The Outcast

12

It was nearly dawn. The gaming house had shut down for the day, and the cleaning staff had not yet begun their work. They would begin shortly after sunrise, working throughout the morning and into the afternoon, preparing the Crystal Spider for yet another night of gaming, dining, and entertainment. The place was deserted when Sorak came in and went up the back stairs to his quarters.

Tigra had grown anxious and restivein his absence and had torn apart the bed. The tigone had also gnawed through two chair legs, upended a table, clawed up the rug, and torn down the curtains over the window. Fortunately, Sorak had left the heavy window shutters closed and bolted, and Tigra had not been able to open the door—otherwise the damage surely would have extended beyond his room.

“What have you done?” he asked when he came in.

Tigra stopped rubbing up against him and looked up contritely. “Lonely,” the beast communicated to him, psionically. “Sorak gone. Left Tigra alone.”

“I thought we had an understanding,” he said. “You were supposed to behave yourself. Look what you’ve done.”

“Tigra sorry.”

Sorak sighed. “Well, I suppose I shall have to pay for all this.”

“Tigra hungry.”

“Very well. Let’s go down to the kitchen and see if we can find you some raw meat.”

“lyric hungry, too,” said Lyric, mimicking the cat. “Find lyric some raw meat?”

“Stop that,” Sorak said.

“Lyric has a point, though,” Eyron said. “The rest of us have all been very cooperative with you through all this, but city life does not exactly suit us, nor does your diet of kankfood.”

“Eyron is right,” Kivara added. “It has been a long time since we have enjoyed a fresh kill.”

“You know that I do not meat,” said Sorak.

“That is your choice,” said Eyron, “or rather, your rationalization. You may try to deny your elf and halfling needs because of how the villichi raised you, but the rest of us have never accepted their ways. The Ranger holds his peace, but he has not hunted since we came to this city, and he does not feel comfortable here. Screech also hungers for the taste of flesh, as do we all”

“What of the Guardian?” asked Sorak. “Does she feel the same?”

“I am less bothered by your choice not to eat flesh than are the others,” said the Guardian, “but it is not wise to disregard their wishes and their needs. They have always kept their agreements with you and refrained from coming out without your knowledge or consent.”

“And in return I give them access to all that I know, feel, and experience,” said Sorak, “and I allow them time to come out whenever possible.”

“But lately, you have allowed them to come out less and less,” the Guardian replied. “That’s right,” Kivara said. “I have not been out in a long time. lam tired of being kept under. You have not been fair.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Sorak. “We must all live together and strive for balance. Perhaps I have been too selfish. Very well, then. Since Kivara has complained the most, let her come out and share a meal with the others. As for me, you know that eating meat offends me, so I shall duck under and go to sleep. It has been a long day and an even longer night, and I am weary.”

He opened the door and Tigra trotted out into the hall, but it was Kivara who stepped from the room, not Sorak. As Sorak ducked under and went to sleep, Kivara came out and moved quickly down the hall after Tigra, toward the stairs leading to the first floor and the kitchen.

Outwardly, nothing about the elfling had changed, but a keen observer who was familiar with Sorak would have noticed a slightly different, lighter gait, almost catlike, with a playful bounce in his step and a somewhat more self-conscious carriage. The expression on his face, too, had undergone a change. Whereas, under most circumstances, Sorak’s expression was a rather neutral one—if anything, one of brooding and contemplation—now Kivara gave his features a more animated cast. A slight, crafty smile played about the lips, and the eyes seemed to dance with mischief.

In the kitchen, she found some game birds hanging in the smoke room and tossed them out on the floor for Tigra. The tigone greedily began to gobble them. Without wasting any time on such niceties as table settings, Kivara grabbed a large hunk of raw z’tal meat and tore into it. It was not the same as a fresh kill, and the thrill of the hunt was absent. The heady rush of warm blood spurting down her throat was missing, too, but the pleasure of eating raw, still-bloody flesh, only recently butchered, was undiminished. Both Kivara and the tigone made sounds of satisfaction deep in their throats as they gobbled their food.

“Decided to have a late night snack?” asked Krysta.

Kivara looked up to see the half-elf standing in the kitchen doorway, wearing a long, sheer, gossamer-thin nightgown.

“I thought you did not eat flesh,” she said with a mocking smile. “Something about a... spiritual vow, was it?”

“I was hungry,” said Kivara, unable to think of a better explanation for the discrepancy between her halfling appetites and Sorak’s asceticism.

“So I see,” said Krysta in a low voice. She was coming closer. She moistened her lips. “I told you once vows can be broken... especially when one is hungry—”

She reached up and touched Kivara’s cheek gently, running her fingertips down along her jawline to her lips.

“Kivara, make her stop,” the Guardian said, and the Watcher echoed her distress with a surge of alarm.

“There is blood on your mouth,” said Krysta.

Kivara raised her hand to wipe it off, but Krysta caught it in hers and said, “No, don’t. Let me...”

And she brought her face closer....

“Kivara!”

... So close that Kivara could feel her warm breath....

“Kivara, what are you doing? Stop it!”

... And gently, Krysta’s tongue flicked out and licked the blood from her lips.

“Kivara! No!”

The Watcher fled, abandoning her post in her panic and ducking deep under, where the Guardian could no longer sense her presence. Alarmed, the Guardian shouted and pressed at Kivara from within, but Kivara was out now, and she had been under for a long time. The unwillingness to relinquish control and the fascination of the new sensations she was experiencing were combining to create resistance. At the same time, that resistance—a child’s rebellion against an overbearing parent—and what Krysta was doing with her mouth were tremendously exciting. It was a new sensual experience, and Kivara was unable to let go of it.

Krysta was pressing her body up against her now, and the warmth of the touch flowed through Kivara. She could feel Krysta’s smooth, sinewy flesh beneath the sheerness of the nightgown, and it was soft and pleasant to the touch. Krysta’s flesh responded as Kivara touched her, and she felt it tremble. Krysta’s tongue was probing between her lips now, and Kivara, interested to see where this would lead, opened her mouth to it.

She struggled to block out the Guardian’s protests as Krysta’s fingers twined themselves in her hair and evinced a wonderful, tingling sensation. Their tongues met, and Kivara followed Krysta’s lead, learning quickly with a hunger for experience that only the truly innocent could know. Krysta’s hands were on her chest now, fingernails scratching lightly, caressing, moving lower....

Sorak was jerked out of his slumber by a jolt from the Guardian. His first, disoriented perception was that they were all in danger, for he felt the Guardian’s tremendous agitation and alarm, and then suddenly he realized what was happening. Angrily, he yanked

Kivara back under and rose to the fore...

“No! No, not yet! It isn’t fair!” Kivara protested, but Sorak ignored her as he suddenly found his arms full of passionate, half-elf female, hungrily devouring his lips and lashing her tongue against his. He felt her left hand reaching down his leg, while the fingers of her right hand fumbled at his breeches...

“No,” he said, quietly but firmly, and pushed her away.

“What?” said Krysta, staring at him with sudden confusion. “What is it? What’s wrong?” This is wrong,” said Sorak. “I cannot do this.”

“How can it be wrong when it feels so right?” asked Krysta. “Besides, you were doing just fine a moment ago—”

She came up dose to him and put her arms around his neck. Sorak took hold of her arms and gently but firmly removed them. “Krysta, please... you do not understand.”

She stepped back away from him, her puzzled expression turning to one of anger. “What?” she demanded. “What do I not understand? I understand that a moment ago, you were willing... more than willing, eager, and now this sudden change of heart comes upon you inexplicably. Is it me? Am I not good enough for you, now that you know who and what you are? Is that it? Is a former slave not a fit consort for a king?”

Sorak shook his head and sighed wearily. “That has nothing to do with it,” he said. “I have already told you what I think of this idea of yours about my being some sort of mythological elven king. It is utter nonsense. I reject it.”

“Then what?” she demanded. “What is it? Tell me I did not excite you! Tell me that you did not want me!”

Sorak sighed. “You did not excite me,” he said. “I did not want you.”

“Liar!”

“As I said, you do not understand. You did not excite me. It was not I who wanted you, it was not I who became excited over new and unfamiliar physical sensations. It was Kivara.”

“Who?” said Krysta. “What are you talking about?”

“Kivara,” Sorak said. He took a deep breath. “Kivara is... another entity who inhabits my mind and shares my body with me. She is not me. She is a different person.”

Krysta gaped at him. “She?”

“Yes, she. Kivara is a female. A halfling female.”

Krysta stepped back another pace, utter confusion on her face. “What are you telling me?” she asked. “Are you trying to say that you think you are a... female?”

“No,” said Sorak. “I am male. But Kivara is a female, as are the Watcher and the Guardian. My other aspects are all male.”

Krysta shook her head. “You are trying to confuse me.”

“No. I am simply telling you the truth.”

“Then... you are insane?” Krysta asked with disbelief. “Is this what you are trying to tell me?”

“Perhaps I am insane, in a way,” Sorak replied. “Most people, knowing what I am, would undoubtedly think of it that way. But my mind is not unbalanced, Krysta. It is merely divided into a multiplicity of different personalities. At least a dozen that I am aware of. That is one of the main reasons why the villichi took me in. They have encountered this sort of thing before, though it is exceedingly rare. They call what I am a ‘tribe of one.’”

Krysta stood, shaking her head, staring at him with astonishment. “But... how can that be?”

“The villichi believe it comes about in childhood,” Sorak explained, “through suffering and abuse that is so intense that it becomes unbearable, and the mind seeks refuge by splitting apart, creating new and separate entities out of itself, personalities that are as real and fully manifested as I am. That is why I took a vow to remain celibate, Krysta, because I am not merely one male. I am at least a dozen different people, some male, some female, all sharing the same mind and body. And not all of them see things alike, as Kivara has just unfortunately demonstrated. I am sorry. I was not present when it happened. I was... sleeping. Had I known, I would have stopped it before it even began. Please... forgive me.”

Krysta stared at him with a stricken expression. “You are really telling me the truth?” she asked.

“I would not lie to you,” said Sorak. “There was someone once... a young villichi female, for whom I cared more than I can say. We grew up together as brother and sister, though we were not related by blood. In time, the feelings between us became stronger, grew into love... a sort of love, I suppose. I, Sorak, loved her, at any rate, and I still do. But we could never consummate that love. The Guardian is female, and could not make love with a woman, nor could the Watcher, who is also female. In this, my male and female aspects exist in a conflict that cannot be resolved.”

“But... you said this Kivara is a female....” Krysta began, looking confused.

“Yes, but Kivara is a child who does not truly understand. To her, everything new that pertains to the senses is exciting, and she cannot help but to explore it. However, she grows bored very quickly. If not stimulated by some novelty, her attention tends to wander.”

“But... it was you I kissed!” Krysta insisted. “It was not some... girl child in my arms!”

“No, not if you speak of the body,” Sorak said. “The body is male, of course. But the intelligence guiding it, at that particular moment, was that of an immature female. I was not there, Krysta. I was not present. It was not me. I do not even know how it all began. I shall not share the memory unless Kivara or the Guardian bestows it on me.”

“You mean... but how... the Guardian?”

“She is the one who seeks to maintain a balance in the inner tribe,” said Sorak. “It was the Guardian who controlled the dice the first night that I came here. I, myself, possess no psionic skills.”

“It makes my head hurt just to think about it,” Krysta said, staring at him wide-eyed. “How can you live this way?”

Sorak shrugged. “I have never known any other way to live,” he said. “I have no memory of what I was like, or even who I was, before this happened to me.”

“How terrible for you!” said Krysta, with sincere concern. “If I had only known...”

“What difference would it have made?” asked Sorak. “Even now, you do not fully understand. You may grasp the idea of it, but you could never truly know what it is like. No one could. That is why I must remain alone. Yet, in another sense, I can never really be alone. I am a tribe of one.”

“And that is why you seek the Sage,” said Krysta. “You hope that he may cure you.”

“I seek the Sage for the reasons that I gave you and

Rikus,” Sorak said. “I do not know that I can be cured, or even if ‘cure’ is the proper term to use under the circumstances. I am not sick. I am merely... different. Nor am I sure I would wish to be any other way.”

“But... if the Sage could help you, would you not accept his aid?”

“I do not know,” said Sorak. “If I were to become simply Sorak, what would become of all the others? What would happen to them? Where would they go? They are a part of me, Krysta. I could not let them die.”

“I see,” she said, looking down. “I think, perhaps, I understand.” When she looked up again, her eyes were moist. “Is there nothing I can do?”

Sorak smiled. “You have already given me two things that I prize above any material gain or comfort. Your friendship and your understanding.”

“I only wish that there was—” A horrible scream cut through the stillness of the night. “What was that?”

Sorak was already moving. “It came from outside.”

“The gatekeeper!”

They ran through the dining room and into the empty gaming hall. Sorak drew his sword. Even as he did so, the heavy front door burst off its hinges and three ghastly apparitions came stumbling through. They were encrusted with dirt, and rags hung from them in tatters, as did rotting flesh. Empty eye sockets, writhing with worms, turned in Sorak’s direction. The breeze blowing through the doorway carried the rank stench of decomposing flesh into the room. Krysta blanched. “Undead!” she gasped. They look very dead to me,” said Sorak. The rotting corpses stumbled toward them.

“Guards!” shouted Krysta, running for the stairs.

All three corpses ignored her and came straight for Sorak.

“Tigra!” Sorak said.

The tigone roared and took a running leap, bringing the first corpse down. It jerked convulsively as Tigra tore it apart, and the scattered parts continued to twitch and writhe upon the floor.

Sorak swung his sword as the second corpse came stumbling toward him, its rotting fingers, with bones poking through, reaching for him. Galdra whistled through the air and cleaved the zombie completely in two, and where the magic blade had passed, acrid smoke issued from the twitching flesh and bones.

The third zombie lurched toward him, its burial clothes in rotting tatters, its feet nothing but bones, its face little more than a grinning skull. Sorak swung his sword again, knocking the head clean off the shoulders. Smoke issued from the zombie’s neck, or what was left of its neck, but still the body came lurching forward, arms stretched out, skeletal fingers grasping. Sorak swung his sword again, chopping off one arm. It fell to the floor, smoking and twitching, but still the corpse came on. Then it fell as Tigra leapt upon its back, daws and teeth rending it apart

Sorak heard the sound of running footsteps, guards on the stairs. He was about to tell them that it was all over when he saw two more zombies stumble through the doorway, followed by a third, and yet a fourth.

And as he watched, the scattered remnants of the first corpse Tigra had torn apart writhed toward one another across the floor and began to join themselves together once again.

“Gith’s blood!” said the guard captain, as the walking dead lurched and swayed toward Sorak across the gaming hall. And two more were coining in.

Sorak lunged to meet them, and the guards drew their weapons and joined the fray. The zombies were unarmed, and they did not move quickly, but as each one fell, hacked to pieces by Sorak or one of the guards, another came in to take its place. And, moments later, the ones that fell came up again, their rotting body parts joined back together. The guards and Sorak laid about them with their blades, and Tigra leaped from one walking corpse to the other, savaging them and rending them to pieces.

Sorak noticed that the ones he had dismembered and struck down twitched for a short while, then grew still, nothing but rotting flesh and bones on the floor. The others, torn apart without Galdra, always reshaped and attacked again. A severed arm lay twitching, then began to drag itself across the floor to rejoin itself to its torso. A skull that had been split apart became magically fused back together. One of the guards ran a zombie straight through the chest with his sword, but the blade passed through the corpse’s ribs with no apparent effect, and the zombie kept on coming, impaling itself on the sword until its bony fingers closed around the guard’s throat and started squeezing. The half-elf screamed, but the others could spare no time to save him, and he went down beneath the corpse’s weight.

Krysta came running back downstairs, having quickly grabbed her blade. Several more zombies came lurching through the doorway and Sorak charged them, chopping his way through, swinging Galdra like a scythe. As they fell, he encountered three more in the garden just outside the door. They went down before his blade and became nothing more than rotting bones and body parts upon the ground, but another was coming down the path toward him.

Krysta’s voice cried out behind him, “Sorak, look out!”

He swung around and chopped out with Galdra just as another zombie came stumbling back out of the gaming hall toward him. The corpse was cut in two by the elvish steel, and the smoking, severed halves of its body collapsed to the ground.

Sorak saw Krysta cut her way through several of them and come running up to his side. Three more of the zombies followed her out the door. Together, she and Sorak cut them down, but only the ones that Galdra struck remained dismembered on the ground. The others, it seemed, could not be stopped.

“Running them through does not do any good,” said Krysta, gasping for breath. “You can cut them to pieces, but the pieces keep coming back together. Five of my guards are already dead, and the others are hard pressed. But it’s you they’re after. See, here come two more.”

As she spoke, two more zombies came stumbling out the door, heading toward them. With a roar, Tigra flew out behind them and landed on both in a flurry of claws and teeth. But Sorak knew it was, at best, a temporary reprieve. Only Galdra, it seemed, could truly be effective against them. Behind them, inside the gaming house, the sounds of fighting were diminishing. There was a scream, followed by another, and yet another as Krysta’s guards were overwhelmed.

“Kank’s blood!” said Krysta, looking beyond Sorak and pointing, her eyes wide with horror. “Look!”

Sorak turned to gaze in the direction she was indicating. He looked out through the open gate, the strangled body of the unfortunate gatekeeper lying on the ground beside it, and saw that the entire street beyond was full of walking dead. There were dozens of them, shambling down the street like specters, some recently dead and still recognizable as human, some no more than skeletons. And even as he looked, the sounds of struggle in the gaming house behind him stopped completely. The last of Krysta’s guards had fallen. The corpses started coming back out toward them.

“We are going to die,” said Krysta. Not if I awake the Shade, thought Sorak, and wondered if even the Shade, for all his fearsomeness, could deal with such a sheer weight of numbers. “No,” he said, aloud, “not you. It’s me they’re after.”

“They killed all my guards,” she said. “Only because they were in their way,” Sorak replied. “Get away from me! Run, and you’ll be safe!”

“I won’t leave you,” Krysta said, hefting her sword as the zombies closed in on them from both directions. Tigra brought two of them down, but more were coming.

“I have no time to argue with you,” Sorak said. He quickly transferred Galdra to his left hand and, with his right, struck a sharp blow on Krysta’s chin. As she collapsed, he caught her, then dragged her off the path and dumped her behind a rock outcropping in the garden.

“If you hadn’t done that, I was about to hit her myself,” said a familiar voice.

Sorak spun around and his jaw dropped as he saw a young villichi priestess standing behind him, dressed for battle, her white hair tied back, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. “Ryana! How... what are you doing here?” She slashed out with her sword and knocked the head off a walking corpse, then kicked the still-ambulatory body back into the pool. “Someone had to watch out for you,” she said.

“Behind you!”

But with the sharply honed instincts of a villichi fighter, she was already spinning around, sword flashing, and another zombie fell as she sliced through its rotting waist with one vicious stroke.

“I’d already dropped that one before,” she said. “They don’t stay down, do they?”

“They do if Galdra strikes them,” Sorak said, wondering why the Shade wasn’t manifesting. There were more of them coming, far too many, even for the Shade.

“Galdra?”

Then Sorak became aware of a curious, warm, floating sensation stealing over him, suffusing him. A lilting voice that sounded like an echo from some far-off canyon came to him, speaking in his. mind, saying, “Sorak... let go.”

“Kether,” he whispered.

“Sorak... we have a lot of company,” said Ryana, her voice betraying anxiety despite her outward bravado.

“Let go, Sorak. Let go.”

“Ryana!” he called out. “Use this!”

She quickly sheathed her dagger and caught his blade as he tossed it to her, and then he felt himself fading away gently into a lulling, soothing warmth. He knew now why the Shade had not responded to the threat. There was a still-greater power within him, something that seemed to be a part of him, and yet was not a part of him, an entity that seemed to come of its own volition, not from within him, but from... somewhere else. As his vision faded into a stark yet comforting white haze, he could dimly hear Ryana calling out to him, and then her voice was fading, too. “Sorak!” Ryana shouted.

She saw him standing there, absolutely motionless, his eyes closed, not a single weapon in his hand. And then there was no time to do anything else but defend herself and him, as four corpses advanced toward them down the path, and six others came out of the gaming house behind them. The one she had kicked into the pool stood up, dripping and still headless, and began to splash its way toward her. Tigra roared and leaped onto the one in the pool, but the others kept coming. There were far too many of them, thought Ryana, holding her sword in one hand and Sorak’s in the other. She could not fight and use her psionic powers at the same time. It was hopeless.

“Coming here was not a smart idea,” she muttered to herself, and slashed out with Sorak’s sword at the nearest corpse. The zombie’s flesh emitted smoke as the blade passed through it effortlessly and cut the torso completely in half. The dead thing fell and walked no more. Ryana whistled to herself softly. “Nice sword,” she said.

The zombies were coming closer. She backed away, looking for some room to fight in, and then she saw them turn and head for Sorak, disregarding her completely.

He simply stood there, unarmed, doing nothing. “No,” she whispered.

They closed in around him, obscuring him from view.

“No!” she screamed.

She was about to launch herself at them when she saw something that froze her to the spot. The corpses simply fell apart. What little flesh remained on their bones disintegrated, and then the bones themselves clattered to the ground like a rain of dry twigs. In the wink of an eye, they turned to ash and blew away on the breeze.

Sorak simply stood there, where once a throng of undead clustered. His arms hung loosely at his sides, and an expression of utter calm and serenity was on his face.

Ryana realized suddenly that it wasn’t Sorak, at all. It was one of the others, but not the Guardian or the

Ranger, not Screech or Lyric... She had never seen this one before.

The entity in Sorak’s form walked slowly out onto the path. The zombies kept coming toward him, ignoring Ryana now that she was not between them and their quarry. And as they came up to him and reached out to seize him, they all collapsed and fell apart, drying up and blowing away just like the others. They kept pouring through the gate, shambling in from the street, grim and terrifying in their decay and lifelessness, and Sorak—or whoever it was—simply allowed them to come to him. As each and every one touched him, the same thing happened.

Ryana stood there, watching it all with a sense of awe and wonder. What sort of power was this? What entity possessed him now?

There were still dozens of the zombies shambling and dragging themselves down the street, heading toward the gate. Sorak moved out to meet them. But as he reached the gate, the street outside was abruptly illuminated by brilliant blue light. Small globes of azure fire came hurtling out from several alleys at once, striking the zombies and wreathing them in glowing, incandescent auras. One after the other, the corpses were consumed, and the hail of energy continued for several minutes, until the street was once again completely clear.

Ryana came running up to stand beside Sorak at the gate. As she looked at him, she could see that it was, in fact, Sorak once again. His face looked somehow different, transfigured, but it was the same face she remembered, that same, stoic, neutral expression of a male determined to keep everything inside. “It is done,” he said. “What happened?” she asked. “Reinforcements,” he said. “Look.” A dozen or more figures stepped out of the shadows into the street. They all wore long, white, hooded robes and veils across the lower part of their faces. The sky was beginning to get lighter. It was almost dawn.

“The Veiled Alliance,” Sorak said. “Your sword,” said Ryana, handing it back to him. “Quite a weapon. Know where I can get one like it?”

“It worked for you?”

“Like no other blade I’ve ever held,” she said, watching as the hooded figures approached them.

“Then your spirit is strong and your faith is true,” said Sorak, with a smile. “Either that, or you’re king of all the elves.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I will explain later.” The robed and hooded figures came up to them and Sorak nodded to them. “Thank you,” he said.

One of the men stepped forward. “We would have come sooner if we could have,” he said, “but we did not receive the summons until the attack was already in progress.”

“Summons?” said Ryana. “They have had me watched,” said Sorak, “to see if

I would prove myself to them.”

“And so you have,” the speaker for the others said. He reached into his robe and pulled out a slim scroll, bound up in a ribbon. “This is the information that you seek from us,” he said, handing the scroll to Sorak. “It will not, regrettably, give you the answer that you wish, but it is all we know, and perhaps it will help set your feet upon the path. Burn the scroll once you have read it, and scatter the ashes.”

“What is he talking about?” Ryana asked.

“Later,” Sorak said.

“Yes, later he can explain. Right now, it would be best for you to leave the city. You have become a marked man, Sorak. What happened here tonight was merely the beginning. Wherever you go, look to the Alliance for your allies. You will find them nowhere else, I fear. We think we know who unleashed the undead plague on you, and if our suspicions are correct, then—”

Something whizzed past the mage, coming at a sharp, downward angle, and Sorak felt the breeze as the crossbow bolt flew by him, missing him by scant inches. There was a yelp behind him, and Sorak turned to see Tigra topple over onto the ground.

“Tigra!”

The Alliance members turned, looking to see where the attack had come from, but Sorak, heedless of his own safety, rushed to the tigone’s side and knelt beside the beast.

“There! On the roof!” one of the wizards cried, pointing to a building across the street.

Rokan had already fitted another bolt to his crossbow. As he pulled back on the bow, Ryana drew and threw her dagger in one swift motion, guiding it psionically to its target. The dagger struck him in the chest, and he fell from the roof to the street below.

“Well done,” said the Veiled Alliance leader, with an approving nod. They moved toward the body.

Rokan was still alive, but only barely. “Damn shoulder,” he muttered, through clenched teeth.

“Made me miss...”

“Who sent you?” asked the Alliance leader, bending over him. “Was it the templar? Was it Timor?”

“Timor...” Rokan’s voice was little more than a croak. “Lousy sorcerer... Ruined me... Ruined everything... Kill the bastard...” His last words escaped in a long, rattling exhalation, and he died. “Who is Timor?” asked Ryana. “Leave him to us,” the Alliance leader said. “He is our problem. We will solve it. See to it that Sorak leaves the city safely. And the quicker, the better.” He reached up to clasp her shoulder. “It was an honor, priestess. Guard him well.”

They split up and scattered quickly into the early morning shadows. Ryana hurried back to Sorak, who was crouched over the wounded animal. “Sorak...” The tigone’s thoughts were weak. “It will be all right, friend,” Sorak replied, stroking the huge beast’s flank. “The wound is not a fatal one.”

“Cannot move... Tigra hurt... Great pain...”

Sorak felt the beast’s body stiffening beneath his touch. His gaze shot down toward the arrow. There was something smeared upon the shaft. He took hold of it and pulled it out, careful not to touch the part of the shaft that was smeared. He sniffed it. Poison. Spider venom. It paralyzed first, and then a painful death swiftly followed. “Nooo!” he moaned. “Sorak... Sorak...” He could feel the tigone’s agony. As its mind touched his, he shared the searing pain, and it washed over him like fire.

“No, Tigra, no...” he groaned, not protesting the animal’s pain that he was sharing, through their psionic link, but the fate of his lifelong companion.

“Sorak...” The pain he felt was ebbing quickly now as the tigone’s own life ebbed, and the link grew weaker. “Friend... protect...”

And then the beast was gone.

Sorak felt it die. He experienced its death, and for a moment, he was numb with shock and loss, as if a part of him died too. And then he threw back his head and howled, a sound that was utterly inhuman, a sound that came from both his broken heart and Screech, the beast entity within him. The cry echoed through the once-again deserted streets, and Ryana stood there beside him, tears in her eyes as the dark sun slowly rose over the city.