Edrin Northstar stares at the closed door leading to the outer hallways of the Estaphan Royal Inn. On the other side, Heilan and Ashi are moving down the stairs to the streets below to see his daughter safely from the city. On the other side of the room, past the open bay window, the huntress Sorlaya moves across the roof tops, to kill his daughter if Heilan failes. And in this gilded room designed for royalty, he stands torn and broken, having never laid eyes on the girl before, feeling a dread only a father knows. "By my command" he thinks to himself. Sorrow and hope strangling his heart between them.
Blood seeps from the wound at his side, he feels it leaking from the heavy bandage down his skin. Glancing at his jacket, the stains are much larger than only a few moments ago. "How long?" he asks Edberk.
Edberk pulls his eyes from empty bay window Sorlaya left through and inspects the wound's discharge creeping out across the fabric. "A month. Perhaps two." He confirms, "No more." Turning to look back at the window, "If you are willing to suffer, I could keep you alive a few weeks after that."
One had to be careful around dwarves when they used words like 'suffer'. Human doctors say things like "this is going to hurt," so you can prepare yourself. Dwarf clerics say things like "this is going to hurt," when preparation was a waste of time and ale.
Two months was enough. More than he deserved given his life, and the decisions he had to bare. Generous in fact. It was time enough to say good-bye to her and to prepare her path if she should live out this night. Time enough to morn, and bring her body to Tera Vi if she didn't. He noticed Edberk's glance, and the deep emotion in mountain dwarf's eyes. "Speak dwarf. You've never cautioned your words before. Don't start now. It's a terrible night for politeness."
"There is nothing to say." Edberk states as he walks to the bar, and assess the crystal decanters, seeing nothing there to sate his current thirst. "As always you made the right decision, and far better than most others would be able to." The words grumbled out of his deep chest. He decides on a whisky. Humans didn't know how to distill it, or keep it, but it was the best the bar could offer.
"You would rather the hags had her?" Edrin asks, dropping into the over stuffed chair Heilan pledged his life from moments before. It would be his last night as well if he failed. "Or worse?" he adds, looking down at his side.
"I would rather she were at home with her mother." Edberk said. "I would rather old wizards minded their own business. I would rather shuck this cloak and dagger business and take her by force to home and keep. Between us we have at our command an army of thousands. Yet we sit here in this glitter room, talking about what we would rather." The crystal decanter in his hand turns to stone, and shatters in his hammer like fist. "I would rather you acted more like a ..."
" A human?" Edrin asks, interrupting him.
Edberk looks at him, calming himself. "I was going to say a father."
Edrin turns away, looking out at the harbor, and the moon light. The sea sparkling out to the horizon, calling him. How many of his kind were lost to that call?
"Your rathers are as useless as the crystal your might and God have turned to broken stone." Edrin whispered softly, not turning from the view.
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"Look," The beggar's hands were signing, "we've been through all of this. There is just not enough information to make good decisions, But we have to act."
"Nothing on Heilan?" Mac Anu signed back.
The beggar sighs. "A Walker was sent out to them with the news. His name was Rupert. Heilan showed up in Shelzar a few hours later. We haven't heard or seen from Rupert at all. The last word before I came here was that he's dead, and probably killed by Edrin, or Heilan. Which leads us to believe that they are after the girl as well. Why else kill the messenger?"
Mac Anu leans back, his eyes running along the walls, and into the shadows. He didn't mind living on the edge. Most of the time. It reminds him he's alive, and there are things worth living for. But running through a gambit, with no edge of your own? This was suicide. He quickly signs, "If we leave the house we are dead."
Naill shot her hands out with two quick snaps. "Better out there than in here."
Man Anu glances down the hall to Helen's room. Behind the frail house door she huddles with three children. He likes those kids. He likes Helen. Turning his eyes from the closed door, he looks at Elaine.
What would she suggest if she were outside looking in? If it wasn't her life on the line, what would her advice be? Would she say that the children were more important than she was? Why? because they are a few years younger than her? She's only sixteen, maybe fifteen from the look of her, half-elf or not.
The gravity of the situation came down on him suddenly. This wasn't a fight he could cut and run from, At some point, he was sure, he could have left. Someone else, a Walker, another follower of Drendari, could have taken his place; but that time had passed. All this girl had at the wolf hour was him and Naill. He would like to count on this beggar as well, but he didn't. "If we leave here Naill, she out lives us." His hands made the signs with a whisper quality. "Swear it." he added.
Naill looked at him, her whole being loosing her vibrant passion, as if the hands of Mac Anu had just placed more weight on her than she could bare. She glanced up at Elaine, and over to the beggar. No one moved. No one edged her on, or tried to talk her out of it; moments like these were sacred for rogues. They happen so rarely.
Her life had always been open. No commitments, no ties. Partnerships of convenience, as well as lovers. She wanted the children safe, she wanted Helen safe, and for some damn reason, her blood would not let her leave Elaine. Not right now. But she had never sworn an oath to anyone, or anything before.
She lifted her hands, "By Drendari." she signed, and sighed as she did so, masking Elaine's gasp.
Mac Anu looked at the beggar, "And you?"
"By Drendari." He signed, and looked at the ceiling, as if choosing a path for his soul to rise.
Mac Anu closed the triad with his own sign, and said to Elaine in a low whisper, "we are leaving. now."
Once the pact was made, they moved with intention. The window in the bedroom upstairs became the exit point. Partially hidden from the street outside by a large tree and the moon shadow of the house, it offered four directions of departure from there. The doors and lower windows only offered two.
Mac Anu and the beggar left their sitting places low, and began to move along the edges of the lower rooms, pausing, listening, pressing their ears to the outer walls to hear the night outside. Naill pulled some cloth from her jacket and three candles. She set the candles on separate surfaces, a table, a counter in the kitchen, a stool in the gathering room. With deft hands she fashioned the cloth into strange shapes and added tin fans to the bottoms of these. Elaine couldn't figure out what it was she doing, even when Naill finished her task, hanging these packages from the ceiling with string.
Elaine began to question a lot of what she thought of these two. They admitted they were thieves, and her country knowledge, as Penbrook would have called it, said that thieves were cowards. People who stole from others instead of working, or earning their way. Cowards didn't make blood oaths though, as these three just did. Oaths with no gain on their part. She was not worth their lives, she had no money, she had no one here to give them money if they some how succeeded. Including her father.
It had never occurred to her that her father would not want to see her, or worst, would want her dead if he knew she existed. It was difficult to think about now, even with what she had learned. She had no reason to believe they were lying, or putting on a show for her, they didn't believe she could understand their hand language. Her father had killed the messenger they sent to tell him that she was alive. Even in the old stories, killing the messenger was an act of war.
There was no where for her to go now, nothing to run to, nothing to ... survive for. She watched the three as they continued to prepare, Mac Anu was putting something on the backdoor, while the beggar was pouring a powder across the front of a window. Naill had a lead and paper out, and when Elaine looked over her shoulder to see what she was writing, she found she was making a list of things in the room.
"For Helen," Naill whispered, "so she can remove the traps in the morning."
Traps? Powder, bits of cloth with foil on strings? When Elaine thought of traps, images of spring doors and jaws of steel clanging shut and breaking bones came to mind, not badly made string puppets.
While these preparations were distracting, what Elaine really wanted to know was what the name of the last sign each of them made, before going into action. It was an oath, she knew that, and oath to something sacred to them. An oath she could feel none of them took lightly. Each of them had sworn to die before they allowed something or someone to kill her this night. They did this, never letting her know, so it was not for glory or to win her love or to gain gold or to put her at ease. It wasn't a game, or an act of chivalry. And everything in her believed them.
These were thieves, she thought bewildered. Her country ignorance was deep.
Of course if they were the heroes of the stories she had heard, they would have shouted their oaths in the middle of the street outside, and she would be a princess or fairy queen, not a tavern girl from across the sea, a rescued slave.
Naill took her arm, and pulled her upstairs. Mac Anu squatted down in the middle of the room, where he could see every window, and each of the doors. Two daggers flashed into his hands. He looked like a spring trap under tension. His gray eyes silver in the candle light. Shadows danced along the walls from the string puppets Naill had made. Elaine's mind caught a vision of what those shadows looked like from outside. They would look like people were pacing and talking inside the room. Five or six of them.
She focused on her glyph of power, the rune of her name transformed by the rune of Enlightenment, and let magic come into her as Naill led her slowly up stairs by the hand, The rogues wanted to leave the house unseen, leaving behind protective traps and decoys, covering their escape and giving protection and warning to Helen once they were gone.
Elaine sent her mind outside, and around the house. Naill was guiding her up the stairs and into the back room. She had never attempted a controlled wandering like this before. But these three had offered their lives up for hers, they did so by grace, and act without request, a gift beyond her ability to earn. If she could help them by any means at her disposal, she would.
Her mind swept up the stairs like a silent wind, a breeze through the night as it passed through the window, and through the foliage of the tree outside. She checked the roof, and found nothing up there but tiles and chimneys. She circled the house. Naill was leading her into the room now, pulling her down, below the level of the windows. Behind her the beggar, smelling of strong whiskey paused at the top of the stairs, She heard the pull of a wire, and the click of a trigger as he loaded a small crossbow.
Nothing was around the house, or in the alley to the East. Elaine was about to bring her wandering back when she caught a movement from across the main street outside. It wasn't that late in the evening, and from what she had learned, there was always movement in Shelzar, in fact she could see several people on the street in other areas, but this was different. It was just a shadow moving. A shadow that had nothing to create it.
She had seen the gestures several times during the silent argument between Mac Anu and the beggar, that her magic told her meant Shadow Walker. The term was unfamiliar, but brought to mind many images, none of them more enticing than the obvious meaning; a person who walked inside shadows. Was that possible? was there a place inside a shadow that was different from the world she knew? She thought of Penbrooks magic, and his exploration of the heavens, and what he called the 'Planes'. He used the term 'Plane Shifting' several times, and it seemed to mean that he traveled to one of these worlds without really moving. That he pulled something away, like a curtain, and simply stepped through a door.
Were shadows like curtains you could shift through?
The errant shadow moved again, and Elaine's curiosity overwhelmed her. If that was a Shadow Walker, she wanted to see him. Besides, if he was out there, he was a friend right? In the conversation downstairs, the beggar had said the messenger to her father was a Walker. And the woman on the roof last night, the one that Mac Anu met, he said she was a Walker.
Naill pulled her to the wall near the window, and then set to opening the portal without moving the curtains. Back against the wall, knees to her chest, Elaine's mind shot across the street to see the Walker. The alleyway there was darker than any other place. So dark in places she couldn't see the walls or fences. A strange darkness, that moon light didn't enter. She could make out no shapes, but she could see movement, and feel something in there.
Her curiosity faltered a little and the familiar feeling of fear, crept into her thoughts. What was there to fear though? She was in a wandering, they couldn't see her, or hurt her in any way. Then a memory flashed into her mind, of two travelers coming down the road to Shelzar, riding horses, and eating grapes stolen off the vine. She knew who those two were now, Mac Anu and Naill, arriving in Shelzar the same day she was brought into the city. She remembers getting close to them and Naill suddenly looking up, as if seeing her there, and the anger on her face... forcing her back.
The question was enough to keep her from entering the deeper darkness. She would stay here, and watch for a bit, until Nail was pulling her to the window. It was difficult to move her body and wander at the same time. With Naill guiding her, it was okay, but climbing out a window to a tree was something else. Something moved in the shadow again. Something large. Something that felt larger than the shadow itself. Fear prickled across her skin.
Shadows were darkness. Not everything in them would be a friend. After all, not everything in the light was a friend, or even good for that matter. This could be something waiting for them, something dangerous, far more dangerous than powder on a window sill, or string puppets in candle light. It was right across the street from the house as well, the chances that it was 'just here' or just happened to be here now, and had nothing to do with those hunting her and these thieves who stole her, were slim.
She focused on her glyph of power and let more magic flow into her, more than she had ever let come in before.
"I will see you." She whispered, and projected all of her will into the darkness.
Mac Anu got to the top of the stairs and slid past the beggar, trading rear guard with him. So far, so good. Of course, they weren't out of the house yet, but he felt calmer than before. He didn't know the beggar, and had never been in a situation like this with Naill, but the communication and skills of all of them worked smoothly together. Without that, they were lost, with it, they had a chance.
He made a quick sign for 'twenty', and the beggar blinked his eyes twice. Mac Anu edged down the short hallway, adjusting his weight as floor boards threatened to creak below his feet. Measuring the distances, estimating the placement of the support studding. Cats make more noise. He could feel a slight burn in his thighs from the exertion it took to move like this over extended periods. It would be hours before that burn became more than slight discomfort.
Reaching the door to the room, Naill is just getting the window to position. She's weighted the edges of the curtains with small lead balls, like the line weights fishermen sometimes use. 'Nice touch', he thinks and smiles. The string puppets were a good trick too. Having spent a lifetime watching shadows and hiding places, it didn't take him long to calculate the effect those toys would have on an observer outside. If only they had something that could "make conversation." something that murmured, to go with the shadow puppets, that would be nice.
But movement and shadows were enough for now. Draw watching eyes down to the lower windows, to the light, and out of the tree on the side of the house. A small edge, to be sure, but it was in these edges that life, and hope sprang.
Elaine was sitting with her knees to her chest, and her back against the wall. Her head was down, as if she were asleep. 'The tension is getting to her' he thinks. Not everyone did well on adrenaline and tension. Some people even go to sleep at times of heavy danger. They don't pass out, they burn out. He's seen it happen. The light in their eyes just goes out.
But the light in Elaine's eyes, just came on.
A blue light sprang from her eyes like a small lantern glow, and her head shot up from her knees, "I will see you" her voice said, and yet not her voice. It was a voice of power, a voice of command. A voice that resonated across the walls and through the fiber of the earth. Mac Anu's skin crawled, and Naill spun away from the window, drawing daggers while putting her back against the wall.
Elaine wasn't looking at him, but at something past him, past the house, past ... everything. Her face was powerful, and curious. He watched, not sure what to do. He could feel her leaning forward, some how he knew she was cautiously moving toward something, something she was a little afraid of, but needed to see. Nothing in her movements told him this, just her face. It was the same expression a thief has, as he is moving past the guard, or across the trapped hallway. Her dangerous journey caught him up, he didn't think about the blue light of magic around her eyes, or the trance state she was in, 'watch your step, look for traps' he willed at her. His eyes flicked around the room, checked the window, the hallway behind him, the ceiling above, and back to Elaine, 'get the prize, get home alive' he whispered.
Then Elaine's eyes went wide, and her face turned into a mask of horror. A shadow blurred past Mac Anu and across the room to Elaine. The beggar was now clamping his hand against her mouth, and with good reason. Elaine screamed. The beggar pulled her in close, muffling the terror sounds, letting her breath through her nose, whispering in her ear. "Control. Back away. Back away. You are safe here, just back away."
Naill halted her attack, inches from the beggar's spine. Waiting.
"Elaine," the beggar whispered. "Listen to me Elaine. Back away, come back to the house, and into the room. You are safe here. Come back and tell us what you saw."
"I'm coming." Elaine said inside the muffling palm.
"Where is the danger Elaine?" the beggar asked. "In the front, or in the back?" easing his hand away from her mouth.
"Front" She answers, "across the street. Horrors in the shadows".
"What about the back, did you check the back as well?" He asks.
"The roof and alley are clear." she croaks, and her eyes loose their trance state, she's looking at Mac Anu now, tears in her glowing eyes. "They are demons." she whispers to him. "I can't let you die for me," She lifts her head and looks at all three of them, one at a time. "They want me alive." she shrugs a little inside the beggars stifling embrace. He backs away, giving her room. "They are to take me out of the city to some one called the Sisters. They know I'm in here, or at least in one of these houses. A man is guiding them."
The three rogues look at one another, quick half signs flash between them, but they don't move otherwise.
"They are monsters Mac Anu." She sobs. "Covered in hard scales, with claws longer than your daggers. You can not protect me against these, and I can not live with the thought that you will die for no reason, in a battle without hope."
"Take back your oaths and run." She says, whipping her hands across her eyes, the glow vanishing. "Take the children out the back door with Helen." She moves as if to stand up, but then sits back down. A small smile crosses her lips. "I will wait for them here, because I'm too terrified to be noble and meet them in the street."
The rogues don't move, the darkness seems to draw in towards their faces, covering their expressions. Where she hoped to see fear, she sees resolution. They won't take back their oaths. Run they may, but they are running with her, just as they had planned to do from the start. The beggar senses her frustration and places a finger on her lips. "Screaming at us, won't help." he says simply.
"The far end of this alley puts us in the sprawl." The beggar is saying. "I can jump that far with Elaine. Meet us there, and we'll head for the Red Lady."
Naill looks at him with wide eyes, "You're a Walker."
He smiles, "No, I'm a drunk, and a fool, and know a few tricks." He looks at Mac Anu. "This trick will get her out of the house, from there ... " he shrugs. "Odds have changed. Percentages are slim. Being hunted by demons, if that is what they are, and not just some form of Titan Spawn our young charge here has never seen before, is much different than being hunted by men."
"The running is the same though." Mac Anu whispers.
"True enough." The beggar replies. "I hope Drendari is watching tonight. This sounds entertaining."
The name flashes an image of their last sign downstairs. The left palm open and out, yielding, and splayed slightly, then pulled back, almost vanishing. A subtle sign. Difficult to do correctly. Drendari. The rune formed by her magic as it translated these hand gestures to her, matched her own name, with a slight variation, transposed by the rune of Enlightenment. "There is power here." she had thought when she first saw it in her mind.
"Who is Drendari?" she asks, and the intensity of her voice halts all three of them.
Rogues know intention, it is a survival skill. The focus and change of intention is a palpable thing to those who move through dangerous ground. Learning to read it, knowing how to control it, knowing that all creatures have it in them to feel your presence by the vibrations pouring out of you. Focus on a guard too intently while you are creeping up on him, and more often than not, he will suddenly turn. He might believe he heard you, or tell himself that, but he felt you coming. He couldn't read your thoughts, or even tell what you were, but he knew his life was in danger.
Elaine's intention just changed. Something important to her, something more important than the demons outside, or the dangers they faced.
"She is our goddess." The beggar says, "Mistress of Shadows."
"Daughter of Enkili." Naill whispers.
"Only woman I ever loved." Mac Anu says, and leaves the doorway to go down the stairs.
Naill moves like a panther after him. They leave without sound. The beggar pulls a crystal from his pocket and holds it up to the window. "I can see them." he says. "Just as you say, scary creatures." He leans forward just a little. "And I know the one with them as well." He puts the crystal back into his pocket. "Well, I didn't see that one coming. Demons? Yes. Always a card in the deck for demons." Standing up with her, "Are you ready?"
"What else did you see?" she asks.
"An old friend, who I thought was dead." He answers.
"Rupert?"
He looks at her quizzically.
"The one you talked about downstairs, the one you said my father killed. The messenger."
He smiles and nods. "The same."
"Then he may still want me." she says, hope springing into her eyes. "I mean, want me alive." she adds, with a smile.
"That he may. Hard to believe that a father doesn't want his daughter anyway." His expression changes to a more serious tone. "Rupert is a Walker." he tells her, "he may feel this shadow jump. So prepare yourself to run as soon as we are on the other side. Don't stand amazed. Keep your wits."
His seriousness reaches through the lightning storm of hope in her mind, and she focuses on what he is saying. "How will it happen?" she asks.
"We will walk into that shadow in the corner there. For a moment you will see a world that I can not describe. Then we will be at the end of the alley coming out of a shadow there."
"Even if I am not here," Elaine says, "When those demons come through the door, Helen and the children will still be in the same amount of danger."
"Don't worry about Helen." The beggar smiles, lifting his hand at the shadow in the darkest corner of the room, then moving forward with her, "she's faced demons before."
