“Indeed,” said the first. “Were it not for the chance to watch you, do you think anyone would work for what Malik is willing to pay?”
Now Aris did smile. “Is that why you were taking my shape studies?”
“Not exactly.” The guards cast nervous looks at each other, then the second one continued, “We took a handful for ourselves—it’s the only way someone less than a lord can afford your work—but Malik claimed most.”
“He was offering them as gifts to anyone who joined his church,” said the third guard.
“Why am I not surprised?” Aris growled. “After all I taught him, he knows better than to show a rough!”
The Shadovar shared smiles, then the first one said, “He certainly knew you would not like what he was doing. You should have seen his face when we told him you had started breaking them.”
“I thought his eyes would pop out of his head,” the second chuckled. “He actually lay on the floor beating it.”
“Yes, I would have liked to see that.”
Of all the betrayals Malik had perpetrated on him, Aris considered distributing his shape studies to be the worst. But he had more immediate problems to worry about, namely finding a few moments of privacy so he could swallow Storm’s pill and free the Chosen—before he starved to death. Kneeling on the floor so he could speak even more softly, he fixed his gaze on the first guard, who seemed to be more or less the leader of this trio.
“Gelthez, it is not fair that Malik profits so much from my work,” Aris said, “while he pays you a starving wage.”
“Amararl,” the guard corrected. He shrugged. “There are many things in this world that are not fair.”
Aris winced inwardly and forced himself to continue in a casual manner. “That’s so, but it’s also true that friends must do what friends can to make the world better for each other. I think I’ll make a piece for each of you, if you would like that.”
The mouths of all three dropped open.
“There’s nothing I would treasure more!” gasped Amararl.
“It’s true what the Arabellans say,” the second guard added. “Your heart is as big as you are.”
The third guard was not so enthusiastic.
“What would Malik say?”
“Malik may own me, but my work is mine to give.”
“I am certain he would feel otherwise,” said the third guard. “And the Most High would agree. Whatever a slave makes, a master owns. That is a law as old as Shade itself.”
“How unfortunate.” Aris sighed heavily. “That is a strange law. No giant would ever honor it.”
Aris left the statement to hang and retrieved his hammer, but continued to kneel on the floor and pretended to study his work. Just as he taught Malik the basics of sculpting, Malik had taught him the principles of negotiation. If his plan was to succeed, he knew that the guards themselves would have to suggest the critical illicit step.
It took only a moment before the first guard, Amararl, turned to the third. “Malik wouldn’t have to know, Karbe.”
“Of course he would have to know,” Karbe said, his amber eyes flashing in anger. “He is the Seraph of my lord Cyric, the One and All! We could no more deceive him than the Most—”
The objection came to a strangled end as a dagger tip—it belonged to the second guard, Gelthez—erupted from Karbe’s chest. Aris cried out in shock, but Amararl reacted by clasping his hand over the mouth of the dying Shadovar and pushing him back onto his attacker’s blade. Gelthez finished the murder with a quick back and forth flick, then withdrew the weapon and let his victim collapse to the ground.
“I was so tired of listening to all that babble about ‘The One,’ ” Gelthez said. “He was about to drive me as mad as his god.”
Amararl kicked the corpse to be certain it was dead, then nodded and looked up at Aris and said, “I think we can work something out.”
Aris could not stop staring at the corpse. Though he had seen plenty of death in battle, this was the first time he had ever been present at—no, been involved in—a murder.
“You killed him!” Aris gasped.
“Don’t worry about him, Aris.” Gelthez knelt over the body and wiped his dagger on its cloak. “He converted. It is no less than he deserved.”
“Converted?” Aris asked. “From what?”
“That is not important. Now, what is it you want?” Amararl asked. “We may not have—”
They were interrupted by the muffled voice of someone approaching the Black Portal.
“As you can see, Prince,” Malik was saying, “all of the sculpting is being done by my slave Aris—when he is not busy on his statues, of course.”
Amararl and Gelthez looked to each other, their jewel-colored eyes sparkling with alarm.
“Prince?” Gelthez mouthed.
Their gazes dropped to the corpse between them, and Amararl mouthed some curse Aris did not understand.
“And should you decide to become a member of Malik’s Temple of the One and All,” Malik continued, “you will receive a discount of a quarter of the price on any of Aris’s works you purchase.”
The sound of Malik’s feet scuffing the stairs came through the portal. Aris glanced outside, but saw only the murky facades of the buildings across the square.
“A discount?” It was the wispy voice of Prince Yder. “That does not seem much of a gift for the prestige I would bring by converting.”
Gelthez grabbed Karbe by the arms and started to drag him away, but the spreading pool of blood made vain any hope of concealing the corpse. Aris pushed the body back to the floor, then motioned the two Shadovar aside.
“Of course, the discount is only on purchases made after you become a worshiper of the One.” Malik’s voice grew more distinct as he neared the top of the stairs. “Once you have announced your conversion, it will be my pleasure to make a gift to you of any work you desire.”
“You are too kind.” Yder’s voice was even colder and more sibilant than usual. “I shall look forward to touring Aris’s studio.”
Outside, the crown of the prince’s head was just rising into view. Aris stood and dropped his hammer on Karbe. It hit with a resounding thud, obliterating all evidence of the murder in a spray of blood and bone.
The conversation outside fell silent.
Aris dropped to his rump with a crash far louder than the sound the hammer had made, then braced his head in his hands. There was no need to pretend he was dizzy. His head was already reeling from rising and coming back down too fast.
Malik rushed through the Black Portal. On his heels followed Yder, with a dozen gold-armored escorts close behind him. All eyes instantly fell on the mess beneath Aris’s hammer.
“What is this I see?” Malik gasped.
Gelthez was quick with the answer, “Aris did it!”
Aris glanced over and saw the Shadovar, trembling in fear of Yder, drawing his sword.
“Yes, that’s what happened.” Amararl stepped to Aris’s other side. “He grew dizzy and dropped his hammer. It happened to land on Karbe.”
“Is that so?”
Malik studied the mess beneath the stone hammer and the pool of blood spreading across the dark floor. When he saw the chip Aris had dislodged earlier, he marched across the narthex, his eyes bulging and his finger wagging.
“Look what you have done to my floor, you clumsy giant!” He stopped and stood in the divot. “If you would eat as I have commanded, you would have the strength to keep hold of your tools!”
Yder and his escorts followed Malik across the narthex.
“Aris is not eating?” asked the prince.
Malik cringed at his slip, then turned to face the prince. “It is nothing to concern yourself with.” He tried to stop speaking there, but his face twisted into the bitter mask it made whenever Mystra’s curse forced him to clarify a lie of omission. “He will certainly perish if he does not eat soon, but that will only increase the value of the pieces you purchase before he is gone.”
Yder stepped past Malik to where Aris was sitting. Tall even for a prince of Shade, he barely had to tip his head back to meet Aris’s gaze.
“Aris, why are you starving yourself?”
Afraid the prince would force an answer with the same magic Telamont used, Aris looked away and said the first thing that came to mind—well, the second, since the last thing he wanted to do was admit the truth.
“The food is not to my liking.”
“What?” Malik said. “Have I not offered to prepare anything your heart desires? Have I not brought whole boars from your own home in the Greypeak Mountains and roasted them under your nose, only to see the entire beast vanish down a rubbish chute when you could not be enticed to eat one bite?”
Aris’s mouth watered at the mere memory of the smell.
“I have never been fond of swine.” His stomach growled its protest of the lie, but he added, “I am more fond of yaddleskwee.”
“For the thousandth time,” Malik demanded, “how can I serve yaddleskwee when you refuse to say what it is?”
This drew a sharp-fanged grin from Yder.
“I see,” he said. “I think I know what this ‘yaddleskwee’ is.”
Aris gulped, sincerely hoping the prince did not. A favorite of fire giants, yaddleskwee was the food he most hated in the world. Somehow, he had just never developed a taste for pickled beholder brains.
“You do?” Malik asked.
Yder nodded. “It is not that difficult to figure out.” He raised his gaze back to Aris and said, “You refuse to eat because you are unhappy with Malik as a master.”
Aris breathed a sigh of relief, and nodded. “He was once a friend—”
“As I am still! Had I not asked the Most High to make you my slave, who knows what would have become of you?” Malik paused there, fighting against his curse, then continued, “Though I doubt your fate would have been much worse, for Shade values your art too highly to execute you out of hand.”
Aris ignored the protest and said, “But now he betrays me at every opportunity.” Aris glared down at Malik, and allowing the bitterness of his tone to give voice to his very real anger, said, “And he betrays my art.”
“Betray your art? Ungrateful giant! How many times must I save your life before you show thanks?”
Malik met Aris’s glare with a fierceness born of his own injured feelings—then he seemed to recall the prince he was trying to impress and grimaced, no doubt mortified at how badly matters were going. He took a breath and composed himself, then turned to Yder.
“Pay no attention to the prattling of a temperamental artist, Prince Yder. I will deal with my slave later—and I assure you he will eat.” Malik shot Aris a look of pure venom, then dared to touch the prince’s elbow and gestured toward the nave. “For now, however, allow me to show you the rest of the temple.”
Yder remained where he was and said, “I think not.” He glared down at the hand on his arm until Malik removed it, then looked back to Aris. “It pleases me to hear you are unhappy in Malik’s service.”
Malik’s eyes widened in alarm and he said, “If you think you can steal my slave—”
“Silence.” Yder’s hand was on Malik’s throat, squeezing until it appeared the little man’s eyes would pop from their sockets. “When I wish to hear your obscene voice again, I will break something and let you scream.”
Given the shade of purple Malik’s face was turning, Aris doubted the seraph could have protested had he dared try.
Aris asked, “Why should a slave’s feelings interest a prince of Shade?”
Yder’s yellow eyes glimmered in amusement.
“Because it would have been a great waste to eliminate you,” he said, “and now I know you will not—”
The sentence ended in a screech as Malik drew the dagger he kept hidden beneath his robe and brought the curved blade up into Yder’s wrist.
The prince’s hand opened, and Malik wasted no time gathering his wits or getting his breath back. He fled through the nave and vanished into the darkness between two columns.
Yder flung his arm forward, and showing no apparent concern for the hand flapping at the end of his bleeding wrist, cried, “After him!”
Yder’s escorts swept past in a dark rush, leaving Aris alone with his two guards and the prince. It was only a moment before the temple was filled with shouted commands and the chime of blades probing beneath black pews. Though Aris could not decide whether he was glad for Malik’s escape or sorry for it, he was not worried about what happen to the little man once he was caught. The seraph had an uncanny—Ruha insisted god-given—ability to vanish the instant he was out of sight.
Still trying to figure out why Yder was chasing Malik, Aris asked, “You did not come here to convert?”
“Hardly.”
Finally paying attention to his injury, Yder grabbed his flopping hand and pressed it back to his wrist. The bleeding ceased immediately, and black shadows began to swirl over the wound.
Yder continued, “It was bad enough when the worm stole the ear of the Most High, but this—” he rolled his eyes across the temple’s vaulted ceiling—“this could not stand. It is good you were not a part of it.”
Aris glanced up at the relief he had been working on and wondered how much the prince really knew about what he had been doing.
“You’re no Cyricist, I mean,” Yder said. “Your disappearance would have been difficult to explain.”
Aris asked, “And Malik’s won’t?”
“No one will notice. You will finish his temple, but Malik will become a recluse, never to be seen by anyone except his personal servants—personal servants who are loyal to the Hidden One.”
Aris did not have to ask who the Hidden One was. Though Shar had no temples in Shade—at least none he had ever noticed—the Mistress of the Night was popular enough in the city that Aris, gifted with the acute ears of most giants, seldom went more than a few hours without overhearing a whispered prayer to her.
At length, one of Yder’s escorts emerged from the nave and dropped to a knee.
“High One, the blasphemer has vanished.”
“Vanished?”
Yder glanced over to Aris’s guards, who, already trembling in fear of their own fates, could only shrug and shake their heads. His golden eyes deepened to stormy brown, and he looked back to his escort.
“You have used the Hidden One’s Gift?”
“We have, and still we could not find him,” the warrior said. “He must have escaped.”
“Escaped?” Yder’s voice was cold and level. “How did you let that happen?”
The escort’s gaze remained fixed on the floor.
“It is a mystery—” this was a favorite phrase of Shar’s worshipers—“the exits remain blocked, and we’ve searched every vestibule and chapel.”
Yder cursed under his breath, and it dawned on Aris how much the prince was risking. Malik had bragged many times about his relationship with Telamont and how his strategy to lure Galaeron back to Shade had earned the Most High’s undying gratitude. If only half of what the seraph claimed was true—and Aris knew that Mystra’s curse prevented him from telling a lie—then all Malik need do to save himself was reach the Palace Most High and report what had happened. If Yder survived Telamont’s wrath at all, his political base would be greatly weakened.
Having learned the hard way from Malik’s treachery, Aris thought he saw a way to turn the situation to his advantage. He could not volunteer the information too readily. Malik had taught him that the surest way to manipulate someone was to remind him of his problem, then let him think you knew a way to solve it.
“I may know where he went,” Aris said.
Yder spun on him. “And you remain silent?”
“It didn’t occur to me that you would want the opinion of a slave.”
“You are a slave by the Most High’s decree,” Yder said. “There is nothing I can do about that.”
Aris shrugged. “It was a
lso his decree that Malik be my—”
In a movement as smooth as a sliding shadow, Yder leaped into Aris’s lap and had the tip of a black sword pressed to his throat.
“If I am to be suffer once for defying the Most High, I may as well suffer twice.”
“There’s a trapdoor under the altar.” Aris began to wonder if he had played the game a little too well, and added, “Gelthez can show you.”
Yder turned his yellow eyes on the guard.
Gelthez’s jaw fell. “T-t-trapdoor?” He continued to stammer for a moment, then finally seemed to understand what Aris was doing to him. “He’s lying!”
“Go look. You open it by pressing on the left corner of the base stone.”
Aris had no idea whether this was where Malik had fled, but having built the secret door himself, he did know that Yder would find the passage.
“If Gelthez refused to open it for you,” the giant added, “perhaps it’s because he has converted.”
“Converted?” Gelthez gasped. He reached for his sword and spat, “Liar!”
Yder’s escort caught the guard’s arm before it could reach his scabbard, then slipped behind him and pressed a dagger to his back.
Gelthez turned to Yder with a look of desperation.
“You cannot listen to him, my prince. He is a murderer! He killed Karbe.”
Yder stepped off Aris’s lap and said, “I thought that was an accident.”
“No, it was—”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Yder said.
When he turned to Amararl, it was all Aris could do to keep from smiling. Amararl had no choice except to back up Aris or admit that he had lied earlier.
“The hammer was dropped, my prince,” he said. “It did not look intentional to me.”
This was enough for Yder, who nodded to the escort and said, “Take him and see. If he shows you how to open the door, spare his life.”
The escort bowed, and still holding his dagger at the man’s back, turned to leave.
“Send a company to the temple treasure vault,” Yder said. “I’ll join you there after I see to the giant.”
“The treasure vault, my prince?” the escort asked.
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