Dawnbringer

Chapter Ten

NONTHAL, TURMISH

1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

The small study in the headquarters of House Beguine had changed little over the years, its fine carpet and tapestries still intact, although a little faded with time. The man behind the elaborately carved Mulhorand desk, looked up from an age-yellowed, closely written sheet of paper, and frowned.

“Let me get straight to the point. My niece is in danger, and I need your help to protect her.”

Sanwar Beguine steepled his fingers together and contemplated the man who had served the House as captain of the guard for the past fifteen years, ever since the mysterious raid on the party that brought Kestrel Beguine to meet her future husband at Shadrun-of-the-Snows. There was more white in Kaarl vor Beguine’s beard now, and gray streaked Sanwar’s hair as well.

Kaarl stood on the other side of the desk, in the relaxed stance of an old soldier, and frowned. “I don’t understand. Is Mistress Ciari …?”

After Ciari had wed Vidor Druit, half a year after her younger sister’s alliance with House Jadaren, the family home in Nonthal had been enlarged with the purchase of the shops of a grocer and a wine merchant to make room for an additional wing for Ciari, Vidor, and their growing brood of children. The Beguine-Druit clan was under the protection of the Beguine House guard, and Kaarl should have known about any threat against her.

“No, no,” said Sanwar, leaning back. “That girl is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. I mean Kestrel.”

“Kestrel!” The astonishment on the old soldier’s face was plain. “But surely … Jadaren Hold is impregnable, everybody knows that. What possible danger-”

“The danger doesn’t come from outside the Hold, but from within,” said Sanwar. He held his right hand spread over the yellowed paper, hovering just above it as if it were a source of heat.

“I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he continued. “It’s no secret I opposed the alliance. But I hoped I was wrong about the Jadarens, and all this time it seemed I was.”

Taking the edge of the paper carefully between the tip of his forefinger and thumb, he lifted it slightly from the surface of the table.

“Now I fear for my niece, more than I ever did. I wish I could have obtained proof like this before my poor brother’s passing.”

In the months after the alliance was negotiated, Nicol Beguine had sickened, although on the voyage to Jadaren Hold for Kestrel’s wedding, his appearance and strength had improved. Some months afterward, however, he fell into a decline, and the physicians suspected one of the mysterious wasting diseases that sometimes struck down seemingly healthy people with no outside indication of what could be ailing them. He grew weaker and weaker, and Sanwar took branches of the business under his management so his brother could rest. Finally, the winter after Ciari’s wedding, Nicol died in his bed, with Vorsha holding his hand.

Business continued with barely a ripple-Sanwar already controlled so much of House Beguine’s dealings that transitioning power from his brother to himself was an easy task. After a decent interlude, he married Nicol’s widow, a decision that engendered some enjoyable gossip amid the more prominent families of Nonthal but was in the main considered good business sense.

The Beguine girls kept any opinion they held of their uncle’s marriage to their mother, good or bad, to themselves.

Sanwar still held the edge of the paper gingerly. “What do you know about the history of House Jadaren?”

Kaarl’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I know something of the routes they’ve forged over the years. And the feud, of course. But the history of the merchant families isn’t chronicled the way that of the noble families is, of course-although it’s my opinion they influence the course of history just as much, if not more.”

Sanwar smiled faintly. “That a man of war is wiser than a chronicler doesn’t surprise me.”

He frowned down at the paper. It was of a curiously thick texture, and the writing on it was strange to Kaarl-all slanted, angular lines, rather like dwarf runes.

“The feud,” he continued. “This vendetta we pretend is finished. It’s old news to the merchants we deal with, both those that aligned themselves one way or another and those that managed to stay neutral. But does anyone know why it started?”

Kaarl shrugged. “Ivor Beguine partnered with a man named Jadaren, long before the Spellplague. I’d heard they had a shipping business, and one cheated the other.”

Sanwar nodded. “My father told me Gareth Jadaren cheated Ivor Beguine out of a contract to deliver cedar to Waterdeep. My grandfather claimed a Jadaren poisoned a Beguine when they were rivals in love. I never cared why. I had plenty of reason to hate Bron Jadaren and his sniveling nephew on my own, the smug, self-satisfied-”

He bit his lip and stopped, looking up at Kaarl with glittering eyes.

“Here.” He lifted the paper fractionally. “A scribe in Old Nonthal took this down from Ivor Beguine’s son, as the son lay on his deathbed. It tells why his father hated Gareth Jadaren and why he warned his generations against his. There’s a dark secret at the heart of House Jadaren, within that riddled rock they call their home. It explains the protective magic of the Hold. It explains why the alliance will prove disastrous to my niece.”

He let the paper settle back on the table. “They are patient. They’re willing to wait years for their plans to bear fruit, to see a crop from the seeds they’ve planted deep within the bosom of our family. I know of at least one spy that we all trusted with our lives.”

Sanwar smiled as his quick eye caught Kaarl’s shoulder muscles tense and his right hand flex automatically. “Yes, I know you’ve always suspected that Boro Nimor had something to do with the raid on the party to Shadrun, so many years ago. You can speak honestly to me.”

Kaarl took a moment to marshal his thoughts. “He was so insistent I keep to the back,” he said. “And he let the others slop around, out of formation, that distance from the sanctuary. It wasn’t like him. It wasn’t like a man of his experience. It’s always bothered me. It’s not my place to say so. But it did.”

“You’re a Beguine as much as I am,” Sanwar told him. “Wrong side of the blanket or no. You have every right to state your opinion, to me or anyone else, Cousin.”

The captain of the guard bent his head. “Thank you.”

Sanwar studied Kaarl dispassionately, aware it wouldn’t be as easy to trick him as he had tricked Nimor.

“They will attack you as you approach the sanctuary,” he had told him. “Keep the experienced men in the back, with the girls and the wagon. You’ll know them by the green uniforms-Jadaren uniforms.”

Nimor had frowned at that. “I don’t understand.”

Sanwar had sighed internally and put an expression of patient concern on his face. “I know the Jadarens intend something sinister in this so-called alliance. How they’ve convinced my brother baffles me. If he didn’t live so transparent a life, I’d suspect blackmail. I do believe they’ve wrought an undue magical influence upon him, and I have tried to nose it out, to no avail.”

“My lady Kestrel … she has no such concerns?”

Sanwar had bit back an impulse to tell the captain of the guard to concern himself with martial matters and leave the thinking to him. “She obeys her father’s wishes. And the spell might extend to her as well. I would do so, if I had cast such a thing.

“I need to put doubt in my brother’s mind, just to crack the surface of whatever it is they’re doing to him. Just so I can talk some sense into him, and have a chance of his listening.” Sanwar studied Nimor’s face, seeing obstinacy in his lowered brows. Carefully, he composed the tonalities of his voice, pitching his words in such a way as to make everything he said seem eminently reasonable.

“Do you think the Jadarens would be any kinder to my niece than they were to your sister?”

Noting the involuntary widening of the eyes and the clenched muscle at the side of the jaw that betrayed a sudden flare of rage, he adjusted his voice accordingly, making it more insinuating. “Forgive me, my friend. I don’t wish to prod such a painful wound. But you can’t deny that they entangled that poor woman into debt, encouraging bad decision after bad decision, until everything had been stripped from her and she was destroyed.”

In fact, Boro Nimor’s sister had been an extraordinarily unlucky and poor businesswoman, in debt to many before ill health and despair had cut her life short. At the end, the agents of House Jadaren she had cheated had been dunning her, as were half a dozen other merchants.

But Nimor loved his sister and couldn’t bear to believe her lack of business acumen was her own failing. He needed a scapegoat to blame, and Sanwar had long since convinced him that Angharah Nimor was the innocent victim of Jadaren manipulation.

Sanwar chose his words carefully, cajoling the captain into believing that his plan was the only sensible solution.

“If Nicol thinks there’s a chance Jadaren guards would attack Kestrel, he’ll delay the wedding. The more time I have, the better chance I have of convincing him to call the whole thing off.”

Nimor shifted his weight, considering. “I would not like any of my guard to be hurt in this charade. Many of them are young and untried.”

“My men have orders to retreat when you fight back. Make it last a little, though. Enough that your guards see the uniforms.”

“Are you sure of them?”

“I would not risk the safety of my niece. Or that of your guards, either. They’re actors, playing at bandits, no more. I doubt they could hurt any of you if they tried. I would ask that on your end you avoid killing any of them.”

The burly guard had grinned. “I can’t guarantee they’ll escape unscathed.”

Sanwar spread his hands. “What can one do? They’re well paid and take on the risks of their profession. I would appreciate it if you could manage to avoid killing any of them, though. Good actors are hard to find.”

Not a tenday later Boro Nimor’s body lay under a ragged piece of cloth, just outside the sanctuary, apart from the corpses of the ill-fated raiding party. The fabric was tented slightly where the base of the crossbow bolt that had killed the Beguine captain still protruded.

The mountain air had an edge of frost to it, but Sanwar felt his face burn. He was drained from the working that had killed the she-orc, preventing her from betraying him to that damned insidious monk. And more, he was furious that his plan had failed. Not only had those two guardians, unearthly in their strange facial markings and preternatural stillness, interfered with the raid, but Kestrel, ironically enough, had spotted the false uniforms for what they were.

The bandits, under his orders, were to rough up the party, kill the one Beguine besides himself who knew of the plot, and kidnap Kestrel. The survivors were to struggle on to the sanctuary, where they would meet him, fortuitously having arrived early and suspecting foul play. He would feign outrage, take a couple of the surviving guards, and hunt down the bandits and their prey at a prearranged spot, claiming to use a locator spell and Kestrel’s hair, saved for the amulet, to do it. After an impressive display of battle magic, he would rescue his ersatz niece and bring her safe to Shadrun, where she would repeat the bandit’s carefully scripted threats and gloating-all of it implicating House Jadaren. Trust would be shattered, and any proposed alliance between the Houses would be stillborn from the start.

Instead, the wedding seemed more likely than ever to go forward-curse that fresh-faced Jadaren cub’s playing up to Kestrel like that! And the girl fell for it-and Sanwar’s man, the closest creature he had to a friend, was dead for nothing.

He kneeled, the pebbles of the unpaved path biting into his knee, and lifted the cloth away from Nimor’s face. Someone had tried to close his eyes, but the lids weren’t completely shut, and a dull gleam peered from beneath them. A scarlet bubble had dried in the corner of the man’s mouth.

Something about the half-open lips and the arch of the eyebrows spoke of astonishment. Sanwar wondered whether, in his last few seconds of life, Boro Nimor knew that he’d been double-crossed by a man he’d trusted.

From the inception of the plan, Sanwar had regretted, most profoundly, the necessity of eliminating the captain. It would have made him very happy to find a way to allow him to live. But he couldn’t. Nimor would never have betrayed him intentionally, but it would have been too easy for him to let his secret slip when he was in his cups, or talk in his sleep, or have the truth coaxed out of him by a man such as that Diamar. And if that happened, any power Sanwar held within his merchant clan would be gone.

Thank the gods all the bandits were dead, Garush among them, and none could know his secret. Harilpina Andula would suspect, but she had her own interests to protect. He flexed his hand, which was still aching after the working that had blocked the half-orc’s throat. He had feared that one of the queerly marked guardians, the male, had seen him cast the spell, and that perhaps the female had as well. But they said nothing, and he dismissed the thought. He had plenty to worry about without being paranoid.

A hand closed lightly on his shoulder and he stifled a yelp. Looking up, he saw Kestrel standing beside him. A tear sparkled on her cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Uncle,” she said. “Captain Nimor was always kind to me, and I know he was your friend.”

He stood and took her hand, drawing her into an embrace against him. He could try persuading her against the wedding again, but instinct told him the effort would be wasted.

Later the voice within him whispered to him, setting a clear path in his mind. Let my daughter marry him, he thought then, remembering the weight of her head on his shoulder. She will be my agent, unknowing. If I can’t prevent her from joining with the Jadarens, I’ll use her to destroy them from within.

Fifteen years he had waited, and now it was almost time. He must set his chess pieces carefully.

Carefully, agreed the inner voice that he’d first noticed at Shadrun-of-the-Snows; the voice that sounded within him infrequently but was always insistent when it did come.

“They corrupted Nimor,” he told Kaarl. “But that was nothing to what will happen to Kestrel if we don’t stop them.”

He leaned back and fixed Kaarl with his glittering gaze. “They intend to sacrifice her, and likely her children as well. They’re willing to do anything to maintain their precious wards. Oh yes,” he said, as Kaarl shook his head in incomprehension. “They’ve done it before. It’s all here.

“In a way, it was about a woman. But it was a woman Ivor loved. And to Gareth, she was just a tool; a means to an end.

“She must have been a mage, and a highly skilled one, Ivor’s ladylove. Ivor and Gareth must have been friends at that time, because the mage agreed to set the wards that would make a desolate chunk of rock a Hold. And she did it. She wrought magic that stands to this day.

“And to thank her? Gareth Jadaren killed her.”

“What? Why?”

“To bind the wards more closely to him, and to ensure she couldn’t undo what she had done, or do it for anyone else. He cut out her heart under an oak-a tree that still stands outside Jadaren Hold. They still call it Jandi’s Oak. I’m sure Gareth and all that followed him-Bron and Arna among them-find it amusing to call it by the name of the woman who died by Gareth’s hand.”

“And Kestrel?”

“With time, the wardings fade. To renew them, they must shed the blood of a woman bound to them by marriage and more. They have Kestrel. They have her eldest child, Brioni, who mingles the blood of both families within her.”

“I don’t believe Arna Jadaren would hurt Kestrel, much less his daughter.”

Sanwar waved a dismissive hand. “Perhaps not. Perhaps I malign the boy. But his uncle has a shrewd eye and a heart of stone when it comes to business. And maintaining the wards, to him, is simply good business sense.”

Kaarl frowned and was about to object. And then a tiny voice that must have come from somewhere within him whispered, small in his ear, He’s right.

“What should we do?” Kaarl stifled an urge to shake his head, as if dislodging an insect from his ear. Nothing was there. It was simply his common sense.

Look at the evidence. He’s right.

“I simply want a contingent of you and some of your picked men to have a presence in the woods beside the Hold. I don’t want you to attack it without provocation. But be ready, in case Kestrel has need of you.”

“We can do that,” said the captain. “We can. But it would be easier if we knew the lay of the land better.”

“I think we can ally ourselves with some natives of the place,” said Sanwar. “Those who can find an opportunity in the downfall of House Jadaren.”

Fifteen years the alliance and his inability to stop it had gnawed at him from the inside like a gall worm-fifteen years that would soon be over.

Fifteen years, thought Fandour. What is that? Less than an instant in my prison. How impatient the creatures of this world are, but then, how short their lives. It seems incredible that beings with the span and experience of gnats can help, hurt, or hinder me at all. It’s because of the Rhythanko, of course-that part of my soul within their world. But it’s been so long, it’s forgotten me. It thinks it’s a thing apart. I must bring it to the Vector so it can remember me, and recall its purpose, and free me.

As if fifteen years meant anything at all.

AT THE NORTH BORDER OF THE PLAINS OF PURPLE DUST

1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

The messenger found Lakini before she could vanish into the desert west of High Imaskar. The deva was alone at a greasy table in a tavern of dubious repute in a scrubby little oasis at the lip of the sands. Others clustered in the inn, and fearsome and scarred folk among them, but they avoided the tall, strangely marked woman in the corner.

The messenger was a young woman with pale red hair tied neatly back and a forest green cloak. Around her sleeve was a tan band, inscribed with a simple sigil not unlike some of the figures scrawled about the sanctuary. Unperturbed by the insalubrious locale or company, she stood by Lakini’s table until she raised her mark-marred face to acknowledge her.

“The Vashtun asks that you return, my lady Lakini,” she said, without preamble.

Lakini pushed the chair opposite her out from the table with her foot.

“Sit,” she told the messenger.

The messenger paused.

Lakini sighed. “Even should I decide to oblige the Vashtun, I am sure he can hardly expect me to venture forth by night in this area. And you have come nonstop. I see the red clay of the east-fork hills still on your boots. And you are covered with the dust of travel. Sit and keep me company.”

Somewhat reluctantly, the messenger girl perched herself on the battered chair. Lakini nodded at the geometrical figure about her arm.

“So Shadrun has a crest now?” she asked. “I remember when the sanctuary was not of this world, but apart from it.”

The red-headed girl looked puzzled. “Many come to Shadrun to seek the advice of the holy man,” she said, as if such a thing were natural. “The Vashtun helps keep peace in a troubled region, and the roads safe for all travelers.”

Lakini waved her hand. “Yes, yes. Well I know it. And the safety of those who came to Shadrun was ever our duty.”

One of the men leaning on the bar with his fellows, a great ruffian in leathers with what looked like an impractical number of knives sheathed about his belt and diagonally across his body looked over his shoulder at the deva’s table and grinned ingratiatingly. Lakini narrowed her eyes at him and he turned back to his companions. He said something under his breath, and crude laughter rang out.

“Will you come?” said the messenger. She had a faraway look, and although her jaw was firm and she held herself alert and poised, as if at a summons from the Vashtun she would dart halfway across Faerun, her face was white and drawn with exhaustion.

“You must be tired,” said Lakini. “Here.”

A big brass key was looped around her wrist on a worn length of leather. She handed the key to the messenger, jerking her head toward the hallway that led into the darkness of the inn behind her.

“Third door to the left is my room. Take my bed and sleep. You’re in no condition to go back to Shadrun, whatever my answer.”

The girl held the key in fingers that shook slightly from weariness, and made no move to obey her.

Lakini sighed. “You serve the Vashtun best by resting. No need to kill yourself on this quest. I will not need sleep this night, and I will consider my course of action. In the morning, I will either leave with you or send you back with my answer.”

The girl nodded and made her way to Lakini’s room. The brute with the excessive knives rose and stepped toward the hallway as if to follow her. Lakini caught his eye and shoved the table aside, exposing her hand on the hilt of her dagger.

The brute paused, as if considering his options. His hand wandered across the weapons strapped to his buckler. Lakini leaned forward and rose just a little, balancing on the balls of her feet. The brute’s companions, becoming aware of the tension in the room, quieted their chatter and turned to see what entertainment would result.

The man shrugged and, laughing as if it were all a good joke, returned to the bar. Lakini relaxed and sat back down, glad to avoid a fight this night. She placed her back square against the rough wood wall, slitted her eyes, drew up her legs in a meditative pose, and did not stir until morning.

SANCTUARY OF SHADRUN-OF-THE-SNOWS

1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

“The Vashtun is concerned about the stability of the Beguine-Jadaren alliance,” said Diamar, or the person who had taken the name of Diamar, different from the last one she’d seen. This Diamar was a woman, with the elongated ears and smooth features of a half-elf, and something about her eyes made Lakini deduce her human parent was an easterner. Lakini shifted uneasily next to Lusk, and eyed the familiar pillars of the Great Hall. Once smooth columns of unmarred stone, they were now incised with rows of figures that, from a distance, looked like lettering, and, close up, were revealed to be geometric sigils of the same kind as the messenger’s armband had sported.

The Second continued. “Shadrun did its best to assist the joining of these two great families, because the conflicts between their Houses fostered unlawfulness in many of the lands they do business in. A scion of one of the Houses has expressed concern that despite the current harmony, there is a danger to Kestrel Beguine within Jadaren Hold.”

A figure behind Diamar moved out of the shadows, and Lakini felt a thrill of recognition. It was Sanwar Beguine, whom she and Lusk had suspected of engineering the attack on his own niece to disrupt the wedding negotiations.

The man was wearing a rich red traveling cloak, and, in the few years since she had last seen him, his dark hair had started to streak gray.

She glanced at Lusk, wondering if he found Sanwar’s presence as disconcerting as she did. But she could not read his face. He had stayed at Shadrun while she had wandered. Perhaps he was aware of the politics of the situation.

Why had she returned, after all? Perhaps because she missed Lusk, and the years of their companionship. Perhaps because of the red-haired girl’s mute appeal after she had delivered the Vashtun’s request. Perhaps because of a feeling of loyalty to Shadrun and the safe haven it sought to become. Perhaps because at the sight of the messenger, and the sign on her arm, the persistent voice had begun in her mind again, faintly, as if it didn’t want to be invasive. We need you, Lakini, it had said. We need you home.

At first she had pushed the thought away. Devas didn’t have homes, not in a physical sense. They had causes, loyalties, companions. It was ridiculous to call a place in the world “home” when one wasn’t of the world.

And yet … How was it she longed for home?

Maybe the voice was a god, recalling her to duty.

Sanwar’s voice interrupted her pondering. “My niece and her father were determined upon the alliance,” he said. “I’ve cause not to trust the Jadarens, but for the good of the House I consented.”

Only after a handful of rogues and your own sworn man were dead, thought Lakini. And one killed by sorcery by your own hand.

Sanwar’s eyes shifted to her and he frowned, as if he’d heard her thoughts. She felt Lusk shift closer to her.

“I did take some precautions,” continued Sanwar. “For one, I crafted a charm to protect her from a treacherous attack. It’s not as infallible as I’d like, but it’s a modicum of protection. Second, I have a source inside Jadaren Hold who informs me that a rogue element of the House seeks to harm not only Kestrel, but her family-her husband and children.”

“For what purpose? Why harm a scion of their own House, after all this time?” Lakini asked.

“To empower themselves in the absence of the heir, and to take advantage of the chaos that would ensue,” he returned. “Great Families are like nations in a way, and their conflicts are like wars, and there is always a profit to be made in wartime.”

As you would well know, thought Lakini. You could school them well on that. And I thought the wards of Jadaren Hold were impregnable to spies.

“It’s the Vashtun’s wish that the two of you go to Jadaren Hold and offer your services on Shadrun’s behalf to protect the family,” said Diamar. “You are not bound to obey him, of course. No one here is. But the sanctuary would count it a great favor if you assist it in this manner, and enter House Jadaren’s service for a time.”

“Enter their service?” Lakini glanced up at Lusk, who shrugged almost imperceptibly.

In her mind, the tiny god’s voice sounded. Please.

“It’s part of the ancient warding,” said Sanwar, looking displeased. “Who enters the Hold must pledge service.”

Lusk looked down at Lakini and mouthed an echo of the god’s voice. Please.

Fifteen years she’d wandered Faerun-a long time in the life of a human but not very long in the life of a deva. Still, while she had been Lakini and Lusk had been her Cserhelm, they’d never been separated so long.

She was tired, she realized. It was not a weariness of the body, but of the mind. She was tired of being alone. In the greatness of the world and its populations, it was almost impossible to be alone, but there was none other like her. In her travels, she’d never met another deva. Casting her mind along the fragmentary memories of her reincarnations, she had only known Lusk.

Lakini nodded.

They went to the stables to get their mounts. Lusk took the roan similar to the one he’d ridden years before, on his mysterious mission. Bithesi, her round face creased by a few more wrinkles than Lakini remembered, brought her a sturdy bay mare, already saddled. She passed the deva the reins in silence.

“Bithesi,” said Lakini, “not a word of greeting?”

The little woman paused at the stable entrance, her back to Lakini, and seemed to gather herself before turning.

“You left without saying good-bye,” she said, her face expressionless. “Why should you mind now?”

Lakini considered explaining, considered telling her that had she stopped to take her leave she would never have been able to leave Shadrun, to wander until the despairing cry of the barghest had faded. But no words came to her to say it, and she folded the thick leather straps of the reins over and over between her fingers until the mare whickered in her ear.

Bithesi went into the stable, Lakini mounted the mare, and the devas rode at an easy trot down the mountain.

“She can’t understand,” said Lusk, after they’d cleared the sentry rock. Lakini had a vivid memory of the travel-stained pilgrims she’d passed the last time she was here. “No one can understand how it is with us-except us.”

She nodded. They were silent for a time, but it was a companionable silence, their horses’ cadences matching and each deva keeping all senses alert for danger without having to speak of it. It reminded her why she and Lusk seemed to come together, year after year, lifetime after lifetime.