What Tamlin didn't realize-or so Thamalon prayed-was that the Malveens were likely the source of at least one attempt on his brother's life, though Thamalon hadn't entrusted his children with that knowledge. There was no proof of the first attempt, only rumor passed from Cale's mysterious cousin, who walked the darker lanes of Selgaunt.
More damning was the circumstance of Talbot's adventure of the past year, which ended in the immolation of an old converted warehouse that had once been Malveen property.
Ever since that time, the famed swordsman Radu Malveen had been missing, leaving only his elder brother Laskar and their younger brother Pietro to carry the family name. Their sisters had wisely married away from their family's notorious reputation.
Despite Tamlin's ignorance of the recent offenses of the Malveen men, Thamalon was still irritated. The quality of the gift was one thing, but to think it would absolve him of his irresponsible behavior was so blatant a ploy as to be insulting.
Perhaps an insult was exactly what Tamlin intended, thought Thamalon. He was by far the most sophisticated of the children, but perhaps his courtesy was a mask for contempt.
The damned vein began to pulse again, and Thamalon breathed deeply to still it. He looked more closely at the painting.
There must have been a sale on brown paint, he mused. Malveen had used little else in depicting the dark edge of a forest looming over a hunting lodge. Flecks of red showed where the frightened inhabitants had lit torches against the darkness, but the flames dispelled no shadows. Instead, they picked out the glittering eyes of grotesque beasts creeping out from the forest. Their bodies were all rough knobs and acute angles, as were the trees, which leaned and swayed as Thamalon peered at them.
He tried to blink away the illusion, but some intangible force had locked his gaze upon the canvas. The movement was no illusion, as the brush strokes swirled and converged in a spiral that pulled Thamalon toward the painting.
That wasn't quite right.
The vortex was drawing him into the painting.
He struggled to turn away, but the only movement he could muster was a weak wave of his limp hands. Briefly he thought he must look pathetic staggering around in his housecoat and slippers. He didn't like to think he looked like one of the feeble old drunks who stumbled about the waterfront begging for charity from superstitious sailors eager to buy good luck for a few copper pennies.
The painting pulled him ineluctably closer. Thamalon could smell the pigment-earth and blood and dung. He could almost taste it as the dark colors flooded over and through him.
His feet left the floor. He felt his body drawn apart.
In that last frantic instant, Thamalon Uskevren ceased to exist.
CHAPTER 3
The stench of dung and urine soured the air, but neither of them smelled it. Steaming warmth from the sewage stream provided respite from the winter chill, but neither of them felt it. Any ordinary man in those wretched tunnels would have yearned to scramble back onto the streets, but not these two.
An assassin and a ghost skulked through the vaulted sewers of Selgaunt.
The living man strode along the cobblestone walkway, his steps no louder than the shadow of an owl's wing. The stiff collar of his cloak was laced up just beneath his eyes. The rest of his face hid behind a white enameled mask attached to a steel half-cap protecting his forehead. Behind the cap, a black shower of hair spilled down past his fine shoulders.
The man's shadow crooked upon the walls as he passed each of the eldritch lamps ensconced within its alcove. Eight other shadows rose and fell in turn behind him. Where they oozed along the walls, they left a clammy glimmer on the stones.
"Make a dog," said the ghost. He looked like nothing at all, and his voice echoed only within the assassin's head.
The man said nothing, didn't even break his stride except to slap the edge of his supple leather cloak behind the scabbard at his right hip. The hand that struck the fabric was gnarled and sclerotic beneath a calfskin glove.
"Rrruh! Ruh ruh!" barked the ghost. "Come on, here comes another lamp. You can make a wolfhound."
The man turned and stared at the point from which he must have imagined the voice emanated. In the flickering green light, the black spots of his eyes seemed to swallow up all the whites.
"Still a sensitive subject? I thought you'd moved beyond recriminations, Radu. After all, it's not as if he disfigured you so. You managed that handily enou-"
"Be silent."
Radu Malveen's voice was the sound of a dry wind shaking shattered reeds. It might have been a human voice, once.
"There was a time, of course, when you could have silenced me with a look. What a scary bastard you were, even before you killed me. Ah, my material days. Still, there are advantages to this ethereal existence. That time you dossed down near the festhall, I had just enough room to slip through the wall and peek in at the new talent."
Radu lowered his head but kept his eyes focused on a spot very close to the point from which Chaney perceived the world. Chaney smiled, imagining the assassin's whitening lips, then remembering that Radu no longer had much in the way of lips. That thought made him smile even more.
"If I still had a life to lose, I might think twice before crossing the dread Radu Malveen, prickly, conceited, criminally insane killer from a House of raving no-doubt-on-account-of-profound-venereal-disease lunatics greatest swordsman in Selgaunt. Oh, and pathetic cripple. Mustn't forget the profound and unmanly injuries."
The quick snap of his cloak was the only warning that Malveen had moved. Before an eye could capture the blur that was his single liquid motion, he completed his lunge, extending his slender blade through empty air. While he saw nothing there, something caught his eye from below.
Radu looked down into the sewer water and saw the reflection of his blade passing through the specter of Chaney Foxmantle.
The ghost was almost as slender as Radu, but he was less than half past five feet tall. His fair hair was colorless in death, but some faint blue spark danced in his eyes. Maybe it was the last ember of hope. Maybe it was malice.
Chaney whistled. He looked down at the blade and measured its distance from the place his heart had been.
"Even though I assumed you couldn't hurt me, Seven Sisters and Hopping Ilmater, that was exciting! Good to know for sure, though, don't you think?"
"Foxmantle," warned Malveen, "your insipid rem-"
Radu's eyes darted, seeking something moving out of synchronicity with the ripples of the dark water. He crouched low to view the reflecting water at a sharper angle, watching Chaney's ghost.
There, seven dark figures stood silently in the water, the foul vapors of the sewage mingling with their own indefinite forms. Two looked like street toughs, one a bony old crone, one a dwarf with hairy shoulders, the others middle-aged noblemen of no remarkable features. Their exposed hands were the color of oysters, as were the points of their chins. They hung their heads so low that their damp black hair covered the rest of their faces.
"Who are they?" whispered Radu.
"It certainly took you long enough to notice them. Don't you ever look in a mirror?" Chaney paused for dramatic affect. "What am I saying, of course you don't look in-"
"Who are they?" Radu's voice was full of razors.
"Don't you recognize them?"
Radu's narrowing eyes showed that he did. "They don't look the same as you."
"No, but they died after your rather ignoble defeat, didn't they?"
Radu stared at the shades a moment longer, then he raised his head as if in understanding. He sheathed his sword and strode briskly away.
Chaney chuckled as he watched the man retreat, then gulped as he felt the invisible bonds that kept him within thirty paces of his killer drag him along in his wake.