The images that had been haunting her were so easily explained that they almost appeared to be mundane facts glimpsed on a tired afternoon rather than sleek, sharp-as-steel revelations cutting across her darkened field of memory like swords meeting, their metal crashing during a death duel, the rain of sparks adding much needed illumination.
Her life, all the gods help her, had been dull.
Her name was Krystin Devlaine. She had never been a hunter for the Night Parade. In fact, she had never known that such creatures existed outside of tales she had heard in harsh whispers at the boarding school where she had been sent by her parents. Those stories were generally used to frighten the younger children who believed in all manner of haunts and demons who knew their names and would come for them if they misbehaved.
The kindly old man she had glimpsed had been her grandfather, who had died several years ago. He had lived in Calimport and had visited her much more frequently than her own mother and father, who were restless travelers and explorers. They had relegated the task of raising Krystin to others for most of her life. The vulgar, dark-haired man with rotted teeth, who had tried to club her with a shattered table leg, had been a nameless drunk in a tavern. She had crept away from the school and had been trapped in the bar when a brawl erupted. Physical fitness had been stressed at the school, and she had been an especially apt pupil during the lessons on self-defense. Those hours of instruction had benefited her that night. She had crushed the man’s instep, left him howling in pain, and ran from the tavern with a strange girl she had met, a homeless child.
Melaine.
That night had been her only true evening of adventure until she was snatched by the Night Parade. The false memories Sixx had implanted had given her a sense of bravado that had accounted for her unbearable ego, her prickly nature, and her caustic tongue. They also had made her so much like Myrmeen that it was not surprising that there had been tension between them from the outset.
Sixx also had briefly tasted Myrmeen’s memories on one of the woman’s first nights in the city. It had been after Myrmeen’s narrow escape from death at Kracauer’s “orphanage.” Sixx had been disgusted with Zeal’s decision to leave the humans alive, and so he had gone to Myrmeen’s quarters to finish the Harpers himself. He had found Myrmeen sitting before her open window, sound asleep. He had entered her mind to kill her, but soon reversed that decision when he learned who she was and the power she had at her command.
Shandower’s first instinct had been correct: Sixx had placed Krystin with the Harpers in the hope of eventually gaining control of Arabel through the girl, when she succeeded her “mother,” who would die from an accident they would arrange in a few years. Sixx had not revealed all of this to Krystin, but he had shown her enough so that she could fit all the pieces into place.
But Lord Sixx had refused to give her all of her memories back, and she knew there must have been a reason beyond the one he had given; there was something he did not want her to know, a part of her past that he did not want her to see.
“Your parents are alive,” he had said within her mind. “Once they know you have disappeared, they will search for you. I can lead you to them. I can give your life back to you, child.”
“What about your plans for Arabel?” she had asked.
“It would probably have been more trouble than it was worth. And the apparatus is far more important to me. Work with me and the humans will live. Defy me and they will die, even Mistress Lhal.”
Suddenly, Krystin felt a sharp pain in her leg, as if she had been bitten by an insect. The sensation had shaken her from her memory and she brushed at her leg absently.
Staring into the locket’s emerald depths, Krystin realized that the bauble somehow had acquired the power to reflect her memories, thoughts, and dreams. There had been one last set of images that had not been explained by the revelations caused by Lord Sixx’s magic, memories of figures chasing her. She cleared her mind and began to concentrate on them.
Time slowly drifted past and soon she found herself staring at movement within the locket’s surface. Krystin stared at the images and allowed the world around her to fall away. She saw a half dozen men chasing her down an alley, vengeful, evil men who were quickly gaining on her. As Krystin concentrated more deeply, she was able to see that they wore uniforms: their leathers were black and on their breasts they wore the insignia of a company, a silver dagger dripping with blood.
Suddenly her view of the world altered with dizzying speed.
She saw the wall to her left flash by and suddenly she was staring at the other end of the alley, where three more men waited. All movement stopped. Krystin became aware of a woman’s sharp breath coming in gasps. The men closed more slowly now, enjoying the terror they inspired.
Her world view shifted again, this time jerking upward sharply and spinning in a wide arc. The opposing wall came into view and she was turned once again and lowered gently to the ground. A woman, her face too close to be seen properly, kissed her once, then withdrew and faced her assailants.
Krystin’s vantage point was close to the ground and she felt as if she were watching the dance of giants. The dark-haired woman who had set her down drew a blade and lunged at the closest of the men. To her credit, she wounded three men before they ran her through.
Suddenly a sword was buried in the soft earth before her. In the reflection of the metal she saw that she was perhaps a year old, no more. A baby. One of the men reached down, picked her up, and laughed. He spoke, but his words were gibberish. Beyond him, she could see another man holding up his empty gold purse, making a joke she could not understand. Suddenly her attention was riveted on a prize that hung around the neck of the man holding her, an object that he had taken from the woman he had killed: A beautiful emerald pendant.
The images suddenly dissolved.
Krystin once again sat on the edge of the shaft in Erin Shandower’s cavernous retreat. She looked down at the locket in disgust, then hurled it into the darkness below. She thought she heard it strike the side of the tunnel, but there was no sound to signify that it had reached the bottom. No matter. The locket was gone, but its terrible gift had remained behind and would never leave her.
Myrmeen Lhal was not her mother. The Devlaines were not her true parents. She was, in truth, an orphan, with more in common with the Krystin Lord Sixx unwittingly had manufactured than she ever would have guessed.
She had to tell Myrmeen, had to warn her that she had betrayed them to the Night Parade, that time was short. But she could not make herself move. Her limbs were too sluggish to respond to her mental commands, and when she tried to rise, she nearly toppled into the pit. She fell back, darkness stealing over her. She was unaware that the deep, thin wound in her leg from the “insect” that had bitten her was now black and swollen. As her consciousness faded, she glimpsed a single nightmarish flash of the creature that had inflicted the wound as it climbed out over the lip of the pit, the emerald locket caught in its vicelike pincers.
Within seconds, Krystin was unconscious. If she had remained awake for another few moments, she would have been witness to a sight that was at once horrifying and beautiful. Where a monstrosity had been only moments before now stood a tall, lithe woman with long, dark hair and an ethereal beauty.
Widow Tamara, the Weaver, stopped before the sleeping girl. Her poison snaked through the child’s system, incapacitating her without stopping her heart. She had no quarrel with Krystin. Tamara went down the corridor where she had heard Myrmeen walk some time earlier. The child’s locket was clutched in her hand. She smiled and hurried to the long overdue reunion that she had left Calimport to experience.