadened farther up and cut through a ravine that would've been invisible from their trek up in the fields.

At last, Ralynn crouched and pulled Aberny down with him. He pointed ahead. The stream poured out from a wide crevice, not a hundred paces ahead. Half-hidden by overgrown grasses, the opening led into the earth beneath a large hill.

They split up and approached the crevice from opposing angles. One sword readied, Ralynn eased up and peered inside for a moment. Then he slipped in.

Aberny held his breath until the half-elf leaned back out and waved him on.

Once beyond the low stony lip, the ceiling quickly rose enough for standing room, and outside light reached past to show a natural tunnel leading into the depths of the hill. They paused, listening.

Tali's voice echoed from somewhere deeper in, indistinct. A guttural murmur followed, as if she conversed with the chimera.

Aberny's heart rose. Alive! But not for long if they bungled this.

Ralynn took the lead, using his heightened sight to guide them. After creeping through a darker section, light once more appeared ahead. After ten paces, the tunnel ended, exiting onto a wide ledge that curved around the edges of an earthy cavern.

The chimera's den lay within the hollow hill, the walls all root-snaked dirt and rock. Several wide cracks allowed shafts of sunlight in, illuminating the scene below as the pair sneaked to the edge.

Tali stood before the chimera, which lay basking in a narrow splay of sun, forepaws crossed, tail twitching. All three heads watched her, cocked as if fascinated by this odd creature it had brought back.

All around them lay spines and skulls and femurs of a dozen different creatures, including at least a few humanoids by Aberny's estimation. Tali had gathered a pile of bones and now worked them together, linked and stacked into a grisly sculpture—a fragile spread of ribs that evoked wings.

"See?" she said, as she crafted the piece. "Even in death, there's beauty. Think of it! If you let me live, I could craft you a gorgeous necklace out of nothing but vertebrae and finger bones. I don't suppose you have any gems lying about? Those could be socketed to enhance your natural glory. No? Pity. But one must work with what one has."

Ralynn and Aberny drew back while the chatter continued below.

"I don't suppose you'd let me paint you? Trap your essence for all to admire?"

Ralynn made several circling and grasping gestures with one hand. Aberny shook his head, not understanding. Did he think to try and sneak down the ledge without drawing the beast's attention? Or attempt another leap onto the chimera's back?

"Oh! Have I mentioned how I love the way your fur absolutely traps the light? Divine."

At Ralynn's impatient pushing motions, Aberny edged along where the ledge sloped toward the cave floor. The half-elf nodded, moving the opposite direction.

"I once saw a chimera trapped in a menagerie, you know. Such a horrible thing to do to such a magnificent beast."

A snuffling made him freeze. The chimera's gravelly voice rose, the words alien, but the tone unmistakable. It had detected the intruders.

Tali sighed. "For Shelyn's sake. It's a fools-be-damned trap. Run!"

Coming Next Week: Three-headed horror in the conclusion of Josh Vogt's "Hunter's Folly."

Josh Vogt is the author of the Pathfinder Tales story "The Weeping Blade." His short fiction has been published in such venues as Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Shimmer. For more information, see his website at jrvogt.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

Hunter's Folly

by Josh Vogt

Chapter 2: Foes by Firelight

Aberny gaped at the body for a moment, blood staining the earth at his feet. Then the scene around the campfire snatched his stare away.

The chimera crouched on the far side of the fire, a guard pinned and twitching beneath its massive forepaws. One of the servants crawled for the trees. Entrails dragged from a horrible gash along his side.

Leathery wings tucked back along the chimera's body as muscles bunched for another attack. Its three heads wove independently—a maned lion's, a horned goat's, and a green dragon's. Each set of eyes gleamed with a putrid yellow-green light, alive with vicious hunger. Triple maws drooled in anticipation of a feast. The lion snarled, while the dragon puffed an emerald haze that sizzled as it plumed over the fire. Acid, Aberny realized.

He nearly ducked back inside, but he'd not built his reputation on cowardice. Taking up a knobbed walking staff from beside the tent flap, he emerged and grasped it in both hands. A gasp drew his glance aside to Tali, who'd poked her head out from her tent, and sketched furiously on a parchment.

Then the chimera—roaring, screeching, and bleating—lunged at the second guard, who'd tried to circle around to flank it in the brush. A sweep of a paw and wing knocked the man back and the sword flew from his hands.

Ralynn dove in from the other side, a wordless battle cry erupting from him.

Ralynn combines the ferocity and grace of his half-elven heritage.

Aberny never knew such an immense beast could move so fast. It snapped its lion fangs while trying to gore the fighter with its goat horns. At the same time, the dragon head curled back around to spew another stream of acid onto the hapless guard. The man's screams wrenched Aberny's guts, but there was nothing he could do.

Wielding two short swords, the half-elf had to get in close to do any damage, putting himself within range of wings, talons, and fangs. The chimera lashed with its bared claws while snapping at Ralynn from several directions at once. The fighter evaded the bites, but one claw stuck him across a shoulder and sent him tumbling.

Ralynn rolled through the blow and back up to his feet, swords readied. The dragon head clamped down on the guard's body and flung it through the air at the fighter.

Even as Ralynn dodged, the beast pounced, leaping through the flames of the campfire. The stink of burning fur filled the air as its hind legs trampled the blaze, and the beast's roar shook the shadows themselves. Burning logs scattered about, casting just enough residual light to limn the fight in a red glow.

Ralynn hurtled forward, swords raised. As the chimera pounced, he tucked and rolled, trailing a slash at its belly. The chimera yowled and threw up chunks of grassy earth as it dug in and reversed course.

Aberny lunged and swung his staff, trying to distract it so Ralynn might get in a solid blow. The unsatisfying thump on the creature's hind side only served to irritate the beast, which sideswiped with a paw, while the goat's head jerked toward the merchant. He threw himself aside, almost crushing Tali, who yelped and rolled out of the way at the last instant.

She hurried to his side and tugged at his robe. Aberny lurched to his feet, fearing the chimera might decide to eliminate the two unarmed party members.

But Ralynn had reengaged, combining the ferocity and grace of his mixed parentage. Blades flashed in the light of dying embers as he turned the chimera away from the others, expertly rushing in and twisting aside before it could land another blow. However, he couldn't maneuver for any serious strike.

The horses had already gone near-mad in their proximity to the chimera, and their efforts to escape only grew more frantic as the creature dove into their midst. In a frenzy of teeth and talons, the beast laid several of the hapless pack animals low, while two others at last tore loose and galloped off.

Then the poisonous green gaze of all three heads locked back on the companions, who could only watch in dismay. Three voices spoke in unison, each a bestial utterance that tortured Aberny's ears. He'd traveled widely enough to recognize the language of dragons, but didn't speak any of it.

Ralynn winced as well. "What's it growling about?"

Tali perked up. "It says to be happy it's already feasted tonight, but it'll be hungry again tomorrow and has our scent. Also, it called you a weakling coward."

Aberny raised an eyebrow her way. She knew its language?

Ralynn flourished a sword. "Drop in for lunch and I'll have your heads for trophies."

The chimera snarled at Ralynn's challenge. Then, with a final chuff, its leonine head snatched up the one of the servants' bodies. The creature spun about and charged into the darkness. Moments later, a flap of enormous wings indicated it had taken flight.

The survivors studied the starry sky for several minutes, ensuring the beast didn't intend an immediate return and ambush. Then Ralynn glared at the few dribbles of blood on his blade and headed for the nearest brush where he wiped it clean.

"Well, you two were useless," he said over a shoulder. "Try running screaming into the night with the horses next time and at least provide a distraction."

"Useless?" Tali shot back. "I interpreted its warning, didn't I? That's doing plenty. Want me to fight for you? Then offer me your share of the reward. Didn't you say there was no sign of the creature around when we camped. Piss-poor tracking! Certainly let our guard down. How'd it know we were here?"

"Beyond our fire and earlier noisy arguing?" Aberny shook his head. "It must've caught detected us while prowling about." He frowned at the corpses. "It took the most vulnerable first."

Ralynn scowled at Tali. "Then why's she still here?"

"Because!" Tali lifted her chin. "Even a chimera is more perceptive than you when it comes to strength of spirit. Maybe if you had three heads, you'd have enough brains to—"

Aberny flung his arms wide. "Enough. The beast caught us off guard and marked us for later. Can we focus on that?"

"Dumb boasts," Ralynn said. "In a fair fight, it doesn't stand a chance against me."

"Chimeras don't fight fair," Tali said. "And they're wickedly cunning."

"What do you know?" asked Ralynn.

The gnome tapped her cheek with a silver-painted nail. "Much! Most chimeras live in prides, hunting in groups to outnumber prey. This one could be a younger male or an outcast, and hunting more aggressively as it tries to establish dominance of its chosen territory. Oh, and they like shiny things!"

Aberny eyed her. "How've you learned all this?"

"Besides everyone around town talking for the past few weeks since the first deaths?" Tali drew herself up. "I always—always!—study my subjects in-depth. It's the only way I can properly convey their essence through my pieces."

"You learned the tongue of dragons in a few weeks?"

She sniffed. "Of course not. Languages are a form of art. I've immersed myself in many of them over the years."

"What of you, Aberny? With your investments..." Ralynn indicated the bodies with a flick of his eyes, "not paying off, want to renegotiate?"

Aberny hitched his shoulders back, trying to project his usual confidence, which had alarmingly fled. He'd thought himself sturdier than this. "The hunt continues." He slumped again. "But first, let's respect the dead."

They found a patch of soft earth and Aberny procured a small shovel from the supplies his deceased servants had brought along. Ralynn dug four shallow graves, and then they dragged the fallen over one by one. Tali surprised them by joining in, though she took care to only grab the bodies where blood or bile hadn't marred them.

Aberny and Ralynn took turns shoveling dirt over the holes, even though it proved more manual labor than the merchant had experienced in a long while. He'd sweated through his robe by the time he stopped to pray Desna's blessing, wishing the dead good fortune in the afterlife for their loyal—if short—service.

Ralynn rebuilt the fire and claimed the watch for the rest of the night, but the other two didn't return to their tents. Tali claimed inspiration for a piece she called "Foe by Firelight" left her too roused to sleep, though Aberny noted she kept well within the circle of firelight and sat a bit closer to the fighter than before.

For himself, Aberny settled on his stool and sipped wine to soothe his nerves, while pondering this ill turn of fortune. How could he, bereft of his guards, expect to triumph over such a vicious beast? He'd underestimated the creature, since reports had it picking off one or two victims alone. Now it appeared emboldened and loath to spare any threats to its territory.

Yet he'd always found a way to turn even the most dire circumstances to his benefit. This time, though, it wasn't just about recouping losses. If he considered the chimera a bandit as well as a beast, it put things in the proper perspective. It hadn't just attacked their party. It had robbed him, specifically; and no merchant worth his abacus allowed thievery without consequences.

He slugged back the last of the wine in silent oath to himself. So be it.

The scratching of Tali's sketching nibbled at his ears until just an hour before dawn, when she gave an enormous yawn and slumped, snoring against Ralynn's side. The fighter sighed, but didn't push her away. As the sun lit a candle on the horizon, Aberny rubbed his eyes, wishing he could follow the gnome to rest, but knowing it'd be a futile effort.

Once morning rose in full, he made them a quick, cold breakfast. Ralynn gulped his down and then jostled Tali awake for her portion, which she took with a grimace. Then they debated what to do with the tents and equipment.

"Leave it," Aberny decided, "except for any food we can carry. If the creature plans to return, we might not need to go far before picking up its trail. And we don't want to be overburdened if it ambushes us."

As the others prepared to head out, Aberny retrieved his staff, and then—after a moment's thought—took up one of the swords from a fallen guard.

Ralynn raised a slim eyebrow. "Planning to use that?"

Aberny gave an experimental swing, trying to awaken long unused arm muscles. "I was a caravan guard once, long ago. I didn't leave that profession entirely unscarred."

"You?" Tali asked, goggling.

He grunted. "During a trip through Cheliax, our caravan was ambushed by orcs. I alone survived, managing to get most of the goods to Kintargo in the aftermath. I then established my name based on my former master's reputation. Turned out I had an even better knack for it than he ever did." He tucked the sword into his robe's belt and thrust his staff toward the hills. "Onward?"

Ralynn smirked. "Still willing to brave the danger?"

"By all means. When it slaughtered my men, the chimera made this business rather... personal."

Coming Next Week: On the trail of the beast in Chapter 3 of Josh Vogt’s "Hunter's Folly."

Josh Vogt is the author of the Pathfinder Tales story "The Weeping Blade." His short fiction has been published in such venues as Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Shimmer. For more information, see his website at jrvogt.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

Hunter's Folly

by Josh Vogt

Chapter 1: The Threefold Wager

Aberny chuckled at the sight of the gnome squaring off with the half-elf, paintbrush crossed with a short sword. The campfire cast the dueling partners into bronze-and-shadow relief. Ralynn glowered down his sword, while Tali glared back up at him, both as riled as if one had slandered the other's parentage.

"This is ridiculous," Ralynn said. "You can't seriously believe your brush is equal to my blade. They're leagues apart in use and value."

Tali flourished her brush, spraying azure droplets about. "So! You admit art is superior to swordplay."

Aberny never backs out of a wager.

Ralynn's fair skin reddened up to the tips of his ears. "Not what I meant, and you know it." He twitched his blade, notching the wooden shaft of her brush.

Tali's emerald eyes widened even further, and another flick struck drops of paint across Ralynn's pants. This drew an outraged splutter from the fighter, whose grip tightened on his sword hilt.

Knowing Ralynn's temper, Aberny stood from his cushioned stool, wide hands splayed to separate the two before their verbal sparring came to true blows.

"Friends, might we dispense with the arguing? After all, we didn't come out to hunt one another. And the simple matter is, you're both wrong."

The two turned to him, and he grinned, knowing the firelight would enhance his broad smile and dark, plump cheeks. His jovial demeanor often allowed him to turn even the harshest haggling to his advantage, and he hoped the image he'd cultivated through years caravanning along the Dry Way would work just as well with his companions.

Nothing threatening to see here. Just a common human merchant, arrayed in a colorful robe and adorned with silly trinkets. Don't mind him making off with your coin.

At last, Tali lowered her brush. "Hm? Wrong? What do you mean?"

Aberny gestured to the small dining array his servants had set up. "Let's consider matters with fuller bellies, shall we?"

After another smoldering glare at each other, the two hunting partners went to fallen logs on opposite sides of the campfire. Ralynn began tending to one of half a dozen blades he carried, while Tali adjusted her violet and silver-trimmed dress and plunked down before the canvas she'd been painting on earlier. Aberny gave silent thanks that Ralynn couldn't see her work from his angle, as she began to paint his likeness in a most unflattering manner.

Aberny's servants tended to cuts of venison sizzling on the fire, a contribution from Ralynn, who'd downed a deer on their journey out from Whistledown that morning. A pair of Aberny's caravan guards stood on the edge of the firelight, hands resting on sword pommels, alert to any danger the night held—though Ralynn had scouted the area and assured them no sign of the chimera existed anywhere near.

They'd set a first camp in a bushy grove among the hilly grasslands between Whistledown and Sanos Forest; haunting melodies could still be faintly heard, produced by the popular enchanted wooden carvings that gave the distant town its name. The eerie keening was broken up by the occasional whicker of their horses, which had been tied up nearby for the evening.

"You're both wrong," Aberny said, "because art and battle submit to a greater power."

Ralynn paused in worked a grindstone along an edge. "Like what?"

"Commerce. Profit."

Tali let out a tinkling laugh. "Oh! Of course the trader would think so."

Aberny accepted the mocking with another smile. "Without merchants like myself toiling along the Dry Way, turning coin to goods and back again, neither of you would even have the supplies or equipment necessary to pursue your passions. Profiteers are the lifeblood of civilization."

He accepted a slosh of wine from a skin, and a servant handed him a prepared plate while the other began slicing off cuts for his companions.

Tali hopped up from the canvas and scampered over to the fire, where she began to portion out the proffered meal for herself. "But! Think. Without artists, merchants have nothing to sell. Fighters nothing worth crossing swords. Commerce paves the roads through a city, and fighters build the walls, but art is..." She shut her wide eyes briefly. "Art is the towering pinnacle that defines us."

Ralynn chuckled. "Pinnacle, huh? Take all day to come up with that?"

Aberny raised an eyebrow as Tali piled meat onto her plate. By the time she finished, she staggered under a mound of venison that looked almost twice her weight. How exactly did the gnome intend to devour such a vast repast?

"Some say fighting is an art form in itself," he suggested.

Tali crinkled her nose. "Fighting? Art? If you want bloodshed and death, fine, but I don't see the beauty in it yet."

Ralynn speared a bite of meat and pointed it at her. "Sounds like we got ourselves a blind painter."

"Yet! I said I don't see it yet. I'm not saying it's not there. That's why I cast my lot in on this hunt. To bring greater insight to my craft."

"Yeah?" Ralynn smirked. "Even if it costs you a thousand gold?"

Tali bowed her head, the fire casting half her face in shadow. "I...I'd sacrifice anything for the sake of true art. It can't be faked. It must be lived. But you're only here because—"

"Because I was drunk as slime at the bottom of a wine barrel when you two decided to make a contest of this bounty. I've made worse bets, but I don't back out on a wager." Aberny locked eyes with each of them in turn over the flames. "Ever. Besides, I stand the best chance of winning. Think your gnome trickery will help you beat the beast?"

Tali perked up. "Master Aberny! If you'd read the contract aloud?" She settled back to work on her canvas.

Aberny reached into the pocket where he'd secured the unusual contract they'd drawn up the previous night, when deep in drink back in Whistledown's popular inn, the Azure Cup. Over the years, the three of them had made a habit of meeting there during his stopovers in town. Odd companions, but familiar faces who helped ground him. Still, he never let personal attachments, however fond, get in the way of business.

He unrolled the parchment, revealing their three signatures at the bottom, and read the main statement.

"‘With the evidence of a chimera prowling the nearby countryside—reportedly responsible for at least a dozen deaths of travelers and homesteaders alike—a bounty of one thousand gold has been placed on the monster's head. We, the undersigned, do swear to partake in a hunt of the unnatural beast, employing our individual skills and resources toward the ending of its foul appetites. Furthermore, the first of our party to kill or capture the beast will receive not only the publicly posted reward, but an additional thousand gold pieces from each of the other two challengers.'"

The artist flourished her brush. "Aha! Hear that? Kill or capture." She popped to her feet and swept a bow. "And I will capture the chimera."

Ralynn snorted, an indelicate act that marred his fine features. "Sure. Gonna grab its tail for a moment before it gobbles you?"

Tali turned her canvas around, revealing Ralynn's face, painted with his tongue stuck out, eyes crossed, and cheeks puffed. "There. My first victim. I've captured you. You're trapped in my art forever."

Aberny couldn't quite contain a chortle.

Ralynn's ears reddened again. "Oh?" Before anyone could move, he dashed over and slashed through the sketch, leaving Tali holding ragged fabric on either side of her head.

Her face twisted in fury and she flung a hand out. A burst of dazzling lights exploded before Ralynn's face, forcing him to squint and turn aside.

"Brute!" She cast the scraps away and leapt up, slashing her paintbrush across Ralynn's chest, leaving a cerulean streak.

Ralynn snarled and Tali yelped as the half-elf grabbed the front of her dress and jerked her up inches from his scowl, sword clenched in a white-knuckled fist.

Aberny lurched up, scattering wine and food. "Ralynn! Let her go."

The fighter hesitated until the guards shifted, hands on sword pommels. As soon as her feet touched the earth, Tali jumped back out of reach. She brushed herself off and fixed her viridian hair back into its sweeping coif. Aberny held out a silk handkerchief so the half-elf could clean off his face. Ralynn snatched it away, muttering thanks.

"As host of this hunt," Aberny said, "I won't abide violence towards one another." He fixed a serious look on Tali. "The same for you, little mistress, even in jest."

Tali bunched her fists. "Hmph. I take my leave of you barbarians to dine in peace." She hefted her plate, still mounded with meat, snagged a wineskin, and staggered off into the brush surrounding the campsite.

Ralynn finished wiping off the paint and offered the silk back, but Aberny waved it away. The half-elf frowned in the direction Tali had gone.

"She can't just sketch the beast to win."

"She's technically correct, though," Aberny said with a sigh. "Same as my using hired guards to slay the beast for me, since they're personal resources."

"At least they could give me a real challenge—though I doubt it. She's missing the whole point of a hunt."

"Don't worry. Art is subjective. Even if she does manage to paint the monster, we'll argue the work doesn't truly capture its essence and so falls short of the prize."

Ralynn grinned. "You've thought this through."

"I always do."

Tali returned a bit later, plate and wineskin empty, while her stomach strained at the confines of her dress. With a few unladylike burps, she excused herself to bed and crawled into her gnome-sized tent. Minutes later, high-pitched snoring mingled with the far-off music of her hometown.

Claiming a preference for sleeping beneath the sky, Ralynn laid a simple bedroll beside the fire. He stretched out on this, still dressed in his fighting leathers and with multiple blades strapped to him.

Aberny then retired to his own tent, almost a small home in itself with a portable bed, desk, and chest of select personal items. When one spent countless weeks traveling between anything resembling civilization, investing in personal comforts paid dividends in return.

He spent another hour going through a ledger of contacts back in Whistledown, evaluating how he might invest the reward he fully intended to collect for the chimera's demise. Not that he believed Ralynn or Tali immediately possessed a thousand gold. But their debts would add to the many he'd accrued from others over the years and he'd inevitably find a way to translate them into profits. After all, why have friends if they didn't add value to one's life?

As he pondered snuffing the lamp for sleep, a scream tore the night's peace in two. Shouts rang out from the guards, followed by a defiant cry from Ralynn.

Aberny raced out of the tent just as the body of one of his servants flopped to the ground before him—missing a head.

Coming Next Week: A fireside attack in Chapter 2 of Josh Vogt's "Hunter's Folly."

Josh Vogt is the author of the Pathfinder Tales story "The Weeping Blade." His short fiction has been published in such venues as Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Shimmer. For more information, see his website at jrvogt.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 4: The Ultimate Weapon

Mortil spun only just in time to let loose a spell. Colors ravaged Gull's eyes, and he felt dizzy, as if a full drunken night were compressed into one heartbeat.

When his senses returned, Mortil was gone, a crowd of people was combatting the fire in the kitchen, and Tambour was speaking urgently.

"She'll be all right, Gull, but we must speak, now."

"Corvine..."

"I'm telling you, your friend will be all right."

Gull stumbled onto the veranda where Admiral Kasaba and Governor Bozbeyli themselves were among those tending to Corvine Gale.

Not a mark was on her, but Corvine looked as weak as Gull's elder brother the day a horse kicked him and permanently scared Gull away from honest work.

"Corvine..."

"Gideon... It will be all right. Whatever that bastard's up to, you stop him, okay...?"

"Me?"

"Hey, you're Gideon Gull, gentleman adventurer... I saw..." She handed him a crumpled piece of paper, patting his hand. "Take it, for luck..."

"Corvine..."

He took the poem, and she closed her eyes.

"Is she—"

Mortil, the governor's man, is more than he seems.

"I've seen this sort of injury before, Lion Blade," the admiral told Gull. "She should recover."

"Go with Tambour," the governor said. He passed a bejeweled ring to the corsair. "You Lion Blades are authorized to do anything necessary to hunt down this traitor."

"'Lion Blades?'" Gideon said, rising.

Tambour took his arm. "We'll talk as we walk."

The corsair steered Gull through garden and guards and gate, out into the moonlit streets of Old Cassomir. They passed the public gallows called Pharasma's Pulpit after the goddess of graves, and Gull was unhappy with the omen. He made the sign of the antlers, but good Erastil seemed as far away as Andoran.

"There's no time to spare, so we'll plan as we go," Tambour said. "Most destinations in Cassomir are south of here."

"What plan?" Gull said.

Tambour's response was a grim laugh. "You aren't thinking like a Lion Blade, my friend."

"That's because I'm not a... whatever that is..."

Tambour seemed not to hear him. "We don't need a plan of our own so much as we need to guess Mortil's. He spoke of a target, yes? I don't think he could have meant the admiral. Mortil had enough opportunity, and enough power, to kill her just now."

"But—" Objections crowded Gull's brain as thoroughly as rich houses crowded this walled section of the city. The Admiral's Citadel rose ahead, its towers jabbing at the moon. Beyond, across the harbor, lay the even larger edifice of Grayguard Castle. "Isn't the admiral key to all of Taldor's defenses?" Gull said. "She was vulnerable tonight. Why else plan an assassination for now? Who else to kill?"

"Ah! Now you're thinking, rather than mooning over your diva back there."

"Shut up. She could have died."

"Count yourself lucky. I've lost comrades tonight. Rack your brains, gentleman adventurer. Did the dog Mortil specifically speak of killing?"

Gull thought. "No," he admitted. "I don't think he did."

"I fear he has another target in mind. Something important, something less carefully guarded what with the admiral's party. Something Mortil could still attack with his magic—and certainly will, now that he's exposed."

"The shipyards?" Gull guessed.

Tambour nodded. "That's my thought as well. We have magic-sniffers scattered throughout that district, but as a governor's man, Mortil could bypass them. As ever, betrayal is the greatest weapon."

"Magic-sniffers?"

"I don't have to tell you everything, Gull. Come, let's be quick."

They ran through Old Cassomir's gate and dashed near the looming ruins of Quickfall Abbey. To distract himself from ghosts within and without, Gull said, "If not magic-sniffers, can you tell me of Lion Blades?"

"Why not? Since Lion Blades don't officially exist. We serve in the shadows and the light. For it is a dark time for Taldor. We Taldans are a mutinous crew on a sinking ship—at each other's throats when we need to patch the hull and watch for sharks. Sometimes it's only those who do not properly exist who can do what must be done."

"Why did the admiral and the governor call me a Lion Blade?"

"Well, it was an understandable error. From their perspective you helped me, so you must be one of us."

"Am I not obviously a minstrel—not a spy?"

Tambour chuckled. "My dear Gull, we recruit from the all the bardic schools of this land. Most of us sing quite well. I am a rare exception."

Gull laughed. They were approaching the shipyards, and the lights of the dens of ill-repute lightened his spirits. "If you wore this cloak," he said, "you would no doubt believe yourself a fine singer. Just as it made me think I was an adventurer."

"Yes, that cloak... At first I thought it a strange tool for an infiltrator. Why not a blade? Or something that makes one invisible? But I see now that the cloak allows one to enter into any setting and be accepted—in its way, a greater power than invisibility."

Gull said, "That suggests the agent needed to get very close to something... what's wrong?"

Tambour had stopped. "Listen."

There was a lapping of waters, patter of conversation in a nearby tavern, chirping from the marsh.

"I hear nothing."

"Exactly. No sound of assault."

"Mortil may have fled the city."

"Perhaps... but what you said just now... the Chelish agent wanted to get close to something. Perhaps it isn't a target as big as the shipyards. Perhaps it's something enclosed. A treasure, a device. Can you think of anything else Mortil said?"

Gull could not. Yet his mind was twisting something else, as he'd twisted the poem that lay now in his pocket.

A river swells to spill, dark and rapid through the silent room—

He'd awakened that morning startled from a dream, a dream of the music of the spheres...

What if I'd rolled it out, banquet-carpet, banner unfolding?

And what awakened him was a sound of mechanical grinding, stamping, booming...

Dancing dark, shadow-whisper, marked for crumpling.

"A device..."

"What?"

"Do you know of any mechanical device, Tambour, a large one, inside Grayguard Castle? For I've heard such, from the Dog's Teeth."

"I do not, Gull. But I think we should be going there."

∗ ∗ ∗

"This is most irregular," the castellan of Grayguard said, even as Tambour flashed him the governor's ring and led Gull inside the vast grim fortress.

"We've had no trouble here," the man continued, getting in the pair's way.

"We intend to keep it that way," Tambour said airily. "Can you point us to the machine?"

Wariness entered the castellan's voice. "What machine?"

"The one that wakes up drunks in the Dog's Teeth," put in Gull. When the castellan blinked, Gull added, "Oh, yes. We have informants everywhere."

Whether it was the cloak or Gull's voice or the governor's ring, the castellan gave in. "There's nothing about the apparatus that need worry the crown, Lion Blades."

"Show it to us," Tambour said.

The castellan muttered to himself, told a guard, "Send a runner to the governor," and led Gull and Tambour through a wide, soldier-lined passage into the castle courtyard. After passing a magnificent temple dedicated to many gods (none of them the being that Mortil had sworn by) they reached the far wall and there entered a much smaller passage with a stairway snaking up.

"You realize," the castellan said, "the governor is entitled to his personal projects..." He stopped as he nearly stumbled over a dead guard, whose face was frozen in pain though he bore no obvious wound.

"No!" the castellan cried.

Looking up the stairway, the trio beheld more armored corpses.

"Summon help," Tambour said. "I will deal with the wizard behind this."

"The castle is my responsibility," said the man.

"That's why you must summon help."

The castellan hesitated, but Gull gave him a curt nod and the man turned and descended, bellowing for guards.

Tambour motioned in the direction of the retreating man. "You too, Gull."

"No," Gull said. "I'm finishing this."

"Is that you speaking, or the cloak?"

"Either way, I do this for Corvine Gale."

Tambour grunted and led the way.

The torchlit room at the top was stuffed with machinery—or rather with one single machine. For a long disoriented moment Gull could not understand the sprawling steel mechanism's purpose, but it came to him that the walls of the room were lined with paper and books. He saw titles like A True History of House Thrune and The Benefits of Infernal Rule for All Chelaxians.

"It's a printing press," Gull said. He'd seen them before, for his politically minded compatriots back in Andoran grew ever more fond of posters and pamphlets and broadsheets. But this machine was to a normal printing press as a hydra was to a newt. An octopus of hinged arms terminated in presses that seemed poised to hammer out publications at a blinding rate. The heart of the mechanism possessed a steel face with eyes of blue crystal and a flat, determined expression. It reminded Gull of a bookplate.

"Yes," Mortil said from across the room. The man grasped a tome of great thickness, bound in red leather, and Gull suspected no printing press had ever touched it. This was surely the stern elder kindred of Corvine's gentle reference works: a true book of spells.

Mortil continued, "This thing, this apparatus, this is the great weapon Taldor dares aim at Cheliax."

"But it's all merely words," Tambour answered, voice full of honest confusion. As he spoke crept around the mechanism toward Mortil. "For that matter, it would seem to be words praising Cheliax and its masters."

"'Seems' is the correct term," Mortil answered. "This printing press is producing official-seeming works that are to be smuggled into Cheliax. But unlike the approved works, these contain ideas that would plant the seeds of sedition."

"You mean," guessed Gull, sidling toward Mortil in the opposite direction, "they tell the truth."

"'Truth' is hierarchical," answered Mortil. "Wizards all understand this, though some may deny the knowledge. Not all revelations are appropriate for all people. The common folk need not know every detail about the lives of their betters. Certain lies are, for them, better than truth. Only Cheliax understands this reality and acts upon it. That's why Cheliax will triumph."

"I don't understand," Tambour said. "It's just a printing press. With all this effort, you might have thrown our navy into chaos."

Mortil laughed. "You lack the immortal perspective of our patrons. To you, the struggle is all about land and gold. We understand it is equally about thought. This weapon here is more significant than any warship. And more insidious. The words it prints, though brimming with Chelish pride and patriotism on the surface, magically imbue the reader with sentiments quite the opposite. We need to discourage Taldor from trying this tactic again. I would come no closer were I you."

"You're finished, Mortil," Gull said. "You can't kill both of us and destroy the printing press all at once."

"I don't need to." Mortil cried out in a strange tongue Gull did not understand, and the crystal eyes of the printing press glowed as it rumbled to life.

Inert, it had allowed Gull and Tambour just enough room to step around the perimeter; active, its gyrating arms—grabbing paper and bindings, sinking stamps into ink buckets, pounding out text—made hazardous any path to Mortil. The machine was so thunderous Gull could barely think. He needed to hug the wall to avoid a concussion and at best could only inch his way along.

Tambour was in worse shape, having been tripped by a metal arm and now lying flat for fear of being beaten with the weight of history.

Tambour shouted the strange words the wizard has used to activate the machine.

"Alas!" Mortil cried, laughing. "To shut it down takes a different phrase!"

Gull swore.

"That's not it!" Mortil said. "Now, you've cost me enough time and magic." The wizard began incanting.

Unless the spell was absurdly convoluted, Gull doubted he'd reach Mortil in time to stop its casting. However, his movements did bring him near a bucket of red ink.

It was not so big he couldn't lift it—

Gull ducked and grabbed and heaved, and red ink spilled across the room. Most of it splashed the printing press or the floor, but enough of it hit Mortil to distract the wizard and ruin his pages.

"You!" Spattered with red, Mortil looked as though he bled from a thousand paper cuts. "Whom do you work for? Taldor? Andoran? Rebels in Cheliax?"

"I work for a sad, sweet moment on a long winter's day." Gull shifted ever closer. "I work for the lumberjacks coming home with too little pay."

"What?" Mortil began a spell, this time one from his own memory—perhaps nothing that could destroy the magical press, but surely enough to slay one minstrel with delusions of grandeur.

Gull kept going. "I work for the child's laughter and the lover's kiss. I work for weeks of sorrow and seconds of bliss."

"You're mad!"

Gull laughed. "I am Gideon Gull."

"Then die, Gideon Gull." And Mortil began the words that would make his spell complete.

And screamed.

Sebastian Tambour had crawled beneath the swinging limbs of the machine and planted a dagger in Mortil's foot.

Now Gull reached Mortil, knowing he had just moments to act.

He removed the cloak.

Standing there beside the contraption, the corsair, and the traitor, Gull suddenly felt frail and foolish, like a mouse chasing cats. But he did not falter.

He threw the cloak over Mortil's head and shoved him into the works.

The wizard howled with the pain and outrage of being pummeled with the very propaganda of his Chelish masters. Yet amazingly, Mortil scrambled free of the machinery and on some blind instinct dove for the window.

By the time Gull and Tambour could reach that location there was only moonlight on the waters outside, and the silvered crags of the Dog's Teeth, and no trace of Mortil.

The governor of Cassomir appeared in the doorway and shouted something in a strange tongue.

The printing press slowed and ceased, and the light faded from its eyes.

"It seems I owe you a great debt, Lion Blades," Governor Bozbeyli said in the silence that followed, lowering his scimitar. Armored guards beside him looked around in wonder.

"I'm just a singing drunk, Governor," Gull said, looking again toward the Dog's Teeth. He shivered as his body recognized the danger was over. "Not a Lion Blade."

"Perhaps we should fix that," said Tambour.

"At any rate," the governor said, "I repay my debts. You've exposed a traitor and preserved my little project. What might I do for you?"

Tambour smiled. "I assign my prize to the captain of the corsairs. I'm sure he'll think of something."

The governor frowned a little, but eventually nodded. "And you?"

Gull began to refuse any reward, but he withdrew Corvine's poem from his pocket, stared at it. "This printing press..."

"Yes?"

Gull smiled and held out Corvine's poem. "What I ask is that you print enough copies to make the author of this poem, one Corvine Gayle, well known in Cassomir and Oppara and beyond."

Governor Bozbeyli took the poem. "Corvine Gayle. Ah, the young lady from the birthday party. Yes, it shall be done."

As the minstrel and the man in motley took their leave of the governor and walked through the castle courtyard, Gull watched the constellations and heard Tambour's voice as if from a great distance. "I have two questions."

"Yes?"

"I was in earnest, Gull. You could join us."

"I'm no corsair. I'm a singing—"

"A singing drunk." Tambour laughed. "Yes, I know. That's why we are visiting the Knotty Mermaid. But it's also why I bring up the Lion Blades."

"You know I'm no bard."

"You could become one. We could ensure you are enrolled in an appropriate school... and an appropriate Shadow School at the same time."

Gull did not even bother to ask what that meant. "I'm not a Taldan man, Tambour. I'm Andoren. More so now than ever."

"Yet you've seen what Andoran and Taldor face together. We have our differences. But if you stand with us, you'll stand with civilization, against whatever it is that Cheliax represents."

Verses came to Gull's mind. He wondered if that would happen more and more, now that he'd left the Dog's Teeth behind. He hoped so.

I'm halfway down the road to dead
But woman you have cleared my head
And now the best that I can see
Is to make me worthy of thee.

"The college," Gull said. "Just the college, for now. We can speak again about the rest. In a year."

Tambour nodded.

And I'm busy with the living.

They left the castle, passed the barbershop, entered the muddy streets of Admiral's Fen. Gull said, "You said you had two questions."

"Will you see her again?"

"Ask that also in a year, Tambour. For now, I am not worthy, or ready."

"Much can happen in a year. She may be someone else's then."

Gull shot him a look. "You?"

Tambour shrugged.

"Love is risk, sir," Gull said stiffly. "I would not burden her with the man I am now. But the man who returns in a year—perhaps."

To the wild corners of the page and back again.

Tambour laughed as they reached the threshold of the Knotty Mermaid. "You are ever the hopeless romantic, aren't you, Gideon Gull?"

"No. There is always hope."

Coming Next Week: Chasing down monsters in Chapter 1 of Josh Vogt's "Hunter's Folly."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 3: The Unexpected Assassin

Old Cassomir was like a stately anchorage of petrified ships, and in the case of Madame Velm's domain, one strewn with harbor lights.

Gull, Corvine, Thea, and Nicolaus presented their invitations first to the constables, then the navy officers, then the manor guards, and finally the doorman. The doorman proved the most difficult.

The man, a thick-built but by no means thick-headed Taldan, was by his accent from Zimar and the Qadiran frontier. Luckily he was new to Velm's service and unacquainted with Gull, but he frowned at Gull's invitation. "Seems to me I've heard you sing, Mr. ‘Alaric Reynard.' The harp looks the same, but seems to me you looked different then. Younger. Healthier."

"Perhaps I have degenerated some..."

"Degenerated. De-gen-er-ate. Sounds like a word a Chelaxian would use. You Chelish? A Chelish sympathizer?"

The objection that he was a free man of Andoran rose to Gull's lips. It was Corvine who saved him from such a foolish declaration. She glared at the doorman. "Are you a Chelish inquisitor, to speak thus to my partner?" She linked arms with Gull, squeezed his hand.

The doorman blinked, though his face remained stern. "My apologies, Madame Gale."

The musicians entered the mansion, Gull whispering to Corvine, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. And don't rely too much on that cloak of yours. It doesn't seem to work on everyone."

"Agreed. Those of mighty spirit seem able to resist."

She blinked at that, as though turning the remark this way and that to discover the hidden insult.

Inside they got a glimpse of the powers of Cassomir. There was Governor Bozbeyli, gray-bearded and stout, holding forth on the promise of magical mechanization, bearing a war-trophy scimitar where weapons were otherwise forbidden. There was Admiral Kasaba, frowning in obvious impatience at all the fuss, in her dress uniform the plainest woman among the mighty, and, despite these things—or perhaps because of them—a striking presence to Gull.

There was the high priest of Gozreh beside Madame Velm, white beard beside black crown of hair, silken sea-green robe beside shimmering evening-blue gown. The first had tried to convince Gull to set aside the crude worship of Erastil for the fickle benefits of the god of ocean and weather. The second had seen Gull as a project, a gem to be cut, before disgustedly tossing him aside.

He turned away from the mighty. Household staff steered his group from the party proper toward an unobtrusive passage and the narrow hallways and rooms beyond. While not secret, these servants' domains were easily ignored by the family and guests. It was clear to Gull this was not to be his party.

He looked around for signs of trouble but saw nothing.

And why should he? The true assassin was dead, and since Gull had no intention of harming Admiral Kasaba, why, surely all would be well.

Except that by morning Mortil would know he was a fake. Soon enough Gull would meet a Chelish killer again, and this one wouldn't be conveniently dead.

As Thea and Alaric located the free food (an important skill for musicians), Gull and Corvine claimed their waiting spot beside the garden, where statues of heroes embellished a stone veranda. They stood beside the visage of Sir Gothmoor, shown carrying the head of the enchanted Knight of the Pit, who according to legend had cheerfully continued talking after Sir Gothmoor beheaded him, and whose advice proved surprisingly helpful on subsequent quests. Gull rubbed his neck as he regarded the Knight of the Pit's fey smile.

"All right, Gideon," Corvine said, "I think we can talk. I asked around. There were indeed sightings of a man in a purple cloak. The sightings today all match your story. But the sightings last night had him fighting a group of corsairs at the shipyards. They said the man fell into the harbor with a knife in his back."

Gull felt the rip in the back of the cloak. "That fits."

She shook her head. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

"The sort of thing a bard gets into."

"You're no bard, Gideon."

"Perhaps I will be yet. A little fisticuffs, a little swordplay, a little magic—these seem achievable talents, just now."

"It's that cloak. It will get you killed."

"No. I have a plan."

"This ought to be good."

"I will seek a new patron tonight, and thereby find security."

"Just like that?"

"With this cloak I can do it. I feel it."

Her eyes searched the garden's topiary as if the green animals could offer up auguries. "It's a false confidence, Gideon. It will betray you, and you'll be back in the Dog's Teeth."

"Amazing. You broke off what we had because I failed to rise as a singer—"

"That's not—"

"And now that I have a new chance, you want to reject that too."

"Gideon—"

But the call came for the quartet, and there was no time for argument.

There was indeed a giant cake, and there was Admiral Kasaba beside it, her stern face registering resigned patience. She brightened a little as the quartet performed.

Gull struggled to pull his weight. It was not that he lacked skill with voice and harp; rather he lacked formal training in this sort of music, as well as the practical experience that might compensate for such a deficiency.

He forced himself to smile. A frown could poison a perfect performance—and this was not going to be perfect.

Happy happy (la la la) happy birthday (la la) birthday birthday (la)...

And yet, where in the past an icy winter of fear might freeze his throat and stiffen his fingers, a spring returned to his voice and his joints, and he was at least able to carry his part. The audience clapped and even the admiral looked pleased. No one jumped out of the cake (and that seemed just as well to Gull, for Kasaba's earlier glares looked sharp enough to cut rope) and the group was briefly free to mingle with the elite.

"Bravo," said Admiral Kasaba. She squinted at Gull. "Have I seen you before?"

"I have sung here and there."

"I hope we'll hear more of you. And your companions, of course."

And Gull understood. The listeners had been unaware of Gull's struggle; from their point of view he was the strongest singer, because of the effect of the cloak.

It was unfair. And yet... why should he not enjoy their mistake? Having sold himself through magic, he would apply the hard work necessary to make good on the deal. Was that really so dishonest?

He abandoned any thought of the satirical song they'd discussed at Corvine's. He gave Alaric's harp into Nicolaus's keeping and commenced weaving in and out of conversations, collecting promises of future performances, encounters that could secure patronage. At first he avoided individuals he'd met before, but he needn't have worried. Even Madame Velm seemed to consider him somebody new. Everywhere he left some witticism gleaned from unwritten songs, and was greeted with rapt attention.

"Common sense can't be that common. It's mainly brought up when people are accused of lacking it."

"People talk about being fat and happy as if that were a bad thing. I'd like to try it, just to make sure."

"You live long enough, everything's a phase. Live a little longer, life looks like a phase, too."

However, even with the cloak there was an ebb and flow to the party, and as desserts vanished and drinks took their place, Gull began getting hints the powerful wished to keep their own company. He found himself alone in a corner among gilded eggs on display, counting his unhatched chickens.

Corvine reappeared. She actually seemed a trifle shy.

"I..." she began.

"Yes. It's okay. Say something."

"You were wrong."

That was not exactly what he'd been hoping for. He tried to sound unconcerned. "I'm shocked."

"I didn't break it off because you were failing to rise. Do you have any idea how many good musicians never get anywhere? Even among bards—"

"Don't."

"I just need you to know. I always respected you. Except when you were trying to be someone else."

"You mean, sophisticated. Charming. Witty. The things the nobility appreciate. What I was finally managing to do, just now."

"I liked my blunt Andoren man," she said, "who wasn't afraid of anyone, high or low." She leaned in closer, touching his face, as if reading the music written in his weathered face. "Except, you were afraid, weren't you? Down deep, where no one could see. Afraid of not measuring up."

"Not anymore."

"I wanted you to read this." She passed him a scrap of paper filled with words, and also strikes and smudges and second thoughts. "I don't have the music yet. Something I've been working on."

He read it.

Spilled Ink

I dressed your name in inkwell silks
And curled it slow through the dance of hand and pen
To the wild corners of the page and back again
Dancing dark, shadow-whisper, marked for crumpling.
What if I'd rolled it out, banquet-carpet, banner unfolding?
Would you have divined the grace that runs
From hand to pen to eye, from me to you?
Or would words and grace have drowned together in your eye—
Spilled ink, black oil, a blot on white water.
A voice dams up behind a quiet smile.
A river swells to spill, dark and rapid through the silent room
Where I'd sing or swim, your hand in mind,
In the water-dance where voices break
Crying ever over spilled and unspilled ink.

He twisted the paper in his hand.

"What do you think?"

The first thing that came to his mind was not words. He wanted to take her hand. He wanted to kiss her lips.

But something old and bitter rose within him, and it glittered like the courts of Oppara and smelled of the Dog's Teeth.

"It's... precious."

She hesitated. "Precious?"

"I mean, its heart is in the right place but it's a little... adolescent, don't you think? A trifle... twee?"

"Oh." She took the paper back. "I see. Thank you for looking at it."

He'd expected an angry waving of hands, lashing like wild calligraphy. But her manner, her voice, was compact, withdrawn, controlled. A blot of ink.

"I mean—don't misunderstand—it's good..."

"Don't." She turned and strode to where the servants were scavenging the leftover desserts.

He stared after her, reaching out. His glib remarks of the past half hour were like dead moths on his tongue.

He shuffled toward the veranda.

"Leaving so soon? You haven't tried the cake." Gull glimpsed a servant with a tray veering in close.

"I am not hungry..." Gull began, and felt a dagger against his back.

"Look at that," came the voice of the thug Eutharic, whom Gull had last heard what seemed a thousand years ago this morning, outside the Knotty Mermaid. "There's even a rip here in the cloak, just right for a dagger. Guess it's an unlucky bit of treasure. For you."

"Um, no need to be prickly."

"I got a message for you. From Tarik the Unclean."

"Is it really necessary to say Tarik the Unclean? It's not like I'm going to confuse him with Tarik the Washerwoman, or Tarik the Singing Barber, or—"

"Outside, Gull."

They stepped among the statues of heroes. Eutharic herded Gull toward the statue of Sir Gothmoor. Gull wished the Knight of the Pit's head would give him advice. "What's the message?"

"You know," Eutharic said, "I got confused. The message isn't for you. The message is you. Your bloody corpse at a fancy house, showing the whole city no one cheats Tarik the Unclean—"

"There you go again."

"Cheats Tarik the Unclean of his salvage. They won't miss you, Gull. You're fooling yourself with this lot. You're just another commodity. Plenty more where you came from."

"You might be right." Gull closed his hand on empty air where verse had been. "But you wouldn't be talking about this message unless there was another option."

"You're right. There's stuff going down with Cheliax, stuff you maybe know about, stuff Tarik might profit from. I whistle, my pals Adamantius and Thok create a diversion, we get out of here, you spill to Tarik."

Spilled ink, Gull thought.

"So..." came a new voice. "It is as I thought."

It was the governor's man—and Chelish agent—Mortil. He emerged from the veranda's shadows and raised his hands in a way that instinctively made Gull as nervous as if Mortil had raised an axe. He'd seen such poses from Corvine, after she'd consulted certain books.

"You have not sought the target," Mortil said to Gull. "Instead you have wasted your time on nonsensical activities—or so I thought. But your true purpose was to sell your information to the highest bidder. Disgusting."

"Who's this guy?" Eutharic said.

"I am your death," Mortil said, "if you do not leave now."

"Nobody talks to me like that."

"Hey, that's right," Gull said, "you lose face like that, I might have to write a song..."

Eutharic lunged. It wasn't clear which—Gull or Mortil—he was seeking, especially as Mortil immediately spoke some manner of trigger word and a blast of blue light engulfed Gull's vision.

When he could see again, the Knight of the Pit's head lay at his feet, freed from Sir Gothmoor's stony grip by an eldritch blast. The same blast that had burned a hole through the chest cavity of the gaping Eutharic.

The thug fell, smoking, and Mortil stepped forward. "I will say," he said thoughtfully, "that I exposed enemy agents. It is true enough..."

"You!" called a strident voice. "Governor's man. Stand back from that musician. He may be a spy—and a sorcerer it seems!"

It was Sebastian Tambour, stepping ahead of the astonished partygoers, a few of his fellow corsairs close behind.

Sebastian Tambour is first mate of the Happenstance.

Mortil stepped back, chuckling at his good fortune.

Gull's normal tactics in this sort of situation would be to stare, or plead, or duck, or pray.

Instead, he did two things. With one hand he jabbed his thumb toward the statue and shouted, "Would I blast something behind me?"

With his other hand he hooked the Knight of the Pit's curly stone hair and flung the bemused-looking boulder at Mortil.

The Chelish agent swore—and the being sworn by had an address far removed from those of Taldor's patron gods. Gull did not wait for the crowd's reaction, however, but dashed for a servants' entrance and the kitchen.

At the door he paused only to stick two fingers in his mouth and whistle.

Once inside he was confronted by pots, pans, dangling meats, a brick oven big enough to roast two boars, and a gaggle of scattering servants who'd probably already heard the shouted word sorcerer. "Boo," said Gull.

He was doomed, so he might as well enjoy it.

Once alone in the kitchen he grabbed a large iron skillet and crouched beside the door. It was Sebastian Tambour who entered first, and Gull found it rather satisfying to swing something heavy at Tambour's head.

Alas, the corsair ducked sufficiently to be merely clipped. Tambour rolled, snarling, into a bucket of fish heads.

"I'm not a sorcerer!" Gull said. "I'm not a wizard! I'm not a Chelish agent!"

Tambour swept fish guts from his eyes. "Hit me again, Gideon Gull. That will make your case more convincing."

"Would a sorcerer use a skillet?"

Tambour was up now, knife unsheathed. "I might just believe you, Gull. If you are a spy, you are perhaps the sloppiest, most ridiculous clandestine agent I have ever seen."

"It's Mortil. I think he wants the admiral dead. He thought I was working for Cheliax too. But you killed the real assassin, didn't you?"

"Perhaps..." Tambour backed away with a calculating look.

And Tambour's men grabbed Gull from behind.

Gull did not resist. At this point, surrender was safer.

Thok.

Suddenly the men let go, slumping to the floor.

Gull turned to see Eutharic's compatriots, Adamantius of the demonic tattoos and Thok of the big stick.

"Who killed Eutharic?" snarled Adamantius.

"Thok weeps," Thok said. Gull was startled. This was the first time he'd ever heard of Thok saying anything.

"It was not I," Tambour said. "Nor my men. I am beginning to believe it wasn't Gull."

"Gull could never kill Eutharic," scoffed Adamantius.

"Gull is weak," Thok said.

"Hey..." Gull began, and finished, "that's right. It was the governor's man, Mortil."

"That knowledge," came Mortil's voice, "will die with you all."

Fire filled the doorway.

Adamantius and Thok screamed as an explosive magical blaze consumed them and Tambour's fallen men. Gull and Tambour were barely able to take cover behind a counter. An unused chicken on a hook burned above their heads like a comet of culinary omen. The reek of roasted flesh made Gull gag.

"And when you are finished," Mortil said, "so will the target burn. I may be implicated, and that is regrettable. But in Hell my masters will laugh."

Wedges of light erupted from Mortil's fingertips, and Gull heard a scream.

He knew that voice. Corvine.

Gull scrambled around the counter, skillet in hand, and Tambour was with him, dagger ready. Together they rushed the wizard.

Coming Next Week: The ultimate weapon is revealed in the conclusion of Chris Willrich's "The Cloak of Belonging."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 2: A Roving Young Fellow

Gentlemen adventurers needed to mind their steps, especially on roofs. Gull discovered that hard lesson—as well as that cold, wet, and muddy lesson—when he slipped off the mist-slick summit of Skua Croon's Curiosity Shop and toppled into the mud.

He stood up painfully, brushed the muck of Admiral's Fen off his new cloak, and acted as though such things happened every day.

The passersby nodded and smiled exactly as if it were so.

Striding through the fog toward Cassomir's shipyard like an admiral and not a vagabond minstrel, Gull wondered at the new poise that enveloped him. True, he was clearly no more coordinated than before, nor tougher, as his bruises informed him.

But something had kindled his spirit. Perhaps it was the strange rattles and cranks he'd heard from Grayguard Castle, or the stares he'd attracted with this peculiar cloak. Whatever the reason, Gull walked without fear through the heart of Taldor's naval power. And despite his odd appearance, workers, sailors, merchants, and officials all nodded or waved as he passed.

Once or twice he heard shouts behind him—the corsairs or the ruffians perhaps—and he took care to slip through fog-shrouded alleys between the businesses that catered to the navy and its sailors, the provisioners, sailmakers, coopers and the like, as well as the brothels, fortune-telling halls, and gambling dens. No one challenged him, though some beckoned him toward this ill-reputed doorway or that. Perhaps, with more time on his hands and fewer foes on his tail, he'd have lingered.

But now he'd a destination in mind.

He emerged from the maze of ship-related concerns and braved the shadowy ruins of Quickfall Abbey, making the sign of Erastil's antlers on his chest as he passed that reputedly haunted locale. Like the splintered bones of dead giants, the crumbled walls jabbed through the sunlit fog. Gull whistled, mentally revising an old Andoran drinking song.

Oh, my name's Gideon, I'm a songman gone bad,
And a roving young fellow at need.
So be easy and free, if you're haunting at me—
I'm a man who will run far away.

No spirit deigned to trouble his morning. The tune's energy seemed to pour into his feet, and it was with a light step that he emerged into the northern end of Cassomir, a realm of cobblestone lanes and pleasant cottages and houses. As the rising sun melted the fog away, Gull located a certain flower shop and purchased a red rose from a matron whose suspicious look similarly melted in the light of his smile.

"Why, Master Gull," she said. "You've not been this way in weeks."

"The life of an musician is a busy one, Mrs. Amaranth." Gull looked toward the ceiling. "Ah, is Corvine..."

"She is in, but I don't think—" But by then Gull was out the door and ascending one of the exterior stairs. Abbey Green held many such locales, harboring a shop or two on the ground level and lofting dwellings overhead. A widow, Mrs. Amaranth owned this building and reserved for herself a flower shop and a small home above, while renting the rest of the ground floor to a navy wife who supplemented her husband's pay with needlework and flag-making. As the wife lodged at the Citadel, the remaining space was rented to a pair of female musicians.

Gull had known one of them quite well. The other had regarded her roommate's taste in men as a mental affliction.

As he knocked, a snatch of song came to him, a piece with a backwoods sound, something he'd not worked on in years.

Howling like a mangy old wolf at the moon
Sleeping through the warmth of the sun
Worrying too much about getting the girl—
Not enough about getting the right one.

The door opened. It was the one who'd thought him an affliction.

"You."

Thea Zephyr (a stage name if Gull had ever heard one) narrowed her eyes beneath her artistic beehive of hair, which loomed above like a russet thunderhead with black hairpins for lightning. Taldan women fought endless skirmishes via their glorious crowns of hair. Men who supposed these displays were entirely or even mostly about them were naive.

Gull's own naivete lay elsewhere. "Me," he confessed, smiling.

"You selfish bastard." Thea stepped out, her stare pushing him backward as though she were warding her roommate from the very sight of Gideon Gull. "Do you have any idea how long Corvine looked for you?"

"I..."

"She thought you were dead!"

"She minded?"

Thea finally got a good look at him, taking in the shave, the wash, the raised hands, the cloak. She blinked.

"She minded," she said. She studied him a little longer, her expression shading from anger to confusion. "I'll get her." She shifted slowly inside, then slipped back, snatched the rose from his hand, and gave it a quick sniff like a child stealing a sweet. In she went, and now Gull wore the confused look.

Curious.

He heard new voices from the fog to the south. They might be Sebastian Tambour's men, or even Tarik the Unclean's. He practiced looking as inconspicuous as a minstrel in a gold-embroidered purple cloak on a second-story stairway could be.

A woman with a more subdued tangle of black hair, held by a single ivory pin, appeared at the door. She had bronze-looking skin and pale blue eyes that made Gideon shiver like a newly plucked string.

"You," she said.

"Me," he said.

She handled the rose like an idle conductor with a baton, tapping the blossom against one palm. “So?”

"Yes..." he began, and stopped. The word was like a steppingstone leading into fog.

"Well?"

He held up his hands. "I know."

"And?"

"I'm sorry."

The last thing Corvine Gale expected was a visit from Gideon Gull.

Corvine Gale's fresh appraisal of Gideon Gull did not seem to banish her disdain as it had Mrs. Amaranth's and Thea Zephyr's. Rather the opposite. "You're sorry?"

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry..."

"Yes. May I... come in?"

"No." She followed his gaze to where a group of figures appeared to be emerging from the fog around the abbey. She noted his concern. She sighed. "Yes."

"Okay. Thanks."

"Don't thank me," she said as she led him into the crowded room.

Just before the door closed, Gull heard something hit one of the fallen stones of Quickfall Abbey.

Thok.

Gull looked around, seeing many familiar faces, most with a musical instrument to go with them. "Why, Alaric, Nicolaus, Walpurga... It's been too long."

Several people looked as though they might question that assertion. But they shifted uncomfortably and were uncharacteristically silent in the presence of the new Gull.

Corvine placed a hand on his shoulder, spun him to face her. In the process her balance faltered and she weaved into him. He smelled gnome whiskey. He had an excellent nose for that sort of thing. She stiffened and pulled away. "I'm having a party, Gideon. Well, a rehearsal with a friendly audience. Not much difference. You know how it is."

"I used to."

"Well. Four of us are singing at Admiral Kasaba's birthday at Madame Velm's." She gave Gull a scrutinizing look, for they'd both known Velm well.

"Maybe three," put in a harpist named Alaric. "I've been feeling ill..."

"You'll make it," Corvine insisted. "It has to be a four-part madrigal. And I believe they're going to surprise Kasaba with a giant cake and have a handsome midshipman jump out or some damn thing. I don't know, she's not my patron anymore." Here came another hard look. "They're just paying us to sing. But we need to be good. Just about everybody who's anyone is going to be there."

Gull said, "That's why you're practicing drunk? Madame Velm doesn't like lushes."

"You are not going to lecture me about drink. Nor about a patronage you deprived us both of. You are going to sit right there and not make a fool of yourself."

Gull knew when to shut up. Sometimes. He bowed and took a chair beside Corvine's bookshelf. He tried easing the commotion he'd caused by peering over his shoulder at the books. Although Gull could read, it was no easy task, and he'd learned music entirely from mentors, starting with backwoods fiddlers back in Andoran. Corvine, now, she was a reader. Gull saw books of ballads, scores for operas, and ragged collections of songs and folk tales collected from the villages of the Taldan interior. He saw, too, books about magic—The Olde Companion, The Magister's Tunebook, Songs of the Azlanti Twilight—not the intricate tomes of professional spellcasters, full of maddening esoteric formulae, but the sort of homely references collected over time by those worthy of the title bard.

For all the bravado of this day, he now felt fully the bumpkin, and as the quartet resumed its jolly madrigal the feeling only grew.

Raise the sail, strike the drum
The long-awaited hour's come
Let all who live by wind and wave
Stand attention proud and grave.

Alaric's part faded in a fit of coughing. The man waved for the others to go on, and Corvine proved her status as a bard by gesturing and conjuring an enchanted mouth to sing from the wood of the door. The mouth used her own voice but made it possible to proceed without Alaric.

Though Taldor's foes yet ring us round
Our admiral runs them all to ground.
Though alarums summon all too soon
Hearken to this happy tune.

Now the song seemed to disintegrate like a flock of birds startled by human voices, only to careen back into formation at a higher pitch:

Happy happy (la la la) happy birthday (la la) birthday birthday (la)...

Gull knew there were variances and flourishes here he'd not the education to appreciate, but he understood this tune was both respectful and teasing, and would bring joy to the listeners, and applause—and then be forgotten. That was the way of much Taldan music. In contrast, he'd had only blunt verse, with whatever truth he could muscle behind it. Even songs of battle had eluded him, for he'd focused in Andoren fashion on the horrors common folk faced in war, not on the glory, real or supposed, chased by nobles in polished armor.

His musings led him so far from Corvine's chamber that he only slowly understood the rehearsal was over, the enchanted mouth had faded, and the quartet and its small audience were now gossiping and talking shop. Some snatches of conversation cut through his bitter reflections.

Alaric: It helps to first compose several stanzas about the history of the campaign, the battle setting, the distribution of forces, et cetera. Then you can just tack on an ending that celebrates the victory or mourns the loss. Last, you add a prologue about it all being destiny. Saves time and worry...

Thea: Could it be? Could I truly have been born to sing?

Corvine: Born to talk about it, maybe.../p>

Nicolaus: Alaric, give it up. There's no such thing as imitation quirky...

Alaric: But of course we trust pretty people more than honest people! Taldor's great tragedy is that we value faces over facts.

"Andoran's worse," Gull muttered, "in its way."

Conversation ceased. Gull uneasily looked back at these musicians of Taldor, each better versed in the craft than he. Corvine frowned, as though she'd forgotten he was there, and was unhappy to be reminded. "I'd have thought you would be missing Andoran," she said. "For a while, I thought you had returned there."

Gull saw no choice but to plunge in. "In Andoran anyone can hold high office. So even though we've no king, we the people are in the same position as a king choosing his ministers. But we don't have the leisure or learning of kings. We are busy... well, my fellow Andorens are busy... with our lumbering and bee-keeping and harvesting. So we are like the most foolish of kings—a wastrel prince, maybe, suddenly inheriting the crown and choosing his servants in a hurry. And so we choose the pretty. Or the silver-tongued. Or someone with a famous name, even if they were famous for something utterly irrelevant. Or we choose whomever now seems angriest at the last fool we elected."

He expected to be laughed off, a fool speaking of fools. Or worse, tsked and tut-tutted at by the superior folk of Taldor.

Instead they nodded with interest at his words. Had he spoken better than was his wont? Or was the strange charm of this day working upon them?

Alaric coughed and answered. "Far be it from me to praise Andoran before Taldor... but I think you are too harsh. What you speak of is simply human nature. It applies everywhere. Perhaps the consequences have special meaning in Andoran, but I assure you shallow judgment is as devastating here."

The other man in the quartet, Nicolaus, nodded. "And if the great of Taldor are foolish, who's to stop them? At least in Andoran the fools can expose each other."

And indeed, Gull felt a sudden yearning for his old land.

"I did not know," said Thea, "that you were a philosopher, Gideon Gull."

The other guests made encouraging sounds to echo Alaric, Nicolaus, and Thea's responses. All but Corvine.

"He's not!" she scoffed. "He talks a good story, always has. Maybe he's a little more polished now. But it's the same old Gideon!"

But the others ignored her, and from then on Gull was the center of the party. Alaric loaned him a harp, and with the other musicians' help he began composing something on his theme.

In Andoran, the founders so fine
Gave us all a bottle of wine.
Common Rule, the label had read
A glorious vintage of martyrdom red.
In drunken sprees we drank it all down
Rejoicing that no one would wear a crown.
In sickly dawn's light we needed to pee
And so used that bottle called Democracy.
O Andoran, you land of the free,
You drank up the wine of Democracy
But the price of gettin' some more of that drink
Is a plunge in cold water and a promise to think!

Alaric and Nicolaus jumped in with a verse they'd just concocted:

O Taldan lords, you trample our rights
While you battle each other for miniscule slights.
Our lords eat and drink while the commoners thirst,
True nobles would always put common men first!

"You'll get thrown in the stocks," Corvine warned.

"Just like I'll get tarred and feathered in Andoran," Gull said.

"It's the song that gets you in trouble everywhere!" Nicolaus said.

"But don't you see?" Thea said. "If we are more careful with the words... this song could actually criticize the nobility. It sounds at first like it's mocking Andoran. But it's not actually mocking Common Rule. It just says that Andoran's people don't live up to the ideals."

"Our royals would say," said Corvine, "that no one can live up to those ideals."

"But if we go on to poke fun at Taldor's foils," Thea went on, staring into the daylight beyond the window, "we can have a song that argues for a better world—and sing it right under the nobility's noses."

There was a chorus of assent.

"What?" Corvine said.

"Friend Gull," Alaric said, "you should take my place tonight in the quartet."

"What?" Corvine repeated.

"We all know I'm not feeling well," Alaric continued, "and it's affecting my voice. And just maybe, if there is the right moment, you can sing your song where the powerful can hear. Hold on to the harp. I'll return for it tomorrow."

"What?" said Corvine looking from one companion to another.

"You know," Nicolaus said, "I have had a few ideas of my own, for songs that mock the mighty..."

"I too," said another musician.

"And I," said a third.

"You are all mad," Corvine said. "Out of here, all of you! Gideon is addling your minds. Get some fresh air. I'm serious. You too, Thea."

Thea was the last outside, giving her roommate—or was it Gull?—a last, probing look.

Corvine slammed the door, and turned to face Gull. She did not look enchanted. "Where did you get it?"

"Eh?"

"The cloak, Gideon. It's obvious that's it."

"That's what?"

"The thing you're using to become such a smooth talker. A philosopher." She shook her head. "I knew something was amiss when I noticed Thea of all people making eyes at you."

"She was?"

"Don't act so innocent! You saw how they behaved. I swear they're ready to write limericks about the Grand Prince!"

"All right... yes." He steepled his fingers, leaned back in his chair. He'd seen scholars act like that. "I know there is something different about today. Something extraordinary has come over me. But it could be a concoction of my own mind." He remembered his dream of the music of the spheres. "Perhaps desperation has kindled something in me. Perhaps I am finally ready to awaken from my drunken dreams..."

"It's not you, Gideon. It's the cloak. It wouldn't be the first magic item to enhance a person's presence. Take it off, and you'll see."

He smiled. "Are you actually telling me to take my clothes off?"

"Go to hell."

"All right, all right. That's a spooky thought, you know, when you're wearing a Chelish cloak."

He began to remove the garment, albeit with reluctance. I can take it off anytime I want to, he insisted silently. So why did he hesitate?

He made a show of negligently draping the cloak over a chair.

"Ah," said Corvine. "There you are."

"What do you mean?" He suddenly felt naked as a mole rat, for all that his old clothes clung clammily to his body.

"I mean, you look like yourself."

He let out a long breath, as if weeks of hard living were woven through that gust of air. What had he been doing? Had he really taunted thugs and corsairs, run along rooftops, encouraged sedition? He was insane.

And yet, he'd rather liked it.

"Ah," he said, looking at his feet. "Myself."

"Where did you get it, Gideon?"

He stared at her. "Why do you really want to know?"

"I've the feeling you're mixed up with something bad. Magic like that doesn't just fall from the sky."

"No." He smirked. "It washes onto shore." He told her the story of his day. Her eyes widened at each new episode.

She gripped his shoulder, firmly this time. Her hand stayed put. Startled, he looked into her eyes. He found himself hoping he could keep doing that...

"Gideon,” she said. “I'm glad to see you. Truly. But you are impossible. You don't need magic to rise out of the gutter."

"The gutter has been a step up..."

"Enough. Stay off the streets. Stay here for a while." She rubbed her temples. "I know how to put an ear to a wall. I will go and see what I can learn about strange Chelaxians with purple cloaks—and those who might murder them. You... well, Alaric is sure to come to his senses, but if he doesn't..."

“What about your senses? You've been drinking.”

“Shut up.” She set down two sheets of handwritten music. "Do you remember what I taught you about reading notation?"

"Of course."

"Then practice. If you do end up joining us tonight I don't want you embarrassing us in front of Madame Velm."

"I am sorry. About all of that."

"Sorry you got sloshed before a duet, and cost us both our patronage?"

"That... and that I convinced you to come to Cassomir to work with her. Where there were no other patrons of similar stature."

"This... is not the time. Give me one of those gold coins."

"I have but three left."

"You need clothes." She sniffed. "Don't argue."

He didn't argue. To a degree he was enjoying the fuss. When she left he even dutifully studied tonight's madrigal, so he could adequately perform Alaric's part. He was still a musician. And moreover, he did not enjoy the disdain that had colored Corvine's words.

So he focused on this one small thing.

Presently he was nagged by a desire for drink. He looked about the room for something to sate it. A tiny, persistent disgust at himself crept in through some corner-crack of his soul, like a little animal stubbornly nesting in Gull's mental cupboards. At that moment he found an actual cupboard containing a bottle of Zimaran wine.

He gently closed the door.

And opened it again. And closed it.

He was somewhat in need of willpower.

His eye turned to the cloak, and in one fluid motion he was across the room and swishing it onto himself, tying it off with a dramatic half-turn. "No," he said, "Gideon Gull drinks when he wishes—not when the bottle demands."

And in that manner, proud and purple, he returned to the problem of the madrigal.

So focused upon the music was he that at first he believed the knock at the door to be some rhythm-induced hallucination.

On the second knock, he rose languidly and opened the door. "What did you—" he began, but choked on the words, for it was not Corvine.

Here instead was well-dressed man of hard bearing, his red woolen jacket buttoned with pewter, his blue felt hat bearing a silver pin depicting the Lion of Taldor crouched upon a ship. "At last," said the man.

"Are we acquainted, sir?" The man seemed somehow familiar.

"We know of each other. I am Mortil, assistant to Governor Bozbeyli." More quietly, he added, "I am also your contact." He waited for Gull to take that in, and although Gull failed, Mortil went on. "Are you alone here?"

"Well..."

Mortil brushed past Gull, eyes focused on the musician as if he thought Gull a dangerous customer. Gull was reminded of a look he'd seen back home in the eyes of wild dogs. Mortil took the chair beside the books; Gull shut the door and sat at the nearby bench along the wall.

Mortil said, "I had to call in help to find you. Do you know what that cost me?"

By now, Gull did indeed recall Mortil, someone he'd met once or twice under the patronage of Madame Velm. The recognition was not mutual, however, and Gull suspected he had the cloak to thank for that. A good thing, too. Despite the bland tones, something in the other's eyes spoke emphatically of prices like murder, torture, blood, and madness. This discouraged Gull from his normal loquaciousness. He ventured, "We all must pay the piper..."

"You were not at the rendezvous," snapped Mortil. "Where were you?"

"I—have had my difficulties."

"I have been assured you are exceptional at your work."

"Well... you know, back home I was considered great..."

"We are not in Cheliax. Things are different here."

That annoyed Gull. "Do I look Chelish?"

"Come now, don't fence with me. It doesn't matter to me where Cheliax finds its agents. I have been awaiting the man with the purple cloak for days, and in that time the target has begun working to undermine the efforts of our masters. It is time to strike back."

"Ah."

"Yes. The event is tonight. Never will the target be more vulnerable."

Gull had an uncomfortable feeling he knew who the target was. "I might be able to get close," he ventured, not sure why he was playing along, unless of course it was to avoid getting killed.

Yes, that might be it.

"Good," said Mortil. "I have been unable to divine your plans. You, of course, need not give me details...." Mortil paused.

Gull said nothing.

With a disappointed look Mortil continued. "... but I will ensure the guard is light. There will be enough distraction that you should have no great difficulty. I would do the deed myself, but I would likely be discovered."

"And what of escape?"

"That is your problem."

"And what of reward?"

"That is our masters' problem."

Gull made himself chuckle. "Of course."

Mortil was unamused. "You seem to take this matter too lightly. I assure you our masters, on Golarion and elsewhere, see your mission as essential to their plans."

"Oh, I take it seriously." Gull leaned forward. "Damned seriously." Gull kept a straight face. Mortil studied him, and slowly nodded.

"Very well, I take my leave." Rising, Mortil added, "I hope to hear a tale of woe upon the morning."

Gull opened the door. "Woe's the word."

Mortil shot him a grave look and departed.

"Well, Cloak," Gull muttered, once he was alone. "It seems we have a choice. Disappoint Cheliax and the hordes of Hell. Or assassinate Admiral Kasaba."

He stroked his chin and came to a firm conclusion.

"Where's that wine?"

Coming Next Week: Birthdays and mayhem in Chapter Three of Chris Willrich's “The Cloak of Belonging."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

The Cloak of Belonging

by Chris Willrich

Chapter 1: A Vagabond and a Gentleman

The clank and whir of infernal machinery called Gideon Gull back from the music of the spheres. At first he thought the din was dragging him down to Hell, but in a way it was worse. He woke up on the Dog's Teeth.

As he sorted the mechanical noise from the pulse of his throbbing head, Gull's namesakes scattered around him, foiled in their efforts to pry last night's crusty bread from his death-grip. Since making a home on these coastal islands, Gull had become used to the squawking scavengers. They were an honest crowd of greedyguts, and their voices possessed a kind of desperate music. In any case, he liked them better than his human and near-human neighbors.

Better get up, Gideon, he thought, before one of those neighbors knifes you.

The thought was a prophetic one, for when Gull rose blinking in the tentative gray dawn, he saw the dead man.

The corpse and the ongoing mechanical racket were both located across a tide-covered waterway. Gull beheld the dark cloak and sprawled limbs of the former, facedown on the shore. Meanwhile the latter boomed from the high windows of the great castle looming above the body. For a moment Gull had the eerie impression that the carcass was a sacrifice to some clattering stone god.

The mechanical sound ceased, and what passed for silence returned to the Dog's Teeth. Amid the screeches and ripple of waves and the stirrings of work in the harbor city of Cassomir, Gull cast a look over his shoulder, nibbled a bit of the bread in his left hand, swirled the nearly empty bottle in his right. The look reassured him that the various vagabonds and thugs who occupied these islands were either sleeping off the night's adventures or hatching new plans, and that he was unobserved. The bread nearly cut his lips, but the combination of food and pain helped revive his wits. The bottle held just one crimson drop, the same color as the cheerful red hat pictured on the torn label—a reminder of his home in Andoran, a handful of miles and years of broken promises away.

The past was gone. He sucked out the last drop and tossed the bottle. Hands itching for his lost harp, Gideon Gull took another look at the corpse. He shivered from more than the morning chill. That's a nice cloak, he thought.

I'm halfway down the road to dead
Armed with a bottle and crusty bread.
And friend, the best that I can see
Is that you're doing worse than me.

As he walked through the knee-high tidewaters toward the mainland, Gull was already thinking through a tune for his bitter ballad, something spare and sharp, far removed from the celestial sounds of his dream. Once he'd followed such dreams to the bustling squares of Andoran and beyond to the glittering manors of Taldor. Now he'd hit bottom in this border city between, and he was learning that his true nation was the Dog's Teeth outside this Taldan navy town, and his true calling the songs the dogs of the Teeth preferred.

You wore a cloak so fine
I wore a reek of wine.
I'd say our places are reversed,
But dead man, you're no longer cursed...

The sandy shore was covered in a hash-pattern of webbed seagull prints, like a carpet woven by a weaver with a mania for threes. Gull shooed the birds away, and although he looked nothing like his family's emblem, what with his haystack of blond hair and his sun-parched gangly limbs, he could squawk with the best of them.

Alone, he bent over the pale, dark-haired body. He made the sign of the antlers and checked for a pulse. But the man was cold and his spirit gone, and no servant of the good god Erastil clomped forth to gore Gideon Gull. He took this as permission.

For the cloak was indeed beautiful. It reminded Gull of opera cloaks he'd seen in the capital, its strange purple material silky soft but warm to the touch like velvet. Golden designs swirled about it with strange interweaving patterns that drew the eye into endless labyrinths. Even soaked by the waters, the material looked vibrant, and where the dim sunlight had hit it, the cloak was already dry. Only a small rip testified to the violence that occasioned this find. The tear matched a gash in the dead man's shirt, with a deep knife-wound beneath.

Almost as an afterthought did Gull search the man's pockets for coin—gold Andoren sails, oddly enough, and what's more there were six, enough for some high living.

If he was living high, he thought, he should have a nice cloak, torn in the back or not. He put it on.

The wine-haze and dog-tiredness seemed to bleed away like harbor fog beneath the sun. He stood and tied off his cloak in one swift movement. The rocks and sands around him came into sharper focus. Shore-grass twisted on the breeze, and sand fleas danced—and boot steps sloshed and crunched their way to shore.

He turned to see three ruffians approaching from the Teeth.

"Off to the opera, Gull?"

Eutharic is the sneering lieutenant of the lord of the Teeth.

He knew these three, two Taldans named Eutharic and Adamantius, and a wanderer from the Mammoth Lords' lands named Thok. Folk declared Thok got his name from the sound his only real possession—the improbably big tree branch he carried everywhere—made when connecting with a target. They said he rarely failed to produce that sound. It was probably an apocryphal story, but Thok never tried to correct it, nor communicated at all save to grin whenever he had the opportunity to make that sound.

Adamantius was hardly less intimidating. The man was wrapped in salt-brined leather armor, and what one could see of his skin was a strange blend of scars and tattoos, the artwork portraying monstrous claws and tails erupting from the old wounds, as though the depths of Adamantius were akin to the demonic Abyss.

Eutharic was the brains of the trio, a lieutenant of Tarik the Unclean himself, unofficial lord of the Teeth. Eutharic was only unthreatening by comparison with his colleagues. Thin, taller even than the barbarian, the man exhibited nothing overtly menacing other than the clammy calculation written all over his sneering face. It was Eutharic who had spoken, and Gull knew immediately it had been foolish to assume this loot was unobserved.

The smart move now would be to offer the cloak and some coin to Eutharic. Gull would still come out ahead. Maybe he'd even earn a little gratitude from Tarik's organization.

The deal was upon his lips, and his body was starting its descent into the correct amount of cringing, when something peculiar came over him.

Gull stood up straight as a martial flagpole and said, "I might be. I might not. I haven't decided how to enjoy my salvage."

Eutharic looked amazed. "Your salvage? What washes up on the Dog's Teeth is Tarik's salvage. Give it up, minstrel, and sing us a ditty, and maybe Thok'll only thok you once."

Gull knew about now he ought to be placating the man. All the loot and a round of "The Qadiran's Winsome Widow" might save him from some broken bones. But something buried within him, something like good Andoran steel, rebelled.

He thrust out an imperious finger.

"Then you ought to be about Tarik's business, Eutharic, for there are the Dog's Teeth. Here is the very wall of Grayguard Castle, where Gideon Gull has dared to strike. And what Gull has risked his life to claim, Gull keeps."

By the time he reached Gull keeps, his voice was booming nearly as loud as the surf on the outer reaches of the islets and the strand. The ruffians stood amazed; even Thok's eyebrows rose. Gull felt then almost as though he were two individuals: one who blazed with righteous fury at the threat to his lawful salvage, and the other who fully expected to be gutted and crushed beside the corpse at his feet.

"You... what?" managed Eutharic, too startled even to sneer.

Knowing this was his last chance, Gull raised his hands to implore the thugs to break only a few bones.

Yet something deep and dark as his hometown woods reared up snarling in Gull, and told him no.

And as his fingers rose they did not spread in supplication, but began tracing imaginary designs in the air as he'd seen wizards or bards do now and again. Deep in his throat he gurgled out nonsense words thick with consonants. "Mrrglurrg rumdiggity belchighast blurff! Glark-snaarfl aftblast gassbaggen floof!"

"It's a spell," shouted Eutharic, rushing three paces back, and Adamantius and Thok followed suit, the first crouching low to present a smaller target, the second cursing with the old contempt of his people for civilization and its wizardry. For there was yet about Gideon Gull the reputation of a bard, for all that he'd never truly mastered bardic lore, let alone bardic magic.

Astonished that his bluff had worked, Gull bowed, tossed a gold coin over the trio's heads, and ran like a corsair in a fair wind.

Gull did not stop to scream over the toe he stubbed while rounding the castle wall and scrambling over the breakwater into the town. Nor did he take much notice of his surroundings until he was gasping in the stone streets of the district of Grayguard's Shadow near the Admiral's Barbershop and attracting the stares of two constables.

Little good could come of such attention, so Gull staggered into the shop, struggling to breathe normally. Familiar faces looked up. Though Gull was not a frequent customer, sometimes he came here to sing a shanty or two and earn a shave for his trouble.

He expected a friendly grunt from Bosun Rack the barber, curt indifference from the Taldan sailor in the chair, and easy waves from the laborers waiting for shaves. Instead he got immediate attention.

"Mr. Gull," said Bosun Rack, pausing with his cream-dabbed blade in the air, sounding as if he still had two arms and was serving aboard ship. "What can we do for you?"

Gull searched the tone for sarcasm and found none. The laborers straightened in their chairs. The sailor, half-shaved, sat up, studied Gull, and said, "You seem to be in a hurry, sir. Perhaps you'd like to go first?"

Gull felt as stupefied as the thugs he'd just left behind. But with constables watching outside, he thought a shave would be a good choice about now. He thanked the sailor and sat down, saying, "Nothing fancy, Bosun. Don't want to put on airs."

Bosun Rack brushed cream onto Gull's face and chuckled.

"Full shave, please," Gull said meekly. Bosun Rack was acting as though Gull were still a noted musician, the toast of the capital even, not a washed-up minstrel in a military town. This was becoming an odd day indeed. Maybe the strange mechanical noises of dawn had disturbed everyone's dreams, left them funny in the head. Soon his companions would notice the reek rising from his clothes. The sailor cleared his throat—here it came.

"Begging your pardon," the sailor said, "but are you singing at the admiral's birthday party? It's tonight, you know."

"I... had not planned to."

"Oh, well. That singer, Corvine Gale—didn't you used to do duets? She'll be there, I hear."

Bosun Rack finished the shave while Gull blinked his surprise, and insisted on washing and trimming Gull's hair too, a task fit for a combat veteran. The thought of Corvine darted through Gull's mind like a crow diving for corn. She'd been about the last good thing to happen to him. And like all good things, it had ended it badly. Bosun Rack ended too, by cajoling Gull for a song.

So Gull entertained the group with a rendition of "What Shall We Do with a Sober Sailor?" and the tapping and hooting brought the constables inside. They tapped and hooted too, and clapped Gull on the back as he left. Gull smiled, bowed, and got away from the barbershop before their sea-fevers broke.

What was happening here? By odds he ought to be locked up or bleeding. One thing was sure, he had gold in his pocket, and close by the castle was no place to spend it. He needed a good meal—and perhaps some paid companionship? He hummed a tune as his feet took him toward the rowdier district of Admiral's Fen, in search of the sign of the twisted-tailed mermaid.

Half-dead man with a dead man's cloak
Where do you think you're going?
Pocket full of gold from a man that's cold
Dead on this fine morning?
Off to the Admiral's Fen, my friend
Where streets are ripe and muddy
'Cause dead man's gold is better sold
For wine than left all bloody.
Half-dead man with a dead man's cloak
Do you not have pity?
Well, I'm still alive with gold coins five
And I'm busy with the living.
And I'm busy with the living.

He was not fool enough to drink at this hour, of course, and the gold he offered the barkeep at the Knotty Mermaid wasn't bloody. Nor was Gull a murderer as his new song implied. Nevertheless he resolved not to sing it here. One coin bought him eggs and sausages and bread and a seat beside the common room's sunnier windows. The windows were of straightened and polished strips of ram's horn, which let the light bleed in all golden and glorious but more importantly kept Gull hidden from the street. A return to the Dog's Teeth was surely unwise, and Gull would have to find somewhere else to live. Homeless men in Cassomir had a way of getting press-ganged. The Knotty Mermaid had rooms, but Tarik's operation had fingers in Admiral's Fen. Perhaps Gull could sing in the streets up in Abbey Green. He was feeling energized, with many new ideas for songs. Something peculiar was happening.

From outside, the voice of Eutharic cut through Gull's thoughts. "Word is," Tarik's man was saying, "there's a foreign agent in there."

"Indeed?" said a haughty voice. "We'll handle it."

Knowing some sort of officialdom was entering the inn, Gull hastened to the bar and used his new line of credit to get quill, ink, and paper from the tavern keeper. "Of course, Master Gull," said the man. There was no irony, no sarcasm. There were no complaints about his stench from the shipwrights preparing for a long Toilday. It was almost as if Gull were a respectable citizen.

As if in answer to that thought, a group of sailors strode into the Knotty Mermaid, all dressed in mismatched rich clothing, and their leader did indeed have a whiskered chin. This motley crew received a rousing spontaneous toast from the laborers, for it appeared they were among the corsairs who operated out of Cassomir. Gull belatedly lifted his tankard of water, but he drew attention as the privateers claimed a table.

He tried to ignore their stares and focused on his work. If he appeared to be just what he really was—a musician come into some luck—perhaps all would be well.

So he worked out the details of the dark ballad that had rattled through his mind since seeing the cloak's dead owner. Gull had no superstitions about projecting himself into his work, and gleefully put his narrator into a noose. He'd not worked this swiftly in a long time. Why had he not composed more? It only went to show that fooling yourself you were a musician was easier if you did it every day. Only the conversation of the corsairs impeded him, for he caught distracting snatches of talk from their table.

"Wrong wrong wrong," the bearded man was saying, and Gull knew him for the man who'd spoken with the thug Eutharic outside. "You're all wrong. I'm wrong too, but I look better when I do it."

There were chuckles from the shipyard workers. More came in, and waved at the corsairs.

"I'm just saying," answered one of seamen, "the Chelish are chumps. Making a pact with Hell, well it's about as stupid as getting a loan from my uncle Wulf."

"No, no," said the bearded man, "the Chelish are just recognizing their true value. Look, a Taldan vessel is worth, what, ten Chelish ships?"

There were snarls of agreement.

"And a Taldan corsair is worth any ten Chelish fighting men?"

There was laughing affirmation.

"And a Taldan lady in bed is worth any ten Chelish women in bed?"

That gave the men a moment's hard consideration, but patriotism won out.

"And so," concluded the bearded man, "while any of us would think our souls a matter of high price, for a Chelaxian it may not be much to speak of. 'My soul for a pint! My soul for a chair by the window! My soul for sausages and a good cloak!'"

The corsairs' laugher had a pointedness to it, and Gull snapped out of his ballad (sometimes you got to do, he was writing, what you got to rue) and realized the pirates believed they were goading him. He looked up, bewildered. They were all looking back at him, expectantly.

"I am sorry, good sir," said the bearded man with a deep nod. "I did not mean to offend. I merely wished to cheer these good sailors after their hard weeks harrying foreign merchantmen. Why, just three days ago they sank a Ch—ah, but again I risk offense." He smiled, and made a fair impression of a dandified crocodile.

"Excuse me," Gull said. "You believe me to be Chelish?"

The smile stayed fixed as a steady blade. "You are not, sir?"

Anger flushed in Gideon Gull. "You speak to a free man of Andoran. Many a Chelish bottom still wears the imprint of Andoren boots."

That earned laughter from the other tables. The corsairs glanced around them in surprise. Their leader narrowed his eyes. "I could have sworn that cloak was of Chelish make."

"Perhaps. Do you not also wear clothes taken from Cheliax? Or from Qadira, Osirion, or Nex? Or, dare I say it, from Andoran?"

"The sea provides," said the leader, scratching his bearded chin as though sizing up an attack.

So it does, Gull thought, pulling his cloak tighter around him. "Our lands are not at war, and I may overlook the presence of a familiar style of red hat on one of your companions, my friend. But do not insult me again by calling me Chelish. I may be a fool, but I am not a damned fool."

The shipyard workers rewarded him with laughter and a few raised mugs. This response clearly annoyed the bearded man, who was used to adulation. That made Gull smile. He decided to finish things off. "Let me buy the heroes of Cassomir a round."

The privateers seemed rather appreciative, and the one with the red hat tipped it to Gull, but their leader's face became more set, his gaze more appraising. "Sebastian Tambour takes what he wants. He needs no bribe from foreign agents."

Gull knew the same Sebastian Tambour. The man was first mate on the Happenstance, the current flagship of Jean Coromant's crew of corsairs, who operated out of Cassomir with the full blessing of Taldor.

As with his encounter with the trio at the Dog's Teeth, Gull knew he really ought to be quaking now. Instead he was furious.

In an exaggerated rendition of Tambour's voice, Gull said, "Sebastian Tambour has a stick up his backside. Sebastian Tambour is too proud to let his men drink."

Now the guffaws spread to Tambour's own table.

The man stood. "I will show you a stick, dog. Let us settle this outside, like men."

"I will be glad to do so," said Gull, turning away and taking a long swig, "as soon as any men arrive."

The laughter was this time confined to the laborers, as the corsairs all frowned at the jibe.

So it was that the whole group descended on Gull.

Slammed into the table, his already-aching head concluding that whatever new confidence had bewitched him this day had not made him a skilled combatant, he punched and wriggled in a futile attempt to escape.

All at once he was dropped and fell with a thud upon the floor.

The tavern had rallied to his defense.

The laborers had set upon the corsairs—the very heroes of Cassomir—with fists and mugs and plates and candlesticks. The barkeep was gesturing him over. Gull scrambled on all fours behind the bar.

"Quickly, man," said the owner. "The fog's rolled in. If you get out by the roof, you'll likely escape. They're just drunk, I'm sure, else they'd not have preyed upon a fine gentleman adventurer like yourself. You'll be safe once they sleep it off."

"Yes, yes," Gull said, "of course. Lead the way, good man."

They ascended the stairs and the owner unlatched and shoved a creaky window and worked a hand-crank to extend a plank toward a neighboring building.

"This sort of thing happens often?" said Gull.

"Many of my clients need a discreet escape route. I have an arrangement with the neighboring landlord."

Gull fished out one of his gold pieces, handed it to the man. "Gideon Gull will remember you," Gull said. The barkeep winked and shooed him out the door.

Gideon Gull stepped outside into mist and mystery.

Gideon Gull, gentleman adventurer, that is. He liked the sound of that. This cloak had brought him luck. He wrapped it tighter around himself and fled across the rooftops.

Coming Next Week: An uncomfortable reunion in Chapter Two of Chris Willrich's "The Cloak of Belonging."

Dive into more adventures with Gideon Gull in the new Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust!

Chris Willrich is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel The Dagger of Trust. He is a former children's librarian best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Gaunt and Bone, which have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and elsewhere, and which continue in the novels The Scroll of Years (Pyr, 2013) and The Silk Map (forthcoming). Chris lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. Visit his website at www.chriswillrich.com.

Illustration by Glen Osterberger

Inheritance

by Gabrielle Harbowy

Chapter Four: People and Causes

The camp's last remaining healer had died two days before, infected by some foul colony of demonic parasites. Learning further details prompted Zae to add "never pray barefooted" to her list of life lessons.

Leodar, the knight who had greeted Keren, led the way with confidence through the broken landscape, while Carom and Saric, two young but weathered knights, brought up the rear. Strange geysers dotted the ground, some swelling like pustulant wounds, others rising and falling as if the land was a breathing beast. Above, beyond churning black clouds, the sky glowed the sickly color of rust, giving off just enough light for gnome eyes to see by. Under the cover of night, things clacked and slithered and grunted, distracting Zae with hints of movement in her peripheral vision. The others didn't seem to notice.

Leodar rode unerringly toward an outcropping of stone—the crumbling ruins of an old smithy, barely sturdy enough to serve as an outpost. A clash of swords rang out from beyond the building, followed by a blaze of firelight.

Leodar lowered his visor. "Seems we're not too late."

Keren took a deep breath and nudged her horse forward. "Ennis! It's Keren. I've come from Lastwall."

A burst of fire bloomed above the smithy, leaving blinding afterimages in Zae's vision. The knights charged toward the fray, and Zae nudged Appleslayer to follow the horses. They rounded the structure in time to see a half-dozen cloaked and hooded figures, all chanting in unison, surrounding a single knight in mismatched armor.

Ennis is devoted to his cause—even unto death.

Ennis Rhinn might once have looked very much like his sister, before the demonplague. Now he looked barely human—gaunt as a corpse, face mottled purple and red with bruises and open sores, and just a few thready strands of greasy, ash-dusted hair.

"Ennis!" Keren shouted again, and circled around to charge one of her brother's attackers.

"Begone, demon!" he shouted, hurling something as she passed. Keren deflected a jagged rock with her shield.

"Foul hallucination!" he screamed. "Do you lack the stones to face me in your own form?"

Keren cast a worried glance back at her companions. Leodar lifted his shoulders, as if to say This was your idea. Zae nudged Appleslayer forward to join her.

"Ennis, it's truly me. I'm here with Leodar, and others from your camp." She rode down one of the sword-wielding cultists, then turned Eridem and charged another. "Ennis, by Iomedae, I swear to you..."

A wordless scream interrupted her—one of fury, not agony. "I'll hear no more! I'll bash out my own brains before I let you defile my goddess, or the memory of my sister! Go back to the Abyss, demon!"

Zae sighed. "Well, at least he still cares about you."

At a signal from Leodar, the other knights rode in, blades drawn. They ignored Ennis's shouts of challenge and focused only on riding down his attackers. All the cultists were armed with sickles and other blades, and there was something about that which wasn't quite right.

"Wait!" Zae called. "Weren't there—"

A burst of flame exploded in Carom's face, setting his mount's mane ablaze. The horse panicked and reared, throwing its rider and trampling him before bolting away into the night.

"—sorcerers..."

Ennis slashed with his longsword at anything within reach, armored knight and robed cultist alike. Keren and Saric rode down cultist after cultist, beheading them or hacking off limbs with long sweeps of their swords, while Leodar took off after a sorcerer attempting to circle around and flank them.

Anticipating Zae's command, Appleslayer bounded to where Carom had fallen from his horse and lay unmoving on the ground. Zae tugged off one of his scorched gauntlets to reach his skin and explore the extent of his injuries.

The broken ribs were worse than the burns. Calling on Brigh, Zae pushed healing warmth through her fingers and into him, steadying him, then fished into the satchel still slung over her shoulder for a salve for the burns. Hail began to fall from the roiling clouds, small crystals pelting Carom's armor like pebbles. Zae pulled up her hood and ignored them, sheltering her patient with her small body while she repaired the worst of his wounds. Appleslayer stood vigil over them both.

Presently, Zae became aware that the annoying chanting had stopped. Instead, under the clash of battle, she heard human voices.

"Why do you aid me, demon?"

"I'm not a demon, Ennis. I'm your sister."

Zae stole a glance toward the siblings. Keren, Saric, and Ennis were on foot, parrying and dodging a grotesque flying demon. It looked as if a giant, bloated snowball of phlegm had consumed a few stray humans and a bat, with only wings and the odd nest of misshapen limbs protruding from its mass. One of those limbs held a long, barbed whip.

The cultists, and their chanting—they must have either been summoning the demon, or protecting it.

"Why'd you come?" Ennis asked. "Did Father disown you, too?"

"Father's dead, Ennis. I came to find you."

Saric swung upward at the demon's underbelly, but it only flew up beyond his reach and lashed out with a flick of its slender whip, capturing the crusader's arm. It turned with tug that knocked him to the ground and sent his sword skittering away. Zae crept up toward him, praying under her breath.

Keren hacked at one of the demon's wings while its whip was entangled, but it rose out of range. Another of its arms was reaching for something. At first Zae thought it was feeling for damage to its wing, but instead it looked to be extracting a chunk of its own viscous flesh. As Saric struggled to his feet, clutching the whip to keep the demon from pulling it free, a burst of fire caught him in the chest.

There was the sorcerer from before—the one Leodar had evidently not run down. Demonblooded, with wicked, curved horns, and tiny motes of fire that hovered around her like moths. She flung them toward the three knights with flicks of her wrist. Keren dodged the flame, and charged at the spellcaster with a fierce battle cry.

Zae was almost to Saric. His grasp on the whip only served as another tool for the demon, which jerked away so sharply that the man's shoulder wrenched from its socket. He lost his hold and slumped to the foul ground, where Zae was instantly at his side. Before she could do more than lift Saric's visor, however, Ennis let out a shout and dove toward her, knocking the gnome onto the prone man and falling atop them both.

A thick, caustic rain splattered around them. Ennis jerked against Zae's back and screamed, his breath rattling in his chest like nails shaken in a cup. Face inches from the ground, Zae watched the acid carve tiny pits in the rocky terrain. It was doing the same to Ennis's armor, and to Saric—by Brigh's shiny eyeholes, she'd just exposed Saric's face moments before the viscous attack.

Ennis tried to rise and failed, slumping back heavily on top of them. From beneath him, Zae saw Keren approaching, silhouetted against the night, longsword gleaming with the sorcerer's blood. She took a fierce overhead swipe, splitting the demon's belly. A loud squelch—the sound of a stalk of celery stabbing through an overripe tomato—heralded a second deluge. Zae ducked her head, squeezing eyes and lips shut until it passed and all was silent. She couldn't twist around far enough to reach Ennis's skin, or Saric's.

"Ennis...?" she asked.

His weight on her didn't move, and a wave of guilt and nausea flooded her.

Keren's voice answered as Ennis's weight eased away. "Careful what you touch."

Zae rose unsteadily to her knees. The ground around them, everywhere that Ennis's body hadn't shielded, was pocked and still quietly hissing. She was dry, as far as she could tell, but Saric's helm was full of viscous acid. He had choked on it even as it burned through his jaw and throat, and though she had been right there, she hadn't been able to save him—either of them. Not the knight she'd been about to heal, nor the one who, already plague-ridden, had sacrificed himself to shield her... even without knowing what she meant to his sister.

They walked gingerly, Keren carrying her brother's still hissing and popping corpse, to the ruined smithy. There, Carom waited with two horses and Appleslayer. His breaths were shallow, favoring his tender ribs, but he was whole.

Ennis was not so lucky. Keren set him down with care, supporting his shoulder to keep him from leaning his raw back against the stone, then realized that she needn't bother. He was already gone. Keren set her face in a mask of calm to hold the pain away until there was time for it.

It was a somber ride back to the encampment, with Ennis's body draped across Keren's saddle. When they passed the wardstone that marked the border and Zae pulled back her hood, white crystals fell from the folds. On closer inspection, she saw that they were tiny teeth.

∗ ∗ ∗

Keren traced her brother's medallion with her fingertips, lost in thought. Zae came to sit on the tent's carpeted floor beside her, and Apple padded over to rest his chin in her lap.

Keren fished her necklace out of her tunic and set the medallions on the box, side by side.

"Is it killing you that I haven't opened it yet?" It was a pale attempt at teasing, but it heartened Zae that Keren was up to trying.

"You're apprehensive. I can't blame you. But the hardest part is over, isn't it?"

Keren pushed Ennis's medallion toward Zae. It was more weathered than Keren's, but its intricacies were still intact.

"Together?" Keren asked.

They each placed a disc to an impression on the box. There was no sense of anything clicking into place, but the lid opened smoothly at Keren's touch.

A parchment envelope nestled on cream-colored velvet lining. Keren took it and examined both sides, but it was unmarked. She took a deep breath and lifted the unsealed flap.

Zae could see that the thick page bore neat lines of writing, but she couldn't make it out through the back side of the paper. She rubbed Apple's head and waited, watching wetness gather in Keren's eyes.

"It's a peace offering. He accepts that Ennis went his own way, and he's proud of both of us for fighting for what we believe in. Here: ‘There are three of these rings, which I had forged. I will wear mine into eternity, and the others are for you, to mark us as family. You bear a piece of me, and my blessing, always. The people are more important than the cause, Keren. Victory is meaningless without the people for whom we fight, and the people we go home to.'"

Keren caught her sleeve and swiped her wrist across her eyes, then let out a trembling sigh and upended the envelope into the box. "He just wanted me and Ennis to be together again. And at the end, I guess we were."

Two rings tumbled onto the velvet, gleaming and, to Zae's eye, quite finely wrought of gold and platinum. Minutes ticked by, but Keren didn't reach for them.

"What will you do with them?" Zae asked.

Keren looked up. Stubbornly, she still refused to let her tears fall. "He wanted these to mark us as family, but I don't have any family left—except you. Will you wear one?"

Zae arched one thin blue eyebrow. "Are you sure he'd approve of that?"

"He'd want me to be happy, and I'm happy with you. Your cooking is dangerous, and you perform dog surgery in my house, and every moment with you is full of wonder and something new."

Zae stood and wound her arms around Keren. "I'd be honored," she said. "I wish I'd gotten to meet Ennis in health, or your father, or see more of the Worldwound."

Keren laughed weakly. "Sometimes I think your curiosity is a death wish in disguise."

Zae touched her nose to Keren's cheek. "Oh, but it's not just curiosity. It's informed curiosity. I know how big and complicated and dangerous the world is. What fascinates me is all that variety—how the world can be so full of parts that are so complex and weird and beautiful, and interconnected. I'm not fascinated by birds in flight because I think flight is mystical and impossible, I'm fascinated because I understand how it works, and how it works is fascinating. That's the kind of wonder I see in the world. But to your second point?" She grinned. "Yes. Probably."

Keren rolled her eyes. "You'll need me to protect you."

"Definitely. And you'll need me to stitch you up after you protect me. I hear some creatures think I'm a tasty snack. They might be relentless."

"Are you a tasty snack, pixie?" There was a gleam in Keren's eyes.

"Are you relentless?" Zae countered.

Though—or perhaps because—Zae knew that both answers were yes, she was glad to have a long voyage home in which to explore them fully.

Coming Next Week: A sample chapter of Howard Andrew Jones's new novel Stalking the Beast, featuring the return of Elyana and Drelm from Plague of Shadows!

Gabrielle Harbowy is an editor for such SF publishers as Pyr, Seven Realms Publishing, and Dragon Moon Press, as well as co-editor of the When the Hero Comes Home anthology series with Ed Greenwood. Her short fiction has been a finalist for the Parsec award, and has appeared in such anthologies as The Beast Within 2, Metastasis, Cthulhurotica, and more. For more information, visit gabrielle-edits.com.

Illustration by Kelly Perry

Inheritance

by Gabrielle Harbowy

Chapter Three: The Wound of the World

The next town, Bladswell, wasn't so much a town as a ferryboat station that happened to have an inn and some farms attached. Still, the inn had vacancies and Zae appreciated spending a night in privacy, in something resembling a real bed, after days on the trail. They treated themselves to something resembling a real meal and then a real bath, as well.

She gathered her long indigo curls in a towel and wrung her hair from dripping to damp, then carefully dried her ears—specifically, the line of shining bronze rings that pierced each, all the way from lobe to tip. "Wouldn't it be romantic to sleep in the hayloft instead?" she offered.

Keren, lounging on the bed in only a towel, made a face. "It may sound romantic, but trust me, hay is sharp and unyielding in all sorts of romantic-mood-killing ways."

The gnome raised an eyebrow. "And how do you come by this knowledge?"

Keren stretched and gave an exaggerated yawn. "Oh, look how late it's gotten!"

"Right. You won't distract me that easily."

Standing, Keren slowly and deliberately unwrapped her towel.

Zae, it turned out, was distracted that easily.

∗ ∗ ∗

Zae is always up for an adventure.

Keren became increasingly restless as they sailed nearer to the Worldwound. Her anxiety wanted very much to be contagious, but Zae refused to catch it. She sat on the uncomfortable bed with Appleslayer at her feet, and assembled the bits and parts she'd picked up in Chastel. There was something meditative about handling gears and wire. Partly because it was an activity she associated with prayer, but partly because she liked to fix what was broken. She knew the difference between the sentient and the inanimate, of course, but on a more theoretical level, she had always thought that healing a body and fixing a machine were much the same kind of action. Everything ticking along smoothly.

"Like clockwork..." she murmured, and Keren lifted her head.

"Hm?"

"Just thinking aloud," Zae answered. "Welcome back."

While Zae immersed herself in her tinkering, Keren had paced their small cabin, and then the deck, and then the cabin again. The knight refused soothe syrup—travel up the river was safer than travel along its banks, but not by much, and she wanted her wits about her. Zae could respect that, and was grateful for it.

Keren joined her, sprawling beside the dog and trailing her fingers through his snowy fur.

Zae enjoyed conversation while she worked. "You said you joined the crusade because your father wanted you to. Was it what you wanted, too?"

Keren frowned. "There was never any other option. Me and Ennis, we were groomed for it from birth. I got my first set of armor at age five. Not in the white and gold, of course, since I hadn't taken my oaths yet, but Father made the Knights sound like the worthiest goal in the world, and there wasn't anyone around to tell me otherwise. I don't know...I'd probably have been an artisan, and made beautiful things with my hands. Maybe I still will, someday." She sighed and rolled onto her back. "What will your contraption be when it's done?"

Zae cradled one half of a brass sphere carefully between her bare feet while she worked on the other half, occasionally switching off or testing to make sure that they still fit together. "It'll be a divining rod. Well, ball. Divining ball. It'll tell us which way your brother is, if we ask it the right questions. Except when it doesn't, of course. These things are never completely reliable. And I only have so much incense, so we won't be able to consult it too many times...but I thought it might get us started."

Keren studiously rubbed under Apple's chin. "That had to be stupidly expensive."

"It was," Zae said quietly. There was no point denying it. "But worth it. And don't even think of trying to pay me back. I've never gotten to build one of these before, and... well, I've never had a chance to do something so big and totally selfless for someone I care about before, either."

Silence stretched out comfortably for a moment. "Surely you've..." Keren ventured.

"Had lovers, as you know. Even almost married once—a halfling. He stole my heart, but I got it back."

The comfortable silence returned, broken only by the dog's quiet snores and the lapping of water against the hull. When Zae assembled the halves into a sphere and looked up, Keren was asleep.

It always surprised the gnome how soft even the most hardened humans became when their features relaxed. Curled up around Appleslayer as she was, it was easy to see her youth. Humans lived so briefly and so brightly, and felt things so intensely. Zae didn't think she'd ever truly understand what made them tick, but to get to share even a bit of that—not to mention being on the receiving end of those feelings—was a gift she didn't take for granted.

∗ ∗ ∗

Apple got his land legs back sooner than Zae did—perhaps because he had more of them to balance on. For gnome and human, the swaying of the riverboat became the swaying of a moderate gait in the saddle, gradually acclimating them both to solid ground.

Just in time to see it fall away. They drew to a halt just shy of the border of the Worldwound, staring out at the ravaged landscape. Overhead the sky was low and leaden gray, but in the distance it churned an unnatural palette of bile and sweet corn.

"Got your gadget?" Keren asked.

Zae fumbled in her satchel and withdrew the orb. She knew she had polished it to a shine, but the oppressive air seemed to take away all that was bright in the world. From a side pocket, she unwrapped a small purple cone of incense, added a few drops of clear oil to it, and slid it point-first into a perfectly sized hole in the orb. Making sure she was facing the ruined landscape, she closed her eyes to concentrate.

"Masked clockmaker, she who drives our gears, abide with us a time and be the whisper in our bronze. We seek Ennis Rhinn, and we travel overland. Is a path to the east toward weal or woe?"

For a few moments, nothing happened. Then the orb began to vibrate with the muffled whir of gears turning in their casing. After perhaps half a minute, it stopped. "There."

Zae turned the orb, and the smoke that filtered out was white and sweetly scented. "Thank you, Lady Brigh." She smiled up at Keren. "We go east."

∗ ∗ ∗

The first crusaders they met were a pair on patrol, wearing gouged, pitted armor that had seen many adventures. One look at Keren's white and gold told them her origin, and when she lifted a hand in greeting Zae wasn't surprised to see the Lastwall shield on the guardswoman's palm when it rose in response.

"Here to join the ranks?" the guard called. Keren dismounted and approached on foot. Zae remained on Appleslayer. The knights spoke briefly, clasped hands, and Keren returned to her horse.

"We're heading in the right direction," she said, and nudged Eridem onward.

A mile or so along, an outpost was set up at the edge of the Worldwound, only feet from where the ground turned from dirt and rock to foul wasteland. They reined in before the tent with the largest banner.

All the crusaders looked just as worn as their scouts had. Some were in makeshift armor or had chipped weapons. Scars abounded on roughened faces. One boy looked barely to have reached adulthood, but already had a pink gash cutting down over the socket of one milky eye.

"What've we here?" he called out, and the dozen or so others perked up and took notice. "Fresh blood from the south?" One of the other men coughed, and spat something green and phlegmy that wriggled away toward the cursed ground.

"That's right," Keren answered. "Making our way east." Zae could see her studying every face, looking for her brother among them. "We'll lend you our strength if we can share your camp tonight."

One of the older men laughed, a harsh sound like a file rasping across stone. "It's clear you're confident with your sword, lass, but what of your little friend?"

Zae straightened in her saddle. "I can make water for you."

A round of raucous laughter answered her. "Isn't a one of us who can't make water, tiny lass. What need have we of yours?"

Zae's cheeks flushed hot. "That's not what I meant! Holy water, to fight the demons. Purified water, to drink."

The older soldier pointed out toward the ruined land. "Can ye purify that, miss?" He shrugged and returned to sharpening his jagged sword. "Get on with you both. We don't need the faces of the fresh and eager to disrupt our lives or end 'em with your carelessness. Make water on someone else."

Zae exchanged a look with Keren, who shook her head minutely and put gentle heels to Eridem's sides.

They continued along the border, mindful of keeping to healthy ground. "Maybe our good fortune is still to come," Zae said, but Keren gave no response.

The sun was setting, turning the sky from an unnatural green to an unnatural reddish-brown. No lights shone in the Worldwound, but occasionally something cracked or slithered.

"Did you see them?" Keren finally asked as they rode along.

Zae's heart pounded. "What?" She scanned the horizon, but Keren shook her head.

"No. Those soldiers. They were so..."

"Close to death?" Zae supplied.

Keren frowned, but nodded. "I expected things to be shiny and organized here, like they are at Vigil, but it's all so... fractured. Desperate."

Another fortified outpost loomed in the distance. They arrived at it just at nightfall proper, as the last of the natural light gave way to an eerie malevolent glow.

"If they're anything like the last," Keren said as they walked their mounts up toward the cluster of buildings, "I wonder if we'd not be safer keeping to ourselves."

"Safer, perhaps," Zae answered, "but less likely to find Ennis."

"What about Ennis?" one of the sentries called.

Keren froze. It seemed to take her a moment to find her tongue, so Zae answered for her. "Ennis Rhinn. Is he part of your unit?"

The guard, who looked healthier and more whole than anyone Zae had seen at the border thus far, pursed his lips. Behind him, three more ragged soldiers limped into the camp, two supporting the weight of the one between them. "For now. By morning I suspect that'll change." He nodded out toward the scarred land. "Demonplague's got him. He's making his hours count."

"He's my brother." Keren rested her hand on her sword hilt, gaze hard. "Take me to him."

The knight held up his hand, showing his sigil. Keren and Zae both did the same. "Well met, Rhinn." When he signaled two more knights to join them, the gnome saw Keren's posture relax; she'd been tensed for a fight. "Been out into the 'Wound before?"

"Not yet."

"Figured not; your armor's too clean. That'll change quick. You sure you don't want to wait till morning? Riding through the Worldwound is nothing like picking off a few stray ghouls in the Hungry Mountains. And it's busiest at night."

"You just said morning might be too late. I'm ready." Keren looked at Zae, brown eyes aglow. "What do you think: weal or woe, when we find him?"

The guard lowered his visor. "Naught out there but woe. You'll see that for yourself soon enough."

Coming Next Week: Meetings and endings in the final chapter of Gabrielle Harbowy's "Inheritance"!

Gabrielle Harbowy is an editor for such SF publishers as Pyr, Seven Realms Publishing, and Dragon Moon Press, as well as co-editor of the When the Hero Comes Home anthology series with Ed Greenwood. Her short fiction has been a finalist for the Parsec award, and has appeared in such anthologies as The Beast Within 2, Metastasis, Cthulhurotica, and more. For more information, visit gabrielle-edits.com.

Illustration by Kelly Perry

Inheritance

by Gabrielle Harbowy

Chapter Two: Adventure

Zae took care of cleaning Keren's home and procuring supplies for the journey, while Keren trained Appleslayer to be a riding hound. In just a few busy days, bags were packed, and homes and infirmary were closed up. Keren secured permission to ride along with a party of crusaders patrolling the Virlych border. Zae had wanted to strike out on their own and "rough it" through the Hungry Mountains, just the two of them, but Keren had been resolutely against that plan. It was just as exciting, Zae conceded, to be riding with a squadron of five knights. It certainly made her sit up straighter in her borrowed white-and-gold military saddle.

In short order, it became obvious that Appleslayer had been trained to ride with cavalry and showed no fear of horses. A few days of Keren's expert care groomed the big white dog into a pleasant and eager mount. Apple had obeyed her, but his devotion was to the little gnome who had healed him. They rode alongside Keren and her white war steed, Eridem, like a study in forced perspective.

The pace felt easy, but productive. Every few miles, they passed guard sentries in the white-and-gold armor of Ozem or the more mundane livery of the regular Lastwall military. That meant they were still skirting Virlych, where the Whispering Tyrant lay. Each time, the knights nodded to the sentries and exchanged some meaningless pleasantry, and each time the soldiers nodded back.

Appleslayer is a fine steed.

For a time, they kept the Path River between themselves and Virlych. Adian, the knight in the lead, called a halt to water the horses just as it turned west and dwindled to modest tributary, easily crossed on horseback—or dogback.

"So... where are we actually headed?" Zae was glad of a chance to have a rest from the saddle and stretch her legs. "You know where Ennis was going, but that was how long ago? Can you be sure he actually arrived there?"

"He sent messages to me and Father about a year ago—a sort of peace offering, which Father rejected." Keren took a breath as if was about to say more, then shook her head and lapsed into silence.

Zae clicked her bronze lip ring against her teeth. "Mm. Then you know he got to the Worldwound. That's a start."

"Maybe." Keren sounded surprisingly noncommittal.

"Are you afraid that he's dead, too?" Zae asked.

"I've heard tales of the Worldwound. Some of the strongest, bravest crusaders I've known have come back limp and skittish as week-old cats, jumping at their own shadows and dreading the things they see behind their eyelids in the dark. Am I afraid he's dead? No. It'd be a kindness to him if he is."

"Well, soon we'll have those stories," Zae said.

Keren shook her head and sighed. "Is this all so exciting to you? As much as you yearn for the new, I would think you'd have seen the world twice over by now."

Zae narrowed her eyes, peering past the company of knights and off toward Gallowspire. She wondered what the ruins looked like, and how sturdy the locks on the Tyrant's prison really were. "Oh, I certainly hope I never get to the point where I've seen the world twice over. Then there'd be nothing new to see. You know, I've never even been to the Eye of Abendego."

Keren gave her a sidewise glance. "Why would you want to go there?"

Zae shrugged. "To be honest, I'm not even sure what it is. I've just heard people say it and think it's an excellently fun word. Abendego!" Appleslayer perked his ears and barked.

"Good boy," Zae said, but then the bark turned into a whine and a low growl.

Adian and Marisol, a sorceress in white and gold leather, were already mounted again. "The horses sense it, too," Adian said quietly, and all the soldiers drew their weapons. Zae traced a finger around the tooled gear she wore at her throat.

Unfolding from the barren ground were five beige figures—skeletons, Zae realized, their bones the color of the dirt, slumbering at the base of the mountains that led to the Tyrant's tomb.

Keren swung herself up onto Eridem, but Zae remained on foot with the other knights. She drew her hammer from her belt and whispered a prayer to Brigh. Just as a collection of gears with no motor shouldn't run, a skeleton was a collection of bones with no heart or mind. If it did have a mind, Zae thought, it would have the good sense to remain a motionless pile of parts... especially in the presence of six holy crusaders.

A few dirty scraps of cloth and broken weapons were all that signified the people the skeletons might have been in life. They moved as one but with no particular group mind, only individual focus on the same goal. The knights, on the contrary, were skilled at group tactics. With just a few hand signals, they took to a practiced formation, each focusing on a specific enemy.

Zae mostly healed from her shopfront infirmary in town—healing on the front lines was an honor usually reserved for the paladins and battle clerics of Iomedae and other gods—so the knights' fluid battle tactics were a foreign and beautiful dance to her. It made her proud to see Keren a seamless cog in the crusaders' workings, singling out a skeleton with a shouted challenge and lopping half of it away with her first charge. Zae called upon Brigh's holy light, and a wave of energy blasted the skeleton, overpowering the dark force that animated it.

The gnome let out a gleeful shout, and two of the other skeletons altered their approach, turning toward the sound of her voice.

"Oops," she muttered, but Adian and the sorceress were already upon them, and both were slain before they could reach her. Zae shot Adian an apologetic look when he thundered by on his mount, preparing for another pass at one of the remaining foes, but secretly she was disappointed to have lost her chance to strike again. By the time she was in range of Keren's skeletal target, it was legless and almost sad, flailing its arms and fruitlessly clacking its jaw. She brought her holy light down upon it, just to make the noise stop.

A good thing about fighting skeletons, it turned out, was that they made for relatively bloodless battle. Apple paced around Zae, whimpering. At first she thought he had somehow been injured, but when she stopped him and ran her hands over his coat, she realized his tail was wagging expectantly.

"Okay, boy, go ahead."

He darted into the rubble that had been their attackers. The dog shifted bones with his muzzle, finally picking out a relatively whole forearm. He trotted back proudly with it and settled down at Zae's feet to gnaw.

"We're going into Witchgate Forest, but we can part ways at the tree line and you can skirt around, if you'd like," Marisol said. "Don't get too sure of yourselves, though. Only reason we took out five so fast is that we outnumbered them. It'll be a different game when it's only the two of you."

Zae and Keren exchanged a look, and Zae dipped her head in a slight, canted nod. It was Keren's quest, so the choice was hers.

Keren turned her palm up, tracing the Vigilant's shield marked there with her other hand, the way she did when she was of two minds about something. "It's important for me to get to the Worldwound, but I've sworn oaths to protect these lands. Even though I haven't been assigned with this patrol, I want to stay and honor my oath."

Zae's chest swelled with pride. She turned over her own palm, which bore a similar shield. She only had the one mark, proclaiming her an oathbound citizen of Lastwall; Keren and the others had Iomedae's symbol on their other palms, the sunburst sword signifying that they were also sworn defenders.

Witchgate Forest itself was something of a letdown. Zae saw cultists and orcs, skeletons and shambling, oozing things—all of which she and the knights duly put to rest—but no witches and no gates. When she asked if they might detour past one of the infamous gates, the request was soundly denied.

Though it was early morning, the forest was dark and foreboding, with only the occasional shaft of dusty light peering through the branches. "Hangman Trees over there," Adian said, pointing with his drawn longsword. He led the company off the well-groomed path and onto a side path that had initially looked less inviting.

"I suppose you patrol through here enough to know the landmarks," Zae said to Marisol.

"Indeed. We've tried to take the grove out, but they just grow back. Easier to avoid them, now."

"That's why no one wants to divert past a witchgate?" she surmised, and was pleased with herself when Marisol nodded.

"No sense weakening ourselves on the flora when we should be saving our resources for real threats."

It made sense. Zae was grudgingly glad to have experienced guides, even if it meant fewer chances to sightsee. She was still just a bit grumbly about not having seen a witch or a gate, and she resolved to make up for it by cantering toward the first wall she should happen to see in Canterwall.

They made camp in the forest that night, with soldiers standing guard against the shriekings and moanings. It was oddly disappointing to pass out of the forest the next day and into the relative safety of the fertile plains. They would part ways with their escort and ride north through farmland and rolling hills to the Vistear River, while the crusaders continued their patrol along the northern Virlych border.

The knights clasped hands with Keren, one by one, and then, to Zae's surprise, Adian extended his hand to her. She clasped it, shield to shield, and that seemed to please him; the others followed, exchanging handclasps and warm words of parting.

"Nice to see you getting along with my friends so well," Keren teased her as they rode away.

"I don't know... it's a big step for us," Zae said, playing along. "First we get a dog, then I meet your friends... Maybe I'll get to meet your family next?"

Keren laughed, her shoulders visibly releasing tension. "That's the plan."

Gently but more seriously, Zae asked, "So, where do we start? That's a long, creepy border up there."

Keren touched her fingers to her key medallion. "I was thinking of volunteering at the first outpost we come across once we hit the front lines, and then asking around."

Zae didn't realize her lip ring was clicking against her teeth until Keren gave her the stern "stop that" look. "I was just thinking... We've got a ride up a river between now and then, right? How long do you think that'll take?"

Keren shrugged her nearer shoulder. "I don't know. I've never done it. A couple of days? Why?"

Zae rubbed her hands together. "Give me a couple of hours to poke around for supplies in the next town, and I should have something useful for you by the time we disembark."

Keren eyed her warily. "It's not going to be something that explodes, is it?"

Zae straightened in the saddle and responded with a haughty sniff. "Presumptions! Cruel racial presumptions! When have you ever seen anything explode because of me?"

Keren tilted her head in thought. If Zae squinted, she could almost picture Eridem's rhythmic hoofbeats as the ticking of gears turning in Keren's mind.

"Dog guts all over my kitchen?" she ventured.

Zae patted Appleslayer's neck. "Don't listen to her. Your guts never left your body."

"Well, there was that one time when you tried to cook me dinner..."

Zae huffed, trying to hide her grin by lifting her chin and looking away in high dudgeon. "Pfff. Cheater. You know very well that's not the kind of explosion I meant!"

Coming Next Week: Up a river toward demons and death in Chapter Three of Gabrielle Harbowy's "Inheritance"!

Gabrielle Harbowy is an editor for such SF publishers as Pyr, Seven Realms Publishing, and Dragon Moon Press, as well as co-editor of the When the Hero Comes Home anthology series with Ed Greenwood. Her short fiction has been a finalist for the Parsec award, and has appeared in such anthologies as The Beast Within 2, Metastasis, Cthulhurotica, and more. For more information, visit gabrielle-edits.com.

Illustration by Kelly Perry

Inheritance

by Gabrielle Harbowy

Chapter One: Unexpected Arrivals

Keren Rhinn, Knight of Ozem and Vigilant Defender of Lastwall, stood sputtering in the doorway, her face turning fascinating shades of crimson.

"Hello, darling!" Zae looked up from her work to greet her favorite human with a smile. "Long day?"

Keren had many talents, but the one that impressed Zae most was her unnatural sense of timing. Without fail, Keren always seemed to be able to walk in on a situation at the precise moment that would confound, annoy, or disarm her the most.

Case in point: there was a perfectly good explanation for the bloody, unconscious dog currently staining the floorboards of Keren's kitchen. If the crusader had looked beyond her initial confusion and anger, she would no doubt have seen Zae's surgical kit by her side and the needle and suturing thread in the gnome's nimble hands. But humans were quick to emote, and even quicker to jump to conclusions. It was one of the things Zae loved about them, and about this one in particular.

Since Keren seemed lost for words, Zae took it upon herself to fill in the conversational gap while she resumed her work. "He followed me home," she said. "Can I keep him?"

The hardened warrior made a strangled little sound. That particular set to her jaw meant she was reciting her oath to herself. Zae clicked her shiny bronze lip-ring quietly against her lower teeth and savored the countdown in her head. 3...2...1...

"You're lucky you're oathbound, pixie," Keren said, right on cue. The oaths sworn by all who wished to be citizens of Lastwall included a vow not to harm other oathbound residents. But Zae wasn't afraid of real violence, even though Keren was significantly larger than her own three-foot-three, and carried a sword that weighed more than Zae did. The use of the pet name told Zae that she was already forgiven, even if only on some deep subconscious level. Before Zae had taken the oaths to Vigil and Lastwall, it had been, "You're lucky you're cute."

She had it on assurance that her oath had not robbed her of cuteness, so the update to Keren's ultimatum didn't bother her in the slightest, especially when she accompanied it with some playful epithet. When Keren was truly angry, she was cold and silent, and her hand twitched for the weight of her sword hilt.

Keren fears no blade or magic, but family is a different story.

Zae thanked her by not squealing in delight at Keren's predictability. For some reason, big, tough warriors didn't like being giggled at. Even ones who thought you were cute.

Keren came to kneel by Zae's side, stroking gentle fingers through the healer's indigo curls. She observed a moment, then rose and stepped past the gnome to swing the kettle over the fire, as if resigned to the fact that dog surgery in her kitchen wasn't the strangest thing she was likely to encounter this week.

In fairness, it probably wasn't.

"Seriously." Zae knotted off the thread and snipped it carefully. "I want to keep him. He's obviously lost his person in battle, and we've got good rapport. Just look at him."

"He's unconscious," Keren pointed out.

Zae grinned. "But he wasn't unconscious when I brought him here. He was wounded and scared, and he still nuzzled my hand and followed me home. It's not like I'd have been able to carry him."

Keren poured boiled water into a bowl and brought it to Zae's side, along with some clean cloths. Zae poured in a packet of herbs, and together they washed the blood from Zae's instruments. And, when the water had cooled a bit, from the patient.

"Maybe he thought you were a snack. He's a big one."

Zae laughed. "I'm not very tasty."

Keren raised an eyebrow, glancing at her sidelong.

"All right, then: I'm not very filling. Is that more accurate?"

Under the dirt and blood, the dog's coat was a gorgeous white, and he had a cute black nose. Zae had guessed that he was a cold-weather sled dog from the shape of his ears and muzzle, his barrel chest and sturdy legs, but now she was certain of it. And a gorgeous one, at that.

"So," Keren said. "He was wounded on the front, and you brought him here because it's closer than your infirmary—or your own kitchen?"

"Am I so predictable? I'll have to try harder. Oh! And I was hoping you'd help me train him as a mount, once he's well."

"And you also promise you'll clean my floor?"

Zae grinned. She had won. "Every drop."

∗ ∗ ∗

Zae typically woke before Keren and took the small hours of the morning for her meditation and prayer. Brigh had no temples in the city of Vigil, but Zae always kept a traveling shrine with her. Polishing her treasured brass gears kept her hands busy and her mind free. She had crafted a special gear with a feminine mask engraved on its face, and she wore this on a leather string around her neck, using it to keep her morning worship on track. She ticked her thumb down the teeth one at a time as she prepared her spells for the day.

Warm breath washed across her cheek, followed by a very large, very wet nose, and something hard and wet landed in her lap. She opened her eyes into the dog's pale blue gaze. Something in there shone with intelligence, but before she had time to contemplate it, he dipped his muzzle to indicate the gift he'd just brought her.

Atop her gears and polishing cloths sat a very well-chewed apple, most of its red skin nearly gone, with a tooth pattern that suggested gnawing rather than eating.

Zae ruffled his rounded ears and scratched under his jaw with both her hands. "Good boy! Thank you!" His tail started to wag at that. She suspected the apple was thanks for healing him, and the gesture touched her. Presents stolen from your host's kitchen were still presents, after all. It was the intent that mattered.

She cleaned sweet juice from her gears and folded them back into their pouch. It wasn't just the one apple, she noticed as she rose—the entire basket of apples from the kitchen table had been systematically destroyed, all over the floor she had just cleaned to spotlessness the night before.

"You fierce apple-slayer," she praised the dog, giving his ears another rub. "You'd better help me clean this up, or Keren won't be pleased with us."

As if the improbability of the situation had summoned her, there was the crusader, rising from bed and padding barefooted toward the commotion. She halted at the door, but for once, her words were quiet and unexpected.

"When did this come?"

Zae turned to see beautifully disheveled brown hair, a jade silk robe hanging askew to frame the lime-sized metal medallion she always wore around her neck, and an ornately carved wooden box cradled in Keren's strong hands. The crusader's face was unusually ashen.

She hadn't even noticed the apples. Zae wasn't sure whether to be relieved or concerned. She supposed that rushing to clean them up would only draw attention to them, so she left the dog to finish off his prey and approached Keren instead, pulling out a chair for her.

"Oh! Right. It came yesterday, in the middle of dog surgery. A messenger brought it. I put it aside where it wouldn't get bled on, and then I must have forgotten all about it. Is it important?"

Keren sank into the chair, letting her hands ease onto the table, the box still between them. "It means my father is dead." She exhaled a slow, shuddering breath, staring at the box as if it was a nightmare made solid. "Do we have anything stronger than ale?"

Knowing Keren's high tolerance for drink, Zae took the liberty of choosing a supplement from her healer's kit instead of the pantry. Soothe syrup was a bit cloying on its own, but it added a pleasant flavor to strong tea. "Your father? You've never spoken of him." She rolled a light coating of syrup around the inside of an earthenware mug, then filled it with the tea she'd already brewed with her breakfast.

"He retired from the front, and was teaching up at the War College. I joined the Knights of Ozem in his footsteps, but Vigil is all we have in common now. We haven't spoken in a while."

Zae set the tea in front of Keren and climbed up into the chair beside her. The dog sprawled on the floor under the table, gnawing on a stray shoe and soaking up comfort from their proximity.

Keren turned the box toward Zae and cupped her hands around the tea, clinging to it and bringing the mug to her face to inhale the steam. Like Keren's medallion, the box was carved with painstakingly detailed castles and clouds and rolling waves. The seam of its lid disappeared into the carvings, and its hinges looked to be internal. On one side, two round concave impressions stared side by side like abstract eyes.

"It's beautiful," Zae said, because she felt she ought to say something. Loss didn't visit the knight's face often, and it looked interesting on her. While Zae supposed she shouldn't just watch the mesmerizing sight of Keren, half dressed and drinking her tea, she wasn't sure how to address that sentiment. Most of what she knew about human family structures had been gleaned from her patients. Which was to say, she knew that family was where you got your corpse sent when you died.

Keren tugged the medallion on its leather thong around her throat. It was etched with the same sorts of carvings, giving it an abstract quality unless one examined it closely, as Zae often had. But she had always assumed it to be a religious thing, like her own gear pendant, and never thought to ask about its purpose. "This fits in one of the locks. Ennis has the other key. If we force it, we destroy the contents."

Zae darted her hands innocently back to her lap. "Ennis?"

"My brother." Keren released the medallion and returned her attention to her tea. With half the brew gone, she already seemed to have shed her anxious edge. Now she was merely subdued. "He's up at the Worldwound. Or was. Iomedae keeps her own counsel where he's concerned—he could be demon food and fertilizer twice over by now, for all I know."

Zae sat silently for a few moments, integrating this new information into her mental portrait of Keren. "Do you know what's in the box?"

"No idea. He said it was our inheritance, but that's all he said, and that was years ago. Before Ennis left for the Worldwound and split the family apart."

Zae frowned, puzzled. "But aren't a lot of the Worldwound crusaders from here?"

Keren made a dismissive noise into her mug, then set it down, empty. She sighed. "Fine for other families, but not for mine. My father disowned Ennis—he raised us here, to fight this fight. He said our purpose was to defend Lastwall against the return of the Whispering Tyrant. Ennis said his purpose was to defend against the greatest threat, wherever it might be." She nudged the box, picked it up, and shook it gently. Nothing rattled. "I was finished with my father, for being finished with Ennis. Father put cause before kin. I say you have no cause when you forget the people you're fighting for. But there's no reasoning with my father."

Zae rested her hand on Keren's back, feeling the shift of powerful muscle and the faint shudder of emotion. "And now you have his inheritance, all the same. Do you still want it?"

Keren slumped forward, sighing, until her forehead rested on the wood with a faint thud. She lifted it an inch and thudded it down again.

Zae gently sifted her fingers through Keren's hair."We're going to the Worldwound, aren't we?"

Keren turned to look at Zae, amber eyes calm from the tea. "We?" She leaned sideways until her cheek rested on Zae's shoulder.

Zae brushed unruly brown hair aside and kissed her head. "Of course I'm coming with you. Me and Appleslayer both."

"Oh, pixie. You don't have to come."

"It'll be an adventure," Zae said. Under the table, the dog's tail wagged an eager beat against the floor.

Coming Next Week: A ride north for the Worldwound in Chapter Two of Gabrielle Harbowy's "Inheritance"!

Gabrielle Harbowy is an editor for such SF publishers as Pyr, Seven Realms Publishing, and Dragon Moon Press, as well as co-editor of the When the Hero Comes Home anthology series with Ed Greenwood. Her short fiction has been a finalist for the Parsec award, and has appeared in such anthologies as The Beast Within 2, Metastasis, Cthulhurotica, and more. For more information, visit gabrielle-edits.com.

Illustration by Kelly Perry

The Fencing Master

by Dave Gross

Chapter Four: The Second Trap

As Vencarlo Orisini led Orkatto's men on a noisy chase, I strolled out the front doors with my "bodyguard." In the darkened museum, and without his mask and cloak, which I carried folded under my arm, Master Raneiro did somewhat resemble the younger man who had accompanied me into the museum. I placed my hope in the bravo's topknot and the noisy diversion behind us.

The guards at the doors bowed the moment they saw me, sparing the man at my side not so much as a glance.

Raneiro faltered, drawing the guards' attention as his foot dragged across the gravel. I took him by the arm and stage whispered, "You need only taste my wine, you fool, not guzzle it!"

A chuckle from the guards assured me of the ploy's success.

My footman held the door open, and to his credit he did not so much as raise an eyebrow as I helped my "bodyguard" into the carriage before joining him. I rapped upon the roof, and the driver slapped the reins.

"If they seize Vencarlo..." Raneiro wheezed. The paralysis was taking hold. I knew its effects all too well.

And I knew there was no cure.

"I will intercede on his behalf," I said, knowing it was an empty promise. His pursuers had no intention of taking Blackjack or any imposter alive.

I opened the rear portal and peered back at the museum entrance. His exhausted men at his side, an exasperated Orkatto questioned the door guards, who pointed in our direction. The cowled figure who had poisoned Raneiro emerged to stand by his side.

"Turn here," I told the driver.

"Let me out," said Raneiro.

"No, my men will take you somewhere quiet." I drew his cloak around my shoulders and unfolded his black mask. Looking down at its limp form in my hands, I felt as though I were looking at the face of a corpse. I pulled it across my face and raised the cloak's hood up to conceal my half-human ears. "I will draw them off."

I stepped out of the carriage door to stand upon the running board. After I gave my servants their instructions, Raneiro called my name. With the last of his strength, he lifted his rapier toward me.

I still had Vencarlo Orsini's blade at my side. "No, Master Raneiro. I am not worthy of such an—"

"Of course you aren't," he rasped. "Give it to the boy."

Blackjack is more than a single man. He’s an idea.

Our gazes locked for a long instant. I took the blade and leaped from the carriage.

With a quick calculation of where our pursuers would appear, I dashed toward a lighted intersection. Knowing precisely where the Korvosan Guard was stationed throughout the city, I plotted an escape route while waiting for Orkatto's men to arrive. They found me moments later, standing in silhouette before a street lamp.

Mimicking Vencarlo's disguised voice as best I could, I cried out, "Did you fools truly think you could capture Blackjack, the people's hero?"

"Kill him!" screeched Orkatto.

His hired guards ran toward me, but his assassin lingered at his side, staring at me. I spared only an instant before fleeing, but I noticed that cowled figure running to the side, in the direction I'd chosen for my true escape.

My diversion was proving more difficult to execute than to plan.

I fled as fleetly as I could, revealing myself only when I had extended my lead by another ten or twenty yards. Twice I failed to put myself in front of a revealing streetlight and resorted to Vencarlo's bombastic taunts. "Over here, you fools!"

The expression on their faces delighted me, even as the fear of discovery sent a cold thrill through my veins.

A hippogriff's scream alerted me to the threat I had forgotten. Captain Ornelos and his Sable Company still patrolled the skies, and one of them must have heard the alarum from Orkatto's men. A winged shadow crossed the street before me.

Standing on the other side was the cowled assassin who had slain Raneiro.

The killer moved toward me with uncanny grace, the chain-dart swinging in an accelerating circle.

Debating between defense and flight, I hesitated only long enough to catch a distinctive perfume.

"You jump at shadows, buffoons!" Vencarlo's adopted Blackjack voice—already becoming more natural with practice—boomed down from a rooftop. "Look for me in the clouds!"

With a laugh, he ran across the roof and vaulted over the peak. Moments later, a hippogriff wheeled above us and flew after him.

The assassin hesitated, glancing between me and the other Blackjack. Turning, the killer abandoned me to chase Vencarlo.

Undeterred, Orkatto's guards ran after me. They were, as Blackjack named them, fools and buffoons. It was child's play to mislead them into dead-end alleys and taunt them from two streets away.

I worried more for Vencarlo, whose pursuers were far cleverer and more deadly. A few times I dared reveal myself in hopes of drawing them off, but they knew me for an imposter. They chased the true Blackjack, while I slunk back to my lodgings to prepare my lies for the morrow.

∗ ∗ ∗

Two days later, we buried Master Raneiro beneath one of the Arcadian oaks I had delivered to Queen Domina. By quiet agreement, his students spread word across the city that the celebrated fencing master had finally succumbed to his affection for the grape. Over six dozen of his former pupils came to pay their respects. Vencarlo stood among the youngest, while I stood beside my aged cohorts.

My former bodyguard and I did not speak at the funeral, but our eyes arranged a meeting. After the final words were uttered, my agent announced that Raneiro had bequeathed the last of his wine to his students on the condition that they drink it all in his favorite wine houses before the following dawn.

By previous arrangement, Vencarlo and I met at a little wine house in Old Korvosa, the one not mentioned to the other students.

We drained the first goblet and filled the second before speaking.

"Captain Ornelos questioned me at length yesterday," I said. "I told him you stood guard at my lodgings all night after we withdrew from the museum. Eventually, he believed me."

"I hear he looks quite dashing with his new eyepatch."

"He will not forgive you that injury."

Vencarlo lifted his hands and shrugged. "It was difficult enough eluding the Korvosan Guard. I could be only so gentle when your friend joined me on the rooftops. You'll note that I left him the other eye when I could have taken both. I could have as easily slain him."

"It is better that you did not." For the most part, I believed that to be true, but I feared one day the captain would have his revenge, and the legend of Blackjack would come to an end. "Have you done what you promised?"

"I've made peace with my father. I'll return to study at the Orisini Academy." His eyes narrowed. "Have you done as you promised?"

"In gratitude for my recent gifts, Her Majesty cleared the way for me to purchase the remaining properties Gaspare Orkatto sought. The residents of South Shore will not be driven from their homes."

"Good."

"I am more concerned about your keeping your other promise. I am informed the Lady Seraphina was the victim of another burglary last night."

Vencarlo frowned. "Not ‘another.' She had never been robbed before. She only pretended so to draw suspicion from herself, while all along she conspired with Orkatto to murder Blackjack and remove the last protection of the people of South Shore."

"The rumors say there was a fire in her father's estate. Was that truly necessary?"

"I found the flowers you described, and the poisonous weeds that grew upon them. Yes, I think the fire was necessary."

I could not fault his action, no matter how much it rankled me to know a commoner had committed burglary and arson in the home of a peer. Considering the circumstances, I remained more inclined to caution than to chastise him. "She saw through my disguise, and doubtless through yours as well. You have a dangerous enemy in that one."

"More dangerous than lord Orkatto or Captain Ornelos?"

"Far more, I suspect. She cannot inform Ornelos or the Korvosan Guard of your robbery without exposing her own dual nature, but she will not hesitate to use them against you. What was it you said? ‘A beautiful woman commands all men.'"

"Not this one," he said with bitterness. "Not anymore. Anyway, did you know that just one of her rubies will feed ten families for a year?"

"I will pretend I did not hear that."

Vencarlo smiled and drank and stared through the wall, savoring his first act as the local hero.

I placed Raneiro's sword upon the table. "He wanted you to have this, along with the rest."

Vencarlo restrained his proud smile, but only barely. "It took two of us to imitate him," he said. "Perhaps we could—"

"No. I am a lord of Cheliax. It is my duty to uphold the law."

"Even when the law is unjust?"

"It is my duty," I said. "Not always my preference."

Vencarlo leaned across the table. "After what we did, you are as much an outlaw as Blackjack. We both are. Let's both take up his mask, you from the tower, I from the street. We could—"

"No," I said. "Tomorrow I return to Egorian. I will keep your secret. I can do no more than that. When next you run afoul of Captain Ornelos, Lord Orkatto, or—Desna spare you—Lady Seraphina, you cannot turn to me for help."

A sneer flickered across Vencarlo's fierce smile, and then both faded into a grim line. "You high-born lords can never understand what it is for the common folk to live under your cruel caprice."

"You are correct," I said, knowing he was utterly wrong but unwilling to explain why. Just as the common are subject to the noble, so are the noble subject to the royal, and the royal to the infernal. "But as you have seen, one man can avert that caprice. If only for a while, and only for a few."

Vencarlo refilled our goblets and raised his in a toast. "To Master Raneiro."

I held my cup to his. "To Blackjack."

Coming Next Week: A sample chapter from Dave Gross's King of Chaos, plus a brand new artistic envisioning of Radovan!

Dave Gross's adventures of Count Jeggare (often also featuring his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan) include the Pathfinder Tales novels Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, Queen of Thorns, and King of Chaos; the novellas "Husks" and "Hell's Pawns"; and the short stories "A Lesson in Taxonomy," "A Passage to Absalom," "Killing Time," and "The Lost Pathfinder," all available at paizo.com/pathfindertales. He also co-wrote the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham, and has written novels for the Forgotten Realms and Iron Kingdoms, as well as short stories for such anthologies as Tales of the Far West and Shotguns v. Cthulhu. Dave is the former editor of magazines ranging from Dragon to Star Wars Insider to Amazing Stories, and was a writer for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. For more information, visit bydavegross.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

The Fencing Master

by Dave Gross

Chapter Three: The Second Duel

Vencarlo Orisini tried to draw his rapier, but I lunged forward to strike the pommel and thrust it back into its scabbard. "Stop this nonsense at once!"

Vencarlo retreated, turning to free his blade. I stepped behind him, pulling the scabbard and sword out of his grasp.

"Orkatto, see Lady Seraphina safely away."

"I'll go with them," Cucuteni said, all too eager to escape the quarrel erupting between me and my bodyguard. That was just as well. I desired no witnesses to my chastising my servant.

"I won't let you take Blackjack," snapped Vencarlo. Once more he danced away, trying to draw his blade. Once more I danced after him, thrusting my arm through the crook of his elbow to prevent him from reaching the blade.

"Calm yourself," I told him. "The trap is already sprung. Even now, the Korvosan guard are surrounding the thief."

"He's a hero! You would know that if you ever stepped out of that Red Carriage and walked among the people." Vencarlo feinted right before twisting left. With my hand upon his arm, I felt his muscles tense. Anticipating his movement, I circled him, lifting his sword arm as if to allow him a turn. Instead, I drew his sword from its scabbard.

I stepped back, smiling as I showed that I had taken his blade with my left hand. He smiled back at me, tossing my own rapier from his left hand to his right. He saluted me with my own blade.

"Whichever of us survives this night must thank Master Raneiro for that trick."

"Beware, Vencarlo. I have learned many others since leaving the master's tutelage," I said. "And you have only just begun learning from him."

"Blackjack!" Surprising me, Vencarlo ran toward the east wing of the museum. "They have set a trap for you!"

"Stop this at once!" I ran after him.

The museum curator, my cousin, had ordered only the foyer fully lighted for the evening's reception of Queen Domina and Prince Eodred. In the east wing, only a few perpetual flame spells illuminated the sign reading "Local Legends," and I spied similarly muted lights throughout the gloomy halls. I had not yet visited the latest exhibit upon this visit to Korvosa. With luck, neither had Vencarlo, so we would be equally disadvantaged in the darkness.

Chasing after my disobedient servant, I stopped short as a hideous beast rose up before me. At my approach, an auditory spell unleashed a horrible whinny as a pair of enormous wings flapped at my approach. After a moment's uncertainty, I recognized it as the Sandpoint Devil.

Some disreputable "naturalist" had stitched together this patchwork falsity from the preserved corpses of a stallion, a crocodile, and a dire bat. Later I would have to speak to my cousin about this penchant for the tawdry and sensational.

Movement drew my eye past another exhibit, this one featuring a gruesome waxwork of a local murderess. From the angle, I could not make out what was written on the magically illuminated placard beneath the diorama. I leaped the low picket fence surrounding the murder house. "Vencarlo, come back here! I cannot ensure your safety if you interfere with the guards."

The bravo's laugh echoed through the darkened exhibits. I followed the sound, uncertain of its origin. Rounding a tableau of a lone elven archer fighting a goblin tribe, I found myself facing a masked man. The blade of his rapier glimmered in the dim enchanted light.

Without a thought, my body assumed the guard position. "Surrender yourself," I said. "Upon my word as a count of Cheliax, you will face justice for your crimes."

My foe stood silent and still. From the far end of the eastern wing came a shout and a flurry of footsteps.

A moment of doubt caused me to hesitate, but then I beat the man's blade with my own. It turned aside, and with it the waxwork imposter before me. Glancing around, I saw no witness to my folly—a small consolation.

I snatched up the brazier of perpetual flames beneath the placard and held them closer to the wax figure. It was indeed a depiction of the notorious thief, cloaked and cowled in black, a mask concealing his lower face. But at its feet the placard read "Blackjack, Hero of South Shore." The rest of the tableau showed the figure standing before a woman and child in rags, defending them from a pair of Sczarni cutthroats at the command of a sneering landlord holding a fat purse.

A rope creaked above me. I held the flames high to see another figure of the rogue swinging across the blackened gunwales of a sailing ship with a frightened cabin boy under one arm. This one lacked the mask of the first, and beneath him a wide-brimmed hat lay on the ground. A sign hanging beside the figure read, "Savior of the Lady Luck."

Another exhibit depicted a grizzled Blackjack leaping from the back of one tentacled hulk to plunge his sword through the maw of another. I knew of the incident in which the creatures sometimes referred to as "sewer hulks" rampaged through the city. It had occurred nearly thirty years earlier. The legend read, "Hero of Old Korvosa."

"Vencarlo, wait!" As much as I wanted to prevent him from interfering with my trap, I now also wanted an explanation. How could a man so reviled by my peers be presented by my own cousin as a hero in a museum? I needed to know more before I could—

"He's here!" cried a man from the far end of the hall. The silhouettes of four men ran into the room, toward me.

On a catwalk above us, a cloaked figure laughed back at them. "You fools will never catch me!" cried a voice I recognized despite his attempts to deepen it. "You will never catch Blackjack!"

The voice belonged Vencarlo Orisini. The evidence of his deception hung above me in the form of the unmasked waxwork, whose disguise he had obviously stolen. Yet in the darkness his disguise was more than enough to draw off the guards.

Holding the perpetual flames above my head, I called out to the guards. "It's a trick. He's leading you away from the real Blackjack."

Even as I said the words, I debated with myself whether to reveal Vencarlo's ruse. The guards arrived before I had time to decide.

They were not Korvosan guards. I did not recognize their uniforms, and their coarse expressions and unshaven cheeks suggested hired rather than sworn men. They held the points of their blades toward me as they approached.

"What is the meaning—?"

"Stand down, men. That is Count Jeggare, an ally." Gaspare Orkatto pushed past them, face glistening with sweat. "Did you see him, Your Excellency?"

"Who are these men, Gaspare? I instructed you to use the city guard."

"You did, of course you did," he said, once more waving his fingers beside his cheek in that nervous gesture of his. "But I thought it better to enlist my own men. If Blackjack is as clever as they say, he might notice if some of the Korvosan guard were off the streets tonight."

"I also asked you to look after Lady Seraphina."

"Oh, she is quite safe. I saw her and Lord Cucuteni out of the museum before joining the pursuit. Did you see him? Did he come this way?"

"It wasn't—" Another motion caught my eye, this one behind Orkatto and his men. A graceful figure moved between a pair of Shoanti shaman waxworks, discernible only in the moment when it passed between me and one of the perpetual flames spells. I pointed back toward the foyer. "He went that way!"

With a curse, Vencarlo ran across the catwalk, leading Orkatto and his guards out of the east wing. As they departed, I moved in the opposite direction, toward the silent intruder.

"Show yourself, Blackjack." I lowered the point of my blade and peered into the darkness where I knew he must be hiding. My half-elven vision revealed nothing more than the flickering shadows.

I felt the prick of his rapier's tip against my back. By enchantment or uncanny knack, he moved as swift and silent as a ghost. The moment he spoke, I recognized the liquid tones of his voice. "You have been ill used, Your Excellency."

I turned, confident he would not strike me from behind. "So it would appear, Master Raneiro."

Raneiro is a master of the blade—and so much more.

The masked figure nodded. Now that I had heard his voice, I recognized the line of his chin, the faint stubble upon his skin. He motioned in the direction the hired men had gone. "You have noticed there are no Korvosan guards within the museum?"

"Of course, but too late to understand Orkatto's intention."

"He means to kill me, not to bring me before a magistrate."

"Why?"

"Have you not already deduced his reason? What do you think I do with the jewelry I liberate from the parasites on this city?"

I thought of the tableaux surrounding us, and of Orkatto's recent travails. "The tenants of South Shore. You have been paying their rent."

"Very good," said Raneiro. "But as you said, too late."

"They are chasing after Vencarlo. You must leave before they discover the ruse."

"Without the jewels?" Raneiro chuckled. "I think you underestimate our local hero."

"Does Vencarlo know?"

Raneiro shrugged. "He suspects. He is cleverer than he sometimes appears, and twice as skilled with the blade. One day he will take over his father's academy, once he learns to guard his tongue in political matters."

"And your mask? Will he take that as well?"

"Perhaps one day. Blackjack is more than a man. He is a legend that must never die."

"I will not help you steal the jewels. But if you leave them, I will do everything in my power to ensure your safe escape—and Vencarlo's."

"How generous," Raneiro said, his tone just short of sarcasm. Once more the tip of his blade pricked me, this time above the heart. "But I must decline your charity. Blackjack does not beg for scraps. He recovers what the lords of Korvosa have stolen from the people."

With a quick retreat, I raised my guard just in time to parry his thrust—or so I thought. Raneiro bent his blade as its tip found its intended target, a brass button upon my breast. Had he intended it, he would have driven his blade through my heart.

From the far reaches of the museum, alarums rose and subsided into the clamor of a chase. Above the shouts of Orkatto's men rose a mocking laugh.

"His laugh is quite good," said Raneiro. "Don't you agree?"

"I cannot allow you steal the jewels," I repeated. "But I promise to safeguard your identity."

"You make the same mistake as the local lords, my old friend," said Raneiro. "It is no longer for you to ‘allow.' The people of Korvosa will gladly toil for their bread, but they will not abandon their homes to feed the avarice of men like Orkatto."

My blade licked out twice, a feint and an adder's strike upon his arm—a Taldan attack, one I hoped Raneiro had never seen. He parried it without effort, and his riposte sent me into a retreating Elliendo defense.

He smiled to see me pressed.

My retreating heel struck the base of another exhibit. I froze as the claw of a stuffed owl-beast appeared beside my head. For an instant I thought of the cliffs of Lepidstadt and the stand I had made against my fellow students one drunken night. But then I had not faced a master of the blade.

I could not continue to defend myself in such a tight spot. Turning my latest parry into a bind, I dipped beneath the preserved beast's arm and rolled across the open aisle. As I came up to one knee, I saw by his silhouette that Raneiro had anticipated my move. His blade was fixed upon my eye, his rear leg poised to lunge, his mouth a grim line of regret and determination.

A metallic hiss preceded a dull impact. Raneiro straightened, the point of his sword dipping. His free hand moved with aching slowness to feel his back. He coughed out a single syllable, "Ah."

A lithe figure crouched behind him. A chain dangled from one leather-clad hand, a dripping dart swinging pendulously below. Shrouded eyes caught mine from beneath a deep cowl, but only for an instant before the assassin dashed into the shadows.

I moved to pursue, but then Raneiro dropped his blade and fell to one knee. I went to him and felt the wound. Tasting a familiar poison in his blood, I knew his fate.

"Master, let me get you out of here."

At the tone of my voice, he too knew his fate. "Yes," he said, his voice already weakening. "Find me a quiet place to die."

Coming Next Week: Blades between friends in the final chapter of "The Fencing Master" by Dave Gross!

Dave Gross's adventures of Count Jeggare (often also featuring his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan) include the Pathfinder Tales novels Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, Queen of Thorns, and King of Chaos; the novellas "Husks" and "Hell's Pawns"; and the short stories "A Lesson in Taxonomy," "A Passage to Absalom," "Killing Time," and "The Lost Pathfinder," all available at paizo.com/pathfindertales. He also co-wrote the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham, and has written novels for the Forgotten Realms and Iron Kingdoms, as well as short stories for such anthologies as Tales of the Far West and Shotguns v. Cthulhu. Dave is the former editor of magazines ranging from Dragon to Star Wars Insider to Amazing Stories, and was a writer for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. For more information, visit bydavegross.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

The Fencing Master

by Dave Gross

Chapter Two: The First Trap

"We are most grateful, Count Jeggare." In the reflected light of the glass cases, Queen Domina smiled down at me from the dais. Its position in the grand foyer leant her the aspect of an ancient caryatid guarding a collection of rare Azlanti jewels. "The first of the saplings you have brought us shall be planted here, outside the Jeggare Museum."

A Chelaxian by birth and breeding, Domina had come to Korvosa to rule. Her earliest proclamations had halved both the city's bureaucracy and its coffers. As part of her civic improvement efforts, she had reversed the ban on trees planted within the city walls—the result of a predecessor's shortsighted reaction to the destruction wrought by windstorms over a century earlier.

Beside Domina stood her adult son, Eodred. He had made some effort to pay attention to the honor Her Majesty bestowed upon me, but his gaze kept slipping back to our audience, particularly the young women.

For that I could hardly fault him. To garnish their beauty, the ladies of Korvosa had adorned themselves with exotic flowers instead of gems and gold. Among them, only the queen wore jewels. I inferred from her curious glances that she had not expected the change in fashion.

The queen offered a few more words of gratitude for my gift of two hundred saplings and a thousand seeds obtained from lands as distant as the Mwangi Expanse, Vudra, and Arcadia. Her duty discharged, Domina took her son's arm and departed, accompanied by the royal guard.

The Korvosan nobles rose in her wake, casting discreet glances at each other and at me. In the queen's absence, I became the center of attention.

Across the room, Fedele Ornelos caught my eye. He cut a splendid figure in his dress armor, black and red leather trimmed in silver. With a conspirator's wink, he drifted away from the crowd to join the soldiers who waited with their hippogriffs outside the museum. There they would take flight in the most conspicuous manner possible.

Restraining a smile at my knowledge of his mission, I turned to see Vencarlo Orisini fixing an inquisitive gaze upon me. He stood against the wall, where the other servants strove to make themselves invisible while awaiting a signal from their masters. Vencarlo had noticed my wordless exchange with the Sable Company captain.

Like a younger Fedele Ornelos, Vencarlo also appeared dashing in his new attire, acquired after our duel that morning. He took a step forward, but I shook my head. It was not his place to address me among my peers. He frowned in disappointment and began to step back when a woman crossed the floor between us.

Seraphina is difficult to impress

At rest, Seraphina Leroung was not the most beautiful woman in Korvosa, but in motion she was the epitome of grace. Men had fallen in love after seeing her walk only a few steps, and the current flattery was that none dare watch her dance for fear that they would take their own lives afterward in despair.

She wore a garland of panther lilies around her neck, with a bloom secured behind one delicate ear. The dusky flowers were subtler than those worn by the other ladies, but they were by far the rarest.

One flaw marred Seraphina's face: a neat scar directly beneath her left eye. Rumor abounded as to the cause of the injury, but I suspected it was a fencing scar.

Seraphina smiled at me. If I went to her, the eye of the city would follow—and perhaps that was her purpose, to supplant me as the object of attention. I preferred she come to me.

Before either of us yielded to the other, Vencarlo leaped forward and performed a sweeping bow before Seraphina. He reached for her right hand, but she withdrew it. He spoke quickly, and her lips parted in surprise. Whatever he said caused her to reconsider. She allowed him to kiss her left hand.

Furious, I moved toward him, prepared to discharge him on the spot, but another guest intercepted me.

"My most estimable Count Jeggare!"

Gaspare Orkatto approached with a nervous wave of his fingers beside his cheek. Lowering his voice, he concluded his conversation with the man at his side, oblivious to the fact that my half-elven hearing perceived every word.

"So you can see my concern. No matter how often I increase the rent, they somehow manage to pay. It can only be with the help of that scoundrel!"

Orkatto was a minor lord, one of the newly elevated merchants who had made himself valuable to the crown by dint of his ability to create wealth. Of late he used that wealth to acquire properties all over the city, with no discrimination as to the quality of the district. When last we had met, he tested my patience with complaints about the municipal red tape preventing him from buying whole neighborhoods in South Shore. So long as the tenants continued to pay their rent, he could not take their houses from them.

I nodded to acknowledge him. He beamed as if I'd bestowed a great compliment.

"Your Excellency, allow me to introduce Piero Cucuteni. My lord Cucuteni has a keen interest in the matter you and I discussed so recent—"

"I want that damned villain caught and punished, by Asmodeus!" snapped Cucuteni. He turned to look over his shoulder, gazing across the room to where a hard-faced woman crowned in yellow roses peered into the jewelry display. As if feeling his eyes upon her, she looked up and cast a basilisk's stare back at him. Even I felt the hair on my neck rise at her reptilian disapproval. Cucuteni gulped. "She won't let me rest until I replace her jewelry—every piece!"

Piero Cucuteni and I required no introduction. We had met at previous social affairs, where I found his conversation limited to complaints about taxation and the "wretched" Shoanti and Varisians.

"That's what I was telling you, my lord," said Orkatto. His obsequious tone would do little to ingratiate him to the older families. "Count Jeggare is well known in Cheliax for his ability to aid... our sort of people."

Cucuteni rose to his full if modest height. He had to tilt his head to look down his nose at the upstart Orkatto. Old money never loves the new.

"Very well," said Cucuteni. "Nothing else has stopped this rash of burglaries. Perhaps Count Jeggare can do the trick."

With an effort to appear interested in their exchange, I could not help but look back at Seraphina. Vencarlo stood indecently close to her, smiling as he spoke into her ear. Whatever he said caused her to cover a giggle.

I left a note in my Memory Library to never again hire such a womanizer.

Before I realized it, I was striding toward them. "Stop disturbing the lady, Vencarlo. You are here as my bodyguard, not a jester."

"But Your Excellency, I was simply ensuring the lady posed no threat to you."

My hot blood turned cold with true fury.

"Your man is quite amusing," Lady Seraphina said before I could speak. "This Vencarlo is a marked improvement on that brute you had before. Do let him stay."

Vencarlo offered me a conciliatory shrug and smiled. "A beautiful woman commands all men. Is it not so, Excellency?"

I stepped between him and the lady to shelter her from his coarse behavior. Recalling a previous visit to her father's estate and its extensive gardens, I ventured a guess. "Am I correct to surmise that you are the one responsible for the floral décor, Lady Seraphina?"

"My secret is discovered!" she said. "It seemed a pity to inflict the envy of those who have fallen victim to this villain Blackjack on those who haven't."

"You are the soul of diplomacy, my lady."

"And you are a flatterer," she said. "Although not quite as vivid in your compliments as your man has been."

During our exchange, Vencarlo's demeanor transformed. His back grew as stiff as Cucuteni's. "Blackjack is no villain, Lady Seraphina."

"Do you suggest he is not the perpetrator of the burglaries?"

"On the contrary," Vencarlo replied. "Who else could perform such daring acts? Who else could elude the Sable Company and make fools of the Korvosan Guard? But only the wealthy call him a villain. To the common people of Korvosa, he is a great hero."

"To the common people?" cried Lord Cucuteni, who along with Orkatto had followed me across the foyer. "Do you speak of the Shoanti who befoul our streets with their native stinks and rituals? Or do you mean the Varisians, each born with his hand in another's pocket?"

"Not all Varisians are Sczarni," said Vencarlo. "Most are perfectly—"

"Still your tongue," I said. "You have no right to contradict a lord of Korvosa."

"I want the blackguard found and punished," puffed Cucuteni, forgetting Vencarlo's presence. "He must suffer as I have suffered every day since he stole into my wife's chambers and took her jewels."

Vencarlo's face reddened with the effort of stifling a humorous retort to Cucuteni's ill-chosen words. This time it was I who utilized the gaze of the basilisk, turning it upon my upstart bodyguard. Fortunately, for both his sake and mine, it turned at least his tongue to stone.

Seraphina lay a hand on Cucuteni's arm. "Until they are recovered, I promise to send Agnese a different breed of fresh flowers every day. Aren't those roses lovely in her hair?"

Cucuteni's jowls worked without producing any words, until finally he murmured, "Very kind of you, dear lady. Very kind indeed."

"You must have an expansive garden," I said in an attempt to guide the conversation away. "When next you visit Egorian, perhaps you would allow me to show you my hothouse at Greensteeples. Among other rare species, I have cultivated a weed symbiotic to your panther lilies, a specimen that produces a deadly toxin used by the Zenj people of central Mwangi."

"How fascinating."

"I think the lady would prefer to witness a fencing demonstration," said Vencarlo. He, too, had identified her as a swordswoman.

"The lady can decide for herself," said Seraphina, frowning at Vencarlo. "And now I decide you have become tiresome after all."

"What?" Vencarlo could not have looked more surprised.

"You heard her," I said, trying without great success to avoid gloating. "Return to your station."

Raising his proud chin as though he had just been slapped, Vencarlo bowed, spun on his heel, and returned to his place among the servants. Unlike the rest, who stood at attention, he lounged against the wall, striking a pose he must have thought made him appear like a swashbuckler.

Seeing Seraphina's gaze flick back to him, I had to admit, if only to myself, that it succeeded.

"There," said Orkatto. "Now that we are no longer overheard by the help, Your Excellency, perhaps you would unfold your plan to Lord Cucuteni?"

"A plan? Do you mean something like a business transaction?" Seraphina scrunched her nose in distaste. "Or do you mean something thrilling? A scheme, or a plot, or—better still—a stratagem? Oh, let it be a stratagem!"

Mocking though it was, her enthusiasm enchanted me. I looked to see that the museum staff had begun ushering the guests outside to their carriages. Servants began extinguishing the lights and barring the windows. Soon it would be time to set my trap.

I signaled my agents among the servants. The one beside Vencarlo tapped him on the shoulder and gestured for him to remove his new jacket.

Inhaling, I savored the perfume of Seraphina's flowers. "I suppose there is no harm in sharing the details now, so close to the appointed hour."

Seraphina leaned close and gave me her rapt attention.

"You may have noticed that the officers of the Sable Company left soon after the queen's departure."

Orkatto, already aware of the details, nodded at an accelerating rate, eager for me to share the rest.

"And the city guard," said Seraphina. "I saw two squadrons marching quickly through the streets as our carriage approached the museum."

"They will provide a conspicuous presence at all of the most likely targets of Blackjack's larceny."

"All but one!" blurted Orkatto.

"The jewels here," said Seraphina. "You've set them as bait."

"You are as astute as you are observant."

"And as beautiful as you are astute," said Vencarlo, materializing at my elbow like a dog who cannot be kept from the supper. He beamed at Seraphina. "To praise a woman, a man must not overlook her beauty."

Behind him, the agent who bore a passing resemblance to Vencarlo shrugged on his jacket and went to the entrance. I doffed my own coat and handed it to the hireling who resembled me. Together, they would enter my Red Carriage and depart the museum, leaving us inside with the twenty guards who had gradually secreted themselves throughout the museum during the day. Several other servants had also donned finery to depart, presenting the illusion that as many nobles who had entered for the gala reception were now returning home.

Vencarlo turned to me. "Your scheme will never succeed, Excellency."

"Pray enlighten us why."

"Blackjack will detect your trap."

"How?"

"It is clever to show as many people departing as remaining, but Blackjack is also clever. He will sense a trap when he sees you have dismissed the guards."

"But I have not dismissed them. They remain at their stations, with the exception of two absences, allowing the thief a choice of entrances."

A crash and a shout alerted us to activity toward the rear of the museum.

"And there you have it. The trap is sprung."

Vencarlo's insouciant air evaporated. "You mustn't do this, Count! Blackjack is not some common thief. The jewels he steals feed the poor. He is a champion of the people!"

"That is for a magistrate to decide. Unlike your scofflaw idol, I do not take the law into my own hands. I simply introduce it to those who have strayed beyond its grasp."

"I cannot allow you do this, Your Excellency." Vencarlo bowed and reached for his weapon.

Coming Next Week: Masks, blades, and intrigue in Chapter Three of "The Fencing Master" by Dave Gross!

Dave Gross's adventures of Count Jeggare (often also featuring his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan) include the Pathfinder Tales novels Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, Queen of Thorns, and King of Chaos; the novellas "Husks" and "Hell's Pawns"; and the short stories "A Lesson in Taxonomy," "A Passage to Absalom," "Killing Time," and "The Lost Pathfinder," all available at paizo.com/pathfindertales. He also co-wrote the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham, and has written novels for the Forgotten Realms and Iron Kingdoms, as well as short stories for such anthologies as Tales of the Far West and Shotguns v. Cthulhu. Dave is the former editor of magazines ranging from Dragon to Star Wars Insider to Amazing Stories, and was a writer for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. For more information, visit bydavegross.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

The Fencing Master

by Dave Gross

Chapter One: The First Duel

Several onlookers cursed the driver as he forced the Red Carriage into their midst, but the crowd parted. My footman opened the door, and I stepped out.

The common folk lowered their heads. They muttered "My lord" with varying degrees of resentment. Fortunately, none required the intercession of my footman, whose slight frame and timid demeanor made him a poor substitute for my recently deceased bodyguard.

I moved forward for a better view of the duel.

Within the crowd stood a circle of eight swordsmen, all but one pressing kerchiefs to fresh wounds. The uninjured man appeared three decades older than the others, a swatch of gray at either brow. The fencing master was of a height with me, placing him a few inches above the younger men. Unlike his curious pupils, he did not turn at my arrival. His gaze was locked upon the duelists inside the ring.

One was a Varisian, native to the region, the other Chelaxian, like my mother. Neither had yet seen twenty years.

A week's stubble obscured a fresh snake tattoo wreathing the Varisian's head. Its design marked him as Sczarni, one of his people's criminal class. He glanced at me, and the tip of his small sword drooped. The trident dagger in his other hand wavered.

His opponent beat his blade out of line, lunged, and pricked the man's scalp before he could retreat. The wound left a red tear beneath the serpent's eye.

The Sczarni retreated, hissing as he restored his guard.

"Yield?" The young Chelaxian smiled with such insolence that only a craven could accept. He raised his chin, whipping his bravo's topknot like a flag.

The Sczarni danced to the left, circling in the fashion of a knife-fighter. The flashy maneuver had several weaknesses, I noted, not the least of which was that the quick steps made him vulnerable to a sudden rush.

The Chelaxian also saw the error.

With startling swiftness, he advanced and feinted a lunge. Caught mid-step, the Varisian faltered, but a wild parry saved him from the true attack. Before he could close his dagger to capture his opponent's blade, the Chelaxian had already sidestepped to attack the Sczarni's exposed right. The Sczarni tumbled across the cobblestones. He rolled and came up on both feet, gasping at a wound where had rolled over his own trident dagger.

"Is that two for me or one touch for both of us?" The Chelaxian laughed. "I can never keep track of your Sczarni rules."

Anger twisted the Sczarni's features. He assumed a knifeman's stance, presenting his chest to the foe, bringing his dagger hand forward. It was the worst possible posture for a sword duel, especially when facing an opponent with greater reach.

The Chelaxian knew it, but he also saw murder in the Sczarni's eyes. His mirth vanished as he assumed the classic guard position. From that instant, the outcome was obvious even to the untrained eye.

"Enough," said the fencing master. He raised a hand to indicate the victor.

As the Chelaxian turned to salute his fencing master, the Sczarni began to do the same. Then the trembling of his lips spread rage across his face. He lunged.

The Chelaxian reacted before I could shout a warning, but his master moved first. In a single swift motion he drew his blade and leaped. The point of his rapier pierced the Sczarni's wrist and thrust his attack out of line. An instant later, the Chelaxian struck the sword out of his weakened grip. Before the Sczarni could raise his trident dagger, the master struck it from his hand and slapped his face.

"Leave us," said the master.

"But master—" Tears glistened in the Sczarni's eyes.

Before the offending student could utter his protest, the instructor raised his left hand, palm outward, fingers to the right, hiding the Sczarni's face from his view.

The Sczarni paled at the gesture. Like the sign of the evil eye, it was as familiar to the Chelish citizens of Korvosa as it was to all Varisian people. Such a banishment was as irrefutable as it was irrevocable.

Leaving his weapons on the street, the defeated student turned away. At first he walked with slow pride, but as his shame consumed him, his pace quickened until he ran through the crowd, shoving aside those who moved too slowly.

The Chelaxian student's gaze sank to the street, his posture of triumph dissolving into an embarrassed slump. I recalculated my estimation of his age. He had yet to fill out his adult weight, and whiskers had not yet darkened his cheeks. While he carried himself like a man during a duel, he was perhaps closer to fifteen than twenty. He turned toward his master, but the man ignored him and approached me.

"Your Excellency, I beg you to pardon us for this disgraceful display." He bowed with the Korvosan flourish in vogue when we had first met, twenty years earlier.

I returned the courtesy, despite the disparity of our ranks. "No fault of yours, Master Raneiro. Not all students are worthy of their teachers."

"No," he agreed, with a glance at the victorious bravo. "This one's own father cast him out of his fencing school. He has some talent, but he cannot still his tongue."

The younger man had enough shame to blush, but he covered it with a deep bow toward me. "Your Excellency."

"You quarreled with your father?"

When the young man hesitated to answer, Master Raneiro said, "A political disagreement."

Thinking of the father I had never met and the mother I had lost far too soon, I fixed my eye upon the boy. "You should make peace with your father. One day your quarrels will weigh lightly against his absence."

He frowned, but before he answered, Raneiro caught his eye. Whatever else had been upon his tongue, what he said was, "Yes, Your Excellency." Despite the bravado he showed his opponent, he knew his place before a lord of Cheliax.

For his deference, I decided to reward him with an anecdote. "When I first studied under Master Raneiro, there was another student who quarreled with—"

An eagle's screech scattered the crowd. The buffeting wind from a pair of enormous wings lifted the awning of a nearby shop. A shadow passed over us an instant before the hippogriff landed upon the nearest roof. The impact startled a trio of imps out of the chimney. They trailed a few hectic circles of yellow smoke before correcting course and fleeing back toward the Acadamae.

The hippogriff's wings beat to steady its talons on the slope. Dislodged tiles slid off the eaves and shattered on the street. Despite the tumult, a practiced rider sat easily in the winged mount's saddle. He favored me with a jaunty salute. "Count Jeggare!"

"Captain Ornelos, have you been reduced to patrolling the streets of Korvosa?"

Laughing, the captain guided his mount to drop off of the roof. "Only at the behest of Lady Seraphina," he laughed. "After the unfortunate incident with your bodyguard—what was his name? Rad— Ru—?"

"Rudolfo."

"That's it. Poor fellow just couldn't hold his wine. Pity he chose the wrong wine house. Anyway, Lady Seraphina commanded me to ensure your safe arrival at tonight's ceremony."

"Commanded you?" A captain of the Sable Company answered only to his commandant, and the commandant only to the Seneschal of Castle Korvosa. Not even Queen Domina could interject herself into the chain of command.

"Commands me, most surely," said Ornelos. "In the manner of all beautiful women."

Beside me, where he had no right to stand, the young bravo chuckled. "It's a truth universally recognized that a beautiful woman commands all men."

Ornelos smiled upon the man, but the interjection annoyed me. There was no sign of nobility in the bravo's clothing. His speech was fair enough, but it could not conceal his common origins. A man of his station had no right to intrude upon an exchange between a captain of the Sable Company and a count of Cheliax.

To Ornelos I replied, "Please reassure Lady Seraphina that I have visited this district both to pay my respects to my old fencing master and to employ a new bodyguard."

The bravo cocked his head, considering the implications. In truth, despite my initially favorable impression of his swordplay, my hopes of finding a suitable man had sunk since he spoke out of turn.

Vencarlo has the worst kind of arrogance—the kind backed up with real skill.

Reading my expression, Ornelos said, "I could recommend a dozen better candidates. Former Sable men, handy with a sword."

Before I could reply, the bravo spoke. "I beg you to send them here," he said. "I have damaged all my fellows and could use fresh sport."

Ornelos scoffed. "My men don't brawl with street ruffians."

The bravo grinned at the implied challenge, but before he could speak, Master Raneiro stepped toward Captain Ornelos. "Do you suggest that I train brawlers, sir?"

Doubt clouded Orenlos's face as he recognized Raneiro's tone. The fencing master was a proud man. He had trained a generation of the city's finest duelists, albeit in the streets rather than in a school. While it might prove instructional for all present to see him duel Captain Ornelos, such an altercation would ultimately harm both men.

"Master Raneiro, please disregard my friend Fedele's unfortunate choice of words."

Raneiro glanced at me, noting my own careful phrasing. He could not challenge a friend of mine without offering offense to me. I harbored no illusion that he feared either my station or my skill at the blade. I set my hope for peace upon our friendship.

For an airless moment, neither man spoke. Captain Fedele Ornelos shifted atop his hippogriff, his legs uncomfortable at rest in the aerial saddle. I raised my eyebrow to prompt him.

"Yes, yes, of course I meant no offense to the estimable fencing master." He hesitated, and for a moment I feared his pride would outweigh his diplomacy. "Please forgive me, Master Raneiro."

With a nod, Raneiro accepted the apology.

With the silent invisibility of superb servants, my footman had erected a small folding table. Upon it rested an opened bottle from one of my western estates, along with two goblets. Anticipating my unspoken desire, the footman produced a third vessel by the prestidigitation unique to his class. When he felt my approving eyes upon him, he almost succeeded in concealing his hope. He knew he could not rise to the position of butler in my household, where I employed only halflings, but he also knew that the butlers of four noble houses had been hired upon my recommendation.

At my nod, the footman poured the wine. It was a deep purple vintage Raneiro favored, a blend of several grapes and, frankly, not one of my finest. Yet he so enjoyed this particular wine that I paid the proprietors of several Korvosan wine houses to keep it in stock for the master's exclusive consumption, always free of charge. No matter the street or plaza on which the wandering master found himself teaching, he would find a drink at the end of the day.

Ornelos disengaged himself from his hippogriff's saddle and joined us. I raised my cup and uttered Korvosa's motto: "Fidelity and strength."

As we three drank the toast, the bravo lingered, eyeing the rapier at my side. He noted the calluses on my hand and studied my posture. He recognized a fellow duelist, and in the furrow of his brow I saw his questions.

"I need a man to watch my back, to mingle with the other servants and report their gossip. And, if it comes to it, a man who can hold his own in a fight."

"But you can fight," said the bravo. It was not quite a question. "Even with its jeweled guard, that blade is no mere ornament."

"Would you care for a demonstration?" I turned to Raneiro. "With your permission, Master?"

"By all means, Excellency." He stepped back, signaling his other students to re-form the dueling circle. In seconds, the onlookers returned in even greater numbers than before.

The bravo hesitated. "Do I have Your Excellency's word that I shall not be arrested for wounding you?"

"We shall not fence to first blood." I showed my footman the sign. He had prepared this demonstration before.

Removing my sword belt, I drew the blade and handed the scabbard to Ornelos.

"You can't seriously mean to fence in the street with this..." With a glance at Master Raneiro, Ornelos he chose his next word with care. "...youth."

"If not to first blood..." The bravo trailed off as the footman handed him a goblet full to the brim.

Accepting my own goblet from the footman, I assumed a guard stance. "The first to spill a drop must concede defeat. If you prevail, I shall give you this blade. And if I triumph, you must serve as my bodyguard for the next three days."

The bravo's smile widened as he found a balance between sheltering the goblet and holding his guard. "An excellent test. I accept!"

"Before we begin, tell me your name."

"Of course, Your Excellency." He cradled the goblet in two fingers as he bowed. "Vencarlo Orisini, at your service."

Coming Next Week: Mystery and danger in old Korvosa in Chapter Two of "The Fencing Master" by Dave Gross!

Dave Gross's adventures of Count Jeggare (often also featuring his hellspawn bodyguard Radovan) include the Pathfinder Tales novels Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, Queen of Thorns, and King of Chaos; the novellas "Husks" and "Hell's Pawns"; and the short stories "A Lesson in Taxonomy," "A Passage to Absalom," "Killing Time," and "The Lost Pathfinder," all available at paizo.com/pathfindertales. He also co-wrote the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham, and has written novels for the Forgotten Realms and Iron Kingdoms, as well as short stories for such anthologies as Tales of the Far West and Shotguns v. Cthulhu. Dave is the former editor of magazines ranging from Dragon to Star Wars Insider to Amazing Stories, and was a writer for Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. For more information, visit bydavegross.com.

Illustration by Ian Llanas

The Weeping Blade

by Josh Vogt

Chapter Three: Truth of the Matter

Larem raised his hands to shield his face from the stone and bone fragments that were sure to hit him—yet rather than the satisfying crunch of an undead monster smashed to bits, there came only a muted thud and a hiss of displeasure.

"Damned thing caught it!" Beetle cried.

"Elly nogglaxy!"

A crash shook the yard as the wight tossed the pillar aside.

"Fools."

"Have at you, bastard!" Beetle's palms slapped stone.

Dargley hasn't been the same since that last adventure.

Larem raised a hand. "No!"

A body collided with the wight. Rattling and squelches rose as Beetle laid into the creature. It sounded like the undead just stood there, taking the hits.

"I tire of this," it said at last.

Larem struggled to stand and intervene, but Dargley appeared and bear-hugged him.

Beetle snarled at his foe. "Back to the Abyss with ye!" A snap of bone, and he screeched. "Muh finger!" His cry devolved into incoherent threats.

The wight's hiss cut through the babbles. "For every hour you delay in bringing the Weeping Blade to me, I shall gnaw an inch of flesh from him."

Larem trembled, despising himself for his helplessness. "If... if we somehow find the blade and bring it, will you spare his life?"

"Idjit! Don't bargain with the beast."

Another whack of bone, and Beetle groaned.

"This theft and treachery requires repayment," said the wight. "Blood must be spilled to nullify the spirit within the blade. Yet I will not be unmerciful. You will be given the choice of whose life is surrendered. But make it quickly: you have until tomorrow at midnight to deliver the blade to the Maidens' Midden, unless you wish your companion unable to even crawl into his own grave."

Beetle screamed as the creature dragged him off. Larem tried to stagger after, but Dargley held him fast, moaning and keening. At last, Beetle's cries disappeared, and the two of them stood alone in the graveyard.

Larem spat in disgust. "That didn't go quite as planned, did it?"

"Bloddy tumbuckle."

∗ ∗ ∗

Larem bowed his head into his hands. After hauling him out of the graveyard—over his shoulders, no less—Dargley had deposited him in the crook of an alley doorway and hunkered down nearby to sob.

Larem had no idea what part of Underbridge they'd fled to. No way to orient himself to any of their warren boltholes, and Dargley couldn't find them alone. Not since first losing his sight had Larem felt so useless. So vulnerable.

What would the wight be doing to Beetle at this very moment? What could they do about it? No one would give heed to a blind beggar's pleas for help, thinking it a swindle. Even if they enchanted a substitute blade, Larem didn't doubt the wight would discern a fake.

As he considered their bleak options, a wheedling voice caught his ear.

"Looksee here. Two leetle meece. Wassun they has? Glit? Glum?"

A second sniggered. "Weepsy, ain'tsee? Raggum and baggum."

Larem suppressed a moan. Could this night get any worse? He recognized the guttertalk that had recently become fashionable among some of the younger beggars in Underbridge—little clans of street toughs were always forming and dissolving here, left mostly alone by the larger gangs as long as they didn't get too big for their trousers. Dargley must've neared one of their hideouts, or else they'd been followed, seen as easy prey—not an unfair estimation.

As Larem listened to their approach with dread, he noted an odd rhythm to their gait. After each shuffling step came a whisking noise, like a length of rope being dragged behind. Then their reek assailed him: a stench of sewage, a bestial musk... and damp fur.

Not just gang members. Wererats in shifted form, tails trailing through the alley rubbish.

Dargley jumped to his feet. "Oooosie pillygorp"

"Wassee chatter? Gottsa chucker at we's?" Anger tightened the first gang member's voice. Now Larem could distinguish the clicking of elongated teeth and scrabbling of talons over stone.

"No, I swear he's not making fun of you," Larem said. "Please, we've nothing. Beggars on the street with only rags to warm us. Be merciful."

"Slickspit speaksit. Beggums? Nawsayit. Gots glit, betsa."

"Rippem. Takem."

There came the sound of stomping, and Larem realized his companion had charged the wererats.

"Dargley, stop!"

"Gotta keen edgit! Guttem red!"

Several fleshy smacks resounded. Metal clanged. Dargley's roar turned to a wail. A heavy body hit the ground and the fight ended before Larem barely registered the exchange.

One wererat coughed and gagged, while the other screeched.

"Soons stitched and gutback, unnastand? Gonnas scalp all."

Larem braced for another attack, but claws clicked over stone and drew away. One must be dragging the other out of the alley. Once the sounds of their departure had faded, he got on hands and knees and searched for his companion's body.

Desna, please, show mercy. He couldn't lose both in one night.

"Dargley?"

Larem's hand finally found Dargley's head. Roughened skin all over. Half-melted nose and pitted cheeks scarred by acidic secretions, like Larem's eyes.

He patted down Dargley's body for damage. He still breathed, at least, though with a ragged edge to each intake. What had he used to drive the wererats off? It had sounded like a blade fight. But since Dargley's gone simple, Beetle and Larem hadn't allowed him to carry a weapon, certain he'd hurt himself.

His fingers touched a hilt, and a jolt of energy shot through him.

Larem jerked away. Then, with a shaking hand, he found the weapon again. This time, the tingle of power was undeniable, and he picked out a spiraling teardrop design that coiled up the hilt to a pair of eyes engraved on the crosspiece.

The Weeping Blade.

His heart crumbled as he felt the dagger's keen edge.

"Oh, Dargley. What've you done?"

See and despair.

An invisible claw clutched Larem's mind and yanked. The world twisted about him, and for the first time in years, he could see.

But not the alley. A cavern. No—a tomb. The Tomb of Annuram.

In one corner of the ancient chamber, a fire lit a makeshift camp. Three men argued among themselves until one rose and rushed toward the back of the cavern. The other two restrained him, going so far as to bind his arms and legs and leaving him to struggle while they finished their simple meal.

Larem knew the scene well, though he'd never seen it from this angle.

Beetle continued to struggle even after Larem and Dargley fell asleep, but after another hour of futile escape attempts, he slipped into a snooze himself.

Mere minutes after Beetle started snoring, Dargley's eyes opened, and he rolled to his feet. After ensuring he hadn't woken the others, he slipped off to the area he'd just helped Larem keep Beetle from visiting.

He returned half an hour later and stared at the other two with a wild look. The inhuman expression slowly faded, until he appeared closer to his normal self, though a dangerous glint remained in his eyes. He returned to his sleeping roll, the bulge of a new dagger under his leather armor.

Dargley. No...

Scenes flashed by: Dargley pocketing an employer's pay and claiming they'd been cheated. Dargley altering maps to guide them into dangerous territories. Dargley not warning them of traps... delaying coming to their aid in fights... cutting their horses loose to strand them with devils hot on their scent...

With each betrayal, Dargley bent more to the dagger's sway. Yet he wasn't completely gone. His expression during these episodes looked fraught, strained, as if something at his core fought complete surrender.

That last bit of the original Dargley got its chance during their trek through a kobold-infested swamp. With the natural heat and humidity, neither Larem nor Beetle paid particular attention to the sweat coursing down Dargley's face and neck as he waged his internal war.

The dagger's spirit knew of a giant flytrap that stalked the area, and wanted to see the effects of the creature's acidic secretions on human flesh. But this insidious ploy gave Dargley the impetus he needed for a final, fierce contest of wills.

At the dagger's prompting, Dargley spotted the giant flytrap, its mottled green exterior almost perfectly camouflaged against a nearby mossy mound. Four toothy jaws waited for unsuspecting prey to wander too close.

Dargley let Larem and Beetle wander ahead, claiming the need to drain muck out of his boots. As they forged off into the thick foliage, Dargley raised one hand toward their backs in silent farewell.

Then, as the dagger's spirit vainly tried to wrest control of his body, he sprinted for the flytrap and threw himself and the dagger into the monstrous plant's nearest maw.

His tortured screams, though muffled, had been loud enough to draw the other two running back, blades bared. They'd assaulted the remaining three sets of jaws, chopping barbed vines, dodging tentacle-like roots, growing increasingly reckless as they fought to rescue their companion.

Then jaws clamped around Beetle's legs and dragged him down. Desperate, Larem had produced an explosive magical amulet and flung it into one of the plant's remaining mouths. The pod had exploded, sending the creature slumping to the ground—and sending acid splattering into Larem's eyes.

Larem wanted to look away, to forego sight once again if it meant not having to watch this, but the vision wouldn't let him. Helpless, he watched himself stagger blindly to the pod holding Dargley, still screaming, and lever it open with his sword. Together, they had hauled Beetle out of the monster's sizzling remains.

Their burns had healed over time. The creature's acid bite had cauterized Beetle's severed legs, keeping him from from bleeding out, while Larem's eyes never recovered. In a way, Dargley was the worst: unable to breathe inside the suffocating tomb of the plant's pod, he had gone soft in the head, and never spoken right again. After that, it was all a slow and agonizing path back to Magnimar's filthiest alleys.

Dargley's plan to kill himself and save the men he called brothers had failed dramatically—yet not completely. Due to the damage to Dargley's mind, the dagger's influence over him had been subdued. Still, he clung to the cursed blade out of a buried impulse—and it continued to prompt actions he didn't understand.

More recent scenes flickered through Larem's mind. Dargley catching coins before they landed in Larem's beggar bowl... swapping out Master Ulus' healing elixirs for worthless mixes... supplying Beetle with ale to fuel his fury.

Your despair has been delicious.

Larem's world turned black again. He still clutched the dagger's hilt. Dargley remained insensate before him. His arm quivered as he raised the dagger over the prone man's chest.

Pay him back for destroying your lives. It's the least he deserves.

"Does he?" Larem whispered. "All his actions stemmed from you."

He took the first step, thinking to claim me. That was his downfall. None can own me. But I could abide a partnership.

"With a blind man? You'd cast me aside within the first week."

With my guidance, there will be no end to your rewards. I know where hoards of treasure are buried. Wouldn't you enjoy returning to your former life?

"And what happens to the others?"

The cripple and the halfwit? Damaged goods would just hold you back.

Larem cocked his head. "Perhaps you're right. It is time to move on. However, I also owe money to some quite persistent men. These buried treasures you mentioned..."

The smallest trove I can lead you to is enough to pay them back, purchase a healing spell for your eyes, and outfit your own mercenary band.

"What of the wight? It'll continue to pursue us, and I don't relish the thought of constant running."

With hired swords and spellcasters at your side, the next time it shows itself, you can reduce it to so much offal and ash.

"True enough. Very well." Larem stood and stepped over his fallen companion.

Showing mercy?

He dealt Dargley a swift heel-kick to the ribs. The man moaned but didn't wake.

"He'll suffer more, living with what he's done."

I anticipate great things from you already.

Larem grinned. "Let's settle some debts."

∗ ∗ ∗

Larem's feet kept sinking into the muck as he waited, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders wide—a confident posture he'd not held in years.

He stood on the Maidens' Midden, one of the Dungsweepers' Guilds refuse yards, so named for the bargain-priced brothel that stood near its gate. A few steps away loomed a storm drain large enough to lead a horse through. The unique bouquet of raw sewage hung about like a rancid fog. Breathing through his mouth made the stench bearable, though he clamped down on the occasional stomach spasm. Hopefully he wouldn't have to wait long. But then, if he did, he had much larger problems than a simple stink.

Ah. By the cursing and squelching, his anticipated guest had at last arrived. His pulse accelerated as the newcomer summitted the mound and spotted him.

"I hardly enjoy being called like a servant," Samphy said. "Especially to such a delightful place."

Larem bowed. "I wouldn't have asked to meet here without good reason."

"What's this about, then? You can't possibly have the money already." A sly chuckle. "Unless you lied about not having it in the first place. Or stole it. In either case, I might require a little extra to forgive you."

"I don't have it yet, no," Larem said. "But I've determined the location of an ancient treasure that will more than repay what I owe. I simply need you to allow me to retrieve it."

Samphy wheezed laughter. "You think I'll let you run off after some imaginary treasure? You'll never return."

Larem drew the Weeping Blade from his rags. On contact, the spirit's voice slipped into his head.

Canceling your debts more directly? Bold, but admirable.

Samphy's voice tensed. "Beggarman wants a fight? I can't say this will be fair... but it could be fun."

"No fighting," Larem said. "Instead, I offer a token of sincerity. This blade originates from the very treasure I speak of. Alone, it's worth ten times my debt, but I give it freely as a guarantee."

What? You dare—

"Catch." Larem tossed the Weeping Blade toward Samphy. The thug swore, but by the lack of a thump or splash, Larem knew he'd caught it.

Larem spun toward the storm drain and yelled, "I choose him as the blood price! Take your sacrifice and begone!"

A resounding clang let him know the drain's grate had just swung open, admitting another anticipated guest.

"What the hell...?" cried Samphy.

A roar. A clatter of bones. A scream and a body slapped into the muck.

Larem focused on where the air held an unearthly chill. "You've got your damned blade back. Where's Beetle? If he's not—"

"I's here and I's thirsty," Beetle called from by the grate. "This creature wouldn't s'much as let me have a sip."

"Our bargain is complete," the wight said in its sepulchral tones. "Though I question the soul that sealed it."

"You never said it had to be one of us. Just that I had a choice." Larem pointed at it. "Swear you'll bury that thing deep."

Laughter made his spine clench. "Where I take it, none shall discover until the very foundations of this world are undone."

There was another clatter of bones, and then the storm drain's grate clanged shut. The sound of steps retreated into the distance.

He trudged over to the grate and found Beetle with arms wrapped over a bar to hold himself above the sludge. He tried to check him for wounds, but the other man slapped his hands away.

"Were you tortured?"

Beetle blew a raspberry. "Nicked me a bit, but what's a few more scars? How'd you convince that thing you's gots the blade?

For a moment, Larem almost told him everything—what Dargley had done and how they'd ended up destitute.

Then he shrugged. "Stole an ornate blade from a smithy and convinced a drunk wizard to lay a charm on it. Seemed to suffice."

Beetle laughed. "There's the scoundrel I's know! Always ready wit' a fool's gamble. Where's Dargley got off to?"

"Left him behind so he wouldn't get hurt." He sat, unmindful of the sewage seeping through his threadbare pants. "This whole encounter got me thinking. Perhaps it's time we returned to our old ways in a new fashion."

"Wot... back to adventurin'?"

"Couldn't be worse than squatting around these streets. You can be my eyes, Dargley can be your legs, and I'll provide enough intellect to make up for both of you."

Beetle chortled. "Worth a try, eh? But where we gonna begin?"

Larem grinned as he reviewed the mental map the dagger's spirit had sketched out for him during their chat.

"Oh, I've encountered rumors of certain treasures that are just waiting for the right opportunists to come along..."

Coming Next Week: A glimpse of Count Varian Jeggare's past in the city of Korvosa in Dave Gross's "The Fencing Master"!

Josh Vogt is a freelance author with short stories published in such venues as Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Shimmer. For more information, see his website at jrvogt.com

Illustration by Mariana Gomez

The Weeping Blade

by Josh Vogt

Chapter Two: Touch of the Grave

Larem hissed and dropped the silver piece, yet his fingertips burned from the frigid contact.

The person remained before him, and Larem could sense its silent mockery. He reached for his dagger.

"Who are you?"

His tormenter shifted with a creak of leather. Its every movement groaned and crackled with age.

No, not age, Larem realized as he caught another whiff of grave dust. Death. An undead creature leered at him, having concealed its nature until now through some magic. The knowledge wrapped his heart in thorns and stopped him from drawing the blade.

The thing's voice held all the black promise of a bottomless pit. "Wise. Now, where are the other two? Those thieves you call brothers."

Larem fought down shivers. "Dead. They're beyond your grasp, whatever you wished to accomplish here. I'm just a blind beggar. Leave me be."

A long sniff tickled his hair. "Not dead. I smell them on you." Bony fingers wrapped about his throat, carrying the same sapping chill as the coin. Strength fled Larem's limbs, and he gagged at the carrion reek and clammy touch. "I've been searching for you since I woke. You've something of mine."

"Nothing. Nothing."

The dead creature's hand tightened. "At first, when I detected you hiding among the rat rabble of this city, I thought it a ploy. An attempt to throw me off track. With each one I killed, I expected you to rise up in righteous fury and revenge, as you were once famed to do. Yet with each, you disappointed. Have the Bloody Blade Brothers truly fallen so low? What do you hide behind these rags?"

Fingertips hooked the leather strap and yanked. The worn cord securing it snapped, and Larem rocked back.

A laugh like skulls knocking together. "How tragic. Larem the Long-Sighted now unable to spy a fly buzzing about his nose."

Larem swallowed. "Who are you?"

"You know who I am. I've forgotten my living name, but I remember you three sneaking through the tomb, pilfering without regard for the dead. Well, the dead have no regard for you, except for what you've taken from us."

It creaked again, withered flesh shifting around dry joints. "I know you still have it. The Weeping Blade. I feel it within the city bounds. One of you keeps it hidden. I'll have it back or I'll have your souls." Rotting fingers stroked his cheek. "For every day that you refuse further, I will claim another life. And not just scraggly beggars. Women. Children."

"We don't... we can't..."

"When you change your mind, find me in the graveyard behind the shrine of Sarenrae in Underbridge under moonlight. Until then, enjoy knowing you're the reason for this bloodshed. I'll be watching."

After a final chilling caress, the creature shuffled off.

Larem didn't know how long he sat there, sweating and shivering. Samphy's threats paled compared to this. Could it be possible? Were they the unwitting cause of the death plaguing the city's poor and destitute?

He lurched to his feet. By the time he reached Seerspring Garden, he'd collected further aches and bruises by running into building corners, crate stacks, and pedestrians who thrust him back out of the way with well-aimed elbows and knees. He used the gurgling of the fountain to get his bearings and then staggered east until he reached the gates of the Merchants' Guildhall, lurching through the throng of laborers and traders who milled about.

"Dargley," he cried. "Where are you? Dargley!"

He misjudged the distance to the Guildhall's wall and cracked his head against it. He reeled, spun about, and fell.

A hand grabbed his and hauled him upright. Sticky fingers patted his face as he panted.

"Nocky opate?"

Larem clung to the other man's bulk.

"Take me to Beetle."

∗ ∗ ∗

Beetle may be shorter than most men, but he's twice as ornery.

Beetle's voice slurred loudly as they entered the tavern.

"Matsy, darling. Get over 'ere and gimme a sight worth seeing."

"Burn you, Beetle," came a gruff male voice. "Watch the door, not the staff."

"Bah! 'S too early for any troublemakers. I'll toss any out on their arses, dontcha worry."

Larem navigated the maze of tables with Dargley's help. When they reached Beetle, he didn't notice their arrival until Larem nudged him.

"Boys! Pull up a stool. Piss-poor slop, but it's on me tonight. "

He slurped from what Larem guessed to be a tankard—a guess he confirmed by slapping it away.

"'Ey! What'ser problem? I said I's paying, didn't I?"

Larem tried to glare through the reaffixed leather strap. "How can you afford this?"

"Got me a job, didn't I tell yeh? I's..." Beetle hiccupped. "I's a bouncer. I bounce 'em in. I bounce 'em out. Never ain't nobody think they gonna get walloped by a man who don't come up to their balls. But when I bite, they all holler the same."

Larem gritted his teeth. Bouncer? More likely a spectacle the tavern owner figured would draw in extra business.

"Listen to me. I know who's been causing the beggar deaths."

"Ain't you the clever bastard." Beetle burped. "Whosa fiend?"

"We are. We're the reason these people have been dying."

By Beetle's prolonged silence, Larem wagered the news had brought him at least halfway around to sobriety.

"Whatchu mean?"

Larem turned them away from the growing crowd. "You kept the Weeping Blade, didn't you? After we agreed it was too dangerous, you've kept it stashed all these years."

Beetle's words hung heavy with a drunken pout. "Dunno whatcher talking 'bout."

Larem reached out and, by luck, caught the collar of Beetle's shirt, crusted with dribble and drink. "The Weeping Blade! From the Tomb of Annuram, the one we broke into a few years before... before the accident. The tomb's guardian is here. It believes we still have the blade, and it's going to keep killing innocents until we return it."

Beetle tore Larem's hand away. "We stole a hunnerd cursed bits of metal o'er the years. You think I'm gonna remember one shiny chit from all the rest? And if I had that sorta treasure, I'da sold it quick as hot piss."

"You swear on your mother's bones you don't have it?"

"I'll swear on your bones if you don't stop with this. Ain't got it and never did."

Larem slumped on the bench. Beetle wouldn't lie straight out like this, no matter how deep in the slop. Which meant the creature concealed a deeper agenda or had errantly tracked them down.

"Weeping Blade, eh? What made it so special?"

"Cursed dagger," Larem said. "Stories said it helped you win fights by overwhelming your enemy with despair, but any wielder eventually wound up going insane. Which is why we agreed to leave the dagger in the gravedust."

"Did we?"

"We did. I recall that conversation clearly because Dargley and I had to physically restrain you from taking it until you saw sense."

"What sorta fiend was it that spoke to you?"

"Undead of some kind. Intelligent. Able to work some magic, as it disguised its true nature until it confronted me."

"Would 'splain why no one's caught the bastard yet. Notta ghoul though."

"Nor a lich. I doubt anything that powerful would've gone undetected for so long."

"S'more than your average wraith too. Maybe a wight of some sort?"

Larem bit his tongue. A wight. Far beyond just an animated corpse—a creature deliberately raised by foul magic to guard a burial site and any treasure stashed there. Relentless, powerful, and intelligent. This one must've been a spellcaster in its previous existence, or else had some other sort of magic that let it track them and conceal itself in the city.

Still didn't explain why it believed they had the dagger. Had another band of adventurers—or opportunists, as they once called themselves—taken it after them and somehow set the creature on their scent?

He scrubbed his forehead. "What are we going to do?"

Beetle clamped a hand on his shoulder. "Do? What'd we always do with any unholy beastie? We kill the damn thing."

∗ ∗ ∗

The church to Sarenrae stood desolate under the enormous pilings of the Irespan, the ancient, shattered monument that kept the district called Underbridge tucked into eternal shadow. The church had been built during Magnimar's founding years by a Sarenite cleric named Vosten in an attempt to bring a guiding light to the city... until Sczarni thugs beat him and his acolytes to death when he refused to pay into their protection racket. Since then, the church had languished untended. Like most landmarks in Underbridge, it had become an unspoken center of black-market commerce where foul deeds went unnoticed and fouler packages were swapped in the dark.

Larem tried not to breathe in the stink of rot that stained the area. Would the three of them add to those buried there alongside Vosten, their names long forgotten?

He stood twenty paces before Vosten's grave, marked by a tilted gray pillar overgrown with thorny weeds. Beetle had described it and the surrounding layout when they arrived. Rows of salt-stained pillars lined either side of him, foundations cracked, any inscriptions worn away by a century of sea winds and vandalism.

After scouting to ensure the wight hadn't preceded them, Dargley and Beetle had slipped off to their hiding spot.

As he waited, Larem fiddled with the dagger tucked into his waistband. The moon hung low enough to gleam across the ruins—Beetle had scoffed when Larem claimed moonlight possessed a different texture on the skin than sunlight. Like a candle beaming through a sheet of ice.

Or perhaps the feeling came from the cold sweat that slicked his neck and chest.

A salty breeze whispered past, and dead vines and leaves crackled under his feet whenever he shifted his weight. A creature rustled in a far corner of the yard. Larem stiffened, but whatever it was pattered off on four paws. If any vermin of the two-legged variety lurked about, they wisely kept their presence concealed, perhaps put off by a blind man standing sentry in the middle of a graveyard.

He imagined himself a statue set in place to watch over the spirits of the dead and ensure their safe passage into the afterlife. If they survived this night, he considered visiting one of Pharasma's temples and paying a copper to polish an hourglass in gratitude to the Lady of Graves.

"Do you have it?"

One instant he stood alone; the next, the wight filled the space before him, a sucking presence that made his throat tighten. How? Larem hadn't heard a thing until it spoke and its putrid aura enveloped him.

Quelling a shudder, he forced himself to stand tall. There'd been a time when he'd faced far deadlier creatures than this—though then he'd had his sight and held a length of sharp steel. Or better yet, a bow.

"I spoke with the others," he said, proud that his voice held firm. "One revealed that he did indeed keep the Weeping Blade, and I humbly ask forgiveness for the desecration."

The air temperature dropped several degrees. "Then where is it? Why haven't you brought it as required?"

"Unfortunately, my companion buried it outside the city. I can tell you exactly where to find it if you'll give me but a few minutes."

Again that long snuffling. "Liar. I smell the blade's stink on you. You've been near it recently. What trickery are you and the two beating hearts in the shadows planning?"

Larem frowned. On him? How? Before he could give this revelation further thought, a skeletal fist gripped his tunic and held him in place. Once more, vitality seeped out of him, leaving his limbs trembling.

"I despise thieves and I abide a lying tongue even less. Shall I tear yours out?"

Summoning a last scrap of strength, Larem drew his dagger and slashed upward—not at the wight, but at the length of fabric it held. The well-honed edge sliced through the rotten cloth, and he threw himself backward, shouting, "Now!"

A roar echoed through the graveyard as Beetle and Dargley threw themselves against the pillar they'd crouched behind. There was a grinding noise, and then a greater crack as it toppled toward the wight.

Coming Next Week: Desperate plots in the final chapter of Josh Vogt's "The Weeping Blade"!

Josh Vogt is a freelance author with short stories published in such venues as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Shimmer. For more information, see his website at jrvogt.com.

Illustration by Mariana Gomez

The Weeping Blade

by Josh Vogt

Chapter One: Blind Beggar’s Bind

"Alms!" Larem called to the afternoon marketplace crowd. "Have mercy and spare a coin. A blind man's blessing brings good fortune."

"Droble gamman! Obbly tolt!"

Larem winced as Dargley spouted his usual gibberish. He leaned over and nudged his fellow beggar.

"You're to keep your lips sealed, remember?"

"Foddum nibble?"

Larem may be blind, but he's still more perceptive than most people.

Despite the leather strap over his eyes, Larem sensed Dargley beaming a grin in clueless innocence, the attitude that had defined his existence since the head injury. Sighing, Larem took up his beggar bowl and shook the three copper coins it held.

"Alms," he cried. "Desna smiles upon those who pity the downtrodden."

Shouting rose above the din of Magnimarian hawkers, livestock, and cart traffic.

"Outta the way. Move it, you low-browed dungknuckles. You's never seen a man with no legs? Move it or I'll bite your arse and piss on your robe."

Larem sighed again. Had Beetle been drinking? Where'd he get the coin for it?

"Kick me again and you'll be missing some tasty toes."

Larem tuned one ear to listen for any gangs or guard patrols while the other picked up Beetle's shuffling approach. Grunts alternated with slaps of flesh on stone as Beetle swung along on his hands until he plopped onto the mat to Larem's left. The man reeked of sour wine, and the air about him gained an oily texture that made Larem want to scrub his face with sackcloth.

"Thanks for that," Larem said. "We'll be lucky if anyone gets near us for the rest of the day. What've I told you about threats?"

Beetle snorted. "They work well enough for this lot. Looking down on me like I's dirt."

"People look down on you because you don't come above their waistlines," Larem said. "You just decide to take it personally."

"Bilgrew mothy woll!"

"Too true, Dargley. Beetle needs to control his anger before someone runs him over with a coach."

Beetle spat into the dirt. "Let 'em try. First horse that tries to stamp me out will get its hooves ripped off."

Larem couldn't hide a smile at the idea. Once Beetle might've followed through on such a threat. Oversized shoulders and hands had lent him a freakish strength that made him a feared fighter in their band before...well...

Before this. Now those muscled arms only served to drag Beetle's mangled half-a-body around Beacon's Point, hauling him from one alehouse to another.

Beetle gargled mucus and spat again. "Listen, lads. I've got news."

Larem held his bowl out, though he knew no one stood near enough to toss. "I don't care which minor noble is mucking about with which courtesan at the House of Welcome."

"Shut it. Or I'll start spreading rumors that you've got good eyes under there."

Larem adjusted the blindfold covering the acid-scarred pits where his eyes used to be. "What's this news, then?"

Beetle rubbed his hands, calluses scraping like rough stone on leather. "They found another body stuffed in a sewer drain. Just outside the north end of Washers' Row."

Larem stiffened. "Same as the other three?"

"Ayup. Head gone. Chest split wide and all the innards gutted."

"Any clue as to the dead's identity?"

"City watch was stumped, but ol' Beetle knows his rascals. It were Tolly. He went missing from his spot down by the docks last week and I spotted that bird tattoo on his ankle when they hauled him away—the ugly pigeon he always loved showin' off."

"It was an osprey. And if so, that's four deaths. All victims from Rag's End."

Dargley pressed in close and moaned.

Larem patted his knee. "Not to fear. Nobody would snatch you in the middle of a crowded market."

Beetle cleared his throat with the grace of a rusty hinge. "So...what's we gonna do about it?"

"Do?"

"Course. I ain't spouting off 'cause I love me pretty voice." He dropped to a hoarse whisper. "A fiend's loose in Magnimar—right 'ere in this neighborhood, you betcha—and nobody dealt death to fiends like the Bloody Blade Brothers."

Larem slumped. "We aren't those men anymore. Haven't been in a long time. There's nothing we can do but pray whoever—or whatever—is behind the murders is dealt with quickly."

"Serious?" Beetle's fetid breath huffed over Larem. "It's been two months and ain't nobody got a lead on the bastard. Not even those Caydenites what set up the new bar 'cross the street from The Pig—and I made sure to check in with them a few times to be sure."

"I thought you were banned from there after stealing those bottles of holy wine."

"Not my fault they didn't lock the place up nice and tight. 'Sides, who's gonna turn down a petitioner seekin' a bit of courage to brave these dangerous streets? But all them priests are passin' out is worthless talismans and prayers."

"A cleric's protective measures are nothing to be scoffed at."

"Yeah? Look where they got us. I mean... don't, y'know, look... but..."

Larem grimaced. "I know what you mean. It doesn't change anything. We're not in any shape to confront such a foe."

"You's afraid."

"I'm pragmatic."

Beetle gripped his arm hard enough to make him drop his bowl. Coins clinked about.

"Rag's End folks be our people now. Who's gonna protect 'em but us? City watch don't give a spit who gets splattered, 'cept for having to clean up the mess. Nobles figure a few beggar deaths means less on the streets. Jaijarko and his Sczarni thugs only care if it means another gang edgin' in on their territory."

"Your point?"

"M'point is this is a cause. A reason to fight!"

"For you, being looked at askance is reason to fight."

This time the gobbet of spit struck Larem's cheek. "Lost your sight and lost your courage. I's shamed to squat beside you."

Beetle continued grumbling as he propped up on his hands and lugged himself off. Larem patted the stones and dirt until he found the three copper coins and replaced them in the bowl.

Dargley plucked at his tunic. "Plobbem gardley toodle?"

Larem wiped at his grimy cheek with a filthier sleeve. "He'll sleep off his anger and rejoin us tomorrow."

"Smolley chargarlum?"

"Yes. I'm sure." He fished out a coin and placed it in Dargley's hand. "Go get yourself a hot bun. I'll meet you by the main fountain in front of the Merchants' Guildhall in a couple hours. We're sure to encounter a few generous souls there."

"Wobbum!"

Dargley's footsteps pattered away, and Larem settled into his usual begging routine. Odd to feel so alone within the throng of merchants, browsers, and buyers. And why the twinge of guilt at brushing off Beetle's urgings?

Foolish to think any of them possessed a fraction of their former skill. Foolish to believe they could still make a difference.

When the swell of afternoon commerce ebbed, he gathered his meager belongings. The cheap dagger he kept under his mat got rolled up inside it. He then used the rolled mat to tap his way out of the market, bowl outstretched as he shuffled past shops, stables, and warehouses. He headed for Dockway, following the main road along Beacon's Point's docks.

The salty tang of the sea briefly wiped away the stink of the dirty, sweating crowds. Then the smell returned in force as he shuffled through one of the area's many slums. There, the ramshackle buildings crowded closer, casting cold shadows. Social chatter turned to mutters, whimpers, and grumbles, and the air grew pungent with unwashed refuse.

As he passed one alley—noted by the extra echo to his steps—several people moved to stand in his way. His rolled mat bumped a set of shins, and he stopped, jingling the coins in his bowl while internally bracing.

"Pity the destitute and enjoy blessed dreams."

The nearest man, a heavy breather who smelled of burnt oil, snatched the bowl away and dumped the coins out.

"You owe our master a hundred times this," came his smoke-roughened voice.

Larem swallowed. "As I explained last week, Samphy, the salves didn't work. I won't pay for ineffective remedies."

The flung bowl caught Larem in the forehead, and he stumbled back a step. He resisted the urge to rub his skull, knowing weakness only encouraged thugs to greater cruelty.

"You calling Master Ulus a liar?" Samphy had perfected the art of threatening growls. To Larem, who had heard much worse from fanged beasts as they attempted to devour him, the gang enforcer's sounded a pale imitation.

"I make no such claims. However, even if I were to pay, it's only been a week since your last visit. How was I to procure funds in such a short time?"

The gut-punch dropped him to his knees. The second blow cracked his head to the stones, where he lay gasping as red and yellow explosions flashed through the darkness of his skull.

Samphy crouched beside him. "Master Ulus doesn't enjoy having his reputation as a healer slighted. He also doesn't enjoy welchers. Now, I'm to collect the bill or collect a body. I'd prefer the first, but if there's no other choice..." He patted Larem's cheek. "You've got one more week."

One of Samphy's companions trod on an ankle as they stepped over him, drawing a last gasp of pain before they headed off.

Once alone, Larem felt about until he retrieved the bowl. Clutching it and the mat—with the dagger still inside—he crawled into the nearby alley to huddle and recover.

At least Beetle and Dargley hadn't been around. He'd never told them how he'd squirreled away a last pouch of gold from their adventures, then squandered it on false hope and fake healing elixirs peddled by the local Sczarni thugs. He should've seen the con coming a long way off, even without eyes.

Now not even hope remained.

Footsteps approached. A single person this time. Had Samphy or one of his lackeys returned?

He groaned as he gathered himself. "If I didn't find payment in a week, what will a few minutes have accomplished?"

A rattle alerted him to a coin tossed into his bowl. His trained ears figured it for silver.

Surprised, he raised his head and tried to fix on his unknown benefactor. The person stood before him, a deeper zone of silence in the quiet street. Waiting for...? Ah, of course. Larem swallowed blood and smiled crookedly.

"Desna will embrace your soul, kind... sir?"

He plucked up the offering to bless it with a kiss.

And froze.

The pall of death suffused the coin, an unearthly chill that iced his blood. True silver, by the polish of it, and new enough that he easily picked out the skull engraved on either side.

A burial coin. The type folks sometimes placed over a corpse's eyes before it was entombed.

The presence chuckled—a liquid, putrescent sound, accompanied by a wave of graveyard stink.

"Hello, Larem," it whispered. "I've been looking for you."

Coming Next Week: The hauntings of the past in Chapter Two of Josh Vogt's "The Weeping Blade"!

Josh Vogt is a freelance author with short stories published in such venues as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Shimmer. For more information, see his website at jrvogt.com.

Illustration by Mariana Gomez

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Four: Revenge Is a Dish...

Marcov spotted the modest hut to which the priest had directed him, spent a moment invoking the haunting spirits, and broke into a sprint. He leaped, hurling his whole weight against the shuttered window nearest the front door. Wood burst inward, splinters flying—all in utter silence, for the ghosts of that long-dead village had spread their intangible substances through the surrounding air, muting all sound.

A trio of animated skeletons—Marcov guessed they'd been chosen over fleshier undead so as to cut down on the stench—lurched and staggered from across the room. Bone fingers wrapped around cheap swords, or curled into tearing claws. The clacking and clicking probably would have been disturbing, if he could hear any of it.

Marcov spun, sweeping the legs from under the nearest corpse. Bastard sword held high, he parried a stroke from the second, then brought the heavy pommel of the weapon down in a diagonal arc. The skeleton's collarbone shattered, causing the undead to stagger and nearly topple.

With a quick yank on the thing's opposite shoulder, Marcov removed "nearly" from the equation. The animated bones fell atop the first skeleton, pinning it down just as it tried to rise. Marcov reversed his grip and plunged the blade through both rib cages and deep into the wooden floor. Neither skeleton would be getting up anytime soon.

The third and final guardian was just clever enough to lunge, taking advantage of the intruder's newly disarmed state. It seemed a good idea, right up until Marcov pounded the thing into a heap of splintered bone with a small end table that had been standing in a corner.

A few additional swings took care of the two pinned to the floor. Marcov retrieved his sword and continued, still wrapped in silence.

Doubtless the skeletons had been intended to scare away any potential intruders, and delay an attacker long enough for Khydol to prepare. Except Khydol hadn't heard a peep.

The cleric stood in the next room beside a makeshift shrine to Calistria, surrounded by rickety shelves of mementos—crockery, books, children's toys, candlesticks—presumably lost by those displaced during the General's purge of clerics from Touvette. The tome he'd been perusing fell open to the floor, its pages crumpling, as Marcov appeared in the doorway.

The half-elf's eyes widened at the sight of the unnaturally stealthy intruder. He raised holy symbol wrought of pewter and began to intone a prayer to his goddess.

Sorry, Marcov mouthed around a vicious grin, then raised his blade and advanced at a saunter.

He was halfway through cleaning his blade when the silence lapsed and the room abruptly filled with the whisper of cloth on steel. A moment later, he heard the faint crunching of someone climbing in through the broken shutters.

"Marcov?"

"Next room!" he called back. "You're a little late, Loursa."

"Khydol's dead?" Her footsteps, drawing nearer the open doorway, weren't quite loud enough to mask the peculiar tone of her question.

"Dead as Aroden. Figured I'd ask him a couple of—"

It was pure luck that saved him. Had Loursa arrived before the ghosts had dismissed the unnatural hush, or had his struggle with the skeletons not scattered so many chips of wood and bone, she'd have been on him with no warning at all.

As it was, Marcov heard the sudden rush across the debris and was able to hurl himself aside. The blow that would otherwise have punched through his hauberk and into his back instead left only a fiery trail of blood and pain across his ribs.

"What the hell? Loursa—"

The guard kept coming, her blade thrusting as fiercely as it had against the bandits. Marcov, wincing at every blow, found himself barely able to parry despite his heavier sword.

For a moment there was only steel on steel and shuffling feet. Marcov retreated as far as Khydol's body, then leaped over it, putting a bit of distance between him and his traitorous opponent.

"So what is it, then?" he growled. "Just waiting until you didn't need me anymore to get rid of me?"

"Something like that," she told him softly.

He mumbled briefly under his breath. Then, "Lovely show of gratitude, Loursa."

Again she came at him, teeth bared in a feral snarl.

Marcov clenched his left fist. Wisps of shadow, phantom limbs invisible to mortal senses, swirled.

Khydol's body floated up into Loursa's path just as she made to step over it.

Marcov lunged, burning with betrayed fury. Flesh and bone parted, and his former companion deflated with a soft sigh before sliding from the tip of his blade. For an instant, Khydol's floating body held Loursa upright, then both corpses thumped awkwardly to the floor.

He'd actually grown comfortable, letting someone fight at his side again. Should've known better. Stupid, stupid...

Again he cleaned his sword, then leaned it aside and knelt over the bodies. He began to call upon the surrounding spirits, prepared to ask them to revive Khydol's memories long enough to get some answers...

And paused. His gaze flickered to Loursa's slackened face, a bitter spring of pain bubbling unexpectedly to the surface of his anger.

When his hand came down, he felt the ghosts moving, but it wasn't into the body of the priest he directed them.

Loursa's jaw twitched. Her unfocused eyes turned toward him.

"Why did you try to kill me?" He cursed himself for the plaintive tone he couldn't quite banish.

"Ellithir... tells me... you want to harm her, as... you have so many others. I... have to... kill you first."

"Who's Ellithir?"

"My dearest... friend."

A horrible suspicion began to crawl on millipede legs up Marcov's spine. "How long have you known her?"

"Few hours."

"Then why are you such dear friends?"

"Words. She speaks... strange, pretty words."

The brutal simplicity of the dead. Marcov rose, staggered backward until he thumped against the nearest shelves. Several dishes and other trophies fell, shattering around his feet. He didn't notice.

Loursa hadn't liked him; he'd known that from the beginning, and hadn't cared. But she'd fought beside him. She hadn't betrayed him, not intentionally. Marcov knew magic when he heard it.

And he'd killed her for it.

Marcov rubbed at his forehead and looked back at the corpse, but it was once again an empty, lifeless husk.

"I'm sorry." His voice was oddly hoarse, the words dusty from years of disuse.

Marcov slung his blade over his shoulder and stalked out into the street, his rage growing hot once more. Someone in this town knew who Ellithir was, and Marcov felt more than ready to make whoever it was tell him.

∗ ∗ ∗

A few customers wandered the aisles of the general store when Marcov arrived. For several minutes, as he pulled goods aside and hunted for hidden secrets, the patrons stared at him in confusion. When one of them confronted him, asking what he thought he was doing, the gaunt foreigner was only too happy to let his ghosts toss a few objects around the room until he'd sent everyone into panicked flight.

It took some doing, and nearly ten more minutes; that damn mosquito-repelling herbal smoke, which seemed to be everywhere he went in the River Kingdoms lately, had given him a right headache by the time he was through.

Finally, however, with the spirits subtly guiding him when he got too far off track, he located the hidden trapdoor behind the counter.

He was forced to duck, walking at almost a crouch down the upper portion of the stairs, until he was deep enough below the ceiling to stand straight.

The chamber was earth and soil, barely supported by sagging beams of wood. A stone-rimmed pool sat within, a granite pillar protruding from its center. Both the stink of acrid incense and a faint glow that was the cellar's only illumination spilled from a pair of braziers. Marcov saw no one else here, heard no one, but a lifetime's instincts screamed of lurking danger. Again, he began whispering to the ghosts, asking them to guide his strikes, to warn him of attack, to—

The shadows at the chamber's far end shifted and lightened, revealing a slender silhouette. A voice hissed something only vaguely like words, and Marcov's sword began to glow. He heard skin sizzle even before he felt the searing pain, and threw the weapon aside with a startled shout. It scraped the edge of the pool, settling point-first in the water. Steam hissed upward to join the clouds of incense.

Marcov ran, and not an instant too soon. A thunderous crash shook the chamber, centered where he'd been standing. Dirt fell from the ceiling and water sloshed over the edges of the font. The burst of noise hit him like a physical blow, staggering him, making his ears ring; he could only imagine how much worse it might have been had he suffered the brunt.

Another three paces and Marcov jumped for the low ceiling. A brilliant beam of light flashed beneath him, so close he could feel the heat of its passing. Had gravity taken its normal course, his leap would not have stopped him from plummeting into the path of the ray.

He felt a phantom current wrap around his fingers and feet, holding him to the ceiling. Hanging upside down above the pool like a humanoid spider, he began scurrying sideways.

The darkened figure emerged somewhat from the gloom, revealing a golden-haired elf whose features might have been deemed soft, had they not been twisted in a rictus of anger and hate.

"Ellithir, I presume?"

She grunted an affirmation. "And you would be Draeven. You're a damned nuisance, you know that?"

"So I've been told. What's this all about?"

Ellithir didn't answer, but the flicker of her eyes toward the granite pillar was all the confirmation Marcov needed. He knew a shrine when he saw one, even if he didn't recognize the deity.

Ellithir conjures an abhorrent infestation.

"So, this is a religious thing. Just not Calistrian."

He was stalling, and he knew that she knew he was stalling, but still she answered. "Khydol was useful, as was his faith." She shrugged. "His grudge was genuine. I just... encouraged him to expand his horizons."

"To what end? All this bloodshed and suffering... For what?"

"Bloodshed and suffering is the end, Draeven! We—"

Ellithir flung out her hand in the midst of speaking, clearly hoping to catch him unprepared.

Marcov hurled himself forward and leaped from the ceiling, wondering what fell invocation he'd avoided. Even as he landed, his sword flew from the pool into his waiting grasp, cool to the touch once more. He swung.

The sword crashed into a glimmering aura that sprang into life around the elf, the blade stopping inches from her skin.

Again, Ellithir screeched something that was only vaguely a language. This time Marcov recognized a word—or perhaps a name?—repeated from her first incantation: Gyronna.

The elf's right eye bulged, suddenly bloodshot and grossly swollen, as if pushed partly from her skull by the rage and magic within her. She slapped a hand against his armored chest.

Agony drove him to his knees. Worse than any wound, any illness he'd endured, it felt as though something ate away at him from within.

Then something wriggled, a wet and flaccid tickle that brushed the inside of his ribs and burrowed toward his gut, and he realized that was precisely what was happening. It was all he could do not to retch, then to scream his horror until his mind was gone.

"Idiot!" Ellithir kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling. "We are a plague! We are as the worms consuming your flesh! You haven't stopped me. Even if you'd killed me, you could never—"

The murdered souls that haunted Marcov could do nothing against the unnatural parasites that riddled him. But as they'd guided his limbs before, granting him strength, so did the spirits enable him to act now—more slowly and feebly than he would have preferred, but far more effectively than Ellithir could have anticipated. He stumbled upward.

Again, the glimmering aura prevented a killing stroke.

"Remember how you fought," Marcov whispered, coughing, to the spirits surrounding him. "Remember the men who swept over you, over your families, your children. Remember how you fought..."

Wisps of nothingness swirled, blended, assumed substance and form—until a plain longsword, chipped and battered and vaguely transparent, hung behind the elven cleric.

Ellithir gasped as the blade plunged between her shoulders, unhindered by her aura. She staggered forward, this time into Marcov's waiting grip.

A simple touch was all it took. Flesh split, blood flowed, muscles burst beneath the ghosts' fury.

Ellithir fell, first to her knees, then to one side. Ever thirsty, the earthen floor drank the growing pool of blood around her.

Marcov, too, collapsed once more, panting, shuddering in pain. "A drink and a whore if I live through this," he mumbled, though whether to himself or the spirits was unclear. "Not necessarily in that order."

"Cel—celebrating?" Ellithir's words emerged as a burbling, blood-soaked cough. "Don't. We—we are everywhere. The River Kingdoms belong to us! The flesh is filth. The world is pain. To see is to hate. And the Hag... the Hag sees..."

A final rattle, a pinkish froth, and Ellithir was gone.

Moments later, the agony of the worms began to fade, and Marcov nearly wept in relief. He felt as though he'd just swum the Inner Sea while suckling a mewling vampire, but the worst of the pain was gone.

Then, with the image of Loursa's dead face floating before his mind's eye, he realized he was wrong. It was only the physical pain that had ebbed.

Groaning, he dragged himself upright, leaning on his sword like an old man's cane. His gaze flickered first to the strange stone shrine, then to the dead priestess at his feet.

He thought of Ellithir's dying words—of cults like this spread throughout the River Kingdoms—and the spirits stirred within him.

Just this once, maybe he wouldn't mind the job that lay ahead.

Coming Next Week: The past returns to haunt a group of retired adventurers in the first chapter of Josh Vogt's "The Weeping Blade."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mousferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Three: An Array of Evils

Loursa moved to Draeven's side, limping, sword dragging point-first through the dirt. "I thought you said there'd only be a few of them!"

"I did," he said. "Didn't figure every last one of them would be up and armed at midnight, either."

Understanding pounded over Loursa thicker than the falling soil. "They knew we were coming."

"We did, at that." From the mass of ragged but uncomfortably well-armed brigands, two figures advanced. Loursa knew instinctively that the one in the lead was the "Zarred" Draeven had mentioned. Steel breastplate over leather, an axe that looked like it had actually seen professional care, scars on top of scars... A bandit chief if ever there was one.

The other, the speaker, was a scarlet-haired half-elf who wore his chainmail awkwardly. His sleeves shone gold in the brigands' torchlight, and his left hand fiddled absently with a silver pendant that dangled from his neck.

Zarred is a bandit chief if there ever was one.

"How?" Draeven demanded.

The half-elf shrugged. "Message from a friend."

"But—"

"You stupid, Khydol?" This from Zarred. "Son of a bitch is stalling, is all. Let's just get it done, yeah?"

"Well, I'd have liked to know why this fellow's interfering, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Go ahead."

Zarred barked. Almost a dozen bandits raised crossbows. Loursa sucked in a deep breath, determined to at least die with dignity. Pity it had to be in this bastard's company.

And Draeven, after a moment of muttering to himself... laughed.

A chorus of low howls thickened the air around the condemned pair. Dirt kicked up and fallen twigs flew, yet not a single gust touched Loursa. Triggers clicked. A flock of bolts flew toward the pair and were just as swiftly hurled aside by the spectral forces. None even came close.

The bowmen recoiled, crying their dismay, but the half-elf—Khydol, Zarred had called him—advanced. Shouting, he raised the pendant around his neck. Loursa could just make out its three-pronged engraving, and while she knew little about magic of any sort, she recognized a spell when she saw it.

Whatever power Khydol hoped to invoke, however, was just as swiftly lost. Draeven raised his own hand in a peculiar hooking gesture. The tenor of the howling changed, ever so faintly, and the amulet tore itself from the chain around the half-elf's neck and hurtled through the phantom gale into the foreigner's waiting grip.

Khydol gawped, apparently having been stripped of language skills along with his pendant. Not so for Zarred. "Kill them!" thundered the bandit leader.

Loursa met the first of the attackers, blade clashing on blade. She allowed herself to be pushed back, retreating, watching as his strikes fell into a pattern common to the vicious but untrained. Strike, parry, step, strike, parry...

The guard from Kelbran delivered a short, swift kick, catching the bandit's ankle in midair with an audible crack. He'd barely begun to howl when her sword took him in the throat.

Loursa's withdrawal had taken her away from the man's companions, granting her an instant to catch her breath. She shot a quick glance behind to see how her own unpleasant companion was holding up...

She nearly choked. Draeven was staggering, reeling from blows that skittered across his hauberk or rang from his blade. The blood of several shallow cuts ran down his arms, dripped from between his fingers. He retreated before the enemy, worked to parry any weapon that came too close, but otherwise seemed lost in his own little world. The bulk of the gang was focused on him, Zarred included, and it was nothing more than simple geometry—only a few could reach him at any given time—that kept Draeven from being overwhelmed.

Another brigand, an ape of a man whose face was all beard and rotten teeth, demanded Loursa's undivided attention with his falling mace. His first blow numbed her arm from knuckles to elbow, nearly knocking the sword from her hand. A third attacker appeared from around the mace-wielder, jabbing with a spear. Loursa spun aside, dropped an arm over the shaft and twisted. The weapon flew from the bandit's grip, but by then the big guy was closing again, mace blotting out the sun...

An unearthly screech, high-pitched and keening, echoed over the village. Loursa was startled enough, but her foes seemed shocked into near paralysis; she disemboweled the nearer of the two bandits with a quick swipe before turning to see what had just occurred.

Draeven hung in the air a dozen feet above his opponents, slowly rotating in a phantom whirlwind Loursa could sense but not see or hear. His jaw gaped, distended almost to the point of breaking, yet the scream—only now beginning to fade—was not in his voice and seemed to come from around him as much as from within. Blood slid from his blade, painting an abstract pattern of spatters on the upturned faces of his foes.

Without warning, he dropped back into the bandits' midst, a blur of flashing steel and fists. As Loursa had witnessed back in Kelbran, ghostly arms seemed to guide Draeven's blade, driving it into organs. No matter the ferocity of the enemy that confronted him, he attacked with relentless resolve. Strokes that should have spilled his blood, even dismembered limbs, turned aside at the last moment, repelled by invisible forces. Brigands began to fall.

Screaming in rage—and perhaps a touch of fear—Zarred burst from between his men, axe hurtling in an arc that might have split a healthy bole in a single blow. Draeven crouched, spinning, so that the heavy blade passed clear overhead. Halfway through the turn he rose, sword outstretched.

The bandit chieftain was fast. Instead of being spitted, Zarred yanked himself from the sword's path.

It didn't help. Draeven thrust out his empty hand, slapping it against Zarred's chest.

Spirits groaned. Zarred screamed. And then he... withered. The flesh of his arms and face shrank against the bone, his eyes dulled in sudden pain; even his hair seemed to go limp.

It wasn't lethal, whatever the foreigner had done. But the next time Draeven's hand-and-a-half came around, it plunged clean through Zarred's chest with no hint of resistance.

The remaining bandits fled so quickly their own horses might have had trouble keeping up. Khydol was gone as well, apparently having run after he'd lost his pendant.

This time, Draeven didn't bother to pursue the survivors. Instead, after looking about to ensure no more bandits remained, he wandered over to the nearest house, shoved the door open, and vanished inside.

Loursa followed. She found Draeven slumped in an old chair beside a scarred and food-stained table. He gulped deep breaths of air—whether from physical exhaustion or because of something else, she could not tell.

"Why did you let them beat on you like that?" It wasn't the question she wanted to ask; she was working up to that one.

Draeven shrugged. "I can hear the ghosts' thoughts in my mind, but they don't read mine. I have to explain what I'm asking of them. Sometimes takes longer than might be convenient."

"Who the hell are they? Draeven, what are you?"

∗ ∗ ∗

Marcov hadn't planned on answering the questions. He never had before, and Loursa certainly wasn't the first to have asked. A curse was already squirming on his tongue.

It died unborn, smothered by a low moan deep in the recesses of his soul—a moan that only grew louder, more oppressive, the longer he kept silent.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

The moan became a shriek, nearly knocking him from the chair. The legs of the table began to vibrate.

"All right, all right!"

He steadied himself, only to notice Loursa staring at him. She looked as if she were trying desperately to figure out which of them had actually gone mad.

"Apparently," he growled, "they want me to tell you. No idea why, but I'm getting disgustingly used to that.

"I was a sellsword, and a damn good one. Did most of my work as part of a mercenary band, led by a guy named Craddek. Real bastard, the kind whose own mother would travel a week out of her way to avoid. But then, so were the rest of us."

"I'd never have guessed," Loursa said dryly.

Marcov ignored her. "It was back in early '08. We hit a town called... Shit, I don't remember what it was called. Not sure I ever knew, come to think of it. Few miles east of Saringallow, down in Isger. No war, no part of any contract. Just something we did occasionally between jobs to keep the purses full and the urges sated."

He grinned without humor as Loursa gasped and stepped back. "Not all that worldly, are you, ‘m'lady'? Most who earn a living with steel? Not much different than the men we killed earlier. They're just the bad guys when it's your home they're hitting."

A long silence, then. Marcov, despite his fatigue, rose from the chair and began to pace. "Things got out of hand this time," he said finally. "Peasants fought back harder than we expected. Killed a couple of the boys before we subdued them. Craddek was pissed, and the rest of us not much calmer.

"We killed them. All of them. The whole town was muddy with the mess, and when we were done, there wasn't a man, woman, or child left breathing."

The color drained from Loursa's cheeks.

"The thing of it is," he continued, "being dead didn't keep them from being angry. Really, really angry.

"I don't know why they picked me out of everybody there. Maybe it was random. Maybe I killed someone special. Hell, maybe it's 'cause I was born in Ustalav; we've got a whole culture built on ghost stories. Damned if I know, and they're not talking."

He stopped at the table, leaned on his knuckles. "I remember a howl, like a hurricane, and then screams... Countless screams, echoing forever. When I woke up, Craddek and the others were long gone—and I had myself a new band of traveling companions.

"I haven't lived my own life in years. They're with me constantly, Loursa. Every minute of every day, every second of every dream. They don't speak, unless it's through the bodies of the dead, but they're not shy about letting me know what they want me to do. They'll help me accomplish my ‘assignments'—you've seen them manifest their powers—but they don't ever take no for an answer.

"I wasn't in the River Kingdoms for you people. I was in Daggermark, trying to find Craddek. Keep hoping that if I can find him and the others, kill them, just maybe the damned ghosts'll be satisfied. You want to know why I showed up here? Why I give a tarnished copper about a few towns in Touvette? Because they do. Not the first time they've gotten me involved in this sort of crap, either. Guess it reminds them of, well, them."

He looked up into his companion's face, pale as the dead of whom he spoke, and wondered briefly what his own looked like. He'd never told the story before, couldn't even begin to separate and identify the emotions it stirred up now.

"That's who I am, Loursa. That's what I am. So you want to stand there looking horrified at me? Or shall we discuss what we can do to keep any more of Touvette's peasantry from joining the ghosts themselves?"

∗ ∗ ∗

"I'm terribly sorry, Master... what did you say your name was?"

"Oh, you got me," Marcov said. "I deliberately didn't mention it earlier, but you've tripped me up with your clever ruse. How did I let you outsmart me like that?"

The priest's scowl deepened the already severe crags of his aged face. "Whatever. I'm afraid I haven't the slightest idea who you're—"

"Must we? Half-elf. Goes by the name Khydol. Priest of Calistria."

It had been easy enough to figure out that much in the aftermath of yesterday's struggle at Alvren. Even if Zarred's corpse hadn't told them as much, the holy symbol etched into the stolen pendant was blatant enough.

Calistria, goddess of—among other things—retribution. So yeah, made sense that one of her priests might seek revenge on Touvette for the expulsion of the churches, especially if he or those he cared for were among the displaced. Loursa, given her attitudes toward religion in general, had been quick to accept that explanation.

Marcov was less convinced. He'd known a few Calistrians, back in his mercenary days. They could be savage when wronged, sure, but slaughtering whole villages of peasants—that seemed a little hard, even for them. And he still couldn't help but wonder who'd warned Khydol that he and Loursa were coming.

Conflicted and uncertain—Zarred knew only what he'd been paid to do, not why—they'd followed the dead bandit chief's directions to Khydol's home, a ramshackle town just across the border in Pitax. Once there, they couldn't split up fast enough for Loursa's tastes. Marcov almost smiled at her eagerness to seek out Khydol through the town's social gatherings, while he took the religious tack.

It's almost as if my story made her dislike me or something.

Now Marcov stood in a slope-roofed wooden structure built more like a northern feast hall than a church. Still, it was a sight one would never see in neighboring Touvette. Rows of kneeling cushions and blocks on which to sit faced a generic shrine over which draped an array of altar cloths, each embroidered with the symbol of a different god.

It was the town's only center of worship. Marcov knew it, and the priest knew Marcov knew it.

"There's zero chance," Marcov concluded, "that you don't know a fellow priest in a flyspeck like this one. So can we just skip all the denials?"

"Yes, I know Khydol," the priest admitted, tone as stiff as his back. "We forbade him from leading prayers here. He was stirring up trouble, preaching violence against Touvette."

"Decided to do more than preach it, holy man."

"Maybe so. But I'll still—" They both paused as a village matron strode through the door and knelt beside the shrine. "Still not deliver him to a thug like you!" the old man continued, his voice lowered.

Now Marcov did smile. "Sure you will."

"If you think you can intimidate me into—"

"Khydol is responsible for the destruction of half a dozen villages in Touvette, and the deaths of hundreds. You live near the border; you must know how the General's knights respond to those who threaten their people."

"We're safe here," the priest insisted, though his face had blanched. "King Irovetti—"

"Irovetti," Marcov interrupted, "is desperate for people to take Pitax seriously as a kingdom, rather than a den of thieves and beggars. If he were told that a nothing little community like yours was harboring an enemy of Touvette, at about the same time the General's men showed up looking for a little payback, you think he wouldn't grant them permission to do what they want with the ‘criminals'?"

The clergyman's jaw sagged; his hands visibly shook.

"Khydol dies either way, priest. Only question is, you want everyone else here to go with him?"

∗ ∗ ∗

"Can I help you, miss?"

Loursa gave a tired smile as she allowed the door to swing shut behind her. "Hope so. I'm looking for a man by the name of Khydol. People tell me he frequents your establishment."

"He certainly does," Ellithir said, her grin equally friendly. "Why don't you come in, and I'll see what I can tell you."

Coming Next Week: Deadly machinations and unforeseen encounters in the final chapter of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Two: Worse Than the Disease

The faintest shower of sleet, scarcely more than an icy fog, began to fall over the battlefield that had been the town of Kelbran. Just another instance of the peculiar freezes and unnatural weather afflicting eastern Touvette in recent months, but this time—as visibility grew cloudy and the churned muck of the earth thickened—it almost seemed a harbinger of the oncoming stranger.

They heard his approach before he appeared; citizens, bandits, corpses—all turned toward the clatter and splash of a warhorse thundering across the frost-kissed grass. Pounding in from the north, it grew louder, then louder still, until it was joined by the wordless cry of a warrior seeking blood.

All of which left the brigands more than a little bewildered when the mounted figure appeared from the west, bursting through the flimsy curtain of sleet in absolute, almost phantasmal, silence. Dark of hair, dark of armor, he wielded a massive blade from atop a russet stallion that appeared to be all muscle and resentment. The man swung his sword with a walloping force that seemed beyond the ability of a normal man. Striking like steel lightning, his blade sliced through the mist, hewing down foes as the warhorse bulled ahead. Four of the bandits fell, life gushing into the soil, before the others could even guess at the unbound fury that faced them.

Loursa had no idea whom their savior might be, and for the moment, she wasn't about to question. Instead, with a cry, she led Kelbran's survivors in a renewed attack on their assailants.

"Loursa leads Kelbran's survivors against the enemy."

Even fighting for her life, she couldn't quite take her eyes off the stranger. Whoever—whatever—he was, he was no more natural than the walking dead, and not merely for his abnormal strength. Blade and bludgeon veered at the last instant, sliding past rather than biting into his flesh or even the steel protecting it. In his wake, men who had fallen to seemingly nonfatal wounds twitched, shuddered, and died all the same. He lashed out with his empty hand, as well as his sword, and those he struck fell screaming, limbs withered or skin split.

Perhaps of greater import than any of his eerie abilities was his utter lack of fear. Against one foe or a dozen, living or undead, his arm never wavered, his expression never changed. Where even the bravest of Loursa's companions hesitated to draw near the bandits' shambling allies, the newcomer mercilessly drove his mount to close, his blade filleting desiccated flesh from rotting bone.

When the last handful of surviving bandits fled into the falling sleet, the citizens of Kelbran gave a ragged cheer, Loursa loudest of them all.

Not the stranger. Apparently unsatisfied still, he wheeled his horse and charged after the raiders. Loursa cringed as the din of slaughter and unanswered pleas sounded long after the lot of them had disappeared from sight.

The guard and her neighbors exchanged uncertain glances, then set about gathering the wounded. They'd been at it for perhaps five minutes when the horse reappeared at a walk. The rider dropped from the saddle, sword leaning on one shoulder. As he neared, Loursa could see that nothing about him other than that sword seemed to be in any worthwhile shape, and that the sleet melting down his skin was probably the nearest he'd come to bathing in weeks.

"Draeven," he announced in a bored tone, as though common courtesies were a burden he could do without. "Marcov Draeven. Who commands here?"

Loursa shrugged. "I suppose I do, now. My name is Loursa—"

"Fine." Draeven spun his blade, drove it point-first into the soil and left it standing. He stretched, arching his shoulders and craning his neck to one side. The resulting crack rivaled a small siege engine. "Anything to drink around here?"

"I'm sure we can find you something," Loursa said through clenched teeth. "I want to thank you for—"

"Don't. I didn't do this for you, and I don't especially want to be here." Then, before she could reply further, he idly kicked an arm that had, until recently, been attached to a shambling corpse. "Walking dead. I never heard anything about your bandit problem being an undead problem."

"Neither had we. I think this is the first time those—those things appeared. Maybe because Kelbran is the first town those bastards couldn't take on their own."

"Maybe." For the first time, his expression changed, sliding into a nasty grin. "Bet you're wishing about now that you hadn't booted all the clerics, aren't you?"

Mutters rippled through the citizens, and Loursa drew herself up rigid. "The churches turned on Touvette. They were a bad element. We've been better off since the General ousted them and set up the charities in their stead."

"Oh, yeah." The man allowed his gaze to fall heavily upon the moaning, crying wounded. "I can see that. They look much better off."

"I appreciate your help, Draeven," she said coldly, "but unless you've been granted a traveling pass, I think maybe it's time you left. Or would you rather I escort you to the nearest judge and you can explain to him why you're not a spy and shouldn't hang?"

Draeven waved his hand dismissively. "Lost it in battle, I'm afraid. But I have a feeling you'll be issuing me a new one shortly, Loursa. Otherwise, you'll never find out who's been launching these attacks, and I won't be able to send him to the nearest convenient hell. I'm not leaving without an answer. Or that drink."

"You didn't leave anyone alive who could provide any answers!"

Again, Draeven offered that ugly, crooked smile. "That's not too much of an inconvenience, really."

After a brief and apparently perfunctory examination, the foreigner knelt beside a deceased bandit. The man had fallen from a nasty slash through his ribs; Loursa grew more and more puzzled as Draeven prodded at the corpse's mouth and head. He looked for all the world like a gourmand examining a haunch of beef.

She grew more bewildered still when Draeven said, "All right, you bastards. Make yourselves useful and get in there." Not only did it not make sense, but his head was twisted to one side while he spoke, as if he addressed neither the dead body nor Loursa herself, but some nonexistent entity between them.

Loursa staggered, unable to repress a startled breath, when the dead man's jaw creaked open of its own accord. Horrified gasps and angry murmurs ran through the gathered townsfolk. Loursa wondered briefly if some of them weren't actually planning to attack Draeven.

She listened with rapt attention as they talked, these two unnatural creatures. Draeven spoke under his breath, his words intended for the corpse alone. The sounds that emerged from the body itself scarcely seemed to be words at all. Soft wheezes and croaking whispers, kneaded by dead lips into shapes that only vaguely resembled syllables, occasionally wafted to Loursa's ears, but she was too distant to make any sense of them. The sleet ceased falling, the wind stilled, and gradually the low drone of those voices became the world's only sound.

When Draeven finally concluded his "conversation" and stood, it was all Loursa could do not to either draw her sword or back away. Both urges were only strengthened when she realized that the man's hair, and the sleeves of his tunic, billowed in the unmoving air.

"You know Alvren?" he asked.

"I—what?"

Draeven sighed. "Alvren. Do. You. Know it?"

"It's a small hillside community," Loursa replied, now definitely leaning more toward the "draw her sword" option. "It's about fifteen miles north, on the border with Pitax."

"Good. Let's go."

"Why the hell you'd believe I'd go anywhere with you—"

"Because," he drawled, "I need a local to guide me. And like it or not, you owe me for saving your hide." Then, just as she was drawing breath to retort: "And we want the same thing. At least, I assume so. You do want these raids to stop, right? I'm not giving you too much credit, there?"

"No." That single word was icier than all the fallen sleet.

"Then can we get moving already?"

Spitting curses, more than a few of which called upon or profaned gods her people no longer worshiped, Loursa stalked back into Kelbran to gather supplies.

∗ ∗ ∗

The basement was pungent with soil and mildew, a stench utterly unconcealed by acrid fumes of ceremonial incense. Walls of damp earth bulged, supported by a haphazard array of mold-covered wooden beams that sagged, exhausted, under the heavy load. An equally rickety staircase slouched up to a trapdoor that was the cellar's only exit.

Well, its only nonmagical exit.

The inhabitants of the chamber sat, crouched, or sprawled around the cellar's peculiar centerpiece: a circular well of granite, sunk deep into the earth and filled to overflowing with filthy, stagnant water. A stone obelisk, rough-surfaced but perfectly cylindrical, rose from the precise center of the foul pool. Only if viewed from directly above would the peculiar monument appear as a representation of a staring, disembodied eye.

Ellithir leaned back from the edge and brushed a stray lock of hair behind a pointed ear. Over the simple woolen tunic and leggings with which her customers in the store above were familiar, she now sported a voluminous black tabard, torn ragged around the hems. "Well, sisters." She waved idly at the images that were only now fading from the pool. "What do we make of this?"

"Death swaddles him." This from a figure hunched in the shadows across the dark water, a silhouette that might or might not have been human. Her voice was dull, monotonous, like a woman entranced. "An infant's blanket and a burial shroud, both at once. He walks with ghosts. They ride him, as a stallion newly broken."

"Yes, dear, I think we all got that." It was a third who spoke now, a long and lanky shape whose height and proportion, though generally humanoid, were clearly anything but human. "I could barely see the morsel, for all the phantom energies swirling about him. But I believe our sister's point was that we ought really to decide what to do about him."

"More or less what I meant, yes," Ellithir said. "We didn't plan for anyone like him, but we knew someone would interfere eventually." The coven had summoned a host of foul creatures through a variety of spells—some far worse than the undead Khydol had raised—and set them loose along the highways of Touvette. They'd kept the General's knights nicely distracted from the bandits, but the coven knew well that their diversions couldn't last indefinitely.

"Do we call it done, then, dearie? Leave the cleric and his thugs to their fate? The bloodshed's already been heavier than we could have demanded. Perhaps we've accomplished enough for now."

"The priest's wrath rages hot, still," the other shadowed woman droned. "We can burn plenty more, before the conflagration dies."

Ellithir nodded. "I'll send a warning to Khydol, making sure he thinks the message came from some supposed ‘survivor' of the Kelbran battle. He and the rest of Zarred's bandits should be more than enough for this newcomer, once they know he's coming."

The larger figure shifted, stretching. "And if they're not enough?"

"Mm. Can the two of you assist me in renewing the weather magics before you depart? Wouldn't do to have the ‘punishment of the gods' suddenly let up."

"Those spells shouldn't require renewing until the day after tomorrow."

"No, but I intend to be busy for the next few days. Contingencies, in case—as you suggest—Khydol and Zarred don't come through. One way or another, ghosts or no, it behooves us to ensure that this Draeven is just another corpse on the pile.

"The flesh is filth, my sisters," she concluded, her tone abruptly formal, ritualistic. "The world is pain. To see is to hate."

From the others, in unison, "And the Hag sees all."

∗ ∗ ∗

Slipping, Marcov, you wretched fool. Should have known this was too easy...

Should have known—and would have known, only a few years ago, when his arm and eye were honed by a life behind the sword. Before the fury and frustration. Before the drink.

Before the ghosts.

They'd reached Alvren quickly enough, stopping only for a few hours to rest up after the battle at Kelbran. It proved an easy journey, over open fields with only the occasional rolling hill, and often across trails tramped flat by years of passing feet, human and animal alike.

And they'd taken every precaution. Marcov had learned much from the corpse he'd interrogated. He knew that the bandit leader—named Zarred—had depopulated Alvren and taken it as a base camp for his band. He knew there were several dozen men left in that band, but Alvren should house only a fraction of them at any given time. He knew the band had been hired by someone to make these raids, though presumably only Zarred and his immediate lieutenants knew who.

What Marcov hadn't known, Loursa had. Familiar with the geography and—though he would never deign to admit it—possessed of a sharp sense of tactics, she'd planned a nighttime approach that kept them hidden behind Alvren's own houses and barns.

Between their swords and what advantages Marcov could squeeze from the souls who rode him, they'd cut down a trio of riders patrolling near the hill, and a pair of sentries at the edge of town. They'd been so silent, in fact, that the choir of frogs and crickets—those that had survived the recent freeze—hadn't been sufficiently disturbed to cease their calls.

So why, why, after battling a throng of bloody undead, was I too stupid to check for magical defenses?

It had erupted from the earth, a blast of thunderous force that shattered the night, nearly deafening him even as it hurled him and Loursa from their feet. Soil and splinters rained around them, and the world seemed subtly tilted as Marcov struggled to rise.

Now, cursing himself for an idiot and the phantoms for dragging him into this mess, he finally staggered to his feet. One more abrupt lean almost sent him sprawling again, and then the earth righted itself enough for Marcov to see what he faced.

"Well... shit."

Coming Next Week: The sins of the past revealed in Chapter Three of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

Ari Marmell

Chapter One: Echoes of the Past

Rattling shutters and gaps between the wooden slats of walls allowed a faint breeze into the store. The establishment smelled of dust, mildew, and the acrid aroma of burning leaves that kept the ubiquitous mosquitoes and flies from riding the weather inside. It wasn't that much of a store, all in all; but then, it wasn't that much of a town, either.

The bulk of the voices—and there were always voices, despite the store's ramshackle appearance—wafted from the counter opposite the door, and from the racks of meats and baked goods alongside. Ellithir allowed the locals to loiter, picking at the foods and paying for whatever they consumed, rather than insisting they buy in bulk. Just another way to compete with the eateries and taverns in town—all two of them. Even over the sounds of those voices, though, the willowy elf heard rickety floorboards beneath a hesitant tread, and the faint rustling and thumping of someone browsing idly through the aisles of various tools.

The visitor eventually emerged from the second aisle over, between haphazard coils of hempen rope and a portcullis of dangling rakes. Beneath a mop of unruly red hair, Khydol's face was morose. The gold-hued tunic he normally favored was hidden by a cloak and mantle of drab brown—as was the holy pendant he usually wore exposed for all to see.

Gracefully, her own steps squeezing nary a squeak from the floorboards, Ellithir stepped from behind the other counter—the one where she normally tallied up purchases—and produced a three-legged stool for her guest.

"Thank you." Clearly a response born solely of instinct; his eyes hadn't even focused on her. Ellithir studied him further: the abnormal garb, the pensive gaze, the faintly pointed ears indicating that he shared a portion of her own racial heritage.

Studied him, and waited for him to come to it in his own time.

"It's done," he said finally.

She nodded. She'd expected as much. "And this troubles you?"

"It..." he shrugged. "Yes. Somewhat. It's just... a lot to take on."

"I know it is." She reached out, gripping his shoulder tight. "We've talked about this, Khydol. You're doing the right thing. Look at what else is happening over there! Hail, in this season? Wilting crops? If the gods are finally showing their wrath at those apostates, surely your anger is justified!" It was an old discussion, one they'd held half a dozen times before. Khydol agreed with her, she knew that; he just had to be reminded.

"And besides," Ellithir continued, jabbing a finger at the half-elf's unseen holy icon, "what else would she ask of you but vengeance?"

Reverentially, Khydol reached beneath the woolen mantle and withdrew the heavy pendant. There, worked into the silver, were the triple daggers of the Savored Sting: Calistria, mistress of lust, deception... and retribution.

"The goddess be praised," Khydol murmured, softly but sincerely. Across the store, the voices began to taper off as men and women glanced out the windows, saw the first streamers of smoke writhing from over the horizon—and over the border.

"The goddess be praised," Ellithir echoed, her thin lips quirked in the faintest of smiles.

∗ ∗ ∗

The ghosts of Marcov Draeven's past have taken their toll.

In some taverns, a brawl means something has gone very wrong, and it's time to yell for the watch. In others, it just means that sailors are in port, or teamsters are between deliveries, and someone's imbibed a bit too freely.

And then there are those in which a brawl simply means "We're open."

The stranger—one of many—slouched in a rickety chair, trying to absorb the last dregs of warmth from the hearth's dying embers, and watched with profound disinterest as the last of this evening's rowdies were hurled out the door by the husband-and-wife team of half-orc bouncers. The fight hadn't even been fun to watch; those killjoy bouncers had stepped in too early.

He couldn't be bothered to remember the tavern's name. The latest in an endless line, tracing a pathway of pain across the Inner Sea, it was nothing to him but another place to drink, and maybe chase a few hours' slumber. It wasn't even a good place; that damn insect-repelling herbal smoke that had recently grown so popular throughout the River Kingdoms was giving him a headache.

Not that Marcov Draeven appeared any more special than the shabby ale hall. Grease-matted hair that might, if clean, have appeared a rich brown hung past his shoulders in ragged strings. Unshaven cheeks went beyond gaunt into sunken, and red-rimmed, deep-set eyes suggested many recent sleepless nights. An old and often-patched chain hauberk left rust stains on a tunic almost too dark to show them. Only his weapon, a monster of a hand-and-a-half sword, demonstrated any signs of care. It currently leaned against the wall, unscabbarded, like any old walking stick.

Any of the patrons who noticed him at all—and if they did, it was only for that naked blade—had certainly dismissed him as just another sellsword, gone somewhat to seed, haunted by past years.

They had no idea how right they were.

To those potential observers, it would surely have seemed just another drunken mishap as fingers fumbled and lost their grip. They might have chuckled as the mug toppled and bounced across the floor, leaving tiny chips to mingle with the layers of broken crockery that served as the tavern's carpet.

Only Marcov himself knew that he'd placed the damn thing solidly on the table, that his hand was a good four or five inches away when it had suddenly gone skidding over the edge.

"Pharasma take you!" His low growl was surely inaudible to any nearby ears. "Leave me alone! Just one evening, damn you..."

His sword wobbled against the wall, threatening to tilt.

Spitting curses, Marcov stumbled a few steps from the chair—not drunk, entirely, but not precisely sober either—and dropped to one knee, hand outstretched to retrieve the fallen tankard.

That lean brought him just near enough to the next table to overhear the conversation over the ambient cacophony. Which, he realized sourly, had been the entire point.

Their entire point.

"...third town in as many weeks!"

"Bandits, maybe? Been a rough harvest. Lots of folks goin' hungry over there."

"Bandits steal, ya idiot. Kill a few; rape some, maybe. What kinda bandits burn whole towns to the ground?"

"I dunno. Angry ones?"

"Idiot."

"Yer both idiots. It's divine vengeance, it is. Knew it was comin' to 'em sooner or later."

"No!" Marcov hissed as he rose, wayward flagon forgotten. "Not my business. Not my problem!"

The mug at his feet shattered as though crushed beneath an unseen heel. His sword against the wall, and the chair he'd so recently vacated, began to rock.

"No, gods damn you!" He already had a goal, had somewhere to be! Why wouldn't they just—?

The chair toppled, one leg snapping loose. The embers in the fireplace burst upward, then extinguished themselves in a sizzling, sifting rain of ash.

And the howling began.

A single voice, at first. Then a dozen... three dozen... a hundred... more. Shrieks of terror, wails of despair, screams of agony, sobs of grief. The final gasps of the dying, and the hopeless moans of the damned.

Nobody else heard them—Marcov knew that all too well from prior experience—but that didn't make them any less deafening to him! Once more he fell to his knees, hands clasped to his ears, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that flickers of color flashed across his lids.

"Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!"

The howling only grew louder. The sword fell, sliding across the hearth, quillons grating on brick. Crockery atop the surrounding tables began to shake and clatter.

Strong-willed, stubborn, and prideful was Marcov Draeven. Even in the face of the unnatural onslaught, the gale of angry souls, it took him nearly a full minute to bend.

"All right! All right, you bastards, enough!" The sellsword's hands dropped from his ears to the floor, where he crouched like a wounded animal. "Enough," he repeated, far more softly.

The howling stopped. The surrounding objects ceased their impossible dance. And Marcov opened his eyes.

The room around him had changed, and not just by the will of the dead. Chairs and tables lay strewn where patrons had bolted to their feet and retreated from the spectral maelstrom. Quite a few had fled, to judge by the gaping door (and, in a some instances, windows). Most of those who remained stood, wide-eyed and sweating, pressed against the farthest walls, but a few edged forward, hands reaching for weapons.

Marcov slowly rose, stretched out his hand, and hissed something at his phantasmal retinue. The broad-bladed bastard sword flew from its spot by the hearth to land in his waiting palm with a muted slap.

The bravery rushed out of those few courageous souls, along with gasps and muted shrieks. They, too, fell back against the walls once more.

Marcov needed only a moment to find one of the men on whose conversation he had eavesdropped. "The towns you were talking about—where are they?"

"I... That... Towns? Sir, I don't want any—"

"Where. Are. They?"

"Touvette!" It was scarcely a squeak. "Eastern Touvette!"

A sharp nod, and then Marcov turned toward the shivering barkeep. "For the damages." He fumbled at his belt a moment before he found his coin purse, not due to any lingering intoxication—Marcov was quite sober now—but because his possessions had a bad habit of never remaining precisely where he'd put them. Finally, he scooped out a handful of silver, which he casually dropped to the floor when the barkeep showed no interest in coming anywhere near him. Then, sword still unsheathed resting flat upon his shoulder, Marcov strode toward the stables.

∗ ∗ ∗

The reinforced leather of Loursa's armor absorbed the stroke that would otherwise have split kidney and spine both. Still, she staggered a step across the churned and muddy field before spinning around, whipping sweaty strands of hair from her face, and slamming the heavy stock of the crossbow against the brigand's jaw. Something cracked—bone or wood, she wasn't certain, but the man collapsed. Loursa took that momentary respite to draw her own blade, catch a few deep breaths, and assess.

Kelbran hadn't been much better off than any of the other tiny communities scattered near Touvette's easternmost borders. The unseasonable ice storms had ravaged the settlement's crops as badly as its neighbors'; its people were just as desperate, just as destitute. But when the invaders came, and the first of the villages fell, Kelbran had welcomed survivors, rather than turning them away to seek refuge elsewhere. It was a decision that Loursa and the other guards had questioned when Samrev first made it, but the old village reeve had been adamant. "We have no charities in Kelbran to provide such services, as the great cities do," he'd said, "but we can show charity all the same."

He'd had a practical motive as well, it turned out. When the invaders finally came to Kelbran, the sixth community to suffer their depredations, Loursa and the other guards had met them with a much larger force than they'd anticipated—a force made up partly of refugees who, though starved and exhausted, burned with the need to avenge their own lost homes. Nobody knew how these bandits had managed to avoid the military patrols that scoured Touvette's major roads, but for the first time, it looked as though they might not be unstoppable.

Still, Kelbran had paid the price; Loursa wasn't sure, but she might well be the only guard left, and at least a third of the townsfolk lay hacked and mutilated. The rest fought in groups, overwhelming bandits alone or in pairs, making up in numbers and ferocity what they lacked in equipment and training. Loursa again brushed sandy hair from her face—she couldn't even remember when she'd lost her helmet—and hefted her sword, ready to go and assist. As long as nothing else changed, victory was just a matter of—

Everything disintegrated in a chorus of screams as the first of the dead shambled over the nearby knolls.

They weren't many, as compared to the townsfolk or bandits. But then, they didn't need to be. Dozens of villagers broke and ran. Those that remained stood rooted in shock, if only for an instant, and in that instant the invaders attacked with renewed vigor. The walking corpses had turned the tide in favor of their living allies before they'd even drawn near enough to strike.

The screaming only grew louder—not merely in pain or in panic, though both were plentiful enough, but in appalled recognition. Loursa's heart, already beating like a charging hound, climbed into her throat as she recognized many of these creatures as the dead citizens of other fallen towns.

The last few dozen survivors of Kelbran found themselves in a chaotic mass, their homes behind them, bandits and the shambling dead to all other sides. Loursa squeezed the hilt of her sword, struggling to hold tight despite the patina of sweat, and prayed for a miracle. Any miracle.

Had she known what sort of miracle was coming, her prayers might have been a bit more specific.

Coming Next Week: A mysterious cult lurks in the shadows in Chapter Two of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mousferatu