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at frenzied, tortured cry of unutterable pain, something new and terrible was born.
Chapter Twelve
“Nomad!”
He spun around, his sword poised to strike. He did not know where he was. The street was unfamiliar. He had been wandering around for hours in a semi-fugue state, looking for the one Shadow who had escaped. Edric. The thought of finding him was foremost in his mind, driving out everything else.
But the man who faced him in the dark and empty street was not Edric. He was a human, slight in stature, dressed in a dark, hooded cloak. His face was wrinkled with age, as was his hand, which he held across the lower part of his face, miming a veil.
Sorak simply stood and stared at him. In one hand, he still held the sword of Valsavis. In the other, he held the broken blade. Both were blood stained.
The old man lowered his hand and came forward, hesitantly. “We have been looking for you,” he said, as he approached. “We know about what happened. By the time we got there, it was too late. Words cannot express our sorrow.”
Sorak said nothing. He just stood there, motionless.
“You are hurt,” the man said, reaching out toward him, then drawing his hand back. “You are losing blood. Please… come. Let me help you. You cannot wander the streets like this. There is danger. Please…”
The man reached forward once again, slowly and deliberately, and took his arm. “I am Andreas. I have some skill at healing, but I cannot do it here, out in the street. We may be seen. Please, come with me. In the name of the Path and the Way, please come…”
Numbly, Sorak allowed himself to be led down a series of deserted back streets and dark alleys until they came to small tavern on a side street, near the merchants’ plaza. It was late, and the tavern was closed for the night, but the old man knocked softly on the wooden door: twice, then a short pause, then three times, then a pause, then twice again. The door was unbolted from within, and they went inside.
It was dark within, and the benches had been turned upside-down and placed on the tabletops for sweeping of the floor. The man who had admitted them was human, middle-aged, and portly— balding on top and dressed in loose brown breeches, sandals, and a slightly soiled white tunic. He bolted the door again behind them and said nothing. He merely conducted them back to the bar, behind it and to a small storage room.
At the back of the room was a beaded curtain. He drew it aside and beckoned them through, but he did not follow them into the dimly lit chamber. Within stood a long table with several benches pulled up to it and three thick candles spread out along the tabletop. Seated at the table in the back room were three men in white robes, who immediately rose to their feet as they came in.
“You’ve found him, Andreas!”
“He’s hurt!”
“Bring him here, quickly!”
They gathered around him and led him to a bench, easing him onto it. He felt them trying to take the weapons from his hands, but his fingers were tightly clamped around the hilts, as if of their own volition, and would not let go.
“Do not be afraid,” one of the men said. “You are among friends. There is no need for these.”
“Let it be,” Andreas said. “He needs something to hold onto. He has suffered a terrible shock.”
Andreas removed his cloak, revealing the white robe of the Alliance, and knelt in front of him, taking each of his hands gently by the wrists. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and concentrated while the others watched. Gradually, Sorak became aware that the old man’s hands were growing warm. The warmth seeped into his wrists and started flowing up his arms. He felt the heat increase as Andreas breathed more deeply, drops of perspiration forming on his forehead. Sorak felt the warmth reach his shoulders and start spreading across his chest. The heat increased, flowing down his torso, into his legs, and rising into his neck, suffusing his face and head.
The cuts and slashes on his body slowly closed and began to fade away. He felt a warm, comforting, drifting sensation, as if he were floating on a summer desert breeze, and the pain slowly went away. He breathed more deeply, and his eyelids fluttered. His muscles relaxed, and he felt the blades drop from his fingers to the floor.
Abruptly, his body stiffened with a sharp, jerking spasm, and the jolt broke the contact with Andreas, who cried out and fell back on the floor, releasing him. Sorak heard the alarmed voices of the men around him, but they seemed to be fading away into the distance.
“What happened?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know…”
Then everything was spinning as the room went away and Sorak found himself out in the street, striding down a dark alley, a cloaked and hooded figure walking just ahead of him. But it was not he walking through the alley. It was the other, the killer, and as the hooded figure turned into a side street and looked back briefly, Sorak recognized the templar he had seen before in his last vision.
The street they had turned into looked familiar. And an instant later, the realization struck him that it was the same street he had walked down with Andreas moments earlier. The door to the tavern they were in was just ahead. They were coming here.
Panic rose in him. He had to warn them, somehow, but he did not know how. He could not break free of the vision. It felt as if he were having a terrifying nightmare, one in which he knew he was dreaming, and he kept desperately trying to wake up, but just could not shake the dream.
He struggled to wrench free as the templar paused outside in the street, just by the door. In his shared perception with the other, Sorak saw the door in front of him, felt it as the killer kicked it in, and then saw the interior of the darkened tavern rushing past as the killer ran through it, heading toward the bar and the back room.
The tavernkeeper came rushing out, brandishing a blade, but the killer sidestepped his lunge smoothly and crushed his chest with one powerful blow.
