Authors: Elaine Cunningham
Roaring out a challenge, Matteo surged to his feet and charged to his friend’s aid. The gray shadow wheeled to face him. Twin scabbards swung out from her hips as she spun. With three quick strides she was upon him, the promise of death in her ice-blue eyes. Her sword flashed down and around in a reverse circle, giving momentum to a stroke that whistled down in a swift, deadly arc toward his neck. Meanwhile her flail-a length of chain ending in a spiked metal ball-swung out wide and whipped in from the other direction in a rising arc. Working together, the Crinti’s weapons formed a deadly parenthesis that cut off evasion or retreat.
Retreat was the last thing on Matteo’s mind. He leaped in close and slammed his dagger into the curved cross guards of the female’s sword. The heavy blow jolted through his arm and sang down his spine, but he did not allow the pain to slow his counterattack. With all his strength he heaved upward, first stopping the sword’s momentum and then forcing the enjoined blades up. At the same time he spun his body swiftly under the locked weapons, forcing his opponent to turn with him so that they stood back to back. With his longer reach he heaved the weapons high and broke the woman’s grip on her sword as his spin brought him inside the path of the flail.
The Crinti’s sword clattered to the rocky ground. Matteo gritted his teeth as the flail’s chain wrapped heavily against his thighs, but the real danger-the spiked metal head-slammed into his opponent’s leg with a wet, sickening thud.
Matteo quickly brought his dagger hand down and jabbed lightly at the gray hand grasping the flail handle. The Crinti snarled and released her grip. Matteo shoved aside the chain and whirled away, then lashed out behind him with one foot. The kick caught the Crinti just above the back of her knees. She fell heavily to her hands and knees. Recovering quickly, she pushed herself off the ground and leaped to her feet, ignoring the blood that poured from the holes the flail’s spikes had punched through her gray leather leggings.
The jordain snatched up her fallen sword, keeping his familiar dagger as a companion weapon. He’d already proven the value of a longer reach, and none of his own weapons matched the second sword the shadow amazon carried on her left hip.
The Crinti drew her sword-twin of the weapon Matteo held-and spun it in a deft circle. Though her gesture held the flavor of ritual, Matteo knew better than to mirror her move. The sword was heavy and strangely balanced: She knew the weapon, he did not.
Matteo stepped back and took several short cuts to get the feel of the weapon. Its weight leaned closer to the point than he was accustomed to-a choice that added power to a thrust or cut and that spoke of great strength and deadly intent. He did not relish the idea of fighting the Crinti warrior with such an unfamiliar weapon.
The elfblood exploded into motion. To Matteo’s astonishment, she tossed her sword into the air. It flipped end over end and fell, point down. She caught the sword as it fell, her hands fisted at the midpoint of the blade. Blood seeped from between her white-knuckled fingers as she clenched the weapon. She caught Matteo’s eye, sneered, and spat.
Then she raised the sword point to her chest and with both hands drove it into her own heart.
With her last strength she threw herself backward, as if determined not to fall prostrate at his feet. She landed hard and her arms flew out wide. Her bloody hands spasmed into clenched fists, slowly opened, and fell slack.
For a long, shocked moment Matteo stared at the dead warrior.
“It is their custom,” Andris said softly. “A Crinti who feels herself disgraced will chose death over shame. They are a brutal people, but proud.”
Matteo slowly turned to his friend. “How did you come by this knowledge?”
Andris swept one hand in a wide circle that encompassed the high, wild country. “This is the Nath. If you wish to survive, you must learn of its dangers.”
“That does not mean you must join them!” Matteo protested. “Gods above, Andris, what are you doing?”
The jordain’s ghostly jaw firmed. “What I think is right. Go your way, and leave me to it.”
“You know that I cannot. Kiva must be found and stopped. The Crinti bandits are my only link to her.”
Even as he spoke, he knew his words to be false. The shuttered expression on Andris’s ghostly face forced Matteo to admit the full and painful truth.
“You fight with Kiva again,” he marveled, “and with the accursed Crinti! Andris, what could possibly justify such an alliance?”
“Halruaa,” Andris said shortly. “My vows as a jordain. The wrongs done to my elf forebears.”
“Kiva is a traitor to Halruaa. How is it possible to serve the land by following one who betrayed it?”
“Do not judge me, Matteo,” Andris warned. “For both our sakes, do not hinder me.”
For a moment Matteo stood, torn by his own conflicting loyalties and by the plea in Andris’s eyes. Slowly he threw away the Crinti’s sword. A smile that was both relieved and sad touched Andris’s face, only to die when Matteo drew his jordaini daggers.
“Return with me, Andris,” he said quietly.
In response, the ghostly jordain drew a dagger of his own and dropped into a defensive crouch.
Matteo tried one last time. “I don’t want to fight you, my friend!”
“Small wonder. You usually lose.”
Andris’s hand flashed forward. His dagger stopped well short of Matteo’s lighting-quick parry, but the jordaini blade was not Andris’s true weapon. With his free hand he hurled a fistful of sparkling powder into Matteo’s face.
The powder struck him in an explosion of unimaginable pain. It burned him, blinded him. Matteo dropped his daggers and reeled back, both hands clasped to the white-hot agony in his eyes.
With a strange sense of detachment, Matteo registered the sharp blow just below his ribs. The pain was a whisper compared to his screaming eyes, but his body responded by folding over at the waist. Two sharp, precisely placed blows to the back of his neck brought the ground racing up to seize him.
As if from a great distance, Matteo heard Andris’s voice speaking with what sounded like regret. “The powder’s effect wears off swiftly. Until then, try not to rub your eyes too much. But don’t follow me, Matteo. I might not be able to let you go next time.”
From a rocky perch high above the clearing, Kiva watched the battle between Andris and Matteo. Her lips curved in a smile as the troublesome jordain fell. As she suspected, Andris was hers. Like the Crinti, he put such value in his elf heritage that all other considerations paled. For Andris to turn against a fellow jordain, his best friend, made that abundantly clear.
This meant more to Kiva than she wished to admit She had chosen Andris before she knew of his heritage and because he was not Matteo. Matteo’s heritage she had known for a long time. The fact that Andris and Matteo were friends disturbed her, as did Matteo’s incomprehensible friendship with Tzigone. Kiva’s nighttime reverie had been haunted more than once by the fear that the three humans were bound by a destiny none of them fully understood.
The elf woman made her way down to the Crinti camp and sought out Shanair. She described Matteo to the chieftain, instructing the elfblood to take a group of warriors and lure him and any companions into the haunted hills. The men were to be kept alive, she stressed, until Shanair received word otherwise.
Once the Crinti chieftain gave grudging assent to these constraints, Kiva took her scrying globe and went off in search of a quiet place and a conversation with a certain wizard. She had not contacted him in years, and finding him among the silver threads of magic’s Weave would be no easy task.
Mastering the spell of attunement took Kiva most of the morning. Even then, the wizard took his time in answering. The elf woman’s lips curled in disdain when at last the man’s face appeared before her. The years had not dealt kindly with the human. He was thin and balding, and the furtive expression on his face made him look disturbingly like a hairless ferret.
“Damn it, Kiva! After all this time, you had to pick this precise moment?” he hissed.
“Trouble, my love?” she said mockingly. “I would have thought you incapable of spawning anything quite so interesting.”
“Where have you been? What’s going on?”
“No doubt you heard of my capture in Akhlaur’s Swamp.”
“Yes, and your excommunication from the Fellowship of Azuth. I’m sure that broke your heart.”
Kiva laughed scornfully. “Yes, but my faith in the humans’ so-called Lord of Magic will sustain me through these trying times. Enough prattle. The battle nears, and we need to unleash all our weapons or fail utterly! You will have to cast the summoning we prepared.”
The wizard shook his head. “You know I cannot. After the incident with the imp, Keturah bound me by wizard-word never to summon a creature I did not understand or could not control. Death comes to any wizard who breaks a wizard-word oath!”
The elf lifted one jade-colored brow. “I can live with that.”
“Obviously, I cannot. Fortunately, I will not have to.”
Kiva’s golden eyes lit up. “You have the girl?”
“In the palm of my hand,” Dhamari Exchelsor said smugly. In a few words he described the events of the past few days and his new relationship with Tzigone. “We’re heading north even now. Keturah’s bastard has not yet learned the spell we require, but she will master it by the time we arrive in the Nath.”
“You have done well,” Kiva said. “Surprisingly so! This Tzigone is a canny little wench, with reason to distrust you. How did you win her over?”
“As a novelty, I tried telling the truth as often as possible. The accusations against Keturah are a matter of public record, so that was easy for her to confirm, but it took some clever magic to convince her and the jordain Matteo of my sterling character and good intentions.”
“Now I know you’re lying,” Kiva said scathingly. “First, you’re not terribly clever. Second, you have no character of any kind, and third, your intentions are never good. More to the point, neither Matteo nor Tzigone can be convinced of anything by magical means.”
“Ah, but the spell was not on them, but me! That talisman of Keturah’s? The one that protected the possessor against me and my agents? I had it reproduced. I gave the copy to Matteo to pass along to Tzigone, and I carry Keturahs original for my own protection.”
The scorn melted from the elf woman’s face. “It protects you from yourself!”
“Just so,” Dhamari said smugly. “Since the jordain and the girl are currently the greatest threats to my success, the talisman protects me by ensuring that I do nothing to reveal my true thoughts and purposes.” The wizard’s smile held great satisfaction. “If you wish to retract your insults, I will listen graciously.”
“Just get the girl to the Nath with all haste. See she learns the spell of summoning on the way!”
Kiva passed her hand over the globe, erasing the image of the gloating human ferret. She tucked the scrying device into a bag and began to climb down the steep ravine that led to a small, well-hidden valley.
The ground here was barren except for a covering of silvery lichen, and roughly level except for the single, conical mound that rose some twenty meters toward the slate-blue sky. Jagged rocks lay strewn about in a pattern that suggested a long-ago explosion. There were several places like this in the Nath. This was the least daunting and therefore the best choice for Kiva’s current purpose.
She walked over to the mound and gingerly pressed one hand against the mossy side. She felt a faint vibration, a not-quite-audible hum of magic and power and ancient, primal evil. Kiva, despite all that she had endured and all that she had become, shivered with dread.
As tentatively as an urchin whistling in a graveyard, she began to hum an eerie little melody, a song that sometimes echoed through the wild places and passes of Halruaa. It was an act that mingled bravado and desperation, and as she sang the hairs on the back of her neck rose in protest. The evil beneath her hand chilled her like the caress of a malevolent ghost.
Still Kiva sang, preparing for the task that might yet fall to her. There was always the chance that Keturah’s daughter could not accomplish the task she had been born to do.
Kiva sang until her throat was dry and tight, but her efforts brought no change to the humming magic of the mound. She fell silent, unsure whether to be disappointed or relieved. As Keturah had once told her, it was rank foolishness to summon a creature one could neither understand nor control.
No one understood the Unseelie folk, the fey creatures that haunted the mountain passes and wild places of Halruaa. Hidden gates led into the netherworld of the Unseelie Court-a place of evil, a land not quite in this world. Few who entered it returned. Even the Crinti feared the dark fairies and would flee at the sound of their song.
Precisely why Kiva needed this spell.
Accepting the Crinti into her plan was rather like inviting rats into a granary to eat unwanted surplus. The nasty gray creatures-whether two-legged or four-were unlikely to leave once their purpose was fulfilled. The appearance of dark fairies would send Shanair and her muscle-bound sisters scuttling back to Dambrath.
As far as Kiva knew, no one had ever managed to summon the Unseelie folk, much less control them. Decades of study into dark elven magic had given her some insight into the dark fairies, for legend had it that ancestors of the southland’s drow had learned their ways during captivity by the dark fairies, to their great sorrow and utter damnation.
Be that as it might. Years of work had yielded a promising spell. Research, however, was one thing, talent quite another. Neither Dhamari nor Kiva had the gift of summoning. Keturah had had it, to a degree that few Halruaans had ever achieved. Unfortunately, the stubborn little wizard-wench would do nothing to promote Kiva’s cause. But Kiva, being elven, was able to plot a long path around this obstacle.
She turned to the east, where wild, snow-topped mountains rose like a spiked wall between Halruaa and the wastelands beyond. She could not see the troops gathering on the plains beyond, but then, neither could Halruaa’s wizards.