Shadow's Witness

  In contrast to the stark exterior of the manse, the sitting room fairly stank of soft opulence. A thick red carpet covered most of the floor. On it stood two richly upholstered divans and a leather covered sofa surrounding a carved teakwood table with a leaded glass top. Bronze candelabra taller than Jak stood in each corner, their beeswax candles unlit. A hearth with a masterfully crafted mantle of carved marble sat in the east wall, its coals still aglow. Valuable gold and silver knickknacks were piled atop both table and mantle but Jak admired them only with his eyes—he had come for just one item, a personal token stolen from under the very nose of Lord Soargyl.

  Clashing linen throws lay scattered haphazardly about the furniture and floor as though thrown about by a strong wind. Jak grinned and shook his head, again stunned by Lady Soargyl’s garish taste. He may have been a thief, but he was a thief who prided himself on style.

  He lightly tapped his knuckle on the table to determine whether he still stood within the effect of his silence spell. He did. Careful to disturb nothing, he walked across the carpet to the far wall of the room. He enjoyed the feel of the thick fibers on his bare toes.

  He knew the moment he emerged from the silence spell because snores as loud as a boar’s snorts assaulted his ears from behind the double doors. He covered his mouth to stifle the laugh that rose in his throat. I can only hope that those are from Lord, and not Lady Soargyl, he thought mischievously.

  After composing himself, he glided to the open door and peeked through. Light from a low burning fire illuminated the large Soargyl bedroom. Jak allowed himself a moment of self-satisfaction for having read Brandobaris’s augury correctly. Within is where the treasures lie.

  A bronze-framed canopy bed sat in the center of the room. Through the hanging linens and piles of blankets, Jak could see the vague outlines of two sleeping forms. A cushion topped-chest sat at the bed’s foot. To his right, a wardrobe and dressing screen. To his left, the dressing tables.

  Though he knew he could have stomped across the floor and not awakened anyone who could sleep through that snoring, he nevertheless squeezed through the door and prowled silently around the room. Keeping his ears attuned to any change in the snoring that might indicate a sleeper beginning to awaken, he quietly hopped onto the top of the dressing table, kneeled, and moved methodically through the items he found there.

  He discarded as unsuitable a silver buckle and a pair of engraved gold bracers. The item he chose had to be just right. He finally settled on a silver cloak pin shaped like an eagle’s talon inset with a single tourmaline. Perfect, he thought, and dropped it in his belt pouch. Now for the final touch. He whispered the words to an incantation and the image of a long-stemmed pipe, with its embers softly aglow and smoke wisps rising gently from the ivory bowl, took shape on the dressing table—the calling card Jak left behind at all his jobs.

  Style, good Lady, he thought, with a nod and smile at the bed. Style. Still grinning, he hopped to the floor—and froze in his tracks.

  A feeling of stark terror stopped him. His breath caught in his lungs. Weak-kneed, he stumbled backward and bumped into the dressing table. Resisting the urge to hide his face behind his hands, he watched as an emptiness, a darkness blacker than pitch, boiled through the same bedroom door he had just entered. His heart hammered painfully in his chest. The darkness roiled like a living thing, coalesced, and finally solidified into the shape of a tall, featureless, black humanoid. Waves of palpable hate radiated from it like heat from the hearth. Batlike wings sprouted from its back, the span as wide as half the room. Two dagger points of light formed in its face, yellow beads filled with malice.

  Jak recoiled into the shadows, sinking slowly to the floor, his eyes involuntarily glued to the creature—not a creature, a demon! A demon! His breath came in short, fearful heaves that he struggled desperately to control. He tried to meld with the wood of the dresser and prayed that those evil yellow eyes did not spy him. Please, please. Some distant part of his consciousness yelled at him to do something, anything—a Harper should do something!—but his body seemed made of lead.

  The demon hovered in the doorway and considered the Soargyl bed. Though it flew, its great wings flapped only occasionally and without wind. Lord Soargyl’s snores continued unabated.

  Shut up! Jak thought irrationally. Shut up! It’ll hear you. But the demon had already noticed the sleeping couple, and it went for them.

  With terrifying speed, the shadowy horror darted to the foot of the bed. It hovered outside the transparent canopy for a moment with its head cocked curiously to the side, as though studying the Soargyls. Its yellow eyes flared eagerly. Jak could sense it slavering, could sense the killer allowing its anticipation to build before the satisfaction of the slaughter. He wanted to scream but could not find his breath. He could only watch, transfixed by horror.

  Two overlong black arms, each corded with shadowy muscle, formed from the demon’s body. The arms ended in vicious claws as long as a man’s fingers. With a gentle grace horrible to witness—for Jak knew the butchery that would surely follow—the demon extended a thin arm and parted the linens that shielded the Soargyl bed. Silent tears formed in Jak’s eyes and began to run down his face.

  Do something, he ordered himself. Do something, dammit! But he could not. He loathed himself for doing nothing, but fear of attracting the demon’s attention froze him to inaction. He gripped his holy symbol cloak-clasp so tightly the metal dug painfully into his palm. Don’t wake up, he prayed for the Soargyls. Please don’t wake up. Silent prayer was all he could bring himself to do for them.

  The demon glided under the canopy and hovered over the bed, looking down on the sleepers. It held its wings and clawed arms outstretched, as though to embrace the Soargyls, to envelop them in emptiness. Lord Soargyl snorted, mumbled something, and rolled toward his wife. His snores quickly renewed, an almost comical funeral liturgy.

  As the demon stared down at the Soargyls, Jak could literally feel its tension building, its hate growing. Stay sleeping, he prayed. Please gods, let them stay asleep. No one should have to die staring into the face of a nightmare.

  The demon reached down and extended a claw toward the sleepers. Jak sensed its insatiable hunger. The shadowy claw seemed to tremble in eager anticipation as it neared their flesh. It will finish them quickly, he thought. His guts roiled at the thought of the slaughter. They’ll be dead before they ever wake up. He took some small solace in that.

  The demon reared back and raised its claw high to slay—

  And suddenly stopped, thoughtful.

  No! No! Do it! Do it, godsdammit! He almost said the words aloud.

  As though sensing Jak’s silent pleas, the demon lowered its claw and turned its baleful yellow eyes in his direction. His heart stopped. He tried to sink farther into the shadows. Them first, he thought, hating himself for a coward but unable to stop the thought. Them first.

  The demon turned back to the Soargyls and Jak’s heart began again to beat. Cold sweat now mixed with silent tears. You’re a coward, he accused himself. A damned coward.

  Rather than raising a claw to strike, the demon instead reached down and gently caressed the cheek of Lord Soargyl.

  Bastard, Jak cursed it through his fear. He realized then that it fed on terror as much as blood. It wanted its prey awake.

  The demon’s dire touch jerked Lord Soargyl from sleep. Lady Soargyl, too, began to stir. The burly lord sat bolt upright in bed to find himself face to face with hungry yellow eyes and a darkness as empty as the Void. “Huh? What the—” He reached instinctively for a nonexistent sword but found only nightclothes.

  His first thought was to fight, Jak cursed himself. Mine was to hide. Tears poured unabated down his face now, for he saw terror take shape in Lord Soargyl’s wide eyes. “Hel—” Lord Soargyl started to shout.

  Casually, the demon flashed its claw and tore open a gash in his throat, a ragged hole so wide that it nearly severed his head. The bed should have been awash in a fountain of
blood, but inexplicably the wound did not bleed. Wide-eyed with terror, Lord Soargyl gurgled and pawed futilely at the tear in his throat, trying desperately to keep his head attached to his neck. His body began to convulse.

  “Ahg, arg, agh.” Foam flecked his mouth and a gray vapor gushed from the wound. Eagerly, the demon devoured it. As it feasted on the vapor, it seemed to grow larger, more substantial.

  It’s his soul, Jak thought in terror. It eats souls.

  Lord Soargyl’s body began to shrink then, to implode until it was little more than an unrecognizable mass of wrinkled flesh. No sounds emerged from his open, screaming mouth.

  Lady Soargyl at last came fully awake, sat up, saw the leering eyes of the demon, and began to scream. Her terrified wail pierced Jak’s soul and freed him from his paralysis.

  “Boarim, Boarim!” She shook the shrunken remains of her husband and Boarim Soargyl’s body crumbled into dried hunks. She pulled back as though burned, screaming and crying the desperate keen of the hopeless. Before Jak could move to intervene, the demon picked her up from the bed and drew her near. A big woman, she kicked and shouted in protest, but the thing held her body aloft.

  “No! Please! Please!” The demon ended her screams by tearing her open from navel to sternum and devouring the vapor of her soul, filling its emptiness with the life it had stolen.

  While it fed, Jak found his wits enough to whisper the words to a spell that rendered him invisible.

  The guards have to be coming, he told himself. They heard her and now they’re coming. But they hadn’t come yet, and the demon finished with Lady Soargyl all too soon. It playfully squeezed the husk of her body and the corpse exploded into a rain of dried pieces that fell to the bed, intermixing with the pieces of her husband. Without a backward glance, it flowed toward the door—

  It stopped.

  Jak’s heart stopped too. It senses me, he realized. Dark, but it senses me!

  The living shadow turned and raised its head, sniffing the air like a hound. Its eyes narrowed thoughtfully and it looked back toward the dressing table. Silently, holding his breath, Jak tried to back away toward the far corner of the room, near the hearth. He froze when the demon darted toward him, quick as a cat. Though it could not see him, it knew he was there. It prowled around the corner of the room, holding its arms and wings out, feeling for its prey. Jak fought off tears as the demon’s claws swept through space and drove him inexorably backward. The thump of his back against the wall made him squeak in terror. With nowhere to run, he held his holy symbol to his chest, tight.

  The demon continued to sniff for him, drew nearer. Sweat poured from him by the bucketful. Surely the thing could hear his heart! It stood right before him now and he could do nothing but wait for death. Fear washed over him. He watched it sniffing, sniffing, its evil eyes searching. Jak’s hair stood on end and he felt so cold that his teeth nearly chattered.

  Suddenly, the demon looked down on him with eyes that bored into his soul like daggers. There you are, said a soft voice in his head, and he shuddered uncontrollably. Gently, the demon reached out a claw, a soft caress that brushed his shoulder.

  At that touch, Jak felt his soul—that essential thing that made him himself—come loose from its moorings and flow toward the empty shadow before him. Terrified, he wet himself.

  I’m going to die stinking of piss, he thought, and would have laughed but for the tears. The demon reared back and raised its claw high for the kill. A scream raced up Jak’s throat—

  The door to the sitting room burst open with a crash.

  “Lord! Lord!” Boots stomped toward the bedroom. The startled demon halted in midkill, whirled, and then streaked toward the door. Jak sensed it hiss in frustration. Barely coherent, Jak sagged to the floor.

  The demon blew past the startled house guards as they charged into the bedroom.

  “There! Get it!” But the shadow flew past them before they could bring their blades to bear—if blades could even harm such a creature. Three men in the green and gold of House Soargyl hurried to the bed and stopped cold. One turned away, covering his mouth. Horrified, the other two poked with their swords at the remains scattered across the bed.

  “Gods,” the taller guard oathed. “Call the priests,” he ordered over his shoulder, “and get a mage in here. And send for Master—make that, Lord Rorsin.”

  Still invisible, Jak rose unsteadily to his feet. He had to get out. A thief caught in a murdered nobleman’s bedroom would not be treated mercifully. Dazed and wracked with shame, he picked his way through the milling guards and into the sitting room. Shouted orders and frightened conversations sounded all around him but he couldn’t make out the words. Everything blurred into an inchoate roar. Two stout guards stood near the broken window he had entered through, talking and pointing—his silence spell had expired.

  He waited for them to step away, then squirmed past and jumped through the window. With a whispered magical word, his fall turned into the gentle descent of a feather. As he floated earthward, he felt his soul clinging to his body by only the merest of threads, a tattered cloak that the cold winter breeze threatened to tear from his being. A vision of living darkness, boundless emptiness, and hate-filled yellow eyes haunted his mind’s eye. Again, he relived a portion of his soul being jerked from his body; relived his essence being torn in two. Halfway to the earth below he began to scream. When he hit the ground of the courtyard, he ran pell-mell from the grounds, unmindful of guards or spells, still screaming.

  CHAPTER 3

  EREVIS

  The vast Uskevren feasthall overflowed with the glittering grandeur of Selgaunt’s assembled Old Chauncel. Having completed the five-course feast, the guests, in accordance with Sembia’s social custom, now stood or sat about the feasthall in small groups, laughing, drinking, smoking, and talking.

  Cale despised their perceived self-importance. To him, the room seemed an ocean of arrogant faces and empty-headed chatter. He strived to keep the contempt from his expression as he maneuvered through the thick crowd and dutifully refilled wine chalices.

  A bewildering array of silk gowns, jewelry, and silver-laced stomachers—the latest fashion among the city’s noblewomen—shimmered in the soft, aromatic candlelight. Though he recognized the faces of many of the nobles in attendance, many more were strangers to him. It seemed his lord had invited half the city to celebrate Perivel’s birthday. This, despite the fact that Perivel Uskevren is forty years dead, he thought.

  Every year on the thirtieth of Hammer, Thamalon held a birthday ball to honor his lost older brother, Perivel Uskevren. Cale had never known Perivel, of course, but based on what he had heard of the elder Uskevren over the years, he thought he would have liked him. Perivel had died plying steel against three foes while the former Uskevren manse, Storl Oak, had burned down around him.

  Though he would have done the family a service by leaving behind a recognizable body, Cale thought.

  After the inferno, the ruins had been carefully searched and the bodies of the dead dutifully removed, but there had been no way to tell if any of the charred corpses pulled from the ruins had been Perivel. Rumors persisted to this day that he had survived.

  So it seemed that at least once every few years, a man claiming to be Perivel Uskevren showed up at Stormweather’s doors and asserted the rights to primogeniture. Invariably, Thamalon and Cale exposed such claimants as imposters sponsored by rival families and turned them away. Still, the problem never seemed to go away entirely.

  Nevertheless, despite the problems that it created by reawakening rumors of Perivel’s return, Thamalon kept his brother’s memory alive with an annual celebration, a feast and ball that had become a fixture in Selgaunt’s social calendar. That the invitees did business in the process seemed only natural. For such is Selgaunt, Cale thought with a smile.

  Though held in Perivel’s name, the birthday ball had long ago become as much about making deals as it was about honoring the elder Uskevren. Thamalon used the fine wi
ne, excellent food, and general good feeling as a platform to discuss trade alliances and business deals with the rest of the Old Chauncel patriarchs. Cale felt certain that Perivel would approve.

  Making his rounds with a bottle of Storm Ruby, he spotted his lord seated in a sequestered corner of the feasthall engaged in earnest conversation with Nuldrevyn Talendar. Cale could guess the topic of their discussion: a contract to arrange shipment of Uskevren wine to the southern lands of Faerûn. House Talendar dealt in fine furniture and frequently shipped to the kingdoms of the far South—Amn, Calimshan, and Tethyr, where the demand for Archendale walnut and Sembian mahogany seemed infinite. Thamalon thought the Uskevren house wines would also sell briskly in the south—particularly the full-bodied Storm Ruby—and had long sought an economical way to move bottles. Renting space on a Talendar caravan would be ideal.

  Seeing the opportunity Thamalon had instructed him to watch for, Cale maneuvered through the crowd and walked toward the two men. Like the other noblemen in attendance, both wore finely tailored attire—Thamalon’s fit frame covered in a twelve button doublet of crimson with black undersleeves; Lord Talendar’s ample belly draped in a doublet of purple with silver under-sleeves and a lace collar. As well, both wore fitted hose and polished Sembian high boots. Neither wore visible steel. As was his custom, Thamalon had forbidden weapons at Perivel’s ball—even dress blades. The agenda was business, not blood, though the two frequently crossed paths in Selgaunt.

  As he approached, Cale plucked uncomfortably at his own black butler’s doublet and pants. Despite his best efforts, he had never been able to retain a tailor competent to fit his towering frame. If his clothing was too short, it exposed his ankles and made him look an imbecile. If it was too large, he looked like a pale scarecrow swimming in a sea of black cloth. With only those two options, he had finally surrendered to the god of the ill-fit and decided on too large rather than too small, and resigned himself to the mediocrity of his tailor.