Crypt of the Shadowking by Anthony Mark Page A

spanning the gap from this tower to the next.
    “We’ll never make it to the bridge,” Caledan said after peering out the window. “Even if we don’t break our legs, the impact would probably destroy that rickety thing.”
    “What’s the alternative?” Mari asked in exasperation.
    The door shuddered violently. One more blow and it would fly apart.
    “All right, let’s try it,” Caledan snapped.
    Mari threw her arms tightly around his neck. The door burst open in a spray of splintering wood, and a dozen guards charged into the room, swords drawn. Gripping Mari tightly, Caledan jumped out of the window. With one hand, he grabbed a handful of the tangled ivy that snaked up the west face of the tower. The tendrils could not support both his and Mari’s weight, and the vines ripped from the wall as the two fell.
    They landed hard on the narrow stone bridge that arched between the two towers. Mari felt the stones shift beneath them with the impact, but the derelict old bridge withstood the shock. Though winded and bruised, the two scrambled to their feet. Guards shouted angrily from the window above, but Mari and Caledan dashed across the bridge.
    They froze in midstep.
    The door in the next tower flew open. A half-dozen guards stood in the opening. Mari and Caledan spun around, only to view a similar obstacle behind them. They were trapped.
    Something hissed past Mari’s ear. She looked up to see one of the Zhent officers above, reloading a crossbow. From both directions the guards began to edge their way carefully onto the bridge. Mari felt the stones shudder beneath her.
    “This thing is about to collapse,” she whispered to Caledan.
    He nodded. “Do you see what I see?” he asked, not daring to point.
    She peered down into the moonlit dimness. At first she could see nothing, but then her eyes adjusted, and she nodded jerkily.
    “When I give the signal,” Caledan whispered, reaching down and gripping her hand. She squeezed back tightly. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to be nice to the scoundrel. They were going to die together, after all.
    Another crossbow bolt whistled by, this one putting a hole in Caledan’s stolen cloak. The guards drew closer. When perhaps a dozen stood upon the bridge, Mari heard a low groan and felt the bridge lurch beneath her feet.
    “Now!” Caledan shouted. Without hesitation they both ran and leaped off the bridge. The guards stared after them in dumb amazement Then the bridge broke apart, and the guards went crashing to the street below along with several tons of bone-crushing rock.
    For a moment Mari felt as if she were flying. She heard the noise of the crumbling bridge behind her, but their leap had carried her and Caledan clear. They landed, hand-in-hand, in a cloud of dust and chaff.
    “You couldn’t have picked a wagon with clean straw, could you, scoundrel?” Mari said in disgust, spitting out an unpleasant mouthful. Her sore shoulder throbbed painfully. The two quickly slid off the back of the wagon that had been passing under the bridge.
    “I wouldn’t complain,” Caledan countered, eyeing the rubble of the stone bridge and the bodies buried beneath it. They started off swiftly through the city’s shadowed streets and were nearly back to the inn before they remembered to argue about whose fault this had all been.
     

Six
     
    The priceless statuette shattered into a thousand pieces as it struck the dark marble wall of the tower’s topmost chamber.
    “I want them strung up by their necks!” Ravendas, Zhentarim lord and ruler of Iriaebor, demanded through clenched teeth. She was pale and lovely despite her rage, or perhaps because of it. “No, I want them run through, left to the rats, then strung up!”
    A young boy sat in a chair before the fireplace, a dulcimer lying in his small hands. Ravendas’s son. His green eyes were focused on the fireplace, watching the flames, as if he were oblivious to his mother’s fury. The lord steward, Snake, stood serenely