The Emerald Scepter soa-3 Read online

Eles's scowl became a glower. "Lesser opponents do not thwart me," he said. "Deal with this."

  Darvin nodded in resignation. Somehow, he had known all along that it would come down to that. "All right," he said at last. "But I can't get back there on my own. Laithe will have to help me."

  "Fine," Eles said. "Take your sister along."

  "Half-sister," Darvin corrected, then immediately regretted it.

  "Darvin," Eles said, his face a mask. "Don't think that just because you are my flesh and blood that you can fail me in this. I will have Reth."

  Darvin nodded. "I know, Father. I'm on my way."

  "Can you heal her?" Vambran asked.

  Arbeenok shrugged, trying to imitate the human gesture. It still felt strange to him to do so, even after several years among humans. "I do not know," he said, "I can try."

  "Do it," Vambran said, forcefully, but Arbeenok understood that he was asking, pleading, not ordering. The alaghi understood, and he did not object, but the man's intense drive was remarkable. There was a fire in his eyes, a fierceness to act, to succeed, burning inside him at all times.

  And there was conflict.

  Arbeenok could see that Vambran questioned himself with every decision he made. The soldier scrutinized all his choices, never satisfied that he had selected wisely or had done enough. Arbeenok wondered where in his life he had failed. He wondered what had convinced the man that he was not capable of choosing the wise course.

  His passion is admirable, the alaghi thought, but he will burn himself up if he cannot find balance.

  Arbeenok turned from the soldier and examined the woman, Elenthia. She stared back at him with wide, frightened eyes. He understood her fear, too. Hers was far more defined. She was dying, and she knew it. "Try to relax," he told her.

  Then Arbeenok began to sing.

  The druid sang to the wind and the stars, to the earth somewhere below, calling to the natural soil that lay beneath the carefully aligned stones, down past the unnatural layer of the garden. He sang to the ocean that he could smell but could not see. He sang to them all, asking them to restore the balance in Elenthia, to cleanse her of the perverse disease that infested her.

  They could not aid him.

  Arbeenok's song turned inward, seeking some energy that he could harness within himself, from the spirits of the animals that resided in harmony in him, hoping perhaps to drain away the woman's sickness into himself and dissipate it.

  The sickness was too strong.

  Arbeenok opened his eyes and looked at his companions. Both were watching him intently. He had seen such looks before by those who had never heard him use his magic. He paid their stares no mind. "It cannot be cleansed by my magic alone," he said. "It is too unnatural for my healing skills." Arbeenok watched Vambran's face turn stony, as though bracing for the inevitable. "I can arrest it, though," the druid said, hoping that the two of them would understand. Sometimes, finding the words to explain things to outsiders was difficult. "Slow it," he added.

  "Do it," Vambran said again, once more in that forceful, demanding tone. For him, failure was a fate too horrible to contemplate. Arbeenok could see that.

  "It will not cure her," Arbeenok warned, wanting the soldier to understand that it was a temporary solution and would hold for a day at most. "She will still be ill, but the sickness will not… progress."

  Vambran began nodding even before Arbeenok finished speaking. "Buy us time, that's good enough," he said. "And we'll go to the bottom of the Reach, burrow into the rock if we must in order to find whatever it is we're supposed to find."

  Arbeenok smiled, glad that Vambran was ready to accept the alaghi's vision, to follow their entwined fates to their logical conclusions. "Yes," he said. Then he closed his eyes and began to sing once more, a different song, one to slow the poisons in Elenthia's body rather than drive them out. He felt the contagion begin to slumber, fall dormant. Satisfied, he finished the song, locking the magic in place for as long as he was able.

  When it was done, Arbeenok opened his eyes and nodded to tell his companions so. The relief on both their faces was clear. "We must rest," he said.

  "There's no time," Vambran argued, his intense eyes looking away to some distant place, not just in space but also in time. He was peering toward the future, always toward the future, trying to catch up to it and yet never seeing it as it went by. "We have to go, get out of the city. People are dying."

  "No," Arbeenok said. He stood, then, pulling Vambran away from the woman, off to the side where they could talk alone. "We must rest. She must rest." Vambran stared hard at the alaghi for a long moment, his eyes glittering dangerously. "I have seen you yawn many times just since we arrived in this garden," the alaghi added. "When was the last time you slept?"

  Vambran looked away. "I don't remember," he said, avoiding the question. "A lifetime ago."

  "You have not slept since I met you, when you were dangling from a pole by your tied hands and feet, hardly a good bed. And that was in the small hours of this morning. How long before that?"

  Vambran sighed. "Not since the ship," he said. "Not since two nights ago."

  "You cannot save the city if you wear yourself to exhaustion," Arbeenok said. "And she will not last long without rest. The harder you push her, the more quickly my magic will… vanish. No, fade. The more quickly it will fade. Do you understand? It can weaken if her body is not strong enough to maintain it."

  Vambran sighed then, letting his shoulders slump. "All right," he agreed at last. "If she needs the rest, I could do with some as well. But we've got to find some place safe. Some place where we can defend her, you and I, without her needing to fight. Better yet, someplace where damnable zombies won't bother us at all."

  Arbeenok looked toward the house. "Up there?" he asked, pointing to a second floor window that overlooked the garden. "I do not think the former owners will mind," he said.

  Vambran nodded. "I'll take a look inside, just to make sure nothing is hiding in there. You stay here with her."

  When the soldier was gone, Arbeenok sat beside Elenthia. She leaned against a tree, her breathing eased somewhat by the effects of Arbeenok's song, but it was still raspy. The alaghi thought it best not to discuss the sickness. "Do you love him?" he asked, thinking to begin a nice conversation.

  "Vambran?" Elenthia replied, looking aghast. "Ilmater's mercy, no. He's… he's just a friend."

  "But you are mates," Arbeenok said, puzzled. "I can sense it in the way you look at one another. You have shared a bed."

  Elenthia blushed slightly. "Yes, we have," she admitted. "But only as friends. Our lives are much too different. He visits me from time to time, and I enjoy his company when he comes to Reth. That's all."

  Arbeenok considered the woman's words for a few moments. "It must be that way between Vambran and Shinthala, too."

  "Pardon me?" Elenthia said, looking sharply at the alaghi. "Who in the Nine Hells is Shinthala?"

  "Shinthala Deepcrest, Grand Cabal of the Emerald Enclave. They, too, are friends."

  "I see," Elenthia said, but her tone was strangely flat. "So, he's bedding a druid, is he?"

  Arbeenok looked at the woman strangely, not understanding the question, but at that moment, Vambran returned.

  "The house is empty, save for a few unfortunate souls in one downstairs room. I checked to make sure they were really dead." His eyes flickered away for a moment, gazing into that invisible distance. "It was the rest of the family," he concluded, his voice thick.

  Together, Vambran and Arbeenok carried Elenthia up to a bedroom and laid her on a thick, soft mattress. Vambran settled onto a divan against the wall, facing Elenthia as though to watch over her. The alaghi saw her give him one curiously unpleasant stare, and she turned her back on him, wrapped the silk sheet about herself, and closed her eyes.

  Vambran was breathing slowly and softly a moment later.

  So they rested, with the alaghi keeping watch, listening for the approach of enemies, of undead, of anythin
g that would disturb them. Outside, beyond the garden wall, fires still burned everywhere in the city. Occasionally, shouts rose from down in the streets, though Arbeenok could not see what transpired there. Nothing came to disturb them.

  Arbeenok felt a small amount of gladness in watching his companions sleep, for their faces were peaceful. He was thankful that he had done something, some small thing, to thwart the terrible sickness, to thwart the strange men of the cities who had brought it.

  The three of them remained in sheltered quiet for several hours. At last, Arbeenok spied the sun beginning to peek over the tops of the closest buildings, the first rays coming to warm the land, to bring bountiful life-giving essence to all the birds and beasts and fishes. He closed his eyes and sighed, enjoying for a brief moment the joy that came to him with the dawning of each new day.

  CHAPTER 7

  Pilos peered through the cracked doorway out into the hall beyond, but no one stood near. Sighing with relief, he shut the portal again and made certain that it latched properly.

  "Must have been some stray draft, blowing the door open," he said as he returned to the far end of the room, well away from the door. "There was nothing out there."

  Pilos and Quill, along with Hetta-still hosted inside Laithe the wizard's body-had retreated to the library where the young priest and Emriana had hidden before, when they had been searching the Generon for Xaphira. After failing to locate the mirror in which Emriana was trapped, they had decided to hide out for a while and plan their next move.

  Hetta had located a set of keys in the prison chamber that freed the two men from their manacles, for which Pilos was truly thankful. His wrists and ankles were sore and bruised from being jerked and banged about by the metal. Once they had the restraints off, they wasted no time departing the dungeon, retracing the path the Abreeant and the girl had originally taken to get down there.

  "Why don't you tell me exactly what has happened here?" Hetta demanded, standing over Quill, who sat leaning against one of the bookshelves, looking forlorn. "Start from last evening, when you met with my daughter and granddaughter, and don't you dare leave anything out."

  Sighing in resignation, the mercenary began. "After Xaphira came to see me the first time, I knew she was asking for trouble hunting for a man like Junce Roundface. But I was so glad she was still alive, so happy that I had found her after all these years, that I wanted to try. For her. Somehow, Junce knew before I did that I was going to come looking for him. He arranged it so that when I started asking around, the information I got led right to him-and about five thugs.

  "The long and short of it is that the meeting went exactly the way he wanted. He made it vividly clear that I could either help him, or Xaphira would die. I decided to help him, because he assured me that once he was done with her, I could take her away, slip out of Arrabar, and the two of us would never look back. That was his promise."

  "And you trusted him?" Pilos asked, his words harsh, clearly both incredulous and resentful. "You know what kind of vile serpent he is, and you actually agreed to get him what he wanted," the priest added, shaking his head and turning away.

  "That's precisely why I did it," Quill argued. "I knew that he could make good on his threats, and I didn't see much choice. I didn't want to see Xaphira disappear again after… after so long."

  "Did Roundface manage to let slip exactly what he intended to do?" Hetta asked, her words no less harsh than Pilos's. "Did he mention how he has been trying to destroy my entire family? Did you really think Xaphira would want anything to do with you once she found out your role in such a thing?"

  Quill shrugged, his expression sullen. "I wasn't thinking beyond just trying to save her life," he muttered, looking down. "I just wanted to protect her. I'm just one man. I can't save your entire House."

  Hetta snorted. "You certainly can't if you don't even try. I'm glad you're not one of my children. I'm sure your mother would be very proud right now, if she'd heard your little explanation."

  Quill didn't say anything, but he continued to avoid his companions' gazes.

  "So what happened?" Pilos prodded. "You obviously set it up for her to be caught."

  Quill nodded and continued. "He told me that all I had to do was meet her as I had originally agreed, then take her to 'meet a man who knew where he was.' He said he would take care of the rest. We set everything up in a shed in the alley behind the Silver Fish-that's the rathrur where I was to meet her. All he told me was, once I had entered the shed, I had better close my eyes. So I did."

  "And just like Emriana, he got Xaphira to gaze into a mirror," Pilos said. "She never had a chance."

  "Yes," Quill said. "Then he kept promising me that he would free her once he had dealt with the other members of the family who were troubling him. After he caught Emriana, I thought he'd be finished, but it was pretty clear that he never intended to let her out."

  "And now you know, too late, that you never should have trusted him," Hetta said. "So you learned your lesson. Now you have to live with what you've done."

  Quill looked up at the woman, sorrow and desperation clear in his mien. "I'll help you find her," he said. "Let me do that."

  "Oh, absolutely," Hetta replied. "I would expect no less from you. I think you owe her that, at the very least."

  Pilos began to pace. "But we have no idea where the mirror has gone. How are we going to find it now?"

  Hetta looked at him. "Isn't your magic strong enough to track it down, as you did before, with Emriana?"

  Pilos shook his head. "There are ways I could do it, but I have nothing prepared. By the time I do, it'll be too late."

  "Then we'll consider that a fallback idea," Hetta said in a businesslike tone, "and come up with other, more immediate solutions."

  "Laithe probably knows something," Quill ventured. "Can you ask her?"

  "Yes," Hetta replied. "I could release her from the ring and let her back into her body," she said. "But it's doubtful I could overwhelm her a second time. She'd be ready for it, and her will is strong."

  "Then we need to make sure we have the upper hand," Pilos said, grabbing the manacles he had worn. "We'll bind and gag you before you release her, then we'll persuade her that it's in her best interests to aid us."

  Hetta considered Pilos for a moment, then she nodded. "It's the best choice we have," she agreed. "Let's do it."

  It did not take them long to secure the wizard. Pilos and Quill locked her legs together and chained her arms behind her back, as theirs had been. After they stuffed a large wad of cloth in her mouth and tied it in place, they sat her down in a corner and took up positions on either side of her.

  "We're ready," Pilos said, and Hetta nodded.

  For a moment, the woman's eyes glazed over, then her head snapped back and her eyes flared in anger. Immediately, she began to grunt and struggle, but Pilos and Quill held her down.

  "Stop it," Pilos ordered, grabbing her by the hair and jerking her face up toward his. "You can't get out of them, so give it up."

  Slowly, with a sullenness in her visage, Laithe relaxed.

  "Good," the young priest said, releasing her. He reached behind her and slipped Hetta's ring from her finger, then pocketed it. "Now, we have some questions, and you'd do well to answer them. Because if we don't find out what we want to know, we'll let our good friend take over your body again, and she might never give it back. Am I clear?"

  Laithe's eyes widened, and she nodded.

  "Excellent," Pilos said. "I'm going to remove your gag, but only if you agree not to call out. If you lie to us, I'll make sure you don't have any teeth left to talk to whomever comes to rescue you. Again, do I make myself clear?"

  Once more, Laithe nodded.

  Pilos reached out and began to untie the gag while Quill stood next to him, his fist drawn back menacingly.

  When the Abreeant had removed the binding, Laithe spit the wad of material out of her mouth and made a sour face. "You two fools ought to run while you have the chance
," she said.

  "Shut your hole," Quill said, drawing his fist back farther. "We ask questions, you answer. Otherwise, no words better come out of your mouth."

  Laithe glared at the man, but she nodded.

  "Fine," Pilos said. "Now, this is very easy. Where is the mirror?"

  "What mirror?" Laithe asked.

  Quill's slap echoed off the bookshelves, and the wizard grunted. When she turned back to face them, her lip was bloody.

  "You know what mirror," Pilos said. "Where did Junce take it?"

  "I don't know," Laithe answered. She tensed, as though ready for another slap. Quill seemed to think about it, but he didn't strike her again.

  "Are you sure you don't know?" Pilos asked. "Because if I have to let my friend invade your body again to find out for sure, we can do that."

  "I told you, I don't know. I don't ask the man what he does when I'm not around."

  "Where did he likely take the mirror?" Pilos asked. "Possible places?"

  Laithe shrugged. "I don't know anything about his mirror. Only that he uses it to catch people. I don't know where he got it or where he keeps it."

  "Liar," Quill snarled, and he smacked her again.

  "That's enough," Pilos said. "She's telling the truth."

  Quill turned to look at the young priest, a hurt look on his face. "How do you know?" he asked.

  "I just do," Pilos remarked. "She may not be volunteering information, but what's she's telling us is accurate."

  "So what do we-" Quill's words died on his tongue as the door to the library slammed open.

  The three of them had chosen their hiding place wisely-the doors were not visible to them-but Pilos knew beyond a doubt that whoever had entered the chamber knew they were there, and had come to hunt them down.

  Laithe apparently knew also, for she began to yell. "Junce! I'm here! Hurry! They're both here!"

  Quill moved to punch the wizard in the face, but Pilos grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. "No time," he said, handing the man a small vial. "Drink this and follow me," he ordered.

  Without waiting for Quill to comply with his instructions, the young priest downed his own magical elixir, feeling the moisture vanish from his mouth and noting the familiar smoky taste. He felt himself become insubstantial, a cloud of misty vapors drifting off the floor. There was no weight to his body, no sense of push or pull in his legs. He just floated there, able to see in every direction at once, an ability his mind had a difficult time accepting.