Kelemvor heard a scream behind him and turned. In the sky to the east, the third rider, Sejanus, was slowly making his way back to the bridge. "What do you want with us?" the green-eyed fighter yelled.
Durrock's nightmare reared, and Adon twisted precariously in the air. "I'm not here to answer your questions," the assassin cried. "Lord Bane, the God of Strife, has sent us to deliver a summons. We are here to escort you to an audience with the Black Lord in Scardale."
"Oh, is that all?" Kelemvor snapped. His grip on the sword tightened. "Thank you, but we'll pass. You'll have to carry my regrets to Bane."
Durrock loosened his grasp on Adon, and the cleric slipped slightly toward the ground. The assassin grabbed the scarred cleric again before he could fall. "Do not tempt fate, fools. You have no choice!"
"We'll come with you," Midnight cried. The mage held her hands, their fingers laced together, above her head so the assassins would know she was not casting a spell. "You've won."
Kelemvor stared at the mage, then looked away and slowly lowered his sword. "This is insane!" the fighter hissed. "They will simply kill us in Scardale, once Bane is done with us."
Midnight sighed and turned to the fighter. "Perhaps. But we can't let them kill Adon now," she said. "We may have a chance to escape later."
"Ah, of course!" Kelemvor snapped. "It will be better if we try to escape. Then they can have the pleasure of hunting us down again before they kill all three of us!" The fighter reached down and picked up the heavy canvas bag containing Midnight's spellbook.
Midnight didn't answer the fighter. Instead, she looked up at Durrock, still hanging against the sun, and nodded. "We're ready," the mage said. The riders began to descend.
VI
Cyric crawled through a tangle of heavy branches on the north shore of the Ashaba. The underbrush served to camouflage his quaking, half-drowned body as the thief heard the sound of the nightmares racing across the sky above the bridge, then watched as Kelemvor, Midnight, and Adon were taken away by the assassins.
I'm lucky I'm not with them, the thief thought. In fact, I'm lucky to be alive at all!
After the dalesman's arrow had caused him to lose his grip on the tree in the river, Cyric had been dragged beneath the surface by a powerful undertow. Only by grabbing for handholds and footholds along the sleek, slimy wall of the riverbank had the thief been able to save himself. When he finally broke the surface of the water, he was past the bridge.
Cyric had remained hidden beneath an overhang in tin-hank and watched the events on the bridge unfold. He saw Midnight's protective sphere burst and Kelemvor become a panther and savage the dalesmen. Two men had escaped the creature's fury — the young, blond guard they had met in Shadowdale, and a shirtless, red-skinned, bald man. Cyric was uncertain of either man's whereabouts.
The hawk-nosed thief had seen Midnight and Adon resurface, then drag themselves up the bank opposite him to the woods at the southern end of Blackfeather Bridge. There had been a brief moment of relief as Cyric watched Midnight move toward the shore, but that feeling faded as he realized that Adon had survived, too. The very thought of the weak-willed Sunite infuriated the thief. Worse, he simply couldn't understand why Midnight protected him. It was that kind of foolish behavior from both Midnight and Adon that made me realize I'd be better off without them, the thief decided as he crawled up the bank. And from Kelemvor's lame performance in the non-battle with the assassins. He gave himself up! Cyric cursed silently — the thief had added the fighter to his list of people too sentimental to be trusted.
Still, Cyric did feel some remorse over the fact that he couldn't help Midnight escape from Bane's assassins. She would be disappointed in me, the thief suddenly realized, then grew angry at himself for being concerned about the mage's feelings at all. Anyway, he concluded, wherever she's been taken, she probably believes that I'm dead.
Perhaps it was best that way. There had been a strong bond of friendship between the thief and the mage — at least there was before the trip down the Ashaba — and Cyric knew that that type of bond could easily get in the way of his plans. Although he didn't care if Adon's blood might have to he spilled in his pursuit of the Tablets of Fate, Cyric did not relish the idea of harming Midnight. She knew things about him that no one else alive would ever know. Still, he realized that he could trust her, that she would not betray him. Were situations reversed, Cyric was sure that his friendship would not prove as unshakable as the mage's.
As the thief moved some branches out of his way, careful not to allow them to snap and reveal his position, he pulled himself up the embankment. The small expanse of woods Cyric faced had to be an unnatural growth, a product of the physical and mystical chaos that was infecting the Realms. That was the only explanation the thief could think of to reconcile the presence of a grove of trees in an area that had appeared barren on all his maps. Although there had been no sounds that would accompany unusual activity in the woods — or signal the presence of the two remaining dalesmen — he was quite nervous about being discovered while he was still unarmed.
Making his way to the top of the embankment, Cyric found himself staring into the eyes of the blond guardsman, Yarbro. The younger man's armor had been discarded, probably to help him avoid drowning. He still had his sword, though, and that sword was now raised against Cyric, its point grazing the thief's throat.
"It seems there is going to be some justice served here after all," Yarbro hissed as be grabbed the thief by the arm and tossed him to the ground.
Cyric was about to leap at Yarbro in a last-ditch effort to bring the guardsman down when he heard the sound of a branch snapping off to his left. Out of the corner of his eve, the hawk-nosed thief saw the deep, red skin of the bald man who had escaped from the bridge. Mikkel raised his bow and nocked an arrow.
"You're making a mistake!" Cyric gasped. The thief quickly ran through a long list of lies and half-truths that the dalesmen might just believe. "I'm as much a victim as you are," he said after a moment, his voice full of emotion.
Yarbro's sword wavered for an instant. The young guard paused, then pulled his lips back in a grimace. "Oh, really?" he growled. "And why is that?"
"Kill him!" Mikkel snapped. "Just kill him so we can get to Scardale and try to catch the other butchers!" The fisherman took a step toward the thief.
"I don't think so," Yarbro said. "Not yet. Not until I hear a few more of this killer's fantasies."
"What I've been through is no fantasy," Cyric groaned. "The sorceress cast a spell on me. She made me her pawn. My will has not been my own… not until this very moment." The thief rose to his knees and looked up at Yarbro. "Think for a moment. I helped to save Shadowdale from Bane's troops. It was under my command that more than two hundred of Bane's soldiers met their deaths. I personally put an arrow in Fzoul Chembryl, Bane's high priest and leader of his clergy. Why would I have attacked him if I were a spy for the Black Lord?"
"Perhaps you wanted Fzoul's job," Mikkel scoffed. "I understand that assassination is the preferred method of advancing one's career in Zhentil Keep."
Cyric shook with barely restrained anger. "The Twisted Tower would have fallen into the hands of Bane's forces were it not for me!"
"That's ancient history." Yarbro feigned a yawn as he allowed the tip of his sword to ease down and touch Cyric's throat again. "More recently, you killed a half dozen of our men when you helped the mage and the cleric escape from the Tower of Ashaba." The guard paused for a moment, waiting for Cyric to respond. "Do you deny it?"