Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel (36 page)

Split flesh rejoined. Shattered ribs came back together. Broken vessels were whole.

She would live on as Lakini. But her face, although she didn’t know it yet, would never be the same.

Lusk paced, uncharacteristically impatient. The pain across his ribs where Lakini had slashed at him stung, and the bruised place on his shoulder ached where she had struck him with her fist closed around the hilt of her dagger.

He glanced at the Hold. The late-afternoon light was casting purple shadows against the surface.

Why had she done that? She could have stabbed him rather than punching him. Instead, she turned the point of the knife away at the last instant, giving him the advantage, letting him strike back in return.

He wasn’t grateful. She should have struck swift and true, the deva way.

More and more he suspected that his path, twisted though it seemed, was the right one, and that Lakini, companion of his many lives and dagger-mate, was straying away from the gods’ plan for them. He had tried to convince her to listen to the Voice, the Voice of the sanctuary that had set him and so many others on the course to meet their destiny. Instead, she had rejected its guidance and left the sanctuary—left
him
—to wander among the useless people of the world. She was convinced to return and join him in his quest to bring an artifact, a coil of metal stolen many years ago, back to the sanctuary where it belonged. But when he had revealed himself to her, his true nature, the things he had done to make the world safer,
purer
, she had rejected him.

She had called him an abomination.

She had forced him to fight her.

She would pay for that, if she was still alive.

Kaarl vor Beguine stood a little way apart, watching the pacing deva with a wary eye. The Beguine guards were stationed at intervals around the Hold, their bows at the ready for any of the besieged that might try to escape. The great doors that led into the caverns at the base of the monolith had been barricaded, and they had already learned that any attempt to break them down would be met by a volley of arrows.

Kaarl had vowed to rescue Kestrel and her family, and it broke his heart that they had failed to get them safely out. He knew Arna was dead, killed by some Jadaren treachery, and had heard terrible rumors about the children.

It went against his every instinct to fight beside the terrible creatures he’d seen preying on mortal men last night. But his guards were too few. As he’d told Sanwar, they were no army. Without the help of the bandits and ghouls, they’d stand no chance against the Jadaren forces. Someone within the tunneled monolith had taken charge last night, organized the defenders, and managed to push them out and keep them out until dawn, until the bulk of the bandits, unable to tolerate the sun, had slunk away.

He’d told Lusk, and the deva had snarled at him that he must wait until dusk, until the creatures of darkness could use darkness to their advantage. And so Kaarl
waited, reflecting on the irony of having to fight beside a vampire.

Lusk suddenly felt Lakini’s presence behind him, warm as if she touched his back. He whirled, his hand on the hilt of his dagger.

No one was there. But across the way, on the other side of the road beaten wide by the passage of trading caravans, beneath the spreading limbs of an immense, lone oak that stood apart from the edge of the woods, a shadowed figure stood.

Lusk shaded his eyes and peered at it. It was standing still in a way few creatures that walked on two legs could imitate—the way a deva stood.

“Wait here,” Lusk called to Kaarl vor Beguine, earning a startled look, and hastened across the road to meet the figure waiting there.

W
alking the mile or so down the crushed-lava road to the oak, Lusk remembered the halfling thief in Cormyr, and a smile curved his mouth. How naïve Lakini was about it.

He had felt the slight tug of the thief’s sly fingers on his coin pouch
.

The deva turned on the unsuspecting thief, quick as thought. The halfling found himself gripped around the throat, his air cut off before he could react, then lifted into the air and shoved hard against the rough, slick stones of the alley wall. His eyes widened as he stared into the eyes of his erstwhile mark, the golden eyes and the slanted streaks across the face. What was this creature? He had taken it for an oversize half-elf
.

The little thief grinned ingratiatingly. The deva was stern but would turn him over to the tender mercies of the city watch. Day watch would be problematic, but dusk watch
was well bribed by the guild and would let him go for a reasonable fee and a few light cuffs for show. The deva might be angry, but he wouldn’t harm him. The creatures were ridiculously law-abiding
.

Nothing could express the little thief’s astonishment when the deva’s knife pierced his entrails, deep, ripping up, up, up. Lusk leaned close to the halfling’s ear, his lips almost touching it
.

“In your last few moments of life, maggot,” whispered the deva, “it will be my duty and pleasure to teach you a very valuable lesson
.”

It was only a minute before the halfling was beyond all education
.

The sun had long passed its apex, and the figure under the tree stood in a pool of shade. Lusk’s fingers itched for his bow, but the figure didn’t move, and he forced himself to relax.

He climbed the slight rise to the base of the oak, passing without a glance the small shrine of lava rock that had stood through all time and weather.

Lakini stepped forward to meet him. Despite himself, Lusk stopped, shocked at the sight of her face.

The pale band was still across her eyes. But now she was further marked. It was as if her face were a porcelain mask that had been dropped and shattered, and then repaired, leaving a pattern of cracks.

“By the Sea, Lakini,” he whispered, forgetting for a moment his anger at his once-companion. “What happened to you?”

Her expression remained placid, but she lifted a hand to her face, tentatively touching it as if she could feel the cracks. He saw her sleeve was brown and stiff with dried blood.

Her hand fell back to her belt, to the hilt of the knife he had given her, now her only weapon. It was an automatic gesture, not meant to be offensive, so he didn’t react to it.

“I began to die, Lusk,” she said. “After I got away, I went to the woods.”

“We tracked you to the edge,” he said. “There was a lot of blood.”

“Why didn’t you go farther?” There was a genuine curiosity in her voice.

He paused, frowning, unable to answer. The truth was that he thought he had killed her. And although they had become enemies, he couldn’t bear the thought of desecrating a deva’s death, which was simply the beginning of the process of reincarnation, by hunting her down like a wounded deer.

After a long pause to allow him to answer, she went on.

“I started to die, Lusk. I felt myself dissolving. And then, when it came to it, I refused my reincarnation.”

“You—” Lusk swallowed and looked past her shoulder, at the rough patterns in the bark of the oak, at the ancient letters carved there. “How?” he asked.

“It’s hard to remember everything,” said Lakini. “But I was … scattering, I suppose you’d call it.”

Her voice grew bitter. “You can’t remember, because they take that memory away from you, don’t they? All the memories of living and dying. How it must have
maddened them that we remembered enough to come together within each lifetime. How it must have gladdened them that we turned against each other.”

Frowning, Lusk looked into her shattered face, searching it. “Who?” he queried.

“The gods, Lusk, that make us play this game of life and death. When it was time, I told them no. I refused to reincarnate. And since they made me to be reborn, they couldn’t let me die.”

A corner of Lusk’s mouth turned up. “Were they angry?”

She toughed her face again, as if self-conscious. “Yes. They were very angry.”

“Why, Lakini?” His voice was stern. “Why did you defy them?”

“Because I realized you were right.”

Unconsciously his hand brushed the hilt of his own knife. “Are you speaking the truth?” There was a thread of hope in his voice.

“I’ve been well marked for speaking the truth,” she said. “These human families do nothing but sell the same goods back and forth until everyone forgets what they have and buys more. I know now why you were sent here.”