The Thieves of Blood: Blade of the Flame - Book 1 (2 page)

The sailor scowled, but he made no further move to depart. He looked back and forth from Ghaji to Diran, and though the man’s gaze was still clouded, his voice was steady as he spoke. “What do you want?”

Diran’s right hand blurred and he pressed a silver dagger to the man’s throat. Ghaji was well aware of how swiftly the priest could move when he wanted to, but he doubted he’d ever get used to it.

Ghaji drew his axe and grabbed the handle tight. “What’s wrong with him? Is he possessed? Undead? A card-cheat?” Despite his joke, the half-orc knew Diran had a good reason for confronting the man. He always did.

“The current races that rule Eberron weren’t always the world’s masters,” Diran said. “Millennia ago, another race held sway … cruel, evil beings who called themselves rakshasa.”

Ghaji felt a stab of fear. He’d battled numerous threats alongside Diran, but they’d never faced anything as powerful as a rakshasa before. The half-orc examined the sailor’s face more closely. His features remained human, but the face had taken on such a fierce expression that Ghaji had no trouble imagining the man to be some manner of fiend in disguise.

Diran continued speaking in the calm, detached tone of a lecturer. “The rakshasa lost their hold at the end of the Age of Demons, and over the centuries their numbers decreased. Still, some survive to this day, disguised in human form and working
evil wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself.” Diran pressed the point of his dagger harder against the sailor’s throat and a bead of dark blood welled forth from the man’s flesh. “And the rakshasa are known for possessing reversed hands.”

The sailor looked at Diran for a long moment before bursting out in laughter. “A rakshasa? Is
that
what you think I am? If I were, you’d be a fool to continue harassing me.”

Diran looked a bit taken aback by the sailor’s amusement, but he forged on. “I am Diran Bastiaan, priest of the Silver Flame. It is my sworn duty to destroy evil wherever I find it.”

The merriment left the sailor’s eyes. “I don’t have time for this foolishness. If you think I’m a raskahsa, then fine. That’s what I am.”

The sailor’s form shimmered and though he wore the same clothes, he was now a humanoid tiger, with a tawny orange coat, black stripes, savage fangs, and feral cat eyes. The man-beast growled as his left arm swept up in a blur and knocked Diran’s dagger away from his throat. Equally as swift, his right hand grabbed hold of his sword hilt and drew the weapon from its scabbard.

Off balance, Diran lost his footing and fell to the ground. His hand sprang open when he hit and the silver dagger skittered out of his reach. Ghaji knew the creature wasn’t about to wait for Diran to get back on his feet before attacking. The half-orc also knew that he didn’t have time to raise his axe and swing it, not fast as this being was. Ghaji rushed the rakshasa, angled his left shoulder at the creature, and slammed into the man-beast’s side as hard as he could.

Ghaji didn’t expect the rakshasa to be a pushover, but hitting the man-beast was like ramming his shoulder into a
brick wall. The impact jarred Ghaji to the roots of his teeth, while the rakshasa didn’t budge. In response, the tiger-man lashed out at Ghaji with the claws of his free hand, but he only raked the half-orc’s battered breast-plate, adding a fresh set of furrows to the numerous marks that scored its surface. The blow was strong enough to make Ghaji stagger backward, though he didn’t fall.

Pedestrians had cleared the street to give them room to fight, but they hadn’t gone far. The entertainment value of a street fight was too much to resist. They stood in doorways, in the mouths of alleys, on street corners, anywhere they could see but still have a fast means of escape should the fight end up becoming more threat than amusement. In a better section of the city, there might have been calls to summon the City Watch but not here. No one wanted the authorities to interfere and spoil their fun.

The rakshasa glared at Ghaji. “I think I’ll slay you first.” His fur-covered fingers tightened around the hilt of his bastard sword.

Diran lay on the ground where he’d fallen, still as a statue, looking up at the rakshasa with his cold, calculating gaze.

Ghaji couldn’t help it. He laughed.

The rakshasa frowned. “Did I say something amusing?”

“More than you could ever know,” Ghaji said.

The rakshasa started to reply, but his eyes flew wide as Diran hurled a dagger toward him. The blade struck the creature in the throat, but only partially penetrated. The flesh there was no longer covered in tawny fur. Instead it appeared rough and bumpy, as if it had been in the process of transforming into lizard-scale when Diran’s dagger hit. Blood trickled from the
wound, but far less than would have if the scales hadn’t appeared. What had been intended as a killing strike had become only a flesh wound.

Diran quickly hurled two more daggers aimed at the creature’s chest. The blades struck the creature, but instead of sinking into flesh, they bounced off and fell to the ground. The creature’s shirt was ripped where the daggers hit, and hard lizard-scale was visible underneath. Ghaji stared as the gleaming scales began to spread across the creature’s body, replacing tiger fur. The creature’s feline features began to soften, blur, and rearrange until it no longer resembled a rakshasa but a lizardman. Ghaji was confused. Rakshasa were reputed to be powerful sorcerers, but were they shapeshifters as well?

The creature, who was now completely a lizardman, tail and all, raised his bastard sword, clearly intending to bring it down upon Diran. Ghaji started forward, intending to intercept the blow, but before the half-orc could strike, a feminine voice shouted out from the crowd.

“Hey, Scale-Face!”

The lizardman turned his head toward the voice. There was a loud twang, and a crossbow bolt slammed into his left eye socket. The creature stiffened and took a stumbling step backward. Armored its body might have been, but its eyes were a different matter. It reached up and clawed weakly at the bolt in an attempt to dislodge it, but it was too late. The damage to the creature’s brain had already been done. The being turned to Diran and glared at the priest with its remaining eye.

“Tonight the streets of Port Verge will run thick with blood, yours included, priest.”

Then a gasp escaped the creature’s throat as it released its
last breath and slumped to the ground, dead. Slowly its form began to change. The lizard aspect of its features melted away until the being appeared humanlike once more. Its skin was now pale grey, its hair thin and ivory-colored. The wide staring eyes had no pupils, only whites, and the face possessed only the merest hint of nose and lips.

Diran rose to his feet and looked down at the dead creature. There was no satisfaction in the priest’s eyes, no delight upon seeing an enemy defeated. In fact, there was no emotion of any kind. Though Ghaji considered Diran a friend and would gladly lay down his life for the priest, it was at moments like this, the moment of the kill, when Ghaji found himself more than a little afraid of his companion.

“A changeling,” Diran said.

Ghaji stepped to his friend’s side. “So he wasn’t a rashasa after all.”

“I’d begun to suspect as much. Rakshasa are far more powerful. We’d never have been able to defeat a real one so easily.”

“Easily?” Ghaji pointed to the crossbow bolt protruding from the changeling’s eye. “Are you forgetting we had help?”

“Whom do we have to thank for aiding us with such a well-timed strike?” Diran asked.

Both companions scanned the crowd. Standing only a few yards away was a blond woman dressed a form-fitting leather-armor vest that left her abdomen bare, along with blue leggings, brown boots, and a dark-red traveler’s cloak. She held a crossbow in her hands and wore and a quiver of bolts over one shoulder.

The blond woman stepped toward them, smiling as she came, but it was a strange sort of smile, one Ghaji had difficulty
reading. It seemed to contain a mixture of happiness and sorrow, with more than a little regret tossed in for good measure.

Ghaji glanced at Diran and was startled to see an expression of wide-eyed shock upon his friend’s face. In the time they’d known one another, the half-orc had never seen the priest shocked by anything. Together they’d battled horrendous creatures the likes of which Ghaji had never imagined could exist, and in all those battles, Ghaji had never seen Diran so much as bat an eye. The priest now appeared completely astonished and perhaps more than a bit afraid. For something to frighten Diran Bastiaan, called by some the Blade of the Flame, it had to be awful beyond all belief. Ghaji gripped his axe handle tightly and prepared to face whatever new threat the woman might present.

She stopped as she reached them, and she and Diran stared at each other for a long moment. Finally Diran said, “Thanks for the help.”

The woman acknowledged Diran’s gratitude with a nod. “It was nothing. You’d have slain him in the end. I simply helped matters along a bit.”

“Don’t be modest. You may well have saved my life.”

The woman’s smile was tender this time. She reached up and touched Diran’s cheek. “It’s the least I could do for an old friend.”

Ghaji groaned. It looked like this woman was going to be just as dangerous as the changeling.

W
hy is it taking so long? We’ve been sitting here for almost half an hour!”

The woman, whose name was Makala, raised her hand in an attempt to capture the attention of the serving girl, but she continued past them to another table. A trio of sailors sat there, talking and laughing, and soon the girl was laughing along with them. One of the sailors, a man with red hair and a beard to match, laughed loudest of all, sounding more like a braying donkey than a human, Ghaji thought.

It was a typical dockside tavern in Port Verge. Wooden chairs and tables were sticky with spilled ale, their surfaces scored with knife-carved graffiti. The floor, covered with sawdust, soaked up whatever liquids might spill upon it. The room was lit by everbright lanterns, windows open to allow in the cool evening breeze coming off the sea. The sole ornamental touch was a fishing net strung across the ceiling with shells and dried starfish hanging in its weave. Instead of a minstrel,
tonight’s entertainment was an elf-woman who stood juggling in front of the empty stone hearth. She stood a touch over five feet, was slender, and had the pointed ears and elongated head common to her race. She wore her brunette hair in a pattern of complex braids, as was common in the Principalities, and was dressed in the typical garb of a traveling player: white blouse, brown tunic, green leggings, and brown boots. She was juggling ten red wooden balls in a circular pattern with graceful ease.

“Don’t take it personally,” Diran said. “Ghaji and I have encountered similar treatment before. People are often uncomfortable in the presence of priests, let alone one who killed a changeling only a few blocks from here.”

“They’re wondering if Diran really is a priest of the Silver Flame,” Ghaji added, “or if he’s just some lunatic who might well decide the next person who looks at him cross-eyed is a monster and start throwing daggers around the room. It doesn’t help that he travels with me either.”

Makala frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“People find us a rather unlikely pair,” Diran said. “A priest and a half-orc … it gives them further reason to suspect I’m not truly a priest, or if I am, that I’m a mad, dangerous one.”

“Well, you are dangerous,” Makala said. “As for mad …” She trailed off, smiling.

“Forget about the others,” Ghaji said. “They’ll ignore us for a while and hope we get the message and leave. When we don’t, they’ll realize the best way to get rid of us is to serve us quickly. Then we’ll drink, eat, and go, and everyone will be happy again.”

“This is ridiculous, Diran,” Makala insisted. “I’ll go talk to
that wench and let her know that we’d like to be served—
now.”
Makala started to rise, but Diran took hold of her elbow and stopped her.

“Don’t bother. The girl will attend to us or she won’t. In the end, it’s of no real importance which she chooses.”

“It’s important to my stomach,” Ghaji muttered.

The half-orc warrior didn’t like how the evening was going. So far, neither Diran nor Makala had seen fit to enlighten him any further on the details of their shared history. Had they once been lovers? Ghaji had no idea if Diran’s order discouraged or even forbade romantic relationships. During the time they’d traveled together, he’d never seen Diran show more than a clerical interest in women.

Despite himself, Ghaji had to admit that Makala was an attractive woman. Her features tended toward pretty rather than beautiful, but she exuded a quiet strength and confidence that drew all male eyes toward her. She was surely a warrior, Ghaji guessed. That was no lucky strike she’d hit the changeling with. Some men found women who were as strong, if not stronger, than themselves off-putting, but not Ghaji, and neither, it seemed, did Diran.

How did Diran know her? Ghaji wondered. Had they met during Diran’s early days as a priest, before Ghaji had become his companion, or had they met before, during the Last War when Diran had served a far different master than the Silver Flame? If so, just how dangerous did that make Makala?