Shadow's Witness (16 page)

She’s too strong to lose, he thought, and smiled. It was the fire of her spirit that had drawn him to her in the first place. No demon’s touch could quench its flames.

He steeled himself and crossed the room. Remembering the unearthly cold that accompanied the shadow demon’s touch, he retrieved the wool

blanket and gently covered Thazienne’s slim body. Some color had returned to her face and she felt warmer to the touch. He pulled a sitting chair close to the bed, covered her small hand with one of his own, and softly caressed her smooth cheek with the back of his other hand. He had never before touched her in that way,

111 miss you if I don’t come back, he thought, and brushed a few stray strands of dark hair from her smooth forehead. Of everything, HI miss you the most.

He tried to fight back the tears but they came anyway. For a long while, he simply sat there, held her hand, and wept. As usual when it came to his feelings for her, he could bring himself to say nothing.

Struck with an idea, he wiped away his tears and walked to her small writing desk. He pulled a piece of parchment, a vial of ink, and a writing quill from a sliding drawer. Scribing in his light, precise script, he wrote, Whatever good is in me exists because of you. He thought for a moment, then wrote a verse from one of his favorite elven poems—At armiel telere maenen hir. You hold my heart forever. He signed it, stood, and stopped—

What would it do to her to learn his feelings if he never returned? Equally important, what would it do to their relationship if he did?

Doesn’t matter, he resolved. She has to know. I can’t die and not have told her.

He turned and walked for the door. When he reached it, he again stopped.

After a brief inner struggle, he turned again and walked back to the bed.

Though he knew her to be unconscious, his stomach still fluttered and his knees felt weak. Shaking with pent up emotion, he bent over her and gently brushed her lips with his own—the only kiss they

had ever shared. Likely the only kiss they ever would share.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Ill always love you.”

He had wanted to say those words for years. He only wished he had done it sooner.

He turned and walked from the room.

When he stepped back into the hall and pulled the door closed behind him, Darven shot him a wink. “We all knew you were more than just a butler, Mister Cale. The house guard I mean. We all knew.”

Cale nodded. “Just Cole from now on, Darven.”

Darven cocked his big head quizzically. “Mister Cale?”

“Forget it. Be well, Darven.”

He turned and walked down the hall. With each stride away from Thazienne’s room, he grew more and more focused, more and more angry. His love for her gave way to hate for the Righteous Man. His hands clenched and unclenched reflexively as he walked. By all the gods, he would make the Righteous Man pay.

Korvikoum, you black-hearted bastard, he thought, invoking a term from dwarven philosophy. You chose to harm the ones I love. The consequence of that choice is that I put you down.

When he descended the stairs, the servants and house guards froze in the midst of their duties and stared in amazement. He offered them no explanations for his attire and weapons—time enough to explain if he returned—and walked purposefully toward the forehall. Thamalon emerged from the library and watched him from the doorway, grim approval in his exhausted eyes. Cale gave his lord and friend a nod as he passed, then walked out of Stormweather, probably for the final time.

He wrinkled his nose at the faded but detectable stink of the Oxblood Quarter. The slaughterhouses that used to fill the block had been moved out of the city decades ago and the buildings converted to the services associated with caravan trade, but still the smell remained. Even the swirling breeze and moderate snowstorm could not eliminate it.

Blue cloak whipping in the wind, Gale crouched low on the roof eave of Emellia’s House, a low-class brothel that served mostly wagon drivers and caravan guards. The steep pitch of the roof and snow slick shingles forced him to grip a stone rainspout for balance. He felt the cold of the stone through the leather of his gloves and his breath formed clouds before his face. Through the shuttered windows beneath him, despite the whine of the wind, he could hear the low murmur of male voices and female laughter. Brothels never closed, even in the small hours before dawn, and neither did thieves’ guilds.

A dagger toss across Ariness Street, dimly visible through the swirling snow and sputtering light of the windblown street lamps, stood the Night Knife guildhouse.

Masquerading as a Six Coins trading office and storehouse, the Knife guildhouse looked much like all the other storehouses that lined the street and served Selgaunt’s thriving caravan trade. Cale knew otherwise, of course. The actual Six Coins trading coster no longer even existed in Faerun. It had dissolved years ago.

Because it had a basement level and easy access to Selgaunt’s old sewer system, the Righteous Man had purchased the two-story brick building from the then money-strapped trading group over a decade ago. Since that time, the guildmaster had refurbished it with guild coin into a combination training facility, safehouse, and fortress.

To perpetuate the illusion of a going coster house, a few of the old Six Coin offices and storerooms had been left intact in the front of the building on the first floor, though most of the structure had been long ago converted to guild use. Night Knife guildsmen who were paid and trained to behave as normal merchants staffed the offices and furthered the ruse. The Righteous Man even used guild coin to fund a small amount of legitimate caravan trade, a practice that deflected suspicion by keeping a flow of wagons and drovers moving in and out of the building.

Because Cale knew what to look for, and the facade now seemed painfully transparent to him. Hardly standard in the typical coster house, the reinforced, iron bound, oak double doors that provided entry looked capable of withstanding an ore battering ram. Unusual too were the thumb-thick iron bars that backed all of the second story windows. The first story glass had been pulled out and bricked over years ago. Cale knew that a careful observer would have noticed the surprisingly small number of employees who arrived daily for work through the front doors, though Hie building itself was quite large. A careful observer would also have noticed the caravan guard uniforms worn by the hard-eyed rogues who typically guarded the entry were out of place.

I don’t know how we managed to keep this location a secret, he thought. To Cale, now on the outside looking in, the building fairly screamed guildhouse!

No guards presently stood watch outside the front doors. No slingers on the roof, either. All the second story rooms were dark, an unusual state even at this late hour.

Strange, he thought with a frown, because of the snow, maybe?

He considered simply storming the front doors,

bluffing his way through the guildsmen to the Righteous Man, and taking the old man down, but dismissed the idea as the ill-conceived product of anger. Unbridled aggression can sometimes be an enemy, Thamalon had told him. He smiled and thought: True enough, Thamalon, true enough.

He observed for a few minutes more to assure himself that he had not missed anything. He hadn’t. There were no guards. The whole situation stank like an ambush. He blew out bis breath in a cloud of mist and rubbed the day’s growth of stubble that peppered his cheeks.

Abruptly, he made his decision—he would enter the sewers at Winding Way and come up through the guildhouse basement. No doubt that entrance would be trapped as well, but going in that way would put him closer to the basement shrine, and thus closer to the Righteous Man. Survival had ceased to be his primary concern. Gale had already said goodbye to everything that he had to live for. Killing the Righteous Man was all that mattered anymore.

I’m coming for you, old man.

He lowered himself over the side of Emellia’s and nimbly climbed down to street level.

The falling snow melted the moment it hit the cobblestones, so the street was covered in a slushy brown muck. Cale pulled his cloak tight against the wind and sloshed a block to Winding Way. The snowfall made visibility difficult, so he relied on his keen ears to alert him to an ambush. He heard nothing. No one was on the street.

When he reached Winding Way, Cale ducked into an alley and looked through the falling snow to make sure no one was behind him. Still no one. He sprinted to the dry common well that the guild had “mistakenly” dug, and that now provided access to the sewers.

Using his height to good effect, he climbed over the well wall and straddled the top. He braced bis heels against one side, braced his upper back and shoulder blades against the other, and began slowly to descend. As he did, he kept his ears focused on the sewer bottom forty feet below. Snowflakes fluttered down the well and landed on his face. They melted instantly in the heat of his exertion. Despite the cold air, sweat beaded his forehead and his raspy, labored breathing echoed off the walls. The stink of waste and organic decay rose up the well to fill his nostrils. He inhaled deeply as he descended, trying to dull his senses to the smell.

He let himself drop the final few feet. Hitting the ground in a crouch, he instantly pulled his long sword from its scabbard. Faint in the distance, he heard the high-pitched squeaks of rats and the scurrying sounds of other vermin. Though too dark to see much, he knew the sewer tunnels branched off in three directions. He wanted east. He pulled forth his flint, steel, and tinderbox, and lit a candle. In the damp air, its small flame sputtered dim and orange off the crumbling walls.

Long sword and candle in hand, he headed down the east tunnel. He tried to ignore the muck that sucked at his feet. Tales abounded in Selgaunt about the dire creatures that lurked in the city’s sewers— creatures such as flesh dissolving slimes and intelligent algae men—but Cale had concern only for an ambush by guildsmen. This portion of the sewers had been sealed off from the main tunnels a few blocks away, and the guild regularly patrolled to keep it clear of anything, or anybody, unwanted.

He had walked less than fifty paces when he began to smell rotting flesh. Shielding the light of the candle with his hand, he crept forward and strained to listen.

He expected to hear the growl of approaching ghouls, but instead heard nothing. Warily, he advanced.

The stench grew increasingly stronger as he neared the turn in the tunnel that led toward the guildhouse. Still hearing nothing, he hugged the tunnel wall and stalked forward, blade at the ready. When he rounded the turn, he saw the source of the stink. Vomit raced up his throat but he gritted his teeth and swallowed it down.

Ahead of him, at the base of the ladder that ascended into the guildhouse, lay a pile of rotting corpses. Black rats, some of them as large as small dogs, feasted on the bodies. Most of them squeaked indignantly at his approach, left their feast, and scurried off.

“Dark,” he softly oathed. He shooed away with his long sword two stubborn rats that had not fled with the rest and knelt to examine the corpses.

A ghastly pile of decomposing flesh, the bodies lay heaped atop one another like cordwood, so rotted and intertwined that Gale could hardly tell where one corpse ended and another began. Fifteen or twenty men maybe, he couldn’t tell for sure. Dead a tenday at least, maybe two. The stench made his eyes water.

Torn and naked, the corpses had been tossed down from the trapdoor above like garbage. Partially eaten by ghouls—Cale recognized the ragged wounds of ghoul claw and fang—the rats had been at what remained. Puss and blood assaulted his eyes. He tried to scrutinize the mangled faces more closely but could not recognize any of them before he had to turn away or vomit. The grotesque image of a half-eaten arm sticking out of the base of the heap, the limb seemingly reaching for release, stuck in his mind and made him sweat in the chill.

He tried to steel himself, for he knew he would have to disengage the tangle of bodies to clear a path to the

‘ladder. It was either that or try to climb over.

Shuddering, he immediately dismissed climbing as a bad idea. A big man, he would likely find himself sinking into the midst of the corpses rather than walking on top of them. The thought of wading chest deep in rot made him gag. ,

Holding his breath and stifling retches, he set to work, HŤ pulled the bodies loose from the pile and hurriedly cast them to the side. Many came apart in his hands. Others leaked so much fluid as he picked them up that pus and blood soon soaked his cloak. He worked as fast as he could. Grab, throw, gag. Grab, throw, gag.

When he finally cleared enough of a path to the ladder, he grabbed desperately at the rusty iron rungs and began to climb. Halfway up he vomited down the front of his cloak. At the same time he realized that he had left his candle sputtering on the sewer floor. He didn’t care. He could not go back down, at least not right now.

When he reached the trapdoor, he shouldered it open with a grunt and climbed into the storeroom.

Darkness, but surprisingly, no guards. Light trickled in from beneath the only door out and provided a dim luminescence. Crates and bags lay broken and torn open. Spilled grain and splintered wood littered the ground. Only tattered scraps remained of the filthy rug that once had covered the trapdoor.

Relieved, and in no danger of imminent attack, Cale took a moment to strip his befouled cloak and use a torn burlap grain sack to wipe clean his blood-soaked arms and chest. After transferring his coin and tinderbox into his pants pockets, he tossed the cloak, the sack, and his leather gloves into the sewer below and closed the trapdoor. Still reeling from the sights and smells of the sewer, he put his hands on his

knees and allowed himself a moment to recover. He inhaled deeply and enjoyed a breath of cleaner air. The charnel smell of nearby ghouls lingered in the air, true, but that seemed clean compared with the foulness of the sewers.

After a few moments, he stood upright and mentally prepared himself. He did not know what he should expect. The guild seemed to have undergone some kind of purge in his absence. He felt certain that the corpses in the sewers below were former Night Knives. Dabbling with the demonic must have finally driven the Righteous Man insane. The guildmaster was purging the guild of unbelievers and transforming Mask’s faithful into undead. The realization caused Gale to despise religion all the more. A man lost himself when he took the rites. The Righteous Man had lost himself. The attack on Stormweather had not been an attempt to get at Cale through his family. It had been merely a ham-handed attempt to get at Cale, an unbeliever. Thazienne’s injury and all the dead were incidental.