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purple bruises over his cheekbones, disappearing into both the gap that had
once been his nose and the dark circle that had held his left eye.
The butler turned, muscled arms cradling two shelves of displaced books.
"You should rest, Captain. The city guard will be here soon to take your
statement." Uther shifted his gaze for an instant to Sir Hamnet. "I have spent
the past three days aiding the watch in their search for the captain. If you'd
told the truth the morning the guards found you screaming like a madman, we
might have rescued him days ago, before the butchers had time to cut him
up."
"Gareth," Sir Hamnet stammered, as if he hadn't heard the accusation. "We
thought you lost. Helm's Fist, but I'm glad you're alive!"
"Liar," Truesilver managed in a slow, pained voice. From the way he
mangled the word, it seemed likely a part of his tongue had gone to power
some wizard's spell, too.
Awkwardly the captain hobbled to a stop in front of Uther. With his right
hand, he lifted the largest book from atop the pile and pitched it into the
fireplace. The flames danced along the spine. With a sharp pop, the tome
flipped open, revealing a hand-colored map of the Hordelands. Fire hungrily
devoured the page and set to work on the rest of the book.
Truesilver tossed another volume into the fire, and another. Sir Hamnet
raised a hand to stop him, but a low and rumbling growl from Uther warned
him away.
Helpless, he turned to the others in the library, his friends, his fellow
explorers. But Sir Hamnet Hawklin found loathing in the faces of the
Stalwarts, and disgust, and anger. They stared at him with open contempt,
silently cheering the destruction of his life's work.
He tried to shrug off the contempt and shore up the barricades he'd built
around his craven heart. But the walls were crumbling now. The society's
shared glories fled him like deadfall leaves abandoning a winter oak. The
myriad ceremonial blades and trophy shields hanging on the walls had been
his to wield. The slaughtered monsters and conquered dragon had been his
trophies, too, proof of valorous deeds beyond imagining. No longer. The
Stalwarts knew the truth, and each accusing eye reflected that truth back at
the nobleman like a perfect mirror.
Sir Hamnet Hawklin was a coward.
The room began to spin, and the nobleman covered his face with trembling
hands. He could block out the sights, but he couldn't deafen himself to the
crackle and hiss of the fire as it destroyed his journals and turned his maps to
ash.
And in that instant, just before his heart was crushed by those toppled walls
of borrowed honor, Sir Hamnet heard it the low, sibilant laughter in the
flames. He'd been right all along. It was the vicious chuckle of Cyric, the
satisfied sigh of the Lord of Strife as a man's spirit shattered and his damned
soul went shrieking down to Hades.
VISION
Roger E. Moore
The summons brought me out of a meeting in an overcrowded den where
the candles had eaten up the air. My clan head grumbled, but he released me
and returned to bullying compensation from an opponent over an imagined
slight of honor. Such wars of words, often punctuated by drawn knives and
brief duels that left the cavern floors slick with blood, were far too frequent
these days among my people. I was glad to go.
I would have been happier for the freedom, but the warrior who called me
out told me I was summoned by Skralang, shaman of all our kind. My
stomach grew tight at the thought of meeting the old goblin. I was no coward,
but I was no fool. The warrior hurried off as I bound up my fears and set off
myself through the long, narrow tunnels of the Nightbelow, our home under
the Dustwalls.
At twenty winters I was a guard captain and assistant to my clan head, a
young fist among the many hands of the goblins of the mountains. I had
fought on the surface against human intruders on our lands since I was
twelve, and had been captured once and held prisoner for a year until I had
escaped. My captivity taught me to never let it happen again. I knew humans
well and feared none of them, but Skralang was not a human, and some said
he was not a goblin, either.
The old shaman's door opened automatically when I reached it at the end
of a black, web-filled tunnel. Skralang greeted me with a nod from his bed. He
carelessly waved me to a chair at a table on which a lone candle flickered. I
steeled myself and entered his den.
I picked my way across the tiny, litter-strewn room. My iron-shod boots
crushed bits of bone, bread crusts, and other debris beneath them. Skralang
did not seem to care about the filth. The world meant less to him every day, it
was said. How he could stand to live in such vile conditions was beyond me,
but it was not my place and not to my advantage to say so. Who insults a
mouthpiece of the gods?
I sat and waited as the shaman took a small bottle and earthen cup from a
box by his bed of rags. He carefully swung his feet off the ruined bed and got
up, shuffling over to pull up a stool and take a seat by me. I stiffened and
almost stood to salute, but he seemed not to care. His familiarity was
astonishing; it was if I were an old and trusted friend.
Even more astonishing was Skralang's appearance at close range in the
candlelight. His robes stank of corruption, as if death were held back from him
by the width of an eyelash. The skin was pulled tight over the bones of his
face and hands; open sores disfigured his arms and neck. Yet even with this,
his pale yellow eyes were clear and steady. He gently poured another drink
for himself, but did not take it right away. Instead he sat back and regarded
me with those cold, clear eyes.
"You are bored, Captain Kergis," he said. His voice was no more than a
whisper. In the silence, it was like a shout. "Life here has no appeal for you.
You long to be elsewhere."
I almost denied it, but his eyes warned me off from lies. I nodded hesitantly.
"You see all, Your Darkness," I said. I knew that with his magic, the old goblin
probably did see all within the Nightbelow even the hidden places of the
heart and soul.
The old one toyed with his cup. His spidery fingers trembled. "Has the
security of our home begun to wear on you? Do the petty ravings of the clan
heads lull your blood to sleep, rather than stir it with fire? Or do you have
plans of your own for advancing your rank and position, and your boredom is
merely feigned to cover your intentions?"
To be accused of treachery was not uncommon, but hearing it fall from the
thin lips of our shaman was like hearing my death sentence pronounced. "I
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