*
As Nesha-tari walked down the middle of the muddy street men stopped talking all around her and stared until she had passed. She had three separate spells active and together they were enough that the effort required to maintain them blunted the weight of the men’s attention. But she knew they were there. She could smell the blood moving in their veins, the big ones through their necks, just under the thin skin that a scratch could open to a welter.
Just days, she thought. Only hours. She would Feed, and soon. She had to.
Nesha-tari crossed the full length of Camp Town from north to south. At the southern end the town ended sharply at a tall palisade wall that stretched the breadth of the valley, great logs sharpened on the top with plank walkways behind them, scaffold towers rising above. Wugs and hobgoblins warded the wall heavily for beyond it was nothing but an open field of thick, short grass stretching almost a mile to the mass of gray fog at the valley’s far end, hanging over everything.
A road of ancient black stones bisected the field and connected the fog to the single gate in the Camp Town palisade. The yard around the gate was further strengthened with earthworks, for two centuries ago it had been a fortress thrown up by Shugak and humans together, by the forces gathered here to do battle should the Third Opening of Vod’Adia have unleashed a new wave of undead horrors into the world. That had not of course happened, and now the Shugak operated the earthen fort as a gate complex through which parties of adventurers would be allowed to pass down the road to Vod’Adia, in accordance with the terms of the licenses they had bought. It was also where the Shugak would halt all adventurers who managed to return, and levy a final tax on everything brought out of the Sable City.
For now, three days before the Opening, the yard within the dirt-and-timber fort was still a marketplace with adventurers queued up on plank flooring before tables at which late licenses were being sold. Nesha-tari strode in and wound among them, close enough that men shivered as she brushed by. Nesha-tari clenched her hands into white-knuckled fists in her gloves. She passed through the lines and then by a slate board marked in chalk with indecipherable bullywug signs, where great numbers of the frogmen chirped excitedly and placed bets on groups of adventures. They wagered mostly on how many of them would die in Vod’Adia.
Beyond the bookmakers a quarter of the yard was enclosed by a second palisade, setting aside ground where a series of low stone buildings built more stoutly than anything else in Camp Town emerged halfway from the ground, stairs descending into each. These would be both Shugak barracks, and warehouses for goods. While none of the Magdetchoi Nesha-tari had seen thus far had made any move to interfere with her, a rank of massive hobgoblins in ornate bronze breast plates barred the entrance to the secondary compound. Two crossed their halberds as she approached, and she stopped before them.
“Kerek,” she hissed, and the animals narrowed their watery pink eyes at her under the low brows of heavy iron helms. Magdetchoi were not effected by Nesha-tari’s peculiarities, no more than she wanted to eat one of them. The hobgoblins saw her as she was, and they were not too impressed.
“Kerek!” she shouted as a demand. She knew the right name, at any rate.
The hobgoblins growled among themselves and one slouched off into the compound while the others continued to glare at her, and those who now joined her. Nesha-tari was aware of Shikashe and Zebulon behind her, and more dimly of Amatesu.
“The three of you will wait here,” she said in Zantish over her shoulder without looking back. “I will not be long.”
There was no response, and Nesha-tari clenched her teeth.
“Baj Nif, you slack-jawed moron. Tell the others.”
Baj Nif started speaking thickly in Codian, his voice just sounding stupid. Nesha-tari fought the urge to turn around and punch him in the face.
The hobgoblin returned and beckoned Nesha-tari forward with a heavy gauntlet, pointing her toward a sloping hut built in the nearest corner of the palisades. Nesha-tari strode for the hut where an emaciated jet-black bullywug with purple spots stood in the crooked doorway under twisting animal horns mounted to the beam. Acrid smoke wafted out of the hut around it, and beads, feathers, and trinkets hung from bands around its chest and arms.
Kerek was the sort of Magdetchoi mage most humans called a Witch Doctor. His importance to Nesha-tari was displayed in his cupola eyes, which were as solidly lightless as two massive black pearls.
The bullywug croaked, but Nesha-tari understood the words as if they had been spoken in Low Drak. Her raised spell of magic detection gave her a tickling twinge.
“I greet my sister of the Blue,” Kerek said.
“I greet my brother of the Black.”
Nesha-tari’s relationship to Kerek was far different than hers had been to Edgewise. The goblin had been the chosen servant of the Bronze Lady, a Great Dragon of the Land, who thus was due a grudging respect. Akroya and Danavod were both Great Dragons of the Sky, and the Azure One had been the greatest among those since the death of Ged-azi the Red. Black Danavod was least among the three Great Sky Dragons yet living, for the Winter Wyrm had perished in the years before men even numbered them.
“How may I serve you?” Kerek asked with a humble bow.
“There is a high priest of the Ayzantine faith of Ayon bound for this place, if he is not here already. You will search him out and inform me when he is discovered.”
Kerek swayed among the stinking smoke, the puffs breaking up in the air as the rain began to fall more strongly.
“And then?”
“Then I will kill him.”
Clear membranes passed over the bullywugs black eyes, and a webbed hand fingered some beads.
“A high priest of the Burning Man’s faith would be a very formidable being.”
“As am I.”
The little creature looked at her longer, rain pattering its hide. Drops fell from Nesha-tari’s hood as well, and while she loathed being wet she gave no sign. Finally, the wug shrugged.
“As you wish, sister.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Sable City Page 50