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  Thieves of Blood

  ( Blade of the Flame - 1 )

  Tim Waggoner

  Tim Waggoner

  Thieves of Blood

  CHAPTER ONE

  Two men walked side by side down a narrow street in Port Verge. One was human, tall, thin, and garbed in black. The other was half-orc, taller, broad-shouldered, thick-limbed, and wearing a breastplate that had seen hard use over the years.

  This was one of the older sections in the city, and the buildings here were weathered and in disrepair. They’d been constructed so close together that in some places the only reason they remained standing was because they leaned against one another. The streets were unpaved and worn by the feet of thousands of pedestrians over the years. Most of the people here were seafolk-sailors and fishermen-but there were a few low-level merchants and sellswords in the mix, along with street vendors hawking cheap tidbits made from shells and the like. Humans were the predominant racial group, followed closely by gnomes and half-elves. There were a handful of dwarves, elves, and halflings around as well but no orcs or half-orcs, except Ghaji, that is, and he received quite a few stares as he and Diran moved through the crowd. Ghaji was used to getting such looks, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

  “So… what’s in Port Verge?” the half-orc asked. For the last several weeks they’d been wandering the Principalities, moving aimlessly from one place to another. Ghaji didn’t want to admit it to his friend, but he was beginning to get bored.

  Diran shrugged. “The usual. Restaurants, wharfs, warehouses, shops, smithies, drinking holes…”

  Ghaji scowled. “I mean, what’s interesting?”

  Diran opened his mouth to reply, but then he closed it and frowned. He stopped walking and nodded toward a sailor standing near the mouth of an alley across the street from them.

  “How about him?”

  The sailor didn’t strike Ghaji as out of the ordinary. He was medium height, stocky, with curly black hair and a cleanshaven jaw. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, black trousers, sandals, and a crimson sash belted around his waist. He carried a blade-from the look of the scabbard, a bastard sword-which rode on his hips just below the sash. This detail did strike Ghaji as a bit odd. Though he wasn’t native to the Lhazaar Principalities, he’d been traveling among its islands for the last several weeks alongside Diran, and from what he had seen of sailors in the Principalities, a bastard sword wasn’t a common weapon. The man looked dazed, eyes half-lidded, a dreamy smile on his face, and he swayed from side to side, as if he were having difficulty maintaining his balance-that or he was swaying in time to music only he could hear.

  “Look at his hands,” said Diran.

  Ghaji focused his attention on the sailor’s hands, frowned, then blinked several times as if to clear his vision.

  “They’re backward,” the half-orc said. They looked as if they’d been twisted all the way around, though the man showed no sign of injury or pain.

  Diran’s lips stretched into a small, thin smile. “Exactly. Come, Ghaji.”

  The two companions stood on the opposite side of the street from the backward-handed sailor. Diran, without pausing to see if Ghaji would follow, stepped into the street and started heading for the man at a brisk pace. Ghaji had been traveling with Diran long enough to know that when the priest thought he was on the trail of some unearthly menace, he could be more determined than a starving swamp lion tracking wounded prey. With a sigh, the half-orc followed.

  Diran Bastiaan cut quite an impressive figure as he crossed to the alley, and the pedestrians who clogged the street parted before him, almost as if they sensed who he was and what business he was about. He wore a black leather armor vest over a black shirt, black pants, black boots, and a black belt with sheaths for a pair of black-handled daggers. He had long black hair that he wore loose, and the breeze coming off the Lhazaar Sea caused his locks to trail out behind him. He wore a black traveler’s cloak, with the hood down, but despite the breeze, the cloak did not billow outward. Ghaji knew this was because it was weighted down by numerous daggers Diran kept in hidden pockets sewn into the cloak’s inner lining.

  It wasn’t his manner of dress that caused the crowd to back away as he approached. It was his eyes, arctic blue, piercing and set into a gaunt face with lean, wolfish features. Those eyes glittered with penetrating intelligence. Ghaji had seen strong men tremble when caught in the fierce, dispassionate scrutiny of Diran Bastiaan’s gaze.

  Diran could move quite fast when he wanted to, and Ghaji, though well over six feet tall, had to lengthen his stride and push himself to catch up. He managed to do so, and the two of them got there at the same time.

  “Good afternoon to you,” Diran’s tone was pleasant enough but with a subtle hint of underlying challenge.

  The man’s eyes rolled in Diran’s direction, but they couldn’t remain focused on him and kept rolling away to stare off into space.

  “Afternoon? Already?” The sailor paused, and Ghaji noticed that the veins in his eyes, and there were plenty of them visible, were tinted purple.

  The sailor frowned. “Still summer, isn’t it? I wasn’t in there that long… was I?”

  The man’s voice was breathy, his words slurred to the point where it was difficult to understand him. The idiot had obviously overindulged in one substance or another, though it was difficult to say what. Ghaji smelled no alcohol on the man’s breath or clothes, but there was any number of intoxicants available for a price, especially in a busy seaside town like Port Verge.

  “Too much urchin-sting, eh?” Diran said. “How long you were in whatever establishment provided the toxin for you, I can’t say, but I can confirm that it’s still summer, though late enough in the season for there to be a chill in the air. Summers are all too short in the Principalities, aren’t they?”

  The priest’s words were friendly enough, but his tone remained emotionless. He was staring hard at the sailor with his ice-blue eyes.

  Ghaji had seen that look numerous times, and he knew what it meant. Trouble. The half-orc carried a hand axe tucked into his belt, and he reached down and took hold of the handle just beneath the axe-head, though he made no move to draw the weapon. He did, however, decide it was time to make use of the more bestial half of his heritage. He scowled, prominent brow furrowing, the nostrils of his flat broad nose flaring, lower lip curling back to expose large lower incisors. Ghaji kept his black hair in a wild, shaggy tangle to better accentuate his orcish ancestry, and he sported a thin vertical strip of beard in the middle of his chin that served to highlight his teeth even more, like a black arrow pointing right to them. Add to this numerous scars on his face, neck, and hands, souvenirs of his time as a soldier in the Last War, and Ghaji could present quite a fearsome aspect when he wished, and he so wished now.

  The sailor chuckled. “You’ve got that right, Blackie. I’ve never been to anyplace else that…” The man trailed off. He stared at Diran for a long moment, peering hard into the priest’s eyes. “You’re awful talkative, you know that?”

  Diran ignored the man and nodded at his backward-twisted hands. “You really should go easy on the urchin-sting. You obviously can’t handle it, or you’d never become so intoxicated that you forgot to keep your hands twisted around while masquerading as human.”

  “My hands?” The sailor held up his hands and tried to focus his bleary eyes on them. “Ah, I see what you mean!” The man’s hands twisted around and returned to their natural position.

  “There, all better. Thank you for pointing that out. Now if you don’t mind, I’m due to meet some friends of mine.”

  The sailor attempted to push past them, but Ghaji put a large hand on the man’s chest and pushe
d him back. “My friend and I haven’t finished talking to you.”

  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 rakshasa, 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 rakshasa 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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Why 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.