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me. My heart fluttered, my body became cold.
"Sharven!" Atera shrieked. She tried to rush to my side, but Raven held her
back. Her tears were genuine, and the grief tore at my soul. I would have
apologized for all my wrongs had I not already been robbed of the power to
speak.
And through the unblinking eyes of one already dead, I saw Raven move
behind Atera and gently pull her away from my body, holding her as she
sobbed uncontrollably. I saw his expression as he looked over her shoulder at
me one of triumph. He had won. And suddenly he appeared much younger
than I'd believed him to be.
But then, there are spells for youth as well as strength.
I thought of his remarks to me, and understood their meaning for the first
time. Yet, the creature he had conjured for me had done exactly what I had
demanded it had found my worst enemy and it had killed. Now my spirit
remains.
* * * * *
Raven required no spells to make Atera love him, though he did give her
one to soften her grief over my demise. I do not hate him for that; there are
many more valid reasons for hate.
I stood in the hall with the other guests and watched him wed my wife. I
went into the bridal chamber, and after, with fury to give me strength, I went
into the little room where I had studied with Raven. Though it took tremendous
effort, I have managed to put pen to parchment and finish this account.
Perhaps Atera will one day read it. More likely Raven will find it first and
destroy it. If so, I will set the words down again, as often as I must.
Even petty revenge is sweet. Raven will never rest easy in my house.
THE THIRD LEVEL
R. A. Salvatore
The young man's dark eyes shifted from side to side, always moving,
always alert. He caught a movement to the left, between two ramshackle
wood-and-clay huts.
Just a child at play, wisely taking to the shadows.
Back to the right, he noticed a woman deep in the recesses beyond a
window that was just a hole in the wall, for no one in this section of Calimport
was wealthy enough to afford glass. The woman stayed back, standing
perfectly still, watching him and unaware that he, in turn, watched her.
He felt like a hunting cat crossing the plain, she just another of the many
deer, hoping he would take no notice,
Young Artemis Entreri liked that feeling, that power. He had worked this
street if that's what it could be called, for it was little more than a haphazard
cluster of unremarkable shacks dropped across a field of cart-torn mud for
more than five years, since he was but a boy of nine.
He stopped and slowly turned toward the window, and the woman shrank
away at the merest hint of a threat.
Entreri smiled and resumed his surveying. This was his street, he told
himself, a place he had staked out three months after his arrival in Calimport.
The place had no formal name, but now, because of him, it had an identity. It
was the area where Artemis Entreri was boss.
How far he had come in five years, hitching a ride all the way from the city
of Memnon. Artemis chuckled at the term "all the way." In truth, Memnon was
the closest city to Calimport, but in the barren desert land of Calimshan, even
the closest city was a long and difficult ride.
Difficult to be sure, but Entreri had made it, had survived, despite the brutal
duties the merchants of that caravan had given him, despite the determined
advances of one lecherous old man, a smelly unshaven lout who seemed to
think that a nine-year-old boy
Artemis shook that memory from his head, refusing to follow its inevitable
course. He had survived the caravan trek and had stolen away from the
merchants on the second day in Calimport, soon after he had learned that
they had taken him along ultimately to sell him into slavery.
There was no need to remember anything before that, the teenager told
himself, neither the journey from Memnon, nor the horrors before the journey
that had sent him running from home. Still, he could smell the breath of that
lecherous old man, like the breath of his own father, and his uncle.
The pain pushed him back to his angry edge, made him steel his dark eyes
and tighten the honed muscles along his arms. He had made it. That was all
that counted. This was his street, a place of safety, where no one threatened
him.
Artemis resumed his surveillance of his domain, his eyes scanning left to
right, then back across the way. He saw every movement and every
shadow always the hunting cat, looking more for prey than for danger.
He couldn't help but chuckle self-deprecatingly at the grandeur of his
"kingdom." His street? Only because no other thief would bother to claim it.
Artemis could work six days rolling every one of the many drunks who fell
down in the mud in this impoverished section and barely scrape enough coins
together to eat a decent meal on the seventh.
Still, that was enough for the waif who had fled his home; it had sustained
him and given him back his pride over the past five years. Now he was a
young man, fourteen years old or almost fourteen. Artemis didn't remember
his exact birthdate, just that there had been a brief period right before the
even briefer season of rain, when times in his house were not so terrible.
Again, the young man shook the unwanted memories from his head. He
was fourteen, he decided; as if in confirmation, he looked down at his finely
toned, lithe frame, barely a hundred and thirty pounds, but with tightened
muscles covering every inch. He was fourteen, and he was rightly proud,
because he had survived and he had thrived. He surveyed his street, his
domain, and his smallish chest expanded. Even the old drunks were afraid of
him, showed him proper respect when they addressed him.
He had earned it, and everybody in this little shanty town within the city of
Calimport a city that was nothing more than a collection of a thousand or
more little shanty towns huddled about the white marble and gold-laced
structures of the wealthy merchants respected him, feared him.
Everybody except one.
The new tough, a young man probably three or four years older than
Artemis, had arrived earlier in the tenday. He did not ask permission of
Artemis before he began rolling the wretches in the mud, or even walking into
homes in broad daylight and terrorizing whoever was inside. The stranger
forced Artemis's subjects into making him a meal, or into offering him
whatever other niceties could be found.
That was the part that angered Artemis more than anything. Artemis held
no love, no respect, for the common folk of his carved-out kingdom, but he
had seen the newcomer's type before in both his horrid past and in his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]