Skein of Shadows

  WELCOME TO TARATH MARAD

  Xujil led them over the stone bridge and toward the back of the cavern where there were no buildings and no everbright lanterns to light their path. A forest of thick white and yellow stalagmites sprouted up from the cavern floor here, some of them reaching up to join thinner stalactites that dripped from the ceiling. The twisting formations obscured the back wall of the cave from view until they came to a gaping hole in the stalagmite thicket. Shattered rock littered the ground here, and it was obvious that the opening had been created by an explosion of some sort. The debris had been moved aside by the explorers who came after, so it was impossible to tell the directionality of the blast from their pattern or the scorch marks that remained in the surrounding stone pillars.

  The drow paused and turned toward them. With the blackness of the entrance to the depths behind him, and framed as he was by the jagged remains of both stalagmites and stalactites, it looked for a moment as if the earth itself had opened up to swallow the guide. The illusion was fleeting, but powerful, and Sabira shivered. She hoped it wasn’t an omen.

  “Shall we proceed, Marshal?”

  Sabira nodded at him.

  “Lead on.”

  Xujil turned and led the way through the yawning mouth of the quake-spawned cavern. As Sabira stepped from the cave that housed the bulk of Trent’s Well into the narrower, cooler passage, the drow’s voice echoed eerily back to her through the darkness, disembodied and alien.

  “Welcome to Tarath Marad.”

  ALSO BY

  MARSHEILA ROCKWELL

  Legacy of Wolves

  Inquisitives Book 3

  The Shard Axe

  SKEIN OF SHADOWS

  ©2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Cover art by: Eric L. Williams

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6139-9

  640-49791000-001-EN

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  www.DungeonsandDragons.com

  v3.1

  For generations, all the world of Eberron knew was war. The five nations—Aundair, Cyre, Breland, Karrnath, and Thrane—clashed long after the warring heirs of Galifar had died, allying and attacking as the tides of battle shifted. Then the Mourning—an atrocity no nation claimed—wiped Cyre from the face of Eberron.

  THE TREATY OF GALIFAR

  ENDED THE LAST WAR.

  Though the war is over, the world abounds with reminders of a magical arms race, the spectacular technology born of magic and ambition. The influential dragonmarked houses ply their magical skills in trade instead of weapons. The warforged, a race of living constructs, strive to find a place in a world that resents them. The lightning rail and the elemental airships that once sped weapons across Khorvaire now haul goods and travelers.

  THE TREATY OF GALIFAR REDREW BORDERS

  Where once a sprawling empire claimed the continent, disparate nations now clutter the landscape. Only four of the Five Nations still stand. Warrior elves defend their ancestral lands in Valenar. Goblins and monsters have established kingdoms of their own and demand recognition. Rebels take old grievances to the streets, and the dragonmarked houses gather power in secret. And no one has forgotten the old hatreds.

  THE TREATY OF GALIFAR SPURRED DIPLOMACY

  In the shadows of the cities and on the frontiers of the fledgling nations, a new kind of hero arises. They are veterans of the Last War, looking for closure. They are spies tasked with protecting their realm from new threats and old. They are inquisitives investigating crimes, trying to make a living while avoiding the state’s attention. They all want to forget the Last War …

  BUT THE LAST WAR

  WON’T FORGET THEM.

  THE NEXT WAR IS BREWING.

  For my father, who gave me roots, and my mother, who gave me wings. And for my big brother, who first introduced me to D&D® and taught me never to crease the spine of a book—this one’s for you, Pin.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No novel is produced in a vacuum (possibly because in space, no one can hear you scream, but I digress). Many people played a part in bringing this book to life, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer them my heartfelt gratitude. To Wizards of the Coast and Turbine, who created and brought to life the world that spawned Sabira—thank you. To my editors, Erin Evans, Liz Mills, and Nina Hess, who helped shape Saba’s story to make it the best that it could be—thank you. To my friends and fellow authors, Jeff LaSala, Don Bassingthwaite, Keith Baker, Sig & Anne Trent, and especially Erin M. Hartshorn and Rebecca S. DeMoss, who helped me pull a rabbit out of my, er, hat—more than once—thank you. To my husband and children, who supported and encouraged me throughout and who I know must be really tired of pizza—thank you, thank you, thank you. And, as always, to Catherine, because—gratias tibi ago.

  PROLOGUE

  Wir, Lharvion 11, 998 YK

  Somewhere beneath the Menechtarun Desert, Xen’drik.

  Donathilde ir’Thul stepped over another fissure in the tunnel floor, cursing. She’d already twisted her ankle in one such fungus-covered chasm, and had had to slow down what was left of her small group while she performed a brief healing spell; she wasn’t about to let that happen again. The fragment of the draconic Prophecy that Baron Breven had given her spoke of a night when “the Anvil next is silent, the Book is closed, the Warder dreams.” It had to be referring to when three of Eberron’s twelve moons were dark—Vult, Rhaan, and Eyre. By her calculations, tonight was the last night when that condition would be met for at least another four years, and the next alignment wouldn’t be perfect like thi
s one, as Rhaan would just be moving out of the dark phase while Vult moved into it. If she didn’t find what she was looking for now, this whole expedition and the deaths of her men would be for nothing.

  There were only three of them left, after entering Tarath Marad with a contingent of thirty. House Deneith had paid only cursory attention when the vast caverns beneath Xen’drik’s Menechtarun Desert and the jutting peaks of the Skyraker Claws had been discovered earlier this year. They became much more interested when powerful artifacts started appearing in the Stormreach Marketplace, and in Khorvaire itself. Determined to beat the other twelve dragonmarked Houses to the loot, they’d sent in Tilde, a former instructor at Arcanix and a draconic Prophecy hobbyist. With her had come thirty Blademarks, some of whom had served with her brother, Leoned. Now, only one of Ned’s former comrades-at-arms remained, the others having fallen to the perils of this deep, dark place.

  “I don’t like this, my lady,” Harûn said, eyeing the close tunnel walls warily, his long sword out and ready. Though there was nothing unusual about that—they’d learned early on that one did not sheathe one’s weapon in Tarath Marad, not even while sleeping.

  “Is there anything you do like, Rûn?” Tilde rejoined halfheartedly as she stroked the fur of the small bat on her shoulder. She was tired of the Blademark’s constant grousing, but in truth, she didn’t like it much herself, and judging from her familiar’s restlessness, neither did he. Though that was no great surprise—there was nothing in this Hostforsaken pit to like.

  Harûn grunted, but didn’t respond. He kept his attention focused on the floor and ceiling, sparing an unfriendly glance at their Umbragen guide, Xujil. The black-eyed drow had come highly recommended by Brannan ir’Kethras, the Wayfinder whose money and persistence had been instrumental in unearthing the caverns of Tarath Marad in the first place. Apparently, Xujil’s people, a heretofore unknown branch of the dark-skinned elves, had been looking for a way out of their underground home just as eagerly as Brannan had been looking for a way in. But while the Umbragen had come to the surface after a centuries-long exile, seeking new magic to defeat their ancient enemies in the depths, Brannan’s goals—like most of those of the members of the Wayfinder Foundation—had been a bit more mercenary. Discovering new cultures meant cornering the market on their artifacts, though the Wayfinder’s exclusive access hadn’t lasted long, and now he made the bulk of his money outfitting other people’s expeditions into the deeps, including providing guides like Xujil.

  When it came to their guide, Tilde couldn’t blame Harûn for his suspicions. The drow spoke seldom and with odd inflections; he practiced disturbing, barbaric rituals; and he moved with an eerie, oily grace, as if he were made of the very shadows that had already housed so many horrors on this damnable expedition. First there had been the ranks of ghouls in the desert night, then bloody slimes that dripped from the cavern ceilings, subsuming and inhabiting the bodies of whomever their rancid ichor touched, and finally that unholy behemoth in the lake that had wiped out half of what was left of their party.

  And then, of course, there were the spiders.

  The eight-legged creatures crept and climbed at every turn, more and more of them the deeper Tilde’s group went into the vast network of caves. Giant hairy spiders, swarms of smaller transparent spiders, spiders with scales, even creatures that looked humanoid but scuttled about and spun webs like the arachnids that crawled all over them. Dol Dorn, but it was disgusting! Tilde was no shrieking maidservant to be frightened of an insect or a mouse, but there was something so alien and repulsive about these deep spiders, with their creeping, segmented legs and their knowing, multifaceted eyes that she couldn’t help but shiver whenever she encountered one—right before she blasted it back into the depths of Khyber, of course.

  Harûn didn’t much care for spiders either, going out of his way to crush the creatures underfoot whenever he saw one, even the ones that appeared harmless—if that word could truly be applied to anything in Tarath Marad. Xujil had tried to stop him from destroying a fat-bodied female, heavy with eggs, shortly after they entered the caverns, and the Blademark hadn’t trusted him since. Truth be told, neither had Tilde. The only thing spiders were good for was getting rid of flies, and considering bats like her little Shieldwing did the same thing without biting you in the process, there really was no earthly need for the abhorrent creatures at all.

  As if awakened by her disparaging thoughts, a mound of fungus to her left began to tremble as she passed. The mosslike green growth sloughed off to reveal an egg sac ready to burst and release its chitinous burden on the world. Before Tilde could bring her own magic to bear, Harûn was there, stomping on the sac with his heavy boots, the look of relish on his face not unlike that of a child jumping in puddles after a welcome spring rain. Xujil looked back as the Blademark ground the pulpy mass into the rock, his dark face betraying nothing and his eyes too veiled to read. Still, the hairs on the back of Tilde’s neck bristled, and she vowed to watch the drow more carefully from here on out. As Ned had always loved to say, when dealing with the unknown, there was no such thing as too cautious.

  They followed the drow for an indeterminate amount of time through the dim tunnels, and the only sure evidence Tilde had that they weren’t actually walking in circles was the gradual disappearance of the omnipresent fungus. She’d become so inured to the monotony that the reason for the fungus’s absence didn’t register until Harûn called for a stop at the entrance into a small cavern, pointing down to a portion of the tunnel floor made of the strange living rock they’d seen several times on their journey. Marginally softer than the inanimate stone around it, the rock held only the faintest of impressions, but the Blademark could read them easily, even in the gloom.

  “Footprints. Booted. A lot of them.”

  He and Tilde looked up at Xujil expectantly.

  The drow came back to where they stood and glanced down at the stretch of stone, which to Tilde looked no different than any of the surrounding rock.

  “Sentries,” he confirmed. “We are below the City of Shadows. What you seek lies ahead.” He blinked at them, owlish. “Vigilance is recommended.”

  “Oh, truly?” Harûn scoffed. “A Deneith is ever-vigilant, elf—and ever-vengeful.”

  The old saying made Tilde think of her brother again, and she reflexively reached for the medallion at her neck. Made of thin gold, the chimera-inscribed disk had been Ned’s gift to her when he entered the Blademarks, leaving her alone in the big old house that had belonged to their parents. She was already deep in her own studies by then, and would leave for the Tower of the Twelve soon after, but he knew how the loneliness would weigh on her in the meantime. He’d given her the necklace as a reminder, and a promise. If she ever needed him to come home, all she had to do was snap the thin gold in two and send half of it to him. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, the moment he saw that half-moon shape, he would return to her.

  The irony being, of course, that it was he who’d needed her help in the end, and he’d had no medallion of his own to send. So he’d died in a cavern not so different from the one she stood in now, while his partner, Sabira “Saba” Lyet d’Deneith—the self-styled “Shard Axe”—had stood by and done nothing to save him.

  Tilde tried to shake the dark thoughts from her mind, her lank blonde hair bouncing in response to the violence of the motion. She hated that thoughts of Saba were never far behind whenever Ned crossed her mind. If she could have erased the Sentinel Marshal from her memory completely—or better yet, from Eberron itself—she would gladly have done so. But like it or not, Sabira and Leoned had been inextricably linked, first by their partnership and then by his death, which had vaulted her to her position as both a Marshal and a dwarven folk hero. Tilde would never be free of the other woman until one of them was dead—preferably Sabira.

  But she’d be the one who got there first, waiting to greet her red-haired nemesis in Dolurrh if she didn’t focus on the task at hand, especially now t
hat they were finally getting close to their goal. In addition to the narrow time frame, the Prophecy fragment had also spoken of a treasure bound by eight locks that could only be opened by “a daughter of Stone and Sentinel”—a phrase which Breven had been certain applied to her, the last remaining scion of the ir’Thul line, known of old as the House of Stone. His interpretation ignored the fact that her mother had given up the Deneith name when she married into the ir’Thul family, so Tilde was not technically a member of the House. And while that fact hadn’t stopped Ned from serving in both the Blademarks and the Defenders Guild, it had meant Tilde’s own studies had been relegated to the Arcane Congress at Arcanix. The wizards in the Tower of the Twelve would accept only members of the dragonmarked Houses as their students and teachers, and Breven had not seen fit to intercede on her behalf as he had on Ned’s. He’d said it was because he needed her eyes and ears in Arcanix, but in all her years there, both as a student and later on staff, he’d only ever asked her for information once.

  She didn’t regret her time there though. In an odd way, she supposed she should be grateful to Breven, because if she’d gone to the Twelve, she never would have met Idris. A beautiful young elf too clever for his own good, Tilde had fallen in love with him immediately. He’d quickly become her favorite student, and if some whispered his affection had more to do with his desire to graduate at the top of his class than his desire for her, his tender words and gentle touch had made them easy to ignore.

  But then he’d decided he needed to prove himself, the night before she was set to administer the Maze of Shadowy Terror test to him as part of his final exams. There, he’d fallen prey to one of the magical creatures inside, and by the time she’d found him, it had been far too late. She held him in her arms as he died, and then resigned her post the same night.

  And had promptly been chided by Breven for it, the first and only time he’d ever taken any interest in her teaching career.