Shadow's Witness (18 page)

“His soul for me and his flesh for you,” Yrsillar said to the ghouls. “Mask commands you.” He began to laugh, loud and long.

“Massk,” the ghouls snarled through drooling fangs, and leaped over the pews to reach him. At that exact instant, the doors to the shrine burst open and the ghouls from the hallway streamed in.

Without thinking, Gale threw the explosive globe at

their feet. The room exploded in a ball of fire and scorching heat. Ghouls shrieked. Flesh and wood blew apart and sprayed the room. Too close to fully avoid the blast himself, the explosion blew Gale backward into the pews and painfully charred his exposed skin. Throughout, Yrsillar’s laughter boomed loudly in his ears.

Though wounded, Gale regained his feet in an instant. He refused to go down easily. The blast had caused his vision to go gray and blurry, as though he peered through light fog. Corpses, fire, and rampaging ghouls tore about the room. Screams, growls, moans, and Yrsillar’s haunting laughter resounded off the walls. The ghouls ran about and clawed wildly at the air, growling and snarling confusedly, as though blind. Some walked right into the blazing fires and leaped back with a scream. Gale did not understand it, but then he did not understand most of what had happened already tonight.

A ghoul prowled forward in a crouch and stood beside him, probing the area before it with its claws, but unable to see him. Without a thought, he used his dagger to gut it. The chaos in the room drowned out its dying screams.

Drawn by Yrsillar’s voice, Gale turned to see the demon now standing atop the altar.

“His flesh for you, my servants! His flesh for you!” The demon’s empty eyes passed over and beyond Gale. Realization dawned on him. Yrsillar could not see! Neither could the ghouls! Gale had to staunch the fit of hysterical laughter that threatened to burst from his tips.

Seeing Yrsillar vulnerable, his desire for revenge fought a war with his better sense. Better sense quickly won out. He took advantage of the blindness of his enemies, picked a clear path, and ran from the shrine.

When he crossed the doorway, the grayness in his vision instantly cleared. The hallway was vacant. All the ghouls were searching for him within the shrine. He spared a glance back and saw that the shrine stood cloaked in blackness as thick as pitch. The torchlight from the hallway simply ceased at the shrine doors, swallowed by darkness.

I saw through that!

He didn’t have time to consider it further. The ghouls could burst from the darkness at any moment. Without looking to the warped rooms on either side, he grabbed a torch from a waB sconce and sprinted down the hall for the storeroom. It, too, stood empty. He jerked open the trapdoor in the floor and slid down the ladder into the stink of the sewers.

He avoided looking at the pile of corpses at the base of the ladder and raced back through the tunnel. When he reached the well opening on Winding Way, he pulled himself up into the shaft and climbed back toward the surface.

.en he reached the top of the well, Gale climbed over the side and sprinted as fast as he could down Winding Way, away from the vileness of the guildhouse, away from the evil of Yrsillar. Minutes or hours later, he finally stopped, exhausted. The cold air stung the tender skin of his charred face. His heart raced and his gasping breath formed great clouds of frost before his face.

Get yourself under control, he ordered himself If they were coming, they’d already be here. With an effort, he calmed himself He had to use his right hand to peel his left fist from the hilt of his sheathed long sword. Only then did he remember that he had no cloak. Adrenaline had warmed him, but now he

began to feel winter’s chill. His armor and clothing held off much of the cold, but he would have to buy a cloak when Selgaunt’s shops opened.

They’re not coming, he assured himself again, and crossed his arms against the cold. At least not yet.

Back in control of himself he bent against Hie wind and sloshed through Selgaunt’s empty streets. He kicked about with mild surprise—the towering brick buildings of the Warehouse District loomed on all sides. He had run halfway across the city—and it was no coincidence he had run in the direction of Stormweather. The Uskevren manse stood only blocks north of him, on Sam Street.

At that moment, the fact that he could no longer return to the familiar comfort of his room hit him hard. He could not return to the welcoming warmth of Thazienne’s smile. He had nowhere to go.

I can’t go back, he reminded himself again, reaffirming his decision. At least not yet, and especially not now. The risk to the family was too great.

While Gale did not yet fully understand everything that had happened at the guildhouse, he understood enough to know that Yrsillar had targeted him personally. The demon’s words rattled around in his head like a pair of knucklebones—Champion, of Mask. You and the other. .

What did that mean? If anyone, the Righteous Man was Mask’s Champion, or had been. He was the priest, not Gale. Gale invoked the gods only to oath by their names. He had never even prayed to one, had been in a church only twice in his lifetime. He consciously kept gods and temples at a distance. He stayed out of their business and they stayed out of his.

Still, Gale could not deny the magical darkness that had suddenly appeared in Mask’s shrine. Only he had been able to see through it. That certainly seemed a divine blessing of sorts.

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Perhaps it was, he reluctantly acknowledged. But how can I be the servant of a god? Much less a god’s Champion?

He found the idea so improbable as to be laughable, and yet thinking of it brought him a strange exhilaration and a peculiar fear. He had no desire to surrender himself to the whims of a god. Still…

Would it be so improbable? He had been the servant of someone or other most of his adult life—the Night Masks, the Righteous Man, Thamalon. The difference, of course, was that with all of those masters he had maintained a certain amount of independence. Could he serve a god and still be his own man?

Doesn’t matter^ he thought grimly. Tonight’s not the night for taking rites. Rather, tonight was a night for retribution. He knew now that the paralyzing fear he had felt back in the guildhouse—the fear that had stolen his resolve and frozen him into inaction—had been supernatural in origin, a function of Yrsillar’s demonic nature. Gale would be ready for it next time.

He also knew that it had been Yrsillar, and not the Righteous Man, who had ordered the attack on Stormweather. The attack that had nearly killed Thazienne. For that, Yrsillar would pay, demon or no. Gale only had to figure out how.

He could go to the authorities—after the carnage at Stormweather, even Selgaunt’s ruler, the idiotic Hulorn, would not be able to laugh off Gale’s claims. Even as he considered it, he dismissed it. It would take the Scepters days to act. It always did. Gale did not want to wait that long.

This is personal now, you bastard, he thought to Yrsillar. Gale’s nature did not allow him to turn the problem over to the city authorities. This is between you and me, he mentally reiterated. If Mask wanted to

protect his interest in this, he could come along for the ride, but Gale would owe the god nothing.

To the east, the slate sky began to lighten. Dawn was breaking. He had been walking the streets for over an hour. As though awakened by the winter sun, Selgaunt’s shops began slowly to come back to Ufa Lights burned in the occasional window as a shopkeeper went about preparing his wares for the day. Gale ducked into the nearest clothier, dug a few fivestars from his pocket, handed them to the startled shopkeeper, and grabbed a blue cloak from among the wares. Too short, as usual, but far warmer than nothing at all.

He emerged onto the street and decided to take a room at the first inn he found. He had nowhere else to go.

Jak. The halfling’s name popped into his head as though by divine inspiration. Jak! Of course! Though he hadn’t seen the little man since their run-in with Riven and the Zhentarim a month ago, Jak had always stood with him. Jak had also made it clear that he always would. He—

Gale’s assuredness melted like the snow in the street when he remembered that the little man belonged to the Harpers. Gale had learned that during their escape from the Zhentarim. The Harpers, a secretive organization that ostensibly strived for the good, might frown on Gale hunting a demon alone.

Demons, he corrected himself, plural, Ecthaini. He now knew there to be at least two demons in the guildhouse—Yrsillar, and the shadow demon that had attacked Stormweather.

Still, he had to consider the possibility that the Harpers might offer help in the form of intelligence, magic items, or protective spells. If they wouldn’t, Gale knew that Jak would help him anyway. The little man

had bucked Harper orders before to help him, and would no doubt do so again. He didn’t relish the idea of getting Jak into trouble, but the little man was his best friend. Gale’s only friend outside of Stormweather. He had nowhere else to turn, and probably only a little time. No doubt Yrsillar and bis minions would be searching for him by tomorrow night. He had to find Jak now.

You and the other.

Yrsillar’s words floated up from the depths of his mind. Is Jak the other? he wondered. The little man was a priest, after all, but of Brandobaris, not Mask. From what little Gale knew of organized religion, the relationship between the halfling god of thieves and Mask the Shadowlord was not an especially friendly one. Could a priest of one god serve the interests of another?

He shook his head in frustration. He was allowing himself to get distracted. It doesn’t matter, he thought. Whether Jak had some special divine role to play or not, Gale needed his help, and he thought he knew where to find the little man.

He turned his face into the snow and headed for the gambling dens of the Wharf District.

In Selgaunt, the gaming houses along Nedreyin Street remained open all day and all night. People of all social backgrounds—nobles, transient adventurers, merchants, rogues—gambled as much as their schedules and finances permitted. Even now, despite the dawn hour and cold weather, Nedreyin Street still had its denizens eager to test Tymora’s favor on the throw of knucklebones or deal of cards. As Gale watched, a crowd of five loud men in heavy cloaks and winter boots strode past the burly doorman and into the Leering Basilisk, a low quality establishment without an attached eatery. At the same time, a pair

of noblemen—probably second sons, not heirs— walked hangdog out of the Scarlet Knave two doors down, no doubt lighter by a few fivestars.

Not yet extinguished by the city’s linkboys, the street lamps sputtered fitfully in the wind blowing off Selgaunt Bay. The smell of sea salt and the reek of the nearby fishmongers’ stalls filled the cold air—the bay did not entirely freeze over until early in the month of Alturiak, and the city’s fishermen habitually worked the waters to the very last. After the horrors he had witnessed on the-other side of the city, Gale welcomed the sight of human beings involved in mundane human affairs and vices.

He walked down the snow-coated street, wary of the shadows in every dark corner. Despite the cold, sleeping drunkards and men who had gambled away their lodging coin lay huddled and shivering under building eaves. Cale eyed them all with a sharp gaze, sure that their cloaks covered gray skin and sharp claws. His concern proved unwarranted—all of them were harmless.

Searching for word of Jak, he moved quickly from gambling house to gambling house and dropped some fivestars to loosen the tongues of the circumspect bartenders and taciturn doormen. Surprisingly, his coins brought no result—no one had seen the little man. He checked Jak’s usual haunts twice-—the Scarlet Knave, the Bent Coin, the Cardhouse—and heard from the regulars that no one had seen the halfling for weeks. At that, Cale began to worry. While he hadn’t expected to find Jak actually gambling at this hour, he had expected to find his friend collapsed in a suite somewhere. That Jak hadn’t been seen at all set off alarms in Gale’s head. He knew that Yrsillar and his servants already had hit several players in Selgaunt’s underworld—no doubt to draw out or find

Cale and this other. If Jak was the other, perhaps the demon had already gotten to him?

Unwilling to consider the possibility, Cale sat at the polished bar of the Cardhouse and spent a silver raven on a cup of warm spiced wine. He drank it down before he headed back outside. By then, dawn had fully broken and the city’s red-cloaked Hnkboys had appeared. Nimbly, they sealed the street torches and snuffed the blazing coals with metal hoods. Though overcast, the light of morning dispelled the shadows of night and Cale breathed easy for the first time since fleeing the guildhouse. He thought it unlikely that Yrsillar would dare make any moves in the full light of day.

Now as much worried for Jak’s well being as wanting the little man’s help, Cale made a hard decision. Though he had promised not to return, he knew where he had to go for information about Jak— the Harper safehouse to which Jak had taken him after the affair with the Zhentarim. Brelgin and the Harpers there would know how to reach Jak. if they still used the safehouse. They had not been pleased when Cale had learned of its location and might have decided to abandon it as compromised.

There’s only one way to find that out, he thought.

He walked back through the quickly crowding, snowy streets and headed for the Warehouse District. Once there, he navigated from memory a maze of back alleys, cul-de-sacs, and small storehouses until he reached the one-story Harper safehouse. The ramshackle brick building looked like any number of similar, unnamed office buildings hi the district — inconspicuous for its mundanity. Having once fled with Jak up from Selgaunt’s sewers into its basement, Cale knew the structure to have a secret lower level three times the area of the surface.

Through the falling snow, he could see two heavily

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cloaked men lounging casually against the wooden porch posts. Neither wore visible iron, but their oversized winter cloaks could have concealed a dwarven great axe. Alert expressions and wary eyes belied their uncaring stances—Harper guards. They had to be. So the Harpers did still use the safehouse, and he might still find Jak. He breathed a sigh of relief.