Elden winced, cried out in his sleep, curled up into himself. Cale whispered a healing spell of his own and gently placed his right hand on Elden's shoulder. The bruises on his face faded entirely and the boy murmured, muttered something inaudible, and inhaled a deep breath.
Riven and Cale shared a hard look. Riven used handcant to communicate to Cale. I'll wake him, he said, nodding at the sleeping man. He gets to see what's coming.
Cale nodded, leaned in close to Elden, and whispered in his ear, "You are safe. I will take you to your grandfather."
Elden said nothing, but his small body started to shake. Cale and Riven might have healed the physical wounds, but the boy's scars ran deeper than the flesh.
Cale's anger burned. Any man who beat a boy deserved what he got. He signaled Riven in handcant, the gestures curt and cutting. Make it hurt.
Riven nodded, his gaze as hard as adamantine. The assassin prowled across the tent, his hands empty of weapons.
Cale readied his spell of silence.
Riven kicked the axeman's foot and said, "On your feet. Time to die."
Cale cast his spell as the axeman's eyes snapped open and his hand tightened around his weapon.
Sound died, but Cale had already heard the emotionless tone of Riven's voice and it told Cale all he needed to know. The assassin was working. And the tent was no place for a boy. He pulled the shadows about himself and Elden and rode them back to the camp at Lake Veladon.
Years of training and hundreds of combats had sharpened Riven's skills to a sharp edge. Controlled rage honed them to a razor. He stepped backward and drew a throwing knife as the lumbering man jumped to his feet, axe in hand.
Riven hurled the small blade at the man and it tore a gash in his forearm. He screamed in silence and dropped the axe. Blood streamed down his wrist and hand and onto the tent floor.
Riven showed the man his empty hands and beckoned him forward.
The big man understood his meaning. His mouth twisted in a silent roar and he charged Riven, head down and arms out. He outweighed Riven by twenty stones, maybe thirty, but Riven did not back off. Instead, he stepped forward into the man's charge and combined a jump with a sharp right knee.
The man's jaw broke from the impact and his charge ended on the spot. He fell to all fours, wobbling, senseless, bleeding from arm and mouth and spitting teeth.
Riven kicked him in the side of the head and he fell flat to the ground. Straddling him, Riven turned him over roughly. The man's eyes tried to focus. Riven punched him in the face, shattering his nose in a spray of blood and snot. The man screamed silently, tried to roll away, but Riven held him fast. He punched him again, again, again, and again. Soon the man's face was a shattered mess of blood and bruises, and Riven's knuckles were sore and nicked.
Riven knelt over him and stared into his eyes, one of which was clouded with blood from broken vessels. He shook the big man's head by the hair until the eyes focused.
"This is what it feels like to be beaten," he said with a snarl, though Cale's spell swallowed the sound.
The man's mouth moved but Riven could not read his bloody, broken lips. He did not care. The man had nothing to say that Riven cared to hear.
Riven normally killed with efficiency, but he had occasionally provided services for a patron who wanted a target to suffer. Riven had never enjoyed it, but he'd done it.
He would enjoy it now.
He stepped away from the stunned man and walked across the tent. He retrieved the metal-tipped spear and returned.
Drooling blood, the man stared up at him and moved his head slowly from side to side.
Riven cuffed him about the face, used another of his knives to cut the straps of the man's breastplate. He tore it off and threw it to the side. He searched the man to ensure he bore no healing potions. He didn't.
Riven stood and put the point of the spear on the man's gut.
The man was senseless. Riven would not have it.
With his free hand he pulled shadows from the dark air, twined them about his fingers, and put his darkness-adorned hand on the man's shoulder. He let healing magic flow through him. He did not need to speak to generate healing energy, so Cale's spell did not thwart him.
Some of the bruises and cuts on the man's face closed, as did the slash in his forearm. Riven waited for the man's eyes to clear. When they did, he stared into the man's face and drove the spear through his gut. The man's mouth opened in a silent scream of agony that continued as Riven leaned on the spear's haft and sank it half an arm's length into the dirt. Blood poured from the wound.
Wailing and squirming, the man pulled at the spear haft but his strength was already failing him. He pawed at the wooden shaft futilely. He glared at Riven through his pain, cursed him, spat at him.
Riven sneered.
Cale's spell would prevent anyone from hearing the man's screams. Riven had seen men die of gut wounds before. The man would be dead within a hundredcount but every moment would be agonizing. The man who beat a witless boy would die swimming in his own blood, in his own shit, in excruciating pain.
He deserved worse.
Staring without sympathy into the pain-wracked eyes of the dying man, Riven pictured the camp at Lake Veladon in his mind, triggered the magic of his ring, and transported himself there.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1 Nightal, the Year of Lightning Storms
Cale carried the limp boy through the camp. Eyes followed him, then a crowd of men, women, and children. He had two score refugees in his wake by the time he put Elden into Endren's arms. The elder Corrinthal, too shocked to speak, cradled the boy as if he were a babe and cried. Elden stiffened at first.
"Granfah?" the boy said in a tiny voice.
"Yes," Endren said through his tears. "Yes. It's grandfather."
Elden wrapped his arms around his grandfather's neck, buried his face in his beard. Sobs shook his small frame. "He hurt Bowny," the boy said, and sobbed.
"Shh," Endren said, and caressed the boy's back. "Shh. It is all over and you are safe. You are safe." Endren looked past Elden to Cale and said, "I owe you whatever you ask, whenever you ask it."
"No need. It is rare that I get to do something like this."
Endren looked puzzled.
Cale shook his head, "Nevermind."
Endren's eyes showed sympathy, appreciation, concern. Cale could not bear it. He turned to go back to Abelar's tent and found himself facing a crowd. Gratitude filled their eyes. An approving murmur ran through them.
"There is light even in darkness," someone said.
Regg emerged from the crowd, stalked toward Cale with purpose, and wrapped him in an embrace. The shadows around Cale swirled but did not hold Regg at bay. "You stand in the light," Regg said, and released him.
"I hope not," Cale said, but smiled. "And now I have other work."
Regg nodded and backed away.
Cale pulled on the shadows and rode them back to Abelar's tent. For a moment, he wondered after Riven's well-being, but decided the assassin could take care of himself.
Willing the darkness in the tent to deepen, Cale stood in the center of the pitch and repeated the words to his scrying spell. He formed the lens from shadow and reached through it for Malkur Forrin. The power of his spell, of his will, grasped Forrin's name and reached across Faerun.
Unlike the boy, Forrin was warded. Cale could feel resistance. Dark shadows clouded the scrying lens. He focused his mind, his power, and tried to push through.
The lens went dark. Cale cursed, cast the spell anew, failed again. His frustration grew. He recalled the broken boy he had just returned to his grandfather, a boy taken and beaten on Forrin's orders. He thought of the graves at Fairhaven, of the broken look in Abelar's eyes.