23 Kythorn
In the evening I toasted a dead man.
"Vairvon and Arras," Damon said. "Dead not far from the patrol route. Should've seen what those Fist bastards did to their heads."
"To Vairvon and Arras." Our two cups of bad wine met inside the bandit hut. One had been Sique's cousin.
"Turned up on 'is doorstep, Sique and me, an' Vairvon got us this booty. Good bloke. Ever since we were kids.
"'Twas a branch o' the Iriaebor Guild for me an' Sique, th' local guards for Vairvon. The three of us'd still drink off hours, atimes even swap stuff...we'd get rid of nasty blokes from the Guild while 'e'd tell us patrol routes ahead o' time.
"Dragged 'im along in civvies once, t' be the pair-o'-eyes waiting outside this merchant scum's place. I'd grabbed me goblins and prodded 'is basement, forced open a maiden's treasures bustin' wiv apples, green beer and berry wine and more milk than ye've ever seen afore." A trapped chest, emeralds and rubies and pearls. "I started to lift th' swag—then 'e yells the signal from outside, surprise patrol thereabouts.
"So Sique an' me, we featherfall outta there fast, an' see—there's this sewage cart 'twas running through the streets, and what d' we notice but that Vairvon' s upended the thing over them draftsmen! Covered in none but crap, they were, decided not to run chase after that." He laughed. "We lagged it outta there real fast. Only sad thing is, 'e must've been seen by someone or other...'twasn't enough proof fer the shackles, but the guards drummed 'im outta there and 'e was off to find 'is fortune with the Black Talons."
Damon drunk again, heavily.
"A good fighter, Vairvon, too. More 'n worthy of the Talons. 'Twas but one time I ever beat 'im in a fight. Said I saved his life. A caravan running southwards, this young firebrand with a sword atop the regular guards—he'd killed Orrin and Idram already, so's Vairvon stepped in and took him on. I'd been helping with the other coves. A hard enough moonlit night it was, two crossbowmen hidden at the back firing into us an' half a score of guards to fight."
"Sounds a right lay." I drunk again; we'd not known the men, but might as well listen.
"Yep, some Mister Noblebritches on the caravan laying about himself like a pit fiend. Vairvon, three others 'round him, Vairvon was holding 'im back but even four weren't slowing that one."
This story. This story could be familiar.
"Then I heard Vairvon screaming, 'e'd been stabbed bad. That's when I stepped outta the shadows and gave a nice shouldertap right between the armourjoints. Bloody aristo didn't know what hit 'im."
A stab in the back. Of course. Of course.
"'E turned around, stared at me shockedlike with the sword sticking out his back, an' fell atop Vairvon stone dead. Donated a nice healing potion fer our trouble too. So's that's how I beat Vairvon. Got some nice plunder, too."
He rummaged in his pouch. There was, of course, a silver signet ring.
Then the dreams came.
—
Mulahey dies. It's Kagain; his axe a grey arc whirling up, burying itself in Mulahey's thick neck, piercing and manufacturing a gap between jagged gorget and brown-stained breastplate. The kobolds are screaming. The skeletons' bones are chittering together. Branwen cleaves a skull in two.
Mulahey stays dead long after all depart. The mines become black. It might be a day or a year that has passed. Empty nothingness fills this lonely space. Mulahey is dead in the darkness.
Mulahey's corpse rises in white light. He is as dead as he always was; he spins in the air, his wounds open and decayed. He waits. He may be expecting a blow, or healing, or whichever afterlife calls him. He was a Cyricist. Beside him shimmers a dagger of bone that signals the intention, a death beyond death. The dagger is pale and cool and heavy when held, and rests easily within the curve of a left hand.
In this darkness Branwen's hammer shattered skulls. In this darkness Kagain's axe killed many. In this darkness Garrick wept. In this darkness Imoen bled.
Hands over Imoen's stomach and about the kobold arrow, the remembered power returns. To heal friends.
The dagger falls to the ground and turns to dust. The invader of the mines is gone and dead. He is cold when his soul passes to Cyric. Perhaps his corpse gives half a smile at the last.
Only three words remain in the darkness, and they echo like thunder.
"You will learn."
—
There is another dream.
—
A bird flies freely. A sparrow high in the air carols. It is a triumph in thievery, a landslide in larceny. A fortified camp the bird sung its way through. A dance in the air. Barred to all others in the world, yet to pass within was easy.
Then the bird is a bird no longer. A lodestone drawn by the harshest of calls to earth, falling so quickly it begins to burn. It slips within the ground as easily as a hot knife passing through melting butter; like a teardrop dissolving into the centre of the sea, leaving no trace behind.
Below the ground lies a cavern within the core of the world. The lodestone must have some means of seeing, some form of conveyance. Stumbling forth into the hidden depths reveals an object. It is not seen, perhaps, but felt in patterns a uniform shade of grey; intersecting planes in the night, akin to infravision's betrayal of constructed objects.
It is a statue. Smooth stone. A complete likeness, down to each individual strand of hair, entirely unmoving. Bare eyes opened, staring into the distance. There are flaws to it, some hidden and others not. The weakness compared to the strength of fighters. The clumsiness if contrasted with true sophisticates. The inability to bespell. Selfishness and laziness and fear buried alone in a locked and guarded estate. If you only...my little angel, you would be much improved if you troubled to listen to me once in a while. It's not as though your opinion is well-formed, is it? The statue was a hair's breath from shattering.
A mocking voice as smooth as rain.
"I see pride undeserved, great one."
Pride in thievery. Pride in reading history and gabbling in Alzhedo, Shou, attempting Sylvan from a few Candlekeep books, Mulhorandi, memorising old Illuskan verb-tenses. Pride in education, manners. Pride is—wrong, is it not? There are others greater—
"Was there pride in your name, once?"
Familiarity, certainly. The only life she had ever known, for all it had felt like a cage of late.
"Or pride in mere gold?"
One never knew the value of gold until searching an ettercap's dead body for it, hands slippery with darkened blood.
"The pride will be a second revenge, oh conqueror."
The burning wind turned all else to ashes carried in its way. Anything for revenge. Anything to destroy them all. "Death. I want to kill them." He was my brother, and he didn't deserve to die.
I apologise for this dirty bit of business, but I must seek your death— the man in the priests' hut said.
"You will learn to remember. Credit where it is due, and due where payment is demanded. Steal this revenge..."
The bone dagger forms from the blackness. It flies true to the statue's heart. The pain is as though rent asunder.
"You were made as you are. You can also be broken."
There are flashes of a bloodstained knife. Again and again. One. Two. Three. He is dead. The counting does not stop.
—
The dreams may have ended here.
—