Skein of Shadows (26 page)

Another dragonmarked House that had somehow learned of the artifact she’d been sent to retrieve? She wasn’t foolish enough to imagine that spies had not infiltrated Deneith, even as far up as Breven’s inner circle. For that matter, there were other groups outside the thirteen Houses who might have an interest in her mission, if they’d learned of it. Any of the royal families, for instance, or leaders of other nations, like the hags who ran Droaam. Even the dwarves’ Iron Council, though she rather thought they’d have approached her directly—she was technically their subject now that she’d been adopted into the Tordannon clan.

But which of those groups had enough of a local presence to launch an assault so quickly? She’d received her mission just three weeks ago, and been in Xen’drik only two. She ran through the list: Kundarak, Cannith, Phiarlan, Jorasco.

And Deneith.

Had Greigur finally decided to make his move?

But, again, it made no sense. Any of the groups interested in the artifact that Baron Breven wanted so desperately
would wait for her to actually find it first and
then
attack her. The timing was off.

And then she had no more time to wonder. A clang of metal against stone sounded just outside the entrance to the cave. Whoever it was, they were here.

Sabira tensed, waiting for the first one to enter the cavern. She saw something sail by in the darkness, and then the world exploded in a white flash.

Temporarily blinded by the light, she heard the rush of booted feet and the clang of a crossbow bolt striking ineffectually off armor.

Then the cacophony of engagement as their enemies located the members of her group and began to attack. Greddark’s blade flamed, casting hellish shadows as the cavern walls echoed with the music of battle; the high, ringing tones of steel on steel melding with the lower, more brutal notes of steel on flesh.

A shout sounded to her left. Zi’s voice, raised in anger, and power. Suddenly, the light winked out and she could see again, albeit with white spots of light still dancing on the periphery of her vision.

A sword was hurtling down at her head and she jerked aside just in time, the blade denting and sparking off her spaulder as it slid past.

That was going to leave a bruise.

Her attacker, a tall man who looked vaguely familiar in the darkness, cursed spectacularly as he tried to recover from what he had intended to be a killing blow. Sabira took the opportunity to swat him aside with the butt of her axe, catching him in the side and sending him flying. She didn’t have time to gloat, however, for the man hadn’t
been alone. His dwarf companion, shorter and earless, lunged at her with a long knife in each hand.

Sabira brought the spear end of her urgrosh around, slamming it into one of his hands before drawing the haft back and thrusting. The dwarf dropped his knife as he took the Siberys shard in his gut.

“Stugrim!” the other man shouted as she pulled the shard axe back out with a wet squelch. Stugrim fell to his knees, dropping the other knife and clapping both hands over his stomach to stem the flow of blood. It was then that Sabira noticed he was missing three fingers, which looked as if they’d been chewed off.

Something tickled the back of her brain, a memory she couldn’t quite grasp and hold on to. She
knew
these men, even if she didn’t recognize the name. But from where?

The answer shouted to her from the back of the cave.

“Tell your people to stand down, Deneith. I’ve got your guide.”

An everbright lantern flared to life, revealing Xujil, the tip of a hook resting at the base of his throat.

Of course. The man with the sword had been at the Glitterdust, and the dwarf called Stugrim, who was even now bleeding out at her feet, was Ears, one of the crew of the
Dust Dancer
.

“Thecla. I’m beginning to think you have an unhealthy obsession with me, and, frankly, it’s getting a little old.”

Sabira took the opportunity afforded by the light from the first mate’s helmet to assess her situation. Rahm was down, as was Jester, but she had no idea if they were just hurt, or worse. Greddark and Skraad each had three men on them—which she thought was a little insulting—and
the dwarf’s sword was no longer aflame. Laven was standing in front of Glynn, shielding her from another two as she held the stump of an arm up to her chest. Zi had only one attacker, whom he’d been trying to fend off with a wand, using it like a club. Three bodies lay on the floor in addition to Ears, but all in all, her group’s performance had not been stellar.

“I told you Arach would have you hunted to the farthest corners of Eberron for what you did,” the dwarf replied, blue light shining off his sweaty bald pate. The first mate looked quite a bit worse for wear since the last time she’d seen him in Sharn. The glamerweave coat and silvercloth breeches he’d worn on the
Dust Dancer
were long gone, as was the jeweled scabbard he’d been so fond of. It seemed that Arach hadn’t been too pleased when his henchman, already out of favor, had been involved in nearly burning down his favorite nightclub.

“Funny, I don’t see him here. Unless he’s one of the corpses littering the floor?” She nudged Stugrim’s lifeless body with her boot for emphasis. “No? Then it kind of looks like this is all you, and Arach has nothing to do with it. Which would make sense, since I’m sure he fired you for incompetence about two seconds after he found out you’d lost me, and trashed his doxy’s place of business in the process. I’m actually a little surprised to see you still alive.”

“Bringing you to him will change his mind, I’m sure.”

Dol Dorn’s broken blade, had the dwarf learned
nothing
? Sabira might have found it in her to pity him if he weren’t standing there threatening her with that ridiculous hook shoved up in Xujil’s face.

“Right. Because he’d never just kill you after you turned
me over to him. He’s far too honorable for that.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Greddark wince, but it was hard to be sure in the gloom.

“Enough talking!” Even from here, she could see the angry set of Thecla’s jaw.

Good. The madder he got, the stupider his decisions would be.

“Or what? You’ll kill the drow? Go ahead; I don’t really like him that much, anyway.”

Thecla scoffed.

“Brave words. How will your people find their way back to the surface, then? Did you leave some trail we didn’t find as we followed you?”

“We have our ways.”

“Your dwarf soarsledder? We’ll kill him too. And I wouldn’t count on teleporting. Something about this area seems to cause those spells to fail rather spectacularly.”

Sabira looked at Xujil for confirmation and the drow gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

Okay. So maybe they didn’t have as many ways as she’d thought.

“Let me get this straight. I go with you, and you let my people go free? And then you’re going to hand me over to Arach in exchange for reinstatement as first mate of an airship he no longer owns? Is that how you’re imagining this is going to work?”

The hook at Xujil’s throat was beginning to shake and Thecla’s scalp was taking on a purplish cast in the blue light.

“I’d say that sums it up fairly accurately, yes.”

Sabira made a show of looking him over, exaggerating the skepticism on her face and in her voice, so that none
of his men would miss it.

“So the man who fired you is going to be so pleased when you deliver me that he’s going to welcome you back with open arms, forgiving all and showering you with wealth? Huh. Think he’ll do the same for your men?”

Thecla’s face was
definitely
turning red.

“They’ll be well-compensated.”

“Really? By whom? Because I hate to say it, but it really seems like you’ve fallen on some hard times since we parted ways in Sharn. How were you planning on paying them, exactly? I mean, I doubt Arach’s going to award that oh-so-generous reward to you—if anything, he’ll probably use it to help rebuild the Glitterdust. And it looks like you can barely afford to eat, let alone pay these men enough to make kidnapping and conspiring to murder a Sentinel Marshal worth their while.”

The man who’d first attacked her had regained his feet while she spoke and she saw him glance quickly over at Thecla. Just as she’d suspected; the former first mate hadn’t bothered to inform his men who their quarry was. She wondered if they even knew that he was no longer actually working for Arach, or had any authority over who got the bounty the Aurum member had placed on her head.

“I said,
enough
!” the dwarf shouted, his face apoplectic. He jerked his arm back, clearly intending to impale Xujil on his hook, but the drow moved almost faster than she could see, reaching both hands up to grab the wicked implement, then twisting and ducking. Even across the cavern, she could hear the crack as the hook broke free of the bone in Thecla’s arm.

The dwarf howled and something white with a lot of
legs dropped from the ceiling, landing on him. Sabira saw Xujil backpedal even as she jumped back herself, eyes and axe going up.

There was nothing, but as she scanned the cavern in the dim light, she saw other figures dropping on the men, irrespective of which group they belonged to. She counted six in all before she heard a soft
whump
behind her.

As she began to turn, shard axe raised, Thecla screamed again, a sound of pure horror and excruciating pain. It cut off abruptly, leaving only echoes.

And then his everbright lantern winked out, plunging the cavern back into darkness.

S
abira’s eyes adjusted quickly, but not before she took a blow to her leg from a spiked club. Staggering backward, she finally got a good look at the creature that had dropped from the roof of the cavern.

It stood on two legs and had two eyes, but that was where any true similarity to a man ended. Its eyes were faceted, reflecting her image a thousand times over in the dim fungal light. Sharp, slavering mandibles protruded from its mouth, clicking at her hungrily. Stringy black hair ran from the top of its mottled gray head down its back like a horse’s mane. Four arms sprouted from its torso, each with two elbow joints. Three of its long-fingered hands grasped weapons—the club and two serrated knives—while the fourth was free to guide the silk thread shooting from the aperture in its bared stomach.

Sabira dodged the sticky substance and a knife lunge, slashing down with her urgrosh. She caught the thing’s free arm at the second elbow joint, sheering it cleanly. As it shrieked and fell back, black blood spurting, Sabira heard
another sound behind her. Whirling, she almost took of the head of the man who’d attacked her, but checked her blow at the last moment.

“We’ve got a bigger enemy,” he said, sword in guard position and eyes on the spiderlike creature. “Truce?”

She frowned, considering. She didn’t really want a battle on two fronts. But he was Thecla’s man, and whether or not she could trust him now that Thecla was gruesomely dead hinged on one question: Had his loyalty been to the dwarf, or to the promised coin?

A question she didn’t have time to ask, let alone answer, as the wounded creature’s cries brought more of its brethren down from the ceiling.

“Truce!” she shouted, spinning to fend off attacks from five arms at once. Her new ally spun as well, moving closer to her as he batted away a half-dozen weapons. After a moment, they were back-to-back.

“Olog,” he said over his shoulder.

“Sabira,” she replied, impaling one of the arachnoids on the urgrosh’s dragonshard. “Pleased to meet you.”

They fought in silence for a time, slashing, chopping, and stabbing until they were both covered in ichor and had a small circular berm of body parts surrounding them.

When she could, Sabira spared a glance to her left, where Skraad fought. Like her, he’d allied with his former attackers, and the orc was just pulling a brawny fist out of the crushed mandibles of one of the multi-legged creatures. Beyond him, she was glad to see Jester back on his feet, fighting alongside Zi, whose left hand crackled with dark energy as he pointed it at the ceiling and brought stalactites down on the heads of their opponents.

Across the way, Laven was on one knee beside Glynn, both of them with their backs to a thick stalagmite. The Vadalis man had a knife in his gut and was trying to fight off two of the creatures with his sword. Glynn threw daggers with her good arm, and though she picked her targets carefully and her aim was deadly, she was down to her last two blades.

Two of Thecla’s men had a scimitar-wielding arachnoid between them, but it was somehow managing to fend them both off with its four blades.

Greddark was standing over Rahm’s body. He’d beaten back all of his attackers and was momentarily alone. As she watched, he stabbed his alchemist’s blade into the ground and pulled a charm from his bracelet. It grew in his hand until he was holding an emerald-tipped wand. Then he shifted it to his off hand and grabbed the sword again, slapping it against one of the creatures’ corpses to set the blade aflame.

As a second wave of the arachnoids advanced, Greddark brought the wand and the sword together in front of him, thumbing a switch as he did so. Green liquid streamed from the wand, catching fire. With his hands holding hilt and shaft together as if in prayer, he sprayed the oncoming creatures as they descended from the roof.

A chorus of inhuman screams echoed from their mouths as the spiderlike things began to burn with verdant fire. The silk they spun seemed especially flammable, and the green flames raced up the ropes they’d descended on to set the entire web-covered ceiling ablaze, catching several more of the creatures as they were coming out of dark holes Sabira hadn’t been able to see before. Flaming bodies fell
from the roof, only to continue burning on the stone floor, for roll and bat as they might, the creatures could not put the flames out.

Following Greddark’s lead, Zi switched tactics and was soon sending balls of fire across the cavern, picking off the arachnoids that weren’t already burning. The stink of charred hair and flesh soon filled the small cavern.