She was supposed to keep the fire burning, wasn’t she? She tried to remember who had told her that.
The light faded until it no longer pained her eyes, and the shape in the middle shifted and resolved itself into the tall and long-legged figure of a woman. Jandi watched with a detached curiosity as the woman approached and kneeled beside her.
The woman tilted her head and considered her. She wore a garment of some river-green fabric that flowed about her as if a breeze were blowing, and her scarlet hair was cropped close beneath her ears. Her eyes, a slightly darker green than her dress, were almond shaped.
The woman smiled suddenly, and her smile was like sunshine on Jandi’s cold flesh. Reaching out, she stroked Jandi’s hair, and her gentle touch broke the icy grip that kept her limbs frozen.
She blinked rapidly. The woman’s elfin features came into focus, and the blaze of light faded until she could see the grass she lay in, the trees beyond, and the dying, stone-banked fire before her. Everything was imbued with a golden, illuminated quality, as if the light had flowed into the landscape instead of dying away.
Jandi flexed her stiff limbs and found she could sit up effortlessly, although the movement made her dizzy. The woman rose and stood over her, still smiling.
“Who are you?” Jandi whispered, expecting her throat to hurt and surprised that it did not.
The woman reached out a long-fingered hand, and Jandi took it.
“You can call me Mandira for now,” she said in a voice that had the tremble of silver bells in it, pulling Jandi to her feet, and seeming to expend no effort doing it. Indeed, Jandi felt as if she were floating.
“I don’t remember …” she began, then, looking down, saw the crumpled body at her feet. The pale face with the blue lips looked familiar, the eyes slightly protruding and staring at nothing. She had the impression of an insubstantial figure bending over the body.
“I don’t understand,” she concluded.
Mandira still had her hand, a touch so light she could barely feel it.
“You will in time,” she said. “But now you have a choice. You can stay here, tied to the flesh and its memories. Or you can come with me, and dwell a while in Brightwater’s gentle realm.”
The red-headed woman tugged her hand, the slightest of tugs, and Jandi let herself be pulled away one step, then two.
“Wait,” she said. “I’m waiting for someone. I’m waiting for …”
Ivor. The name was a whisper in her mind. The woman smiled sadly at her, and Jandi knew she’d somehow heard it.
“It’s a cruel thing,” she said. “To be struck down when love is fragile and new, uncurling like a butterfly from its cocoon. Flesh is mortal and love is not.”
She tugged her hand again. “The lady grants this mercy, because love had found a home in your heart. You may find a home, for a while, with her. You may refuse. You may stay with this body, and see your lover grieve. You may haunt this place, searching ceaselessly for what you can no longer have while your body rots beneath the ground. It is your choice.”
Jandi glanced once more at the body. It seemed a thing utterly alien, nothing to do with her, and now it was fading like a face in the twilight. She saw a small circlet of dull metal beside the body, with a haze of sickly green about it. She felt she should remember something about it, but the memory slipped away like a scarf in the wind.
The oak tree beyond the body was glowing now, its bark burnished gold. The forest beyond faded from view as well, save for individual trees scattered here and there that glowed with the same golden light as the oak. She could see their roots branching beneath the ground, and their leaves were amber and jade.
Jandi made her decision and looked deep into the woman’s eyes, drowning in emerald. The light from the trees grew more intense, until there was nothing but brightness and the distant sound of water.
A tall woman kneeled over the body of the young mage, not loosening the braided cord around her neck until she was sure she was dead. Finally, the woman released her grip and looped the garrote neatly, tucking it into her belt. The moon emerged from behind the clouds, illuminating a lean face with a thick red scar twisting the corner of the left eye and marring the cheek to the jawbone. She pressed two fingers beneath the still girl’s jawline, trying to detect any trace of a pulse.
Satisfied on that point, she plucked a bracelet from the grass. It had tumbled from the girl’s lap in her final struggle. She examined it. It wasn’t silver or gold, and the three red stones embedded in it weren’t rubies or even garnets. She tossed it away like a piece of trash, then rose to her feet.
She didn’t see the bracelet twitch a couple times, elongating and flattening until it became a long chain of links, which crept, snakelike, through the grass and coiled around the dead mage’s limp arm.
Helgre stood, silent, listening intently to the sounds of the dusk. She knew one of her quarry was still down at the stream, and she could hear the other foraging along the verge of the forest, heralded by the heavy tramp of the donkey.
She smiled wolfishly. She had spent months nursing her wounds and hatred in the Mulmaster slums. Many tendays she had spent sniffing out rumors of the deserters in the dockside dives and taverns. She had spent almost a year tracking them and the wench they’d picked up in Mulmaster, north through the unfriendly towns of Turmish, and then following them across borders and back again. By chance she had met one of would-be Baron Berendel’s men in a roadside inn and heard the tale of a mad ex-sailor who wanted possession of a cursed piece of barren rock.
Hard on their trail, she lurked in the cover of the sprawling forest. When she ventured close enough to see their faces, a fierce joy burned in her veins. It was them, after all-Gareth Jadaren and Ivor Beguine, traitors and cowards who had not only abandoned the ship she loved but set those dreadful avengers on her wake.
That had been more than a year ago now. The second she had found Din and Barneb sprawling on the deck in the early morning, still groggy, she knew something was wrong. She knew Gareth and Ivor were on third watch, and their absence was suspicious. A few quick slaps across Din’s face and a knife beneath his jaw elicited the information that the Turmish man and his friend had come last night with wine. She considered knifing the hapless easterner and dropping him over the side.
Instead, she dropped him in disgust and went to tell Ping of the deserters. She’d just reached his chambers when she heard the chaos on deck.
It was too much of a coincidence. Gareth and Ivor had jumped ship and betrayed them in Mulmaster. I never trusted that Gareth, she thought, as she drew her knife. I should’ve cut his throat when he signed on.
She expected to see a fighting ship and a pack of Mulmaster bullies, recruited by what passed for the law in that scabby dock town. Instead, she saw a confused mass of crew, some of them sprawled on the deck, unmoving. Standing on the forecastle deck was a tall figure, armed with a heavy bow. He looked rooted in place, his boots wide-side on the boards. The graceful motion of his upper body as he drew his long black-feathered arrows from the quiver strapped to his back, nocked them to the string, pulled back effortlessly, and loosed into the shambles, finding his mark every time, spoke of long practice and a mastery of the art.
On the deck below, the shifting bodies gave her a glimpse of Krevlak, a burly half-orc they’d picked up near Thay, swinging a mace at another combatant. Krevlak’s opponent ducked, and the mace swung wide, sending the half-orc off balance. As the figure straightened, Helgre saw it was a woman, dusky skinned with a pale mask across her eyes, and hair braided away from her face.
She held a greatsword two-handedly, and, as Krevlak stumbled, she brought it up in a killing stroke across his torso. The half-orc fell in a red spatter, and the woman leaped across his body with insolent ease, engaging another pirate.