The Gates of Night: The Dreaming Dark - Book 3 by Keith Baker Page B

place—” Lei began, but the drow cut her off.
    “The spirits told you this?” Her musical voice was low and serious. Xu’sasar was a head shorter than Lei, and she pushed closer and stared up into Lei’s eyes.
    “I suppose you could say that …”
    The drow girl reached up and placed her hand on Lei’s forehead. Her skin was smooth and cool to the touch. Lei wondered if the blood of the dark elves was colder than that of humans. Then Xu reached out with her other hand, touching the face of the carved dryad.
    “Ask her,” she said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Ask her. This tortured one, whose spirit has been bound in wood. She is of this world. She can show us the path to Dusk.”
    Lei frowned. She didn’t like the drow girl. Lei had learned planar theory in the Towers of the Twelve, and she didn’t want to debate with a jungle savage. The problem was, this time Xu was right.
Darkheart knows the path
.
    She looked at the staff. “Can you lead us to the Gates of Night?” she said.
    And the spirit showed her the way.

D aine caught the moonlight on the edge of his sword, watching the light shimmer across the steel. In the chaos of recent events he hadn’t had the time to study it, but he knew that something had changed. It wasn’t that he felt a living presence in the weapon, and thank the Sovereigns for that; between Lei’s sobbing staff and Pierce’s unusual behavior, the last thing Daine wanted to deal with was another strange spirit. Still, he could feel some force stirring within the weapon, a power he couldn’t quite touch with his conscious mind, which he could draw out in moments of anger. Just days ago the traitor Gerrion had been stunned when he’d tried to sunder the sword with Daine’s own dagger—a blade of Cannith-forged adamantine, which should have sliced through the steel with ease. In Karul’tash, Daine had been filled with rage and fear at the sight of Lei in peril. Somehow, that emotion flowed into the sword. He’d brought the warforged assassin to the ground with a single blow. He should have been pleased; it seemed he had a powerful weapon at his disposal. Still, he didn’t like mysteries. What were the limits of this power? How could hecontrol it? And what was its origin? Daine had inherited the sword from his grandfather, and if it had a fabled history, Daine had never heard it. But it seemed there was much Daine didn’t know.
    One more thought nagged at the back of his mind, the faintest fear. When Daine and his companions had first arrived in Sharn, Jode had pawned Daine’s sword. Some time later, the blade had been returned to by Daine by Alina Lorridan Lyrris, a gnome with considerable magical talents. Daine had scored the House Deneith sigil off the pommel when he had left the house, but Alina had restored it and refurbished the blade. Today, the sword was in better condition than it had been when Daine had first received it. Alina was a manipulator by nature. While she worked to increase her own wealth and power, her favorite pastime was toying with the lives of others—and she certainly wasn’t known for her altruism. Alina did nothing without a reason.
    So why had she gone to the trouble of finding and returning Daine’s sword?
    For that matter, how did he know that it
was
his sword? The balance was perfect. Refurbished as it was, it was the very image of the blade he’d seen his grandfather wield in battle. Still, could it be that Alina had given him a
different
weapon?
    Daine sighed.
    Lei led the way across the rocky plains, her staff held before her like a torch. Occasionally the staff would murmur, a fluting sob that sent a chill down Daine’s spine. After their experience with the Huntsman, he found himself studying each stone face buried in the ground with suspicion, wondering if a new warrior would rise out of the soil.
    “How much farther?” Daine called.
    “I don’t know,” Lei said. “It doesn’t talk. I just sense emotions, I guess. I don’t