The Serpent
You'll know he's the one the moment you look in his face - that wan face, those feverish eyes - but for now all you have is anonymous scribblings of blood, riddled with insane hatred and with Lucien's name.
The rain clouds have drawn aside to make way for a clear winter's night. The sea sighs softly against the jagged rocks, and Anvil's white lighthouse rises, fire-topped, against a backdrop of a million stars. One small group, prominent overhead, winds a sinuous trail against the black, beautiful and subtle and treacherous.
But you, you put aside subtlety and forgot stealth. You burst into the lighthouse keeper's home with your blade unsheathed, and you were desperate enough to use the Brotherhood's name openly to get what you wanted. It worked, and here you are, at the end of the trail of festering blood left in this traitor's wake.
The stench is appalling. Accomplished assassin though you are, the lavish mess in the cellar rooms sickens you. What you read makes you inhale sharply with shock, and the moist, reeking air leaps into your throat and nostrils, making you gag.
Your name is in there, too. All this has been a very long time in the planning. He's lain coiled in wait, spreading his slow poison, testing the air with a forked tongue for the right time to strike.
Lucien Lachance will die!! The writing snakes backwards across the page, and your grip on the journal tightens until your knuckles are bone-white. Whoever this man is, his suffering has warped him beyond all reason, but you feel no pity, only rage and terror twisting together into a fierce protectiveness that makes your eyes burn in the dim light. Lucien!
* * *
As long as you live, you'll never forget this ride. The chill night air streaming in your face, drawing tears, the staccato pounding of hooves, the smell of hot, straining horse, camps and cave entrances flashing past you, indistinct. Boulders and fallen trees loom out of the darkness too quickly to avoid; a good thing your Shadowmere is that limber and can clear them with ease.
But Anvil to Bruma is a long way, and even she has limits. On the far side of the Imperial Reserve she begins to falter. Her sides are heaving, her eyes rolling, gobbets of foam falling from her mouth to spatter the ground, but for now you don't care. Whenever she shows signs of slowing, you strike her savagely across the flanks with the flat of your sword. Because there's still time - or so you think.
Much further north, Mathieu Bellamont breathes in the cold, clean mountain air and smiles for sheer joy as he and the other three slip noiselessly through the dark to stand before the farmhouse door. Arquen, in the lead, lays an elegant hand on the latch-
-but this is the part that you didn't get to see. From here on, we'll let Lucien tell his own story. After all, it's the last chance he'll get.