*
“Tell me again what you saw,” Garrolus Kreeth snarled.
“It was only one person,” the servant stammered. “That’s what we saw. One man in a dark cloak riding away with the cart we drive to town in the mornings.”
The rest of Kreeth’s staff cowered in the corner, keeping together as if bunching up might somehow siphon off their master’s terrible fury. On the wall across from them, another servant was pinned several feet above the floor as if an invisible hand held him.
Kreeth’s voice was sharp and dangerous as a viper’s fangs. “Tell me again how this intruder got in?”
“We think it was at breakfast time. He—he must have come in through a window.”
Kreeth made an angry motion with his hand. The servant slid backward as if being pulled by an invisible rope until he thumped against the wall. Then he began to lift off of the floor as his body slid up the wall.
“That means someone here left a window unlocked,” Kreeth growled. “And that means one of you has been working with my enemies.”
Everyone in the room went deathly still.
Before Kreeth said another word, the door to the room swung open and Ravel walked into the room, pausing only long enough to give short notice to the two servants hanging against the wall several feet off the ground.
“He lived,” Ravel said without preamble.
Kreeth raised a hand and muttered a word, then with a casually dismissive gesture, all of his servants’ faces suddenly went blank, and in their eyes, a glassy, vacant stare replaced their fear. The sorcerer snarled, “Why is he still alive?”
“It was Joachim. He jumped me before I could finish Kine off.”
Kreeth went silent for a moment. His face lost some of its previous fury, which was quickly replaced with annoyance. “This means I will have to disappear for a while.”
“But what about your search?”
“Are you so suddenly concerned with my welfare?” Kreeth asked suspiciously.
“No. I’m concerned about my money.”
“I have to see to my servants, first. After that, there is the matter of my guest upstairs. And I have more searchers to command. You’ll get your money, and more.”
With that, Kreeth snapped his fingers and the two suspended servants fell to the floor in crumpled heaps. “Help me gather these two up,” Kreeth said, looking down at them with contempt.
“What are we going to do with them?” Ravel asked.
“Feed them to my guest; I have no use for them anymore,” Kreeth said.
Ravel just shrugged his shoulders and bent to grab a servant underneath the arms. What Kreeth did with his staff was his business. After all, the money was good.
The Dread Lords Rising Page 54