The spawn babbled and hugged themselves, writhing under the pangs of invisible wounds. They fell to their knees and begged forgiveness with their inarticulate tongues.
Stannis spat his words at them. "The boy… is not… to be… touched. Not by you!"
Darrow had not heard such anger from Stannis before. He could not bring himself to pity the creatures who had tormented him, but he shrank from the sight of their punishment. He felt their seething hatred even though their eyes avoided him. They looked like beasts, he knew, but they were cunning and mean. They would remember.
"Begone," spat Stannis, "and be grateful for such a gentle reminder. I shan't be so forgiving again."
Chastised, the spawn fled like dead leaves before a winter blast.
There, now," said Stannis, descending once more. "Distasteful task, that, but they shall not trouble you again."
"I thank you, master," said Darrow, bowing. At last, fate was rewarding him for enduring the day's earlier indignities. Tymora's coin was turning in his favor.
"It appears I've spilled my wine," said Stannis.
He set his goblet beside the bottle and held up his hand. Darrow quickly fetched a towel and gently wiped the wine from his master's wrist. Stannis watched him all the while, his eyes half-lidded with approving affection.
"What is this charming discovery you have made?" he asked, indicating the wine bottle. "You say it is a local vintage?"
"Yes, master," said Darrow.
He lifted the bottle to show off the vintner's stamp. He had not noticed it before, the seal of a horse's head beneath a slender anchor. He realized his mistake just as Stannis recognized the device.
"The horse at anchor… The horse at anchor!" he rasped, choking. He dashed the bottle out of Darrow's hand. It flew across the carpet to crash against a nearby pillar.
"You seek to poison me with the milk of my enemy?" Stannis moved closer to loom over Darrow.
"No, master!" Darrow pleaded. He dropped to his hands and knees, averting his gaze from the dread presence. "I didn't know."
Stannis spoke the words Darrow feared, though he could not understand them. Then he felt the agony he saw on the faces of the spawn moments before. Every sinew felt like a copper wire stretched thin and fragile over a raging fire. He thrashed and convulsed, but no effort could save him from the sorcerous pain.
As the spell subsided, Darrow tried to smother his sobs with his fist. He felt his master's dark presence draw close, and he knew Stannis was looking down at him. Humiliated beyond all endurance, he pulled the holy symbol of Tymora from beneath his tunic and held it up toward Stannis.
Darrow heard the sudden intake of breath, a gasp quite unlike the vampire's usual sighs and hisses. He looked up to see that Stannis had recoiled, his bulky form bobbing in the air five or six feet away.
"Stop…" said Darrow. Even the brief look at Stannis Malveen's inhuman form melted his resolve. The vampire's eyes surged^and tumbled with infernal energy. "Please," sobbed Darrow, dropping the coin to his chest.
"Throw it in the pool," commanded Stannis.
Darrow obeyed at once, snapping the leather cord that held the talisman and dropping the holy symbol into the water. There it sank to the curved bottom and slipped out of sight through one of the long oval drains.
"Master," he said, turning back to Stannis without standing. "I beg you, it was a mistake."
"It was indeed," concurred Stannis, floating down to peer into Darrow's eyes. "It was a very grave mistake."
That night, Darrow learned just how many screams he had in him.
Chapter 6
Tarsakh, 1371 DR
Tal endured the self-imposed captivity of another moon before winter began loosening its icy grip on Selgaunt. Frost still bit those who overslept their hearthfires, and some mornings revealed a light sheet of snow on the streets, but by noon the sun and traffic had cleared the cobblestone streets, and the smell of freshly turned earth rose from every garden in the city.
Before trying to slip unnoticed into the library at Stormweather, Tal and Chaney visited the booksellers at the market and in the city's shops. They searched for anything to do with werewolves, Selune, and the phrase that continued to trouble his thoughts: the Black Wolf. Eventually Tal found a few volumes that dealt with lycan-thropes, or nightwalkers as Feena had called them.
When he bought more than one book at a shop, the package came back across the counter with some curious looks from the seller.
"It's research for a play," Tal explained. He made a claw and menaced Chaney. "Grr!"
"Help!" cried Chaney in a credible falsetto.
The shopkeepers laughed politely, but the querulous looks vanished into smiling nods.
Once he was sure that Thamalon was away from home, Tal visited his father's library. It was one of the most eclectic in Selgaunt. If the Old Owl kept an entire shelf of tomes on elven lore, Tal figured he was bound to have a few volumes on religion. He discovered volumes ranging from The Speculum of Selune to The Visage of the Beast, yet none explained the overheard reference that Feena refused to discuss. Worse yet, they were all written in the elliptical manner of sages who fancied themselves poets. Tal briefly considered taking some of it back to the Wide Realms for a dramatic reading the next time the company needed a few laughs.
"It's pretty boring stuff," he told Chaney later. They had found a quiet corner at the Black Stag, a tavern close to the playhouse.
"But useful, right?" Chaney sat with his back to the wall, scanning the room each time newcomers arrived. Whenever Tal teased him for his paranoid habits, Chaney reminded that twice he'd spied a pickpocket creeping up on Tal. "The Black Wolf is another name for Malar."
"Maybe," said Tal. He'd known only a little about Malar before his recent studies, and what he'd learned since was little help.
The god of hunters was worshiped more widely in the country, especially the farthest wilderness. Like sailors who prayed to cruel Umberlee to spare them from her mighty wrath, farmers and herdsman made offerings to the Beastlord so that he might spare them from wild animals and monsters. City dwellers had little use for the ancient god. Among urban churches, the Beastlord was considered a primitive god. Powerful, to be sure, and older than most of the other dark gods, Malar's name was rarely spoken in civilized places. When it was uttered, it was by the lips of huntsmen who wished only for a fine trophy to bring home from their jaunt in the country.
Tal thought back to the night of his own hunting trip, when beasts raged out of the darkness to scatter the young men and women from Selgaunt. He had thought they were owlbears at first, but later he learned it was Rusk and his pack who had slain his fellows and inflicted him with their curse. What monsters they must be, to hunt humans like mere animals, to eat their kill.
They were cannibals.
More than any other aspect of his curse, it was that thought that most horrified Tal. It was a dire thing to kill a man, but the thought of preying on other humans was repellant to Tal. He loved fencing, and yet during the brief period in which he thought he'd killed a man, he considered putting an end to his own life lest he murder again.
The thought gave Tal pause. He could kill, if need be. He was sure of that. Should someone threaten his friends or family-even, gods help him, his annoying brother or overbearing father-he'd feel no qualms about cutting the offender into parts.
At least, that was his theory. Except for maiming Rusk in self-defense, Tal had yet to prove he could kill. He knew it was too much to hope that the silverback werewolf had crawled away to die. He must have made it back to his lair in the Arch Wood by now. Cheney's warning about going after him when Rusk was surrounded by his pack carried weight with Tal, but he hated the idea of just waiting to learn whether Rusk would return to trouble him.