Free Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel by Samantha Henderson

have while your body rots beneath the ground. It is your choice.”
    Jandi glanced once more at the body. It seemed a thing utterly alien, nothing to do with her, and now it was fading like a face in the twilight. She saw a small circlet of dull metal beside the body, with a haze of sickly green about it.She felt she should remember something about it, but the memory slipped away like a scarf in the wind.
    The oak tree beyond the body was glowing now, its bark burnished gold. The forest beyond faded from view as well, save for individual trees scattered here and there that glowed with the same golden light as the oak. She could see their roots branching beneath the ground, and their leaves were amber and jade.
    Jandi made her decision and looked deep into the woman’s eyes, drowning in emerald. The light from the trees grew more intense, until there was nothing but brightness and the distant sound of water.

     
    A tall woman kneeled over the body of the young mage, not loosening the braided cord around her neck until she was sure she was dead. Finally, the woman released her grip and looped the garrote neatly, tucking it into her belt. The moon emerged from behind the clouds, illuminating a lean face with a thick red scar twisting the corner of the left eye and marring the cheek to the jawbone. She pressed two fingers beneath the still girl’s jawline, trying to detect any trace of a pulse.
    Satisfied on that point, she plucked a bracelet from the grass. It had tumbled from the girl’s lap in her final struggle. She examined it. It wasn’t silver or gold, and the three red stones embedded in it weren’t rubies or even garnets. She tossed it away like a piece of trash, then rose to her feet.
    She didn’t see the bracelet twitch a couple times, elongating and flattening until it became a long chain of links, which crept, snakelike, through the grass and coiled around the dead mage’s limp arm.
    Helgre stood, silent, listening intently to the sounds of the dusk. She knew one of her quarry was still down at the stream, and she could hear the other foraging along the verge of the forest, heralded by the heavy tramp of the donkey.
    She smiled wolfishly. She had spent months nursing her wounds and hatred in the Mulmaster slums. Many tendays she had spent sniffing out rumors of the deserters in the dockside dives and taverns. She had spent almost a year tracking them and the wench they’d picked up in Mulmaster, north through the unfriendly towns of Turmish, and then following them across borders and back again. By chance she had met one of would-be Baron Berendel’s men in a roadside inn and heard the tale of a mad ex-sailor who wanted possession of a cursed piece of barren rock.
    Hard on their trail, she lurked in the cover of the sprawling forest. When she ventured close enough to see their faces, a fierce joy burned in her veins. It was them, after all—Gareth Jadaren and Ivor Beguine, traitors and cowards who had not only abandoned the ship she loved but set those dreadful avengers on her wake.
    That had been more than a year ago now. The second she had found Din and Barneb sprawling on the deck in the early morning, still groggy, she knew something was wrong. She knew Gareth and Ivor were on third watch, and their absence was suspicious. A few quick slaps acrossDin’s face and a knife beneath his jaw elicited the information that the Turmish man and his friend had come last night with wine. She considered knifing the hapless easterner and dropping him over the side.
    Instead, she dropped him in disgust and went to tell Ping of the deserters. She’d just reached his chambers when she heard the chaos on deck.
    It was too much of a coincidence. Gareth and Ivor had jumped ship and betrayed them in Mulmaster. I never trusted that Gareth, she thought, as she drew her knife. I should’ve cut his throat when he signed on.
    She expected to see a fighting ship and a pack of Mulmaster bullies, recruited by what passed for the