“I need to know what’s happening,” he said, striving for a calmer tone. “Are the nomads coming?”
“Who can say, Highness? Your desert folk are like wolves, fierce and wild. I’ve lived here two years and I don’t begin to understand them.”
Shobbat, Khur born and bred, didn’t understand the nomads either, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Hengriff.
Changing the subject, the Knight told him of his father’s agreement to clear all the city gates of troublemakers.
“Really? All the gates, you say?” The prince pressed a fist to his lower lip. If soldiers of the Household Guard had been sent to all nine gates of Khuri-Khan, there couldn’t be many left in the palace.
“Careful, Highness. Your thoughts leap from your face.”
Shobbat forced a careless laugh and palmed sweat from his forehead. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m simply suffering from the heat. I should retire indoors and escape the warmth.”
Hengriff bowed to the heir of Khur. “To Your Highness’s continued good health.”
The prince withdrew. Once he had seemed a ridiculous figure but Hengriff was beginning to wonder if he had underestimated him. The situation was coming to a head, and quickly. Hengriff’s dispatches to Jelek stressed this urgency. He felt the Order must be ready to move on a moment’s notice. When the crisis came, the fate of the elves would fall not to him who struck first, but him who struck the most decisively.
Six lengthy dispatches, carefully enciphered, he had sent to Jelek via the border town of Kortal. Six dispatches in as many weeks, yet no answer had come back. If Hengriff had been the suspicious type, he might think his messages weren’t getting through. Worse still, could Rennold be ignoring him?
Odd sounds reached the citadel courtyard. Distorted by the brick canyons of Khuri-Khan, the tumult sounded like the crash of waves on a rocky shore. Hengriff knew better. They were the sounds of conflict.
His four bodyguards arrived, already mounted, leading his horse. “My lord!” cried his man Goldorf. “There is fighting at the city gates!”
Hengriff swung into the saddle. “Sahim-Khan ordered his troops to clear the gates. Who are his guards fighting?”
“Torghanists.”
Hengriff betrayed surprise. The priests of Torghan were taking Nerakan pay, and he hadn’t asked them to blockade the city. So who had? His dark eyes narrowed. He suspected the meddling hand of Prince Shobbat in this development.
“Well, let’s see how Sahim’s men fight,” he said, grasping his reins in one large fist.
He and his bodyguards galloped straight to the west gate, which faced the elves’ camp. They scattered Khurs left and right. The Lesser Souk was emptying rapidly as the sound of swordplay rang over the market. The sight of the Nerakans on horseback only hastened the process.
This gate was known to city-dwellers as “Malys’s Anvil” because the red dragon had crushed so many foes against the stout iron portcullises. When Sahim-Khan’s guards arrived the gatehouse had appeared undefended, but as they broke ranks to open it, stones and timbers rained down, thrown by Khurs concealed inside. A squad was sent up each side of the battlement, to storm the gate in unison and trap the attackers inside. Unfortunately, the fanatics proved to be armed with more than brickbats; they produced swords and spears and, in the narrow confines of the parapet, Sahim’s guards had a real fight on their hands. Soon the ground around the gatehouse was littered with bodies. Most wore nomad gebs, but more than a few wore the scale armor of the khan’s royal guard.
Hengriff halted his horse some distance away to watch the unexpected fight. His men pulled up respectfully behind him. Silent at first, the bodyguards soon were offering a running commentary on the progress of the battle and bellowing advice to the outmaneuvered guards.
“Cut at their legs! Civilians are terrified of that-keeps ‘em from running away!”
“Look at those shields, dangling from their wrists like a lady’s nosegay. Get your shields up, you goatherds! Watch those spearpoints!”
“I’ll bet you wish you had a score of archers just now, don’t you?”
“Shut up,” Hengriff growled and the bodyguards subsided, merely shaking their heads at the display before them.
Below, the guards breached the flimsy barricade around the gate. Leaping over baskets filled with brickbats, they quickly routed the Torghanists on the ground. In hours, the remaining eight portals were likewise free of “malcontents.”
Long before that, Hengriff had led his men back into the city. The Knight had other falcons to fly during the coming night.
* * * * *
Hytanthas arched his back, stretching. He was tucked inside an angle of broken wall, on the grounds of a once- beautiful villa. Through a chink in the wall he’d been watching the ruined house for half a day He’d begun to think he was on a kender’s errand.
Disguised again as a human, he had lurked in wine shops and low inns seeking clues to the whereabouts of the elusive sorcerer Faeterus. He’d learned nothing of note until he overheard a merchant complaining to his fellows about a peculiar order he’d received.
“I am a poulterer,” the merchant declaimed proudly, “not a trapper. Who orders a dozen live pigeons? Nobody eats those filthy birds!”
His colleagues mocked him mercilessly. Apparently this was not the first time he’d received such an order, nor the first time he’d complained about it.
“Then why didn’t you refuse?” taunted one of his colleagues.
“Because of the money!” put in another.
There were guffaws around the table, and the poulterer joined in. The money was indeed good, good enough to convince him not only to procure the despised pigeons, but to deliver them to the city’s ruined northern district. He’d stopped here for a refresher before venturing into that cursed area. His comrades agreed the Harbalah was home to ghosts-and worse.
At this point Hytanthas insinuated himself into the conversation. Posing as a Delphonian down on his luck, he offered to deliver the pigeons. The chicken merchant was eager to shift the duty to another. He paid Hytanthas two silvers-insulting wages, which the elf accepted with fawning gratitude-then gave him directions, and a warning.
“Remember, leave the cages outside the old garden wall. Don’t go any closer to the house.”
“Why so much fuss? It’s a ruin, isn’t it?”
“Just don’t, if you value your life’s blood!”
Hytanthas heeded the warning. He had placed the caged birds where he’d been told, then took up a position in one of the wrecked outbuildings to see who claimed them. He was certain it would be Faeterus. The shattered mansion was the perfect setting for a renegade wage. And Hytanthas had heard unsavory stories about dark magical rites involving the sacrifice of animals, like pigeons.
The land rose slightly from Hytanthas’s position up to the villa proper. As the sun set, the shadows swelled like a dark sea, claiming first the grounds, then the decrepit house. Blocks warmed all day gave up their heat by night, so Hytanthas had a snug place from which to watch the pigeon basket. Too snug, in fact. After so many hours of inactivity, he began to nod.
The clatter of broken stones jerked him from sleep. Gripping his sword hilt, he peered through the chink in the wall. The wicker basket was where he’d left it, its avian cargo asleep.
He heard another small avalanche of disturbed masonry. Someone was moving in the ruins. A low, breathy growl penetrated his hiding place, then a voice, hoarse with age, pitched slightly high.
“What is it, Talon? Intruders?”
The voice was behind him, to the left of the villa’s front door, in the ruined garden. With all the stealth imparted by heritage and training, Hytanthas rose up from his crouch and peeked over the low wall. There was Faeterus, not ten yards away. He was standing in profile, hooded, heavy robe draped over his hunched shoulders. One long-fingered hand held a thin, glittering leash. At the other end of the leash was a walking nightmare.
The monster stoo
d on four feet, like a lion, and its body was covered by thick, tawny hair. It had a long neck coated in sleek, bronze-colored scales. Atop this, surrounded by a stiff red mane, its head was an awful parody of an elven or human face, with a flat nose and a mouth many times larger than a person’s. Row upon row of silver metallic teeth filled the creature’s fearsome smile. Its tail switched back and forth, like a cat’s.
“This is what happens when I take down my wards to receive new birds; someone takes advantage,” Faeterus said. “Very well, Talon. Find the intruder.” He released the thin leash.
Hytanthas ducked down. He heard the monster’s paws dig into loose rubble as it sprang away from its master.
“Whoever you are, you’d better run. When the manticore finds you, the meeting won’t be pleasant.”
Hytanthas gathered himself, took a deep breath, and leaped over the wall. He landed with feet wide apart and presented his blade to the robed mage. He looked around nervously. The manticore was not in sight.
“In the name of the Speaker of the Sun and Stars, surrender!”
Faeterus looked surprised, but only for an instant. “Ah, I see. An elf hiding in a human shell. That explains Talon’s confusion. What’s your name, Hermit Crab?”
Hytanthas told him, just as the manticore came bounding back down the path. Hytanthas rushed forward, laying the edge of his sword alongside Faeterus’s neck.
“Keep that thing away, or I’ll have your head!”
Faeterus snapped his fingers. The monster halted at once, as if arrested by an invisible tether. Dropping on its haunches, it stared at them with round, cold blue eyes, grinning with its insanely large mouth. Hot breath, stinking of carrion, washed over Hytanthas’s face.
“I’m taking you to the Speaker to be judged for your crimes,” he said.
“I don’t think so.” Hytanthas tapped him with the flat of his blade. Faeterus chuckled lightly, adding, “Yes, a good blade, and I’m sure you know how to use it. But it’s not yet time for me to meet Gilthas Pathfinder.”
With that, he simply went away. How or where, Hytanthas could not begin to guess, but one instant he was gripping the mage’s bulky robe; in the next blink of an eye, his hand was empty. His sword, now resting on nothing, dropped to the dirt.
The manticore leaped.
Hytanthas got his blade up in time to ward off the monster. His point raked across the bright scales but did not pierce them. He backed rapidly, keeping his weapon pointed at the beast. Huffing, the manticore advanced slowly.
Hytanthas spotted Faeterus. The mage now stood on a veranda high on the side of the ruined villa. The basket of pigeons sat beside him. His face showed no excitement, merely calm curiosity. Apparently he wanted to see how his monstrous pet dealt with an armed and agile intruder.
Hytanthas cut at the manticore’s eyes. The creature stood its ground, batting the tip away with one paw. Hytanthas reversed his motion and thrust at the paw. His keen point pierced it from furred top to padded sole. Dark blood flowed. The beast howled, opening its mouth so wide the elf feared its head would break at the hinge and fall off. Its voice was high and piping.
The manticore attacked again. Hytanthas pirouetted aside, but the beast’s claws caught his Khurish robe. He was dragged down, landing on his back atop broken masonry, and the sword flew from his hand. The monster’s claws slashed across his chest. The mail shirt he wore beneath his robe saved him from being gutted like a fish, but the blow still knocked the wind from his chest.
Furious at its failure to draw blood, the manticore swatted the elf like a housecat toying with a mouse. The blow sent Hytanthas rolling across the weedy ground until he fetched up against a sizable date palm. Shedding sun hat and shredded robe, the elf hefted several fist-sized stones and hurled them at the creature. They thumped against its chest, eliciting grunts, but barely slowed the manticore. Hytanthas turned and ran, Khurish sandals flapping.
He vaulted nimbly over ruined fences and broken walls, but was forced to detour around larger obstacles. His adversary simply bulled straight through everything in its path, thereby gaining steadily on him. As he leapt for the top of a stout pile of stone masonry, the creature was so close behind he felt the rush of air as it swiped at his legs. He hauled himself up and over the pile.
The manticore crashed into the pile, but the masonry was too thick for it to break through. With a human-sounding scream of frustration, the monster reared up, rested its paws atop the pile, and looked over. Frustration turned to unholy triumph, and it grinned. Its quarry was trapped!
Hytanthas stood with his back against the estate’s outer wall, designed to enclose the villa like a miniature fortress. Whole sections had been toppled, but it was his misfortune that this portion, a good twenty yards long, was intact. Fifteen feet high, its surface was smoothly plastered, allowing for no handholds, even for a nimble and highly motivated elf.
With evident relish and terrifying slowness, the manticore scaled the masonry pile. Its pale blue eyes never left Hytanthas’s face, and the elf stared back, afraid if he looked away it would pounce.
Suddenly, the manticore froze, right foreleg in the air. Hytanthas hadn’t heard or felt anything, but the creature obviously had. It waited several long seconds, tail twitching, gaze flickering upward, then resumed its advance.
On the veranda, Faeterus felt something, too. He released the pigeon he’d been stroking, moved to the edge of the gallery, and stared out into the night.
A deep vibration suddenly shook ground and air. Gradually Hytanthas discerned a new sound: heavy footfalls, and the noise of something weighty being dragged. It was coming from his right, a part of the estate he hadn’t explored.
As he tried to make sense of the noises, the manticore began behaving oddly. Attention fixed in the direction of the approaching footsteps, it shrank down, belly against the rubble pile, as if trying to make itself small. Its thin lips parted and it hissed like a frightened cat. The hair along its back stood up.
The heavy footfalls and dragging sound drew nearer, bringing with them the metallic reek of blood. The warm wind carried the stench of putrefaction, as of a large wound gone black with gangrene. The manticore howled loudly then rushed away, keeping itself close to the ground.
Cautiously, Hytanthas followed. He’d spotted his sword, glittering faintly in the rubble. It was a long way away and the manticore, departing or not, was between the weapon and him.
He was sizing up his chance of reaching it when something loomed up out of the darkness. At first he thought it was the manticore, but the sheer bulk of the thing was too great, at least three times the size of Faeterus’s deadly pet. He made out a pair of green eyes, each at least ten inches across, with large vertical black pupils, and a huge face ringed by horns. Hytanthas screamed.
His cries were answered. Faeterus tossed a small globe into the air. It exploded, flooding the scene with brilliant white light. The light was painful to Hytanthas, but bearable. By its illumination, he finally realized what it was he faced, though he could hardly credit his eyes.
During his exile in Khur, the young elf had tried to learn all he could about the dangers his people might face here.
Never had he thought to see a sand beast. Especially not in the middle of a city.
Fortunately, the creature did not seem overly interested in him. Head lowered against the glare, the sand beast continued its advance toward the ruined villa. Someone had hurt it. It hauled itself forward by its forelimbs, its hindquarters dragging lifelessly behind. Where left hind leg joined sloping back, a great festering wound spread.
The elf never considered running away. His mission was to bring Faeterus before the Speaker; he could hardly do that if he left the mage at the mercy of this monster. Faeterus, hampered by his bulky disguise, was descending the stone steps from the veranda.
“Talon!” the sorcerer panted. “Attack!”
The manticore came galloping over the debris-strewn ground, its earlier fear of the sand beast overcome by th
e will of its master. In the last few yards its strides stretched to great bounds, and on the third leap it threw itself on the sand beast’s back, wrapping its legs around the scaly hide. The greenish-gold scales covering the sand beast’s throat resisted the manticore’s teeth, but the mage’s pet kept trying.
The sand beast shook its horned head from side to side, hoping to dislodge its attacker. The manticore climbed up and hooked its foreclaws on the beast’s lower jaw. Mouth opening wide, the manticore worried the beast’s throat. The sand beast gave up trying to remove its tormenter. Lowering its head, it ran itself against the nearest standing wall. Blocks burst apart, and the manticore finally was knocked loose. It rolled, got its feet beneath it, and sprang again. With lightning precision, the sand beast’s head came around, its jaws opened, and it caught the manticore in mid-leap. The manticore yowled in high-pitched rage, but only for a moment. The sand beast’s jaws closed on its neck. A sickening snap, and the human- looking head dropped to the ground.
Faeterus had reached the arena of battle. The mage extended his left hand toward the furious sand beast and uttered a string of mysterious syllables. An invisible concussion drove the beast backward a few feet, but that was all. Metallic lids narrowed over its eyes, a throaty growl rose from its throat, and the beast advanced again.
“You’re only making it angry!” Hytanthas yelled. “Keep it busy, and I’ll help you fight it!”
The mage’s hooded head turned toward him. “Yes, perhaps you can be a help, at that.”
Faeterus spoke a word, and the globe of light overhead went out. Hytanthas, his attention focused on getting to his sword, was suddenly astonished to find himself not only plunged into darkness, but dragged backward as if in the grip of an invisible band. He protested, flailing futilely against the force that held him. Faeterus waited until he was nearly in range of the sand beast’s claws, then released him. With the beast thus distracted, the mage made his escape. He vanished into the outer darkness.
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