Available for the iPad

by

Robert E. Vardeman & Geo. W. Proctor

Chapter 1

Black Qar, God of Death, favored the night's shadows that veiled the streets of Raemllyn's cities. No more than an icy chill that wove within an unseasonably warm late autumn's eve, the Great Destroyer entered the avenues of Bistonia. She ... he ... it—Qar's sex was as varied as the profanities spat into the Death God's face by those whose lives the Black One claimed—hungered.

Outstretching an invisible finger of ice, Qar tapped the unblemished forehead of a young mother with child suckling at breast, then passed on.

The gently smiling woman tightened the arm cradling the frail bundle at her bosom. Her hand, supporting a tiny head too weak to lift its mouth to a nourishing nipple, worked inward with a steady and increasing pressure. With a motherly smile, she watched the red face of her infant daughter disappear in the whiteness of her milk-swollen pap. She hummed a soft, crooning lullaby until the miniature arms and legs wrapped within the warm constraint of a woolen blanket lay still and lifeless ... then the horror of her act penetrated the icy numbness of her brain.

A mother's wail of anguish echoed through Bistonia's streets.

Qar smiled, appetite whetted. The Black One extended another forger.

Garrid of Salim, twenty years Bistonia's finest cobbler, eased from the cozy warmth of his wife's side to walk from their bed to his workbench. There he hefted a wooden mallet used for preparing uncured hides. Pleased with its weight, he returned to the bed. For a moment he stood above his wife. The mallet rose.

And fell.

Garrid the cobbler was hard pressed to explain the bloody hammer in his hands and the bodies of his wife and seven children when he was discovered by the city guards the next morning.

Qar moved on, once more lifting a finger. This time Death's frigid touch tapped the nape of the neck of Aylrah the Fleet, a minor purse-snatch in Bistonia's network of thieves, while he stood in the blackness of an alley near the Inn of the Winged Ram.

Aylrah had spent the better part of the eve trailing a young newcomer to the city, maneuvering, scheming. The rich weave of the young man's deep wine-red silk brocade vest, the full, unsoiled sleeves of his white silk blouse, the fine leather of his over-the-calf boots, and the weighty sway of a pouch tied to a broad, silver-buckled belt about his waist had first drawn Aylrah's attention.

The young man's manner of dress bespoke wealth and a money pouch fat with gold rather than copper. More than vest, silken shirt, boots, and silver-buckled belt, it was the pouch that mesmerized Aylrah.

That the raven-haired young man carried a sword and dagger upon that same belt from which the money pouch dangled was of little concern to the thief. Nor did he give more than a glance to the burly hulk of a man who walked beside his intended victim. After all, Aylrah was dubbed "the Fleet," and rightly so. For ten years he had artfully eluded the grasp of Bistonia's city guards and managed to live quite comfortably off the purses of others less agile than himself.

Aylrah's right hand dropped to his waist. A slender, finely honed knife slid from its sheath as the richly dressed man and his companion approached the alley. The blade rose high to pause at the top of its arc. An icy fire flowed within Aylrah's veins. With all the strength he could muster, he drove the pointed sliver of steel toward a vulnerably exposed back as his victim strolled past the dark alley, oblivious to Qar's servant.

"Aaarrggaa!" Agony gasped from Aylrah's pain-twisted lips.

The deadly blade hovered in midair, its needle point a hairbreadth from a wine-colored brocade vest.

The pain-accented cry spun Davin Anane around. The swarthy young man's hand poised—too late—on the hilt of his own silver dagger.

The danger had passed ... for him!

"Friend Goran!" Davin Anane grinned widely. "What have you found this fine night?"

Though Aylrah's blade hovered at Davin's chest, it might as well have been embedded in granite for all the harm it could deliver now. Davin's friend and fellow freebooter Goran One-Eye held the scrawny thief at arm's length. The purse-snatch futilely kicked and struggled.

Against Goran, Aylrah's efforts availed him naught. The red-bearded giant's powerful arm bulged with the effort of keeping the would-be assassin's feet just inches off the ground, his sole grip around one bony wrist.

Abandoned by his legendary quickness, Aylrah desperately swung his left hand up to salvage the knife from his bloodless right.

Davin's own arm shot out with a speed that left Aylrah's jaw agape. The young adventurer snared the knife and sent it cartwheeling into the night. It clattered against the cobblestone street twenty yards distant.

A curious bypassing pedestrian, wrapped in the fur-lined cloak of a merchant, peered into the alley, saw the deadly tableau, and blanched. He turned and hurried on his way, muttering to himself about crime running rampant. In the city-state of Bistonia it was not wise to meddle in others' affairs, especially when those affairs all too often spelled death for the unwary.

"So you thought to rob me, eh, little one?" Davin eyed the thief with more humor than he might have shown on another occasion.

He and Goran had successfully completed a daring robbery of their own only a week before. Four days of hard riding had ensured their escape. For the past three days and glorious nights they had been enveloped in the wonders—and debaucheries—offered by Bistonia. As long as gold weighed nicely in his pouch and the city guards kept their distance, Davin Anane was willing to let bygones be bygones.

Not so Goran.

The massive mountain of muscle and bone relished a good fight almost as much as anything else life had to offer—a trait that had given Davin pause, and a shiver of fear, on more than one occasion. But then, of all men alive, only Davin knew Goran One-Eye's secret—the man was no man!

Rather, Goran was a Challing, a creature nine parts spirit for every one part physical.

Some claimed the Challings came from another space, drawn to this world by magicks so powerful that only a few mortals had ever heard the chants, much less mastered them. For Challings were changelings, entities capable of assuming the form of any living creature—or inanimate object.

Davin knew Goran's sorry tale of being ensorcelled by the demented mage Roan-Jafar and brought to this world for scurrilous deeds best left unmentioned. But Goran's anger at being sundered from his own realm gave him energies unknown to the summoning mage.

Goran had killed Roan-Jafar with the sorcerer's own knife, an act that had freed the Challing of his would-be master, but not of the gargantuan form to which he had been bound. Since that day, over five years in the past, Goran had journeyed the lands of Raemllyn in search of another possessing the sorcerous knowledge needed to free him from the bonds of human flesh.

To return to his own realm was all Goran sought from life—but that didn't prevent the hulking giant from enjoying a few of the more human pleasures encountered during that search. Although those pleasures were often beyond Davin's comprehension.

"I enjoy the feel of blood—another's blood—oozing between my fingers," Goran declared loudly.

More than bravado boomed in that resounding voice, a fact apparently all too crystal clear to the dangling thief, whose eyes grew saucer-wide. An instant later, sinews sprang forth on Goran's log-thick forearm as his bearpaw-sized hand squeezed vise-tight about Aylrah's wrist.

A heartbeat before the thief's wide eyes clamped shut and anguish tore from his throat, Davin heard the crush of bone.

"Do with him as you will." Davin refused to allow his friend's sanguinary diversion to dampen his own high spirits.

While he would have sent the thief scurrying with a well-placed boot to a bony backside, the cutpurse had earned whatever reward Goran decided to bestow upon him. Indeed, mayhap even more! The son of a mange-ridden Oraidian bitch meant to bury his blade hilt deep in my back!

With a final glance at the helplessly dangling thief, Davin turned to leave. "I intend to spend my time in more ... exciting pursuits."

"That wench Belatha, eh?" Goran peered at his friend through his one good eye.

The witch-fire burned brightly in it tonight, making

Davin shivered slightly. The sight of those demon sparks adance like light reflecting off the insides of an opal betold of Goran's magical powers on the wax. Davin wanted no part of his friend when this happened—Goran had scant control of prodigious energies at the best of times.

As for Goran's other eye, or darkened socket, it lay hidden beneath a fox-skin patch as fiery red as the Challing's magic-bound mane. How Goran had lost that orb provided something of a mystery for Davin because of the giant's propensity for cobbling together a new and even wilder yam every time he was asked.

"Please, lords, I beseech you! Be kind to a poor man only trying to steal to support his sickly wife and seven malnourished bratlings," Aylrah squealed, obviously fearing for his life.

"Ah, a liar as well as a thief! I'll wager that this one is incapable of siring offspring. Two bists that he is shriveled and much too wormlike to properly render the services a woman requires of a man."

Davin waved away the proffered bet and shook his head, neither of which stopped Goran from reaching down with his free hand, gripping the thief's belt, yanking, and exposing his squirming plaything to the night.

"Ha! I was right! See, Davin, see? This rooster can no longer crow. It's no bigger than a joint of my thumb! And his jewels hang like sparrow peas in a dried husk!"

"Let him go play with himself, Goran. We've better things to do than badger this pathetic wight. Belatha awaits me at the inn. And didn't you mention a game of chance over on the Street of Five Winds you wished to attend this night?"

"That I had. And fat merchants who don't understand odds! A dozen or more are to be there. Tonight I turn this paltry stake into real wealth." Idly Goran discarded the thief as another might a crumpled sheet of foolscap.

The scrawny man slammed into a solid brick wall and slid to the alley, clutching his broken wrist and glaring at the Challing in giant's form. When Goran glanced his way, the merest spark of hellfire burning in his one good eye, Aylrah swallowed hard and scuttled toward the street, thus depriving Qar of two souls that night, Davin Anane's—and his own.

"Ha-hiya!" Goran's bellowed laugh rolled resonant and rich from the hidden depths of his barrel chest. "This will be a good evening: Can you watch after yourself, friend Davin? Or would you like me to hold it for you while you're seducing lovely blonde Belatha?"

Davin ignored the Challing's coarse attempt at humor. His thoughts preceded him to the side of a busty woman with emerald eyes that smoldered and burned with ill-suppressed passion.

"Let us not waste another moment in this Qar-damned alleyway!" Without so much as a backward glance, Goran One-Eye lumbered off, his mighty battle-ax swinging at his hip.

Davin watched the Challing's retreat with a shake of his head. Goran was incongruously out of place with the gold-threaded finery of his satin breeches and the tightly stretched expanse of orange and burnt umber tunic held at his waist by green pletha-snake hide.

Davin's attention returned to the two braziers ablaze before him that marked the entrance to the Inn of the Winged Ram. He edged aside the erotic image of curvaceous Belatha that tauntingly wove into his mind.

That same alluring vision had almost cost him his life but moments ago. Bistonia was a dangerous city for the unsuspecting or the unwary—or the foolhardy! He had been too intent on the unspoken promises he had seen in Belatha's lingering gaze that afternoon to even notice the purse-snatch tucked away in the alley's shadows. Any street waif displayed more caution than that—especially at night!

If he intended to collect those emerald-eyed promises, and he did desire Belatha with all his heart, soul, and body—at least for this night—best that he pay less attention to his lust and more to his environs.

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