“You wanted to speak to me?”
Slith reared back in shock, a numbing cold sweeping through him.
Almost as close to him as the air he was breathing was a face, its pale contours blending into the darkness. It appeared disembodied, dark eyes staring directly into his own.
Slith swallowed, then nodded wordlessly, his mouth too dry to form sounds.
The black eyes twinkled as if in amusement.
“Then speak.”
Slith opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The eyes in the darkness narrowed slightly as a look of annoyance entered them. He cleared his throat and forced the words out.
“I found something. I thought you should see it.”
The face inclined at a slight angle.
“Very well. Show me.”
Slith fumbled inside his shirt pocket and pulled forth the roll of rags in which he had wrapped the blue-black disk. Before he could reach out to hand it over the roll of cloth disappeared from his grasp.
The dark eyes cast their gaze downward; then the face turned and vanished.
In the distance a glow of light pulsed, then brightened into a ring, as one by one a circle of lanterns was unhooded.
As the room was illuminated Slith saw that it was much smaller than he had imagined when the darkness still reigned unchallenged. In the far corners several grizzled men were watching him as they brought the room to light with the lanterns.
Esten stood before him, turning the blue-black disk carefully over in her long, delicate hands, her face, unlike those of most Yarimese women, unveiled. In the half-light he could see that she was no taller than he, with long raven hair and garments the color of a starless night that had blended perfectly into the darkness a moment before. Her tresses were bound back in a braid that was knotted at the nape of her neck, further accentuating the sharp angles of her face. Slith imagined she must be of mixed blood, her face possessing some but not all of the characteristics of Yarimese faces. He pondered where she might be from for a moment, but the thought disappeared as she leveled her dark gaze into his own.
“You are one of Bonnard’s apprentices?”
Slith’s father had imparted few words of wisdom that he remembered, but one oft-repeated phrase stood out in his mind: Look every man in the eye, friend or foe. Your friends deserve the respect, your enemies warrant it even more. He returned her stare as respectfully yet directly as he could.
“Yes.”
Esten nodded. “Your name?”
“Slith.”
“What year are you?”
“Fourth.”
She nodded again. “So you are, what — eleven? Twelve?”
“Thirteen.”
A look of interest came into her eye. “Hmm. I took you on rather old, then, didn’t I?”
Slith swallowed, determined to hold his ground, and shrugged.
Esten’s expression of amusement widened. “I like this one, Dranth. He has steel in his viscera. Make sure he is getting enough to eat.” The blue-black blade appeared between her long, thin fingers. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it in a greenware jar on the back storage rack in the firing room.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No,” said Slith. He watched as Esten’s gaze returned to the disk. “Do you?”
Shock washed over her face at his impertinence, as if he had attacked her. Within a breath she had recovered in time to gesture to the men behind her, staying their hands, and leveled her shining gaze at him again.
“No, Slith, I don’t know what it is,” she said evenly, holding the disk up to the streaks of light pulsing from within the hooded lanterns. “But you may sleep in deepest peace tonight, assured in the certainty that I will find out.”
“At first I thought it was a seam scraper of some sort,” Slith said, watching the firelight ripple over the surface of the disk in her hands. “But it occurred to me that it has probably been in that jar a long time.”
When Slith looked at her again, her eyes were glittering with cruel excitement, looking past him.
“You may be right,” she said softly. “Maybe for as long as three years.” She turned to one of the men in the corner. “Yabrith — give Slith here a reward of ten gold crowns for his sharp eyes, and a good meal; tell Bonnard he will be ready to return to the foundry after he has supped.” She looked at Slith once more. “Your attention has served both of us well. It would be a good habit to cultivate. Tell no one what has transpired.”
Slith nodded, then followed the sullen man who gestured to him.
Dranth, the guild scion, watched as the boy had left, then turned to the guildmistress.
“Do you wish him removed?”
Esten shook her head as she turned the disk over in her hands again. “Not until we discover what this is. It would be a shame to toss away four years of good training if it merely is a seam scraper.”
Dranth’s eyelids twitched nervously in the lanternlight. “And if it is more? If it is indeed something we missed, something left behind from — that night?”
Esten held the disk up to the light, ripples of blue reflecting against the dark irises of her eyes.
“Bonnard knows where the boy sleeps. And you know where Bonnard sleeps.”
She finally broke her gaze away and nodded to the remaining men, who slipped out the back and disappeared into the darkest part of the Inner Market.
All but one of the lanterns had been extinguished and night held sway within the walls of the guildhall when the men returned with Mother Julia.
Esten smiled wryly as she watched the wizened crone enter the antechamber of the hall. She was a withered old prune, hunched and shrouded in myriad colorful shawls, the second most powerful woman in the Market, accustomed to receiving those who wanted information from her in her own lair, on her own terms. Being summoned in the middle of the night and hauled into the depths of the Inner Market undoubtedly did little to improve her normally crotchety and imperious disposition but, like everyone else in the realm of thieves, she could not refuse Esten, or show any sign of annoyance.
A false smile, minus more than a few teeth, spread across the wrinkled face.
“Good evening, Guildmistress. May Fortune bless you.”
“You as well, Mother.”
“What may I do to be of help to you, then?”
Esten studied the weathered face, its aged features a deceptive setting for the bright, quick eyes that stared back at her. Mother Julia was by trade a soothsayer, a fortune-teller who procured an extremely comfortable living from the fools who sought her advice. Although her ability to predict the future was no better than anyone else’s, she was a source of generally reliable information about the past and, even more so, the present, largely owing to her extensive network of spies, which was centered in Yarim but also crossed provincial and even national borders, the majority of them members of her own family. She had seventeen living children at last count, Esten knew, having been the agent by which that tally had been diminished by one, and more grandchildren, cousins, and relations by marriage than the stars in the night sky.
She was anxious, Esten knew as well. The wrinkled face was placid, but the dark eyes within it burned with nervous light. Usually Mother Julia played the information gambit better than anyone in the Market, but she had led too early, had tried in her second breath to entangle Esten into indebtedness. She’s losing her touch, the guildmistress thought, tucking the observation away as she did all information. She turned away and walked toward the fire, denying Mother Julia a clear look at her face.
“Nothing at all, Mother.”
The crone coughed, a consumptive sound of rattling phlegm and fear. “Oh?”
Esten smiled inwardly, then set her face into a serious mask and turned to face the old woman.
“I have been singularly disappointed in your lack of response to the one question about which I did seek your help.”
An arthritic claw went to the soothsaver’s throat.
“I — I have — have been scrying diligently, Guildmistress, peering through the — the red sands of Time to try and discover —” Her words choked off and she sank into silence when Esten raised her hand.
“Spare me your prestidigitation and claptrap; I am not one of the imbeciles who seek it from you. You have had more than three years to bring me an answer to a simple question, Mother — who destroyed my tunnel, stole my slaves, killed my journeymen? Who snatched the sleeping water of Entudenin out of my hands, leaving Yarim to wither in thirst and depriving me of the wealth and power it would have brought? This should be an easy thing to find at least one clue to, and yet, yet you have brought me nothing, nothing at all.”
“I swear to you, Guildmistress, I have searched diligently, night into day following night, but there is no trace!” the crone stammered, her voice quavering. “No one in all of Yarim knows anything. Outside the Market, not one soul even knew of the tunnel. The destruction must have been the work of evil gods — how else except through the hand of a demon could all that slip be fired into hardened clay, when all your ovens together could not have done it?”
A blur of movement, and Esten’s eyes were locked on the crone’s from a breath away, a gleaming blade at her throat, pressed so lightly and yet so close that tiny droplets of blood were spattering the air with each of the old woman’s nervous tremors.
“You old fool,” Esten growled in a low voice. “Gods? Is that the best that you have for me after all this time?” She lashed out violently, contemptuously, and shoved Mother Julia into the table behind her, causing the old woman to stagger and crumple against the table board with a moan of pain. “There are no gods, Mother Julia, no demons. Certainly a charlatan of your caliber, who finagles idiots out of their precious coin in return for bursts of colored smoke and disembodied voices, must be aware of that, or you’d already be burning in the Vault of the Underworld.”
“No, no,” the woman moaned, struggling to stand but only managing to clutch the table before falling to the dirt floor. “I give homage to the All-God, the Creator who made me.” She made a countersign on her heart and ears, her arms trembling.
Esten exhaled, then strode to where the woman was cowering on the floor, seized her arm, and pushed her into the chair.
“The gods do not make us, Mother Julia; we make the gods. If you understood this, you would be a much more powerful and respected woman, instead of just a pathetic impostor who swindles the naïve and vies with Manwyn for the idiot trade.”
At the sound of the Oracle of the Future’s name, the old woman made her countersign again, her eyes wide in terror. “Don’t invoke her,” she whispered. “Please, Guildmistress.”
Esten snorted contemptuously. “Too late to fear that now. Manwyn. only sees the Future. She knew what you were going to hear a moment ago before I said it; she can no longer remember it now.” She crouched before the frightened soothsayer, moving slowly, deliberately, like a spider stalking a victim. “All she knows is what lies ahead for you.” She cocked her head to the side, dark eyes gleaming. “Do you think she is afraid on your behalf?”
“Please —”
“Please? You are asking me for favors now?” Esten leaned closer, her limbs moving in a deadly dance. “Did you think your time was infinite, my patience endless? You are an even bigger fool than those pathetic vermin who seek you out for answers to their insignificant questions.” She stopped within a hairsbreadth of the trembling crone, and the glint in her eyes grew harder, like greenware firing in the kiln into bisque.
“I employ you because your network, your leprotic clan, has so many eyes,” she said steadily, her voice low and deadly. “Those hundreds of eyes must all be blind, then, to have been unable to find even one clue in three years, wouldn’t you say, Mother?” A terrifying smile spread slowly over her delicate face. “Perhaps they no longer need the use of those eyes.” She turned to the guild scion. “Dranth, issue an order to the Raven’s Guild: from here forth, any member of this simpleton’s family that they come across is to have its eyes put out immediately, including her wretched grandchildren who prowl the street, spreading filth and breathing the air reserved for others who have some actual worth.”
“Mercy,” the old woman whispered, her arthritic hands clasped in front of her. “Please, Guildmistress, I implore you —”
Esten settled back on her haunches and regarded Mother Julia, whose face was gray and covered in beads of sweat.
“Mercy? Well, I suppose I can consider your entreaty, can offer you one last chance to redeem your sorry family. But if I do, and you fail me again, all the world will regard your clan as monsters, because that which is useless on their heads — eyes, ears, and tongue — will be removed from them and cast into the alleys to feed my dogs. Do you understand me, Mother?”
The crone could only bring herself to nod feebly.
“Good.”
From within her garments Esten pulled forth the bundle of rags Slith had given her. With great care she moved the layers aside and revealed the blue-black steel of the whisper-thin disk; it gleamed in the inconstant light of the lantern.
“Do you know what this is?”
Mother Julia shook her head.
Esten exhaled. “Study it well, Mother Julia — use your eyes for what may be the last time. Within one cycle of the moon I want the word spread within your clan alone as far as your miserable influence extends; I want to know what this is. And more importantly, I want to know to whom it belongs. Bring me that information, and I will keep you within my protection. Fail me, and —”
“I will not fail,” the crone said softly. “Thank you, Guildmistress.”
Esten patted the woman’s wrinkled cheek gently. “Good. I know you will not, Mother.” She reached into the folds of cloth that formed the trousers of her garments and pulled forth a gold coin minted with the head of the Lord Cymrian on one side, the crest of the Alliance on the other. “Take this gold crown for your newborn grandson — what was he named?”
“Ignacio.”
“Ignacio — what a lovely name. Give this to Ignacio’s mother for him, please, and extend my warmest wishes to her upon his birth.”
The old woman nodded shakily as two of Esten’s men took her arms and raised her to her feet.
“See to it Mother Julia gets home safely, please,” Esten instructed as they led her to the door. “I would not want anything untoward to befall this dear lady.”
She waited until the door had closed soundly, then sat down before the lantern, watching the watery patterns of light ripple across the smooth surface of the disk and off the razor edges, like bright waves rushing headlong over a shining cliff to a dark sea.
Soon, she thought. I will find you soon.
Green
Grass Hider, Glade Scryer
Kurh-fa
4
THE CAULDRON, YLORC
Even if he did not have the kingly sense that allowed him to perceive the movements and changes within his mountains, Achmed would still have known that Grunthor had returned to the Cauldron.
Centuries before, in the old life, Achmed had traversed a fjord near the Fiery Rim, a desolate inlet of churning sea currents between towering black basalt cliffs. In the thick woods atop those cliffs, teeming with wildlife but uninhabited by humans, dwelt Firewyrms — giant, chameleon-skinned beasts akin to dragons, which legends claimed were formed from living lava with teeth of brimstone. Dormant much of the time, the serpents, when hunting, prowled through the undergrowth below the forest canopy in relative silence, and yet it was always obvious to him when they were approaching, because the fauna would disappear utterly; the incessant birdsong that rattled over his ultrasensitive skin would suddenly cease, as if the forest was holding its breath, hoping the predators would pass.
It was much the same in Ylorc whenever Grunthor returned.
Achmed had never been able to divine exactly what it was about the Sergeant-Major’s training that enabled him to strike such abject fear into t
he hearts of the Firbolg soldiers in his command, but whatever it was, it had needed to be applied only once.
From the moment he was sighted, still three or more leagues away, the corridors and mountain passes of Ylorc scrambled to attention, clearing away any tomfoolery in favor of regulation dress and behavior. The Firbolg could sense his approach from great distances, like the birds and creatures of the fjord hiding from the Firewyrms, and, like them, took great pains not to draw his notice.
Despite their obvious fear of their commander, a fear he cultivated continually, the Firbolg army was devoted to Grunthor in a way that Bolg had never been. It was a source of amusement to Achmed how in little more than four years’ time the primitive nomads they had discovered when he, Grunthor, and Rhapsody had first come to this place had learned to hold watch as well as any soldier in Roland, Sorbold, or Tyrian, and were better trained in tactics and weapons use. Such skills were only partially imparted by training. Most of them came from pure loyalty.
Grunthor’s impending arrival this day, however, seemed to be generating more than its usual consternation. Rather than snapping to attention, as the Firbolg soldiers generally did when word came down that the Sergeant was within range, the Bolg were scattering before the scouts that heralded his arrival.
This did not bode well as to whatever Grunthor had found on his border check.
A few moments later Achmed’s foreboding was borne out. Over the rim of the steppes that led up to the foothills of the Manteids, as the Teeth were officially called by cartographers, rode a party of eight horses, one enormous, heavy war horse in the lead. Achmed’s extraordinary vision could make out the Sergeant-Major, the many hilts of his weapons collection jutting from behind his back, urgently spurring Rockslide, cresting the battlements and riding through the gates in the recently erected walls of baked brick and bitumen.