When he looked back, both mist men were there, looking at him with hunger. They approached him, hands rising, and he realized they meant to attack. He retreated, but his back was against the wall of the alley.
"Away." As Levia had taught him, Kalen let the threefold god shine against them. He began to glow, warding off the walking dead. "Away!"
But either his power was too weak or these were not undead, for they came forward. Kalen saw the woman climbing to her feet, a bleeding hole where her hearr should be.
"The sword," the mist whispered. "The sword that was stolen- the crusader has come!"
Kalen thought, for one horrible moment, that they were talking about him. But these were images of long ago, if not entirely random manifestations.
He struck with his watchsword, but the mortal steel passed clean through them, disturbing the mist with its wind. Their hands passed through his guard and leathers as though they were not there. He felt ice inside his flesh.
"Away," he tried again, but his voice was hoarse.
Weakness was taking him, and he could not even flee. The woman in the mist appeared over him, and he thought she was not beautiful but terrible-she was death embodied.
Then the alley was bathed in blue light. Kalen felt the hairs on his neck and arms rise and he threw himself down just as lightning crackled through the air, scorching the stone buildings. A figure stood before him, surrounded in blue electricity and fire. It was the fiery woman he had seen in Downshadow only a few nights before-whose appearance had saved him from death at a half-orgre s gnarled fingers.
He averted his eyes to keep from being blinded, and the mist creatures fell back. He could see them, just vaguely, bowing and scraping like servants, almost… reverent.
Then the light went out, and the woman-no longer flaming but still glowing-stood shakily in the center of the alley. Her dizzy eyes met his, and he saw they were startlingly blue.
"Szasba," she said in a tongue he did not know. "Araka azzagrazz?" Then she sagged.
Leaving his watchsword on the cobblestones in his lunge, Kalen caught her just before she hit the ground. She was so light, barely more rhan a girl, and little more than skin, bone, and… blood.
His gauntlets came away sticky. The girl was naked but for a slimy coating of what looked like black and green blood. He searched for wounds but could find none. Her hair, plastered in the sickly gore, was blue. Everything about her was blue: hair, lips, even her skin.
Then Kalen realized her skin was not blue, but rather covered in glowing tattoos. Runes, he thought, though he did not know them. Even as he noted them, the tattoos began to fade, shrinking into her deeply tanned flesh like ink on wet parchment. He blinked, watching as lattices of arcane symbols vanished, little by little.
Kalen didn't know what to do, but he couldn't leave her.
Her arms tightened around his neck and her face pressed into his chest. "Gisz vaz."
"Very well," he replied, not having the faintest idea what she'd said.
He took off his cloak and wrapped her in it. Then he held her tightly, looked around for misr figures-the fog had begun to disperse-and started off at a trot.
Cellica's stew-left to simmer until morningfeast-was bubbling when he returned to the tallhouse.
"You're back early," the halfling said when he came through the open window. She had risen from her cot, a towel wrapped around her little body, but she didn't look sleepy.
"Did I wake you?" Kalen took care not to hit the strange woman's head against the sill.
"I never sleep when you're-" Cellica's eyes widened. "Who's that?"
"No idea."
Kalen strode into Cellica's room and laid his burden on the halfling's cot.
"She's…" The halfling trailed off, touching the sleeping woman's cheek. "She's bone cold! Out! Out! I'll take care of this."
Kalen felt Cellica's will take hold of him and wandered out while she laid blanket after blanket over the sleeping woman. The stranger's uncertain frown became a blissful smile.
Gods, Kalen felt tired. His limbs ached and his armor stank of sweat. The girl was light, but he'd carried her all the way across the city. In that time, her azure tattoos had all but disappeared. Her breathing seemed normal, and she slept peacefully.
"Why lasses run around the night streets naked in this day and age, I'll never understand," Cellica said. "Younglings! Hmpf."
"Mmm," Kalen returned. He was rubbing his eyes. Gods, he was tired.
"Who is she?" the halfling asked. Rather than being upset, she was inspecting the woman critically, fascinated; "Your hunting extends to naked ladies in addition to villains and dastards?"
Kalen murmured a reply that did not befit a paladin. He traipsed off to his cot, shedding his leathers as he went, and slumped into bed. He was asleep two breaths later.
It only briefly occurred ro him ro wonder where he'd left his watchsword.
THIRTEEN
Fayne slammed her fist on the table in the little chamber in Downshadow.
"I should have known." She spat in most unladylike fashion on the array of cards. "Useless. Utterly useless. I should have known you were a perverse little fraud, after you fed me all the drivel about the doppelganger conspiracy."
B'Zeer the Seer-the tiefling who ran this small, illicit "diviner's council" in a hidden chamber in Downshadow, of which only those of questionable honor knew-spread his many-ringed hands. "Divination is an imprecise art, my sweet Satin, and requires much patience."
"Oh, ore shit," Fayne said. "Divination hasn't worked right in Waterdeep for a hundred years." She shoved her scroll of notes in her scrip satchel. "I don't know what I was thinking, coming to a pimply faced voyeur like you."
B'Zeer ran his fingers over the cards and furrowed his brow. His milky white eyes, devoid of pupils, scanned the tabletop, and he scratched at one of his horns. "Now wait, I think I see aught, now. Something to do with your father… your need to please him… perhaps in-"
"I don't need, some peeping, pus-faced pervert to tell me about my father, thanks," Fayne said. "I was asking about my dreams-you know, the girl in blue fire?"
"Ah yes, B'Zeer sees and understands. I believe-"
"Wirh all due respect-and that's none-piss off and die. I have business to attend to this night, and a tale for the Minstrel to deliver to print."
Fayne exploded from her chair, but a hand clamped around her wrist. She looked down, eyes narrow. "Let go of me, or I will end you."
"This may be a touch indelicate, what I ask now," the seer said. "But what of my coin?"
Fayne glared. "No hrasting service, no hrasting coin." "Call it an entertainment fee," he said. "We all have to eat." "Piss," Fayne said, "off."
He moved faster than a shriveled little devil man should be able to, darting forward and seizing her throat to thrust her against the chamber wall. She saw steel in his other hand.
"You give me my coin," he said, "or I'll take it out of you elsewise."
She should have expected this. Most women in Downshadow were of negotiable virtue. It was simply part of living coin-shy. Particularly amusing were those monsters that took the form of women and revealed themselves only in a passionate embrace. Justice, Fayne thought.
She smiled at B'Zeer dangerously.
"Hark, Seer-it isn't bound to happen," she said. "I think, if you read your destiny, you'll see only you… alone but for your hand."
"So you say, birch," the tiefling said. "But let us see what-uuk!"
The seer choked and coughed, grasping at himself where she had driven a knife through his bowels. Blackness poured down his legs. He mumbled broken words in his fiendish language-harsh, guttural sounds-but he could summon no magic with his life spilling down his groin.
"If it gives you any comfort," she said as he sank to the floor, "I did warn you."