A Dance of Chaos: Book 6 of Shadowdance (2 page)

As Varen listened, his pale face somehow grew paler.

“You would incite a rebellion against their king?” he asked when Muzien finished. “Even worse, you would have us explicitly responsible? Should the humans hear…”

“They won’t,” Muzien insisted. “I’ve used my guild’s connections for every step of the plan, protecting our people from blame. When the fighting begins, it will be sudden, chaotic. We’ll position the various mercenary groups all across Mordeina. At my word, they’ll begin burning villages to the ground. The combination of chaos and surprise will prevent the king from properly mustering his troops, and that’s when my puppet noble marches on Mordeina. The plan will succeed, Varen, I promise you.”

Varen looked away, to the statuette of the goddess. Putting a hand atop it, he closed his eyes, shook his head.

“What is it you want from me?” he asked. “If you didn’t need help, you’d have already put this plan into motion, consequences be damned.”

Muzien felt relief sweep through him. If Varen was ready to consider the cost, then the hardest part was over.

“My guild’s trade network is extensive, and has grown rapidly over the past few years, but it is still not enough to pay for an entire army’s worth of mercenaries. I need the coffers of the priesthood opened to me. With it I can establish a puppet king loyal to my desires. Even if we fail, we’ll plunge the human nations into chaos that will take years to recover from. All I ask is that you trust me.”

“Why come to me?”

“Because what we do must be kept between just us. The fewer who know, the safer we are. You control the coffers, and you alone. I bring before you a plan to save our people. All you must do is give me the word to begin.”

Varen opened his eyes, and his hand fell from the statuette.

“That coin is tithed to us so we may build statues and temples to our goddess,” he said. “It is given to us so we may feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Come the midsummer festival, when we rejoice in the love of our maker, it is those tithes that pay for every instrument, every singer, every baker. And you would have me spend it on mercenaries to slaughter entire villages in the vain hope of replacing one human king with another?”

“I do what must be done,” Muzien said, his temper flaring.

“And I do what the goddess says is right! The humans are flawed, but they hold as much capacity for good as they do evil. We will reason with them, Muzien. We will find ways to make them listen to us, to show we are not their enemy, and we’ll do it without becoming the monsters they already think we are.”

Varen moved to walk past him, and fighting off the beginnings of panic, Muzien stepped in his way and halted him with a hand on his chest.

“This is a mistake,” he said. “Before us is a threat, and it must be met with full force, not delusions of peace! I do the goddess’s work, restoring a balance so horribly broken only the most desperate of paths will save us. How can you not see that?”

The high priest grabbed his wrist and pushed it aside.

“Those years in Mordeina have corrupted you,” Varen said. “And what I see is a sad shadow of my former friend. Conquest through coin? Death before peace? Celestia’s blessing is not on your hands, Muzien. You’re more human than elf now.”

The words were a knife to his heart, and he felt his whole body tremble with rage. Reaching back, he put his hand on the statuette of the goddess, felt the cold stone against his skin.

“Varen,” he said as the priest headed for the door.

“Yes?” asked Varen, turning about.

Muzien struck him across the head with the statuette, a corner of the square base crunching into his temple. Varen let out a single cry before dropping to the ground, his entire body limp. When he landed he splayed awkwardly, the back of his head smacking the hard floor with an audible crack. Dropping the statuette, Muzien stood there in the middle of the shrine, feeling panic nipping at the corners of his mind.

“Her will,” he said to the body. “I did her will, always her will, yet you’d turn on me? You’d have my ten years of living among those wretched humans be for nothing?
Nothing!
”

He kicked Varen in the side, but there was no reaction. Blood continued to spill across the emerald floor, taking on a purplish hue. Trying to fight down panic, Muzien scrambled for ideas. There had to be a way to make his plan work. There had to be a way to salvage the situation. But everything involved coin he didn’t have, and with Varen dead, there was little chance for him to obtain any wealth from his brethren.

Turning, he let his eyes fall upon the statuette, which lay on its side, the bottom stained with the priest’s blood.

“I did this for you,” Muzien said, voice dropping to a whisper as he fell to one knee and reached out to take it. “Tell me what to do, my goddess. My actions were just, I know it with all my heart. Please, tell me how to save our people.”

The fingers of his left hand closed about the goddess’s legs, and he bowed his head, eyes closed. He prayed for a voice, a sign, a whisper of wind in his ear … but instead he only felt pain. It grew steadily, burning, charring, but he refused to relent. Varen was wrong. Celestia would not abandon him so. She would not betray him. But why did his hand burn? Why did the pain sear into him, and why must he now be screaming?

At last he could stand no more. The statuette dropped to the ground, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a brief glow fading from the stone. As for his hand, he held it shaking before him, saw the blackened remains through the blur of his tears. His skin was charred, and with every twitch of his fingers fresh pain shot up his arm.

“No,” Muzien whispered, tears falling. “No, damn it, no!”

Slowly he stood, his chest suddenly hollow as Varen’s words echoed in his mind.

You’re more human than elf now.

More human? Then so be it. Let the elven lands burn. Let humankind destroy the home of his former kin. Drawing a knife from his pocket, Muzien walked to the altar where the statuette had first rested. Dropping to one knee, he let his voice soften into prayer, let his whispers echo across the unseen void.

“If you would deny me, then I deny you as well,” he told the goddess as he took the sharpened edge to the tip of his left ear. “If you would rebuke my attempts to save your people, then let them all perish.”

He cut into the ear, removing the curled tip that set him apart from the men and women he’d walked among throughout the city of Mordeina. As the blood ran down his neck, he took the knife to the other ear. After two quick breaths, he cut it as well. Rising back to his feet, he sheathed his knife and clutched the bloody stumps of cartilage tightly in his darkened hand.

“If I am more human than elf, then let me become the greatest at being human,” he swore to the heavens. “Their love of coin, their lust for power, their hearts ruled by pride and slaves to ambition … everything they cherish shall be my god, my only god. I need no other.”

With that done, he kissed the burnt flesh of his hand, felt the heat of it on his lips, and then exited the hidden shrine. The severed tips of his ears he left atop the altar, just beneath the four-pointed star.

His final sacrifice to Celestia.

His first to a new god of blood and coin.

   1   

N
ot since Alyssa Gemcroft unleashed her army of mercenaries upon the streets of Veldaren had Haern felt so at risk while racing along the rooftops. Before, he could use the cover of night and the blend of his cloaks to disguise his allegiance. Now those of the night belonged to the Sun, and they bore no cloaks at all. Before, the various politics and feuds among the guilds had kept his foes in check, and the Watcher’s reputation alone had prevented most sane men from engaging him willingly. But times were no longer sane, and Haern could only guess how the master of the Sun Guild would react to the Watcher’s return.

Haern slowed his run, then stopped completely at the edge of a home, careful to keep his footsteps light, his weight evenly distributed. He was nearing the castle, and there would be no densely packed homes to rely upon anymore. Grabbing the edge of the roof, he swung himself low, landed with but a whisper of sound on the cobbled stone. A quick glance up and down the street showed no one, not that that meant much. Eyes were everywhere in Veldaren, more so now than ever before. Noticeably absent were any patrols by the city guard. From what Tarlak had told him, the king had given the Sun Guild near-total immunity to any sort of punishment, and it seemed keeping the guard at home was the easiest way to accomplish that. Haern frowned, and for hardly the first time he wished a better man sat on the throne.

Before him loomed the castle, its large double doors shut and barred. Scaling the stone walls to the upper windows wasn’t the hardest thing to do, but Haern had no need. Keeping to the shadows, he looped around to the eastern side of the castle, opposite the attached prison. There he found one of the many soldiers posted for patrol, an older man with a gentle demeanor that seemed to run counter to the armor he wore and the sword strapped to his thigh. Haern gave one last look about to ensure no one watched, then dashed toward the soldier.

Instead of being alarmed at the sudden approach, the man only nodded curtly.

“You’re late,” he said, putting his back to Haern and walking over to the stone wall of the castle. After a quick whistle, a rope fell from one of the battlements.

“Had to be more careful than usual,” Haern said, grabbing the rope.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said the soldier.

Haern flew up the rope, easily scaling the castle and climbing onto the stone battlement, which was little more than a balcony overlooking that side, accessible through a single heavy door. Waiting for him, arms crossed and armor polished, was the man responsible for protecting the city of Veldaren: Antonil Copernus.

“You’ve been gone awhile,” Antonil said as Haern pulled the rope back up. “Almost thought your note to meet was a trap or trick.”

“By who, the Darkhand?” asked Haern. “He seems more the type to demand a meeting, not request it.”

“Given past experience, it’s more that if Muzien wished a meeting, he’d break into my bedroom to have it.” Antonil shook his head. “Gods damn it, where have you been? The city’s gone to shit in your absence, in ways we never could have anticipated.”

Haern thought of his trek to the Stronghold with Delysia and his father, of how fruitless it had turned out to be, and he pulled his hood lower over his face.

“My reasons were my own,” Haern said. “And I thought the Sun Guild was crushed when I left. I pray you’ll forgive me the error, so long as I make it right.”

Antonil rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. The man looked exhausted, and though they met just before midnight, Haern knew the late hour had little to do with it. The responsibilities of his station, coupled with his inability to fulfill them due to the terror Muzien inspired in the king, was clearly wearing on him.

“If you want to make it right, bring me Muzien’s head so I can hang it by the ears over the city gate,” Antonil said. “Hopefully that’s the reason you’ve requested our little clandestine meeting, to let me know of the bastard’s impending fate.”

Haern chuckled.

“I wish,” he said. “No, I have something far worse to share, Antonil, something I need you to swear to secrecy until we have a way to deal with it.”

The man frowned, the dark circles beneath his eyes making him look more dead than alive.

“You have my word,” he said. “Now what is it that could possibly be worse than an insane elf who’s declared himself unofficially king?”

Haern almost didn’t tell him. There wasn’t much the man could do beyond spreading panic if he refused to keep his mouth shut, but Antonil was a loyal ally, and had proven his trustworthiness a dozen times before. Given the dire situation the city was in, he needed all the help he could get.

“Have you seen the tiles bearing the mark of the Sun that Muzien’s placed all throughout the city?” he asked.

Antonil looked surprised at the question.

“I have,” he said, brow furrowing. “What of them?”

“They’ve been magically enchanted with a spell, a very powerful and dangerous one. Last night Tarlak discovered just how powerful.”