AN UNASSUMING GRAY CHEST HAS BEEN STOLEN FROM A POWERFUL SORCERER…

who will stop at nothing to guarantee its return. Once Julice Lock finds out the secret of the chest that has been handed down from mother to daughter for generations, she knows the danger the world is in.

Gerard uth Mondar and Galdar the minotaur, enemies again, are unwillingly detailed to retrieve Julice’s lost trinket, stolen by her most unsuitable suitor. As the journey to find Poko Rome and the chest progresses, though, it becomes clear that not all is what it seems, starting with Julice herself.

The truth about the contents of the chest comes out—and the question becomes whether any of them will survive the revelation.

Protecting Palanthas

( Dragonlance - Champions, Book 4 )

Douglas W. Clark

Dedication

To Nancy Virginia Varian, who
believed in my work from the
beginning. Thank you for sharing
my journey these many years and
for allowing me to be a part of
yours.

“Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Palanthas, where we lay our scene…”

Chapter 1

Galdar the minotaur strode toward Palanthas from the south, ignoring the stares and scowls of the people he encountered. Dressed as a minotaur hekfurion, he wore a gleaming steel breastplate, a red cloak, a kilt, and leather leggings. For weapons, he had a massive sword strapped to his back and a broad-bladed axe at his waist. Young men gasped and stepped aside at the sight of him. A matronly woman fainted, leaving the two small children who had hidden behind her skirts cowering without their protection. The pair shrieked and ran. One man drove his wagon off the road and into a ditch, so intently did he fix his terrified gaze on Galdar. Eggs flew and milk pails tumbled, spilling their contents into the muddy water and turning it a sickly white. The minotaur left the man cursing and cracking his whip in an effort to goad his team into pulling the wagon free of the muck. After every heave, the wagon only rocked back and sank deeper in the mire.

At seven feet tall from the soles of his feet to the tips of his curving horns, Galdar towered over such lesser beings as men. His heavily muscled body, covered with his tough, furry hide, rendered him almost invulnerable to attack by these bare-skinned, puny creatures, even had he not been wearing the breastplate. Although traveling alone, he walked without fear toward the heart of one of their most densely populated centers. Indeed, the knowledge of his own superiority almost made up for his missing right arm.

Almost.

Word of his coming fanned out ahead of him, spreading like a forest fire that leaped from treetop to treetop as it outraced the wind. Thus it was that by the time he reached the outermost buildings of the city proper in the late afternoon, a squad of Solamnic Knights awaited him. The four younger knights shuffled nervously, their swords half-drawn. Their grizzled leader handled himself with more composure. He stepped into Galdar’s path and raised a hand, palm outward in a signal to halt. The other hand rested easily on the pommel of his sword.

“What do you want here, minotaur?” he demanded. “This is a peaceful city. We don’t deal with your kind here. Do you come looking for trouble?”

Galdar didn’t bother answering the man’s insolence. Wordlessly, he reached inside a pouch slung over one shoulder and produced two letters. He handed these to the squad leader, who stepped back to relative safety while his eyes scanned the first sheet. As he read, his features turned down in a scowl. “What foolishness is this? A minotaur to address the Grand Council of the Knights of Solamnia?” He glared at Galdar. “What business could a minotaur possibly have before the council?”

“I believe the letter makes my business clear enough,” Galdar said.

“It says you represent that brigand Samuval—”

“Baron Samuval.”

Galdar kept his voice carefully neutral. Nevertheless, the squad leader took another step back. “Yes, well, be that as it may, I still don’t see how the council’s deliberations could possibly concern the likes of you—or your master.”

The squad leader gave the last word a scornful emphasis.

“Is this the famous honor of the Knights of Solamnia?” Galdar snorted. “I’ve seen better manners from a gully dwarf.” He ignored the surge of tension that crackled through the younger knights at his words. “Now, we can settle this with weapons, in which case I’ll quickly learn the color of your blood, or you can let me pass.”

The squad leader quivered with indignation. His jaw clenched and unclenched. The hand resting on his sword pommel balled into a fist. He glanced at the second letter, and his face purpled with rage. “You? An ambassador!”

Galdar said nothing, but made a point of flexing his fingers and limbering up his arm and shoulder, as if at any moment he might have need of his warrior’s strength and suppleness.

The squad leader tried gamely to stare him down but to no effect. At last, he thrust the letters back at Galdar. “Men, I think we’d best escort our guest to where he claims to be going,” he said with a sneer. “Perhaps we can find him a nice barnyard to stay in on the way. I’d hate to see him come to any harm before he carries out his duties.”

Galdar didn’t rise to the bait. He knew what the second letter said and where he’d be staying.

At a gesture from their leader, the four younger knights took up positions before and behind the minotaur. From the nervous sideways glances they cast at their charge, they made evident the fact that they feared more from him than from any human attackers. They made their way more slowly than Galdar had traveled, for humans afoot could not match a minotaur’s pace. The road of hard-packed earth turned into a cobbled street lined with shops and crowded with people. Yet the teaming populace did nothing to hinder Galdar’s progress, for all dropped hurriedly away at the sight of him, anxious to let him pass. Dogs barked and horses shied. Conversations stopped or continued in whispers. The squad of Solamnic Knights served, for all practical purposes as a grudging honor guard, buffering the minotaur from direct contact with the masses. At one point, a young woman with dark hair and piercing amethyst eyes stumbled out of the way into the gutter and glared at Galdar and the knights as if her misstep were all their fault.

Being escorted by the knights suited Galdar just fine, for he preferred to keep his dealings with the citizens of Solamnia to a minimum. He wished only to accomplish the mission Samuval, his former comrade in arms, had entrusted him with. Although, as the emissary to humans from his god Sargonnas, Galdar supposed he had better get used to dealing with the people of Palanthas as much as humans living elsewhere.

Samuval had told Galdar that he found himself constrained in his new role as uncrowned ruler of Qualinesti following the War of Souls. Outlaws and bandits harassed him in the south, and exiled elves conducted guerilla raids against him in the north. Word had reached him that the town of Solace intended to ask the Solamnic Knights to increase their presence there in order to limit his activities in the region. That last step Samuval found intolerable. Unable to leave the burden of his office to make an appeal to the knights himself, he had requested that Galdar do so as his appointed agent. It was not a petition Galdar welcomed, but he wouldn’t abandon his former comrade and present friend.

Besides, accepting Samuval’s request seemed in keeping with the charge Galdar had had laid on him by Sargonnas.

They climbed ever higher, heading toward the summit that crowned the city of Palanthas. Before long, Galdar smelled a change in the air—salt water. They were nearing the Bay of Branchala, with its access to the open sea. Galdar felt a familiar stirring within him, born of his youth spent aboard ship. Ten good years, that had been. Long enough for life at sea to penetrate his flesh and forever claim a part of his soul. He wished he had sailed to Palanthas by ship instead of having to trek across country from the landward side. He longed to feel the pitch and roll of a deck under him, to pull on the oars of a galley to the beat of the deck master’s drum. When Samuval’s request had come, Galdar had been acting in his new capacity as Sargonnas’s emissary, in that case in Solanthus. A journey overland was the shortest route. However, it felt gratifying to once again be within reach of the sea.

The strange entourage headed straight through the merchandising district; the knights marched while Galdar, with his longer legs, merely sauntered. They passed through one of the eight gates in the Old City Wall, still climbing. The Great Library rose up on their left, then fell behind. As they climbed, the younger knights cast questioning glances at one another, but none of them dared ask their leader where they were headed. Finally, they reached the emperor’s palace at the very hub and highest point of the city, which spread out like a wheel around and below it. The major streets acted as spokes radiating from that center.

From his vantage point, Galdar was treated to a view of the Bay of Branchala ahead, nestled at the base of the city’s northern slope. A stiff breeze whipped up from the bay, blowing into his face and rippling his fur. Galdar drank in the rich, briny smell. With the breeze came the scent of distant rain. Clouds clustered far out on the horizon, signaling a possible squall there, while all remained calm in the bay. The slight undulation of waves in the bay lapped beneath the hulls of the ships bobbing at anchor. As he watched, oarsmen in a pair of longboats towed an aging merchant ship alongside the docks, the vessel’s sails furled in the harbor. Seamen with ropes leaped ashore to secure the ship to moorings so its cargo could be unloaded.

Galdar sighed and returned his attention to his immediate surroundings, for the squad leader had signaled a halt. The younger knights’ mouths gaped in disbelief, their eyes not on the sea, but on the palace directly before them. Galdar was obliged to give the building a cursory glance, for it obstructed his full view of the bay. Acknowledged throughout Ansalon as an architectural marvel, it bristled with imperial majesty, its vaulted roofs housing various wings and several stories. Its numerous spires and turrets challenged the sky. Galdar shrugged, less taken by the structure than were his escorts. Then he realized the younger knights weren’t captivated by the building’s lofty grandeur, but by the fact that it had been their destination. Even then, the leader of the squad was turning Galdar over to the imperial guards, who ushered him with formal dignity through the main doors.

As the representative of a sovereign ruler as well as the emissary of a god, Galdar was entitled to certain privileges. For as long as he stayed in Palanthas, a suite of rooms in the palace would be his home. Galdar snorted and strode into the building’s depths, wishing he could have taken a berth on the merchant ship he’d just watched arrive at the docks instead. Life aboard the lowliest barge would have been preferable to the endless protocol he’d have to endure here.

He wondered briefly who would represent Solace before the council. Undoubtedly, the task would fall to Palin Majere, not that it mattered.

Even as Galdar was shown through the palace corridors toward the rooms that were to be his during his stay, Gerard uth Mondar waited anxiously for the gangplank of the merchant ship he’d arrived on to be lowered. No sooner had it touched the dock than he stumbled gratefully ashore. In his rush to arrive in Palanthas in time to address the Knights’ Council as Solace’s official representative, he’d been forced to seek passage on that rotten carcass of a ship, which the very rats had had the good sense to quit.

The entire voyage had made Gerard anxious. At the time, he could scarcely blow with cooling breath across a steaming mug of tarbean tea but that it called to his mind what harm a great wind at sea might do to so unseaworthy a vessel. He couldn’t glance at the sand spilling through the hourglass that marked the hours of the watch without thinking of the shallows and flats where the rickety ship might run aground. And if he chanced to pluck a stone from his boot, he thought straightaway of the dangerous rocks lurking beneath the surface, which, with the gentlest touch against the vessel’s leaky hull, would spill her cargo upon the waves and sink both ship and crew in a trice.

Safely dockside, he wobbled the ship’s length on legs grown more familiar with a shifting deck than a steady foundation. At the aft cargo hatch, stevedores were already unloading the vessel’s hold. Soon one of them led a horse, a handsome bay, down the gangplank. Gerard waited eagerly, running a hand through his thatch of short-cropped but still unruly straw yellow hair. With practiced indifference, he ignored the stares of those around him who flinched at the sight of his face—a face ravaged by childhood disease and only partially obscured by a short, scruffy beard.

Once onto the dock, the bay blew and stamped. Gerard accepted its bridle from the stevedore, thinking Thunderbolt looked as glad as Gerard felt to have landed safely at last. For a while, they stood on the dock, expecting to be met by an envoy from the Knights’ Council, but no one came. Gerard wondered if it was the reception he could expect for having resigned from the Knighthood.

At last, horse and rider made their own way through the thronged streets of Palanthas, still pleased to be leaving the ship behind them. Gerard wished he could have arrived by a land route instead of being forced to journey by sea, but that would have required months of the most roundabout travel from Solace. However, he was here and glad for once to be among crowds, even if they did tend to stare.

He guided Thunderbolt around a trio of stoutly marching dwarfs whose short strides were no match for the horse’s, then slipped between a couple of burly laborers who were lumbering to work—only to be blocked by a group of elegantly dressed women who seemed to have nothing more serious in mind than a casual stroll. Even at midafternoon, with everyone bustling about their business, Palanthas hurried with a more stately, dignified air than Solace, whose boomtown ways seemed raw and provincial by comparison.

Gerard managed to thread Thunderbolt around the women, almost colliding with a rattling milk cart in the process. A hundred yards farther, he paused to watch with professional interest as two scholars encountered each other up ahead. That they were scholars he surmised almost as much from their rumpled, food-stained clothes (evidence of the wearers’ disdain for the ordinary dictates of grooming) as from the fact that one carried a heavy scroll case and the other lugged a massive tome. The two skirted one another warily. Just as they were about to pass, Scroll Case raised his hand to his face in a universal symbol of contempt.

Tome stopped so abruptly the book almost fell from his grasp. “Did you thumb your nose at me?”

“I did thumb my nose,” said Scroll Case.

“But did you thumb your nose at me?” Tome demanded.

“Just because I do this”—Scroll Case thumbed his nose a second time in the other’s direction—“doesn’t mean you should take it amiss. Anyone with your powers of construing reality in whatever way suits your whim should be able to make light of a simple matter such as this.”

“My powers of construing reality! I assume, sir, you refer to my procedure for dating events in the time of the Kingpriest. My way being the correct approach, I might add, unlike the sloppy way you go about—” Tome broke off when Scroll Case again thumbed his nose. Tome huffed several times, seemingly at a loss for how to continue. At last, he abandoned words altogether and raised his book, bringing it down with a loud thump on Scroll Case’s head.

“Ow!” Scroll Case began to beat his opponent about the ears with the heavy leather tube that housed his scrolls.

While the pair sought with determination to drive home their respective arguments, Gerard shook his head and urged Thunderbolt forward. As sheriff of Solace, he pitied the city guard in Palanthas, whose responsibility it was to keep the peace.

Periodically, Gerard consulted the scrawled directions Palin had given him that supposedly led to the inn where he would be staying. But the directions seemed to match no street Gerard encountered. Finally, he gave up and asked an old woman with a huge basket of laundry for help. She pointed out the way, and Gerard leaned down to press a small coin into her palm. She smiled toothlessly and curtsied. Gerard was just about to continue on when he thought to ask about the altercation he had witnessed between the two scholars.

“Aye. Palanthas is beset with the likes of ’em lately,” the old woman cackled. She squinted myopically up at his face. “My, you’re an ugly one, aren’t you?”

Gerard felt his face redden. “Um, yes, I suppose I am. So tell me about these scholars.”

“Oh, they’ve been meeting all week at the Great Library. Something about fixing the dates of things that happened back before the First Cataclysm, for all the good that will do anyone.”

Gerard nodded. It was an era whose precise history was obscured by the passage of subsequent centuries—not to mention by the devastation wreaked as a result of the Cataclysm itself.

The woman chortled and went on. “Fell into two camps, they did, almost from the first day. Now they bring their differences with them, right out of the Great Library and into the streets. Entertaining it’s been, too, to see their tussles. Not as dangerous to watch as the fights between those two rival orders of the Knights of Solamnia.”

“Rival orders?”

“You know, the Knights of the Rose and the Knights of the Crown. Each claims to follow a higher standard of honor than the other. And they like to bicker and brawl with one another to prove it.” Still laughing, she continued on her way.

Lost in thought, Gerard turned down the side street the woman had indicated. So hostility had broken out between the Knights of the Rose and the Knights of the Crown. It didn’t surprise him, and yet he was disappointed. He still hoped for more admirable behavior among the Knights, even after their failure to come to the aid of Qualinesti following the War of Souls. That failure had precipitated Gerard’s resignation, when he realized the Knights weren’t going to uphold what he saw as their sacred obligation to oust the scoundrel Samuval.

Evidently, Gerard’s former comrades still held his resignation against him. Had it been Palin who arrived in Palanthas to represent Solace before the council, Gerard felt certain he’d have been met at the dock by a formal delegation. Instead, Gerard was left to his own devices.

He turned at the next corner and reined in his horse when he saw the inn. Its roof sagged, the windows were begrimed, and the paint had long since peeled. A dilapidated sign portrayed a jester with several round objects arching above his outthrust hands. Beneath the figure, faded letters identified the establishment as The Juggler’s Balls. Gerard gritted his teeth. Still, the place might not be all that bad on the inside, he told himself. One could always hope.

But the town of Solace was paying for his lodgings, and Palin had made clear the budget was tight. With the high prices in Palanthas, this was the best the town was able to afford.

Summoning his resolve, Gerard turned Thunderbolt over to the hostler at the inn’s stable and went inside. The common room reeked of stale sweat, stale ale, and fried onions. At least the onions smelled relatively fresh, not likely to be too moldy. He wrinkled his nose and wondered whether Samuval’s representative was faring any better. For that matter, who would Samuval’s representative be? Probably no one important. After all, who could Samuval prevail upon to intelligently argue his side?

Feeling better, Gerard sought out the innkeeper to arrange for a room.

Late that evening, shortly after the sun had set but before either Solinari or Lunitari rose to cast its feeble light upon the scene, Poko Rome stood in the orchard of the Lock estate and peered up at the second story. “Hey, Julice!”

A beautiful dark-haired young woman with striking amethyst eyes flounced onto her balcony. “Shh! You want Father to catch you? I’ll never hear the end of it if he does.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Poko muttered under his breath. Then louder, but still keeping it to a whisper, he said, “So are you going to toss me down a rope or what?”

Julice pouted. “I think it would be more romantic if you climbed up the vine.”

Poko’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed the ivy clinging to the wall. “You think it’d be more romantic if I died of a broken neck? That vine would pull loose from the stones before I got halfway up.”

“If you really loved me, you’d be willing to take that risk.”

“If I really loved you,” Poko mimicked in a whispered, stagy falsetto. In his normal voice, he continued, “Just toss me the blasted rope before any of your father’s men catch me here. I’d be just as dead with a sword through my liver as I would from falling.”

“All right, all right. You don’t have to get snippy about it.” Julice disappeared for a moment, then returned and dropped the end of a rope over the balustrade.

“Is the other end securely tied?” Poko asked, giving the rope a tug and feeling it give.

“Oh.” Julice went inside again. She was gone longer then. “I swear, you expect me to remember everything,” she complained when she reappeared.

Poko tugged on the rope again. It held. He began climbing hand over hand. “If you were really such a mighty sorceress”—he panted—“you’d just conjure up a flight of stairs.”

“As if I could conjure anything more substantial than illusions! However, I should summon the appearance of stairs for you and let you fall on your head trying to climb them.”

Poko reached the railing and swung a leg over. “Give me a hand, will you,” he gasped after struggling to clamber the rest of the way up.

Julice grabbed his belt and heaved. Their combined efforts rolled him over the balustrade, where he dropped in a heap on the balcony floor.

“Thanks,” he said, standing up and dusting off his clothes. “I think your room gets higher every time.”

“That’s because you spend your days roaming from tavern to tavern, drinking ale and flirting with the serving wenches, instead of getting any exercise.”

Poko refrained from answering, for the charge was all too true. Of course, it could be argued that he did get some exercise after all, not only in the roaming but as a consequence of his successful flirting. Yet it was better Julice didn’t know about that.

Julice, meanwhile, had strolled into her chamber, pausing before a mirror long enough to ensure that her hair hadn’t been mussed. Poko rolled his eyes at her blatant vanity, although he did so behind her back so she wouldn’t see.

The chamber was strewn with every sort of costly knickknack and priceless bauble Julice had been able to wheedle from her father. With professional skill, Poko snagged an emerald brooch from a table as he passed and slipped it in his pocket. He gestured toward the four-poster bed, where an expensive-looking dress lay, fouled and torn at the hem. “What happened there?”

“Oh, it was the most dreadful thing!’ she said. “I was practically run down by a mob of knights and some minotaur—”

“A minotaur? Here in Palanthas?”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t anywhere else today!” She sniffed. “I suppose he was their prisoner. It would serve him right, causing me to ruin a perfectly good dress.”

“How odd. I mean, how awful for you!” He paused, allowing himself to seem duly concerned before going on. “Your message said you had something important to tell me. What is it?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, that.” She fixed her expression in a pretty frown she had undoubtedly rehearsed beforehand. “Father found out about us. He says I have to break off our engagement.”

“What?” Poko was so taken aback, his eyes started from the mirror where he had been inspecting his own deliberately tousled locks and practicing his characteristic lopsided grin. “How did he find out?”

“I may have let it slip,” Julice said carelessly, running a hand down the lace curtains that could be drawn to enclose her bed.

“Let it slip? I’d say that’s a pretty big slip.”

She spun on him. “See, I just knew you’d take it like that. You’re always judging me. But it wasn’t my fault.” She sauntered away. “Well, not exactly.”

“What, exactly, did you let slip?”

“I was defending you. I happened to say that in some circles, your family has as much prestige as ours.”

“And what circles would those be?”

“The underworld, of course. Among the criminal element.”

Poko considered that with pride. “That’s true, we are very well thought of in the Thieves’ Guild. But I don’t suppose your father sees it that way.”

“His exact words were that he’d sooner die than see me married to a Rome.”

“That could be arranged,” Poko ventured. “I mean, if you’d like.”

“No, I don’t think so.” She sighed. “Not right now.” She blinked several times until she worked a tear free to trickle down one cheek then threw herself theatrically into Poko’s arms. “Oh, what shall we do? Our love is doomed!”

Poko extricated himself. “Doomed?”

“Yes,” she wailed, clutching him again. “Ours is a true love that must be torn asunder.”

Poko wondered where she had learned a word like asunder.

“It’s so cruel, so tragic,” she continued, “so… so…” She huffed and spun away, apparently unable to think of another suitably dramatic term.

Poko cupped his chin with one hand and thought. He’d invested too much time in this enterprise to abandon it so easily. The Lock fortune couldn’t be allowed to slip through his fingers in such a way. “We could run away,” he suggested. “Get married in Solanthus. Your father would have to accept me then.”

“No, he’d just cut me out of my inheritance. That wouldn’t be good.”

“Hmm, no, that wouldn’t be good.”

Julice opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by a voice from the corridor outside her chamber. “Julice?”

“Just a moment, nurse,” Julice responded. She turned back to Poko. “No, I’ve thought it over, and I’m truly sorry, but you must run away to live a life of abstinence and poverty in some dreadful place such as the Plains of Dust or somewhere equally romantic.”

There was that word again. “Julice, have you been reading more of those wretched stories?”

“They’re not wretched! They’re—”

“Julice?” came the voice from the corridor again, more insistently. “My lady?”

“I said just a minute!”

“My lady, your father is looking for you.”

Julice snorted indignantly and stormed toward the door. “Stay here,” she whispered over her shoulder to Poko. “We can decide where you should go and be miserable when I get back.” With that, she left, opening the door just wide enough to slip through.

Poko took stock of his surroundings, estimating how much loot he could carry away with him. But his heart wasn’t really in the task for some reason. He flopped down on Julice’s bed and stared at the wall opposite. He was feeling strangely disappointed. Yes, if he had to admit it, he was feeling rejected.

Her willingness to let them part stung him to the quick. Could his celebrated mischievous looks and roguish charm be letting him down? But that was an impossible conclusion—completely unacceptable!

Gradually, his eyes focused on a shelf adorning the far wall. Three jewel chests were ranged in a row, two of them practically begging to be stolen. On the right side stood a ruby-encrusted gold chest that promised an abundance of jewelry within. For sheer wealth, that box would be his first choice, without a doubt. On the left side perched an intricately wrought silver chest, carved with bas-relief depictions of the gods. That box, too, boasted of the valuables it undoubtedly held.

Between them sat a simple, ugly lead-gray chest, made from strips of the unassuming metal like some miserable attempt at parquet. Two plain brass bands encircled the box as if binding the disparate strips together. The thing couldn’t have looked more disreputable if its maker had tried, and that intrigued Poko. Why, he wondered, had Julice placed so vulgar a piece of workmanship between two chests of such obviously superior value?

Not one to assume matters such as that were ever a result of mere chance, he leaped off the bed, grabbed the leaden chest with a grunt, and rushed to the balcony. “Here, catch this casket,” he quipped to the darkness below. “It ought to be worth the pains—as long as it doesn’t give you a hernia.” He snickered, pleased with his little joke, for no one waited in the orchard to catch this or anything else he might throw down. But he had no way to carry the chest as he descended the rope, so he dropped it carefully among the ivy roots, hoping they would cushion the fall.

At least the box didn’t appear to have burst. For a moment, he stood with his hands tucked into his armpits for warmth, for the chest was curiously cold for so warm a night. Then he lowered himself over the balustrade and shinnied down the rope. Grabbing up the icy chest, he hastened from the orchard, eager to learn what riches the box might hold. If his hunch proved right and the chest was a carefully understated depository housing untold wealth, Julice wouldn’t rest until she’d gotten it back.

That would ensure she didn’t just send him packing, to be forgotten, all too soon. And if she decided not to give chase after all—well, he’d just have to keep whatever riches the chest contained.

Which might not be a bad idea in any case.

Chapter 2

“Father!” Julice’s shrill cry echoed through the Lock mansion. “Poppy!”

Capul Lock cringed. It was never a good thing when his daughter reverted to using her childhood name for him. And just when he’d thought himself safely ensconced in his library, tallying up columns of figures from his shipping business. Numbers—one could always count on them to behave rationally. Either one made a profit or one did not; there was never any doubt about the matter.

It was not so with people, especially when those people consisted of his daughter. She burst into the room, shattering his illusory calm by banging the door open against the wall.

“Yes?” he said, trying to affect an attitude of equanimity.

She flung herself into a chair across the table from him, sending papers flying with the turbulence of her arrival. He frowned and bent to retrieve them as they fluttered to the floor. “What’s wrong, pet?” he asked from under the table.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong! I’ll tell you what’s wrong. My jewel chest has been stolen!”

“Mm?” Capul replied noncommittally, toting up a mental estimate of how much the loss would cost him. Of course, it was not as if anything had really been stolen. More likely Julice merely misplaced one of her many jewel chests and would discover it again soon after she’d finagled him into buying new trinkets to replace the old ones. He sighed and sat up again, having recovered all the papers. “And which jewel chest would this be?”

“That dreadful old thing Mother left me,” Julice pouted. “Though why she couldn’t have bequeathed something better to her only child, I’ll never know.”

A chill ran down Capul’s spine. “The, uh, dreadful old leaden jewel chest?”

“Yes,” Julice said sulkily.

“The one that her letter to you said must be guarded at all costs?”

She nodded, playing with a loose thread on her sleeve.

Capul still couldn’t believe what she was saying. Surely he’d heard wrong. “The one that has been in your mother’s family, handed down from mother to daughter for untold generations?”

“Yes, yes, that one! You don’t have to keep asking me, all right?” Her lower lip stuck out even farther. “I just hope he pulled a muscle in some tender part of him when he stole it from me.”

“He?”

“Poko Rome, of course! He’s the one who took it.”

“And what was Poko Rome doing in your room? I thought I told you to break off your engagement to the scoundrel!”

“That’s exactly what I was doing. Gods, you act like this was all my fault!”

Capul judiciously resisted saying that it was all her fault. “We have to get it back. I don’t know what your mother told you is in it—she never confided in me, claiming it was a secret known only to each keeper of the chest in turn. But I do know she regarded the contents as extremely valuable—and dangerous.”

Julice shrugged, her attention again on the thread. “Anyway, the chest was mine, and he had no right to take it.”

“What shall we do?” Capul moaned, talking to himself. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “We’ve got to get it back.”

“We should send the Knights of Solamnia after him,” Julice said heatedly. “That would teach him!”

“Oh, I think the Knights of Solamnia are much too busy—” Capul began.

Julice sat up abruptly. “Yes, that’s it. Those knights are always looking for some honorable mission. We’ll tell the knights they just have to get it back. It’s a matter of my honor!”

“Now, pet, I don’t know—”

“I thought you said you were friends with the head of the Knights’ Council.” She studied her father from under lowered eyelids, gauging the effect of her words. “Besides, you said yourself that what’s in the chest is dangerous.”

“Hmm, you know, it might help if I could tell the knights exactly what is in the chest,” he ventured. “Your mother told you… didn’t she?”

“Father! You wouldn’t have me break a confidence, would you?”

“No, I guess not,” he admitted, noting dryly that he had been demoted to “Father” again rather than “Poppy.” Clearly, she felt herself once more on firmer ground.

“Then you’ll do it?”

“I’ll try,” he said. “Although I can’t promise anything.”

She smiled, unconcerned by the prospect of his being turned down. “And when they find him, tell them they have my permission to run him through if he puts up a fight—which I hope he does!” With that, she flounced from the room, neglecting to close the door on her way out.

With a grimace, Capul pushed his ledgers aside, took up pen and paper, and began crafting a letter to his old friend Aldric uth Gaynor, head of the Knights’ Council. Capul had little expectation that his request would be granted. Still, he felt he had to try.

Meanwhile, as soon as she was out of earshot of the library, Julice hitched up her skirts and hastened down the corridor and up the long, curving staircase to the second floor. When she reached her room, she carefully locked the door behind herself and began searching through drawers and closets, tossing clothing and expensive accoutrements aside in the fervor of her quest. Where was that blasted letter! It had to be around somewhere.

Truth to tell, once Julice had discovered that the chest left to her held no jewelry, she hadn’t bothered reading her mother’s message through to the end to learn what the ugly box actually did contain. She had simply placed it on a shelf and forgotten about it, preferring to occupy herself with more important concerns such as the latest hairstyles and what women of rank were wearing. It occurred to her that knowing what was in the chest could be useful. She might be able to put the information to her advantage, perhaps even leveraging it into an entire new wardrobe. And who could blame her—her old clothes were so dreadfully out of fashion!

Not far from the Lock estate, while Julice searched for the missing letter, Galdar endured a formal breakfast with the emperor. They sat at opposite ends of a long, gleaming table, waited on by a small army of servants dressed in imperial livery. In a corner of the room, a girl with a lute picked out delicate melodies. Galdar perched awkwardly on an elegant, carved wooden chair built to human proportions, seated sideways at a table designed to accommodate human knees and legs. The effect made him feel oversized and grotesque—an impression intensified by his distorted reflections staring back at him from the curved sides of the gold serving dishes.

Conversation between host and guest was necessarily limited by the vast expanse of polished wood that separated them, and what little they did have to say was limited to political maneuvering on the part of the emperor, who seemed keenly interested in learning the intentions of the minotaurs that held Silvanesti. Galdar cautiously deflected the questions, all the while trying to assure the emperor of the minotaurs’ peaceful aims. Inwardly, he groaned, wishing he were back on military duty, eating a soldier’s hasty field rations while stationed in a makeshift camp. The stringiest meat and driest hardtack shared among comrades in arms would be preferable to the extravagant meal of candied pear halves soaked in brandy, whole baked larks stuffed with hummingbird tongues, and hard-boiled pheasant eggs whose scooped-out yolks had been replaced with a goose liver pâte. But he would not forsake the responsibility his god had laid upon him. No matter how onerous the task became, he would persevere.

At last Galdar was able to claim the need to leave for his scheduled appearance at the Knights’ Council as justification for excusing himself, and if he hurried from the palace somewhat sooner than necessary, he felt he could be forgiven for the deception. After all, how much courtly behavior could one be expected to abide?

Of course, walking through the streets of Palanthas, where he was greeted with fear and loathing, proved not much better. Children wailed and adults fell back hissing. Horses snorted and shied. Dogs barked, the braver among them snapping at his heels. Again and again, he saw furtive gestures inscribed upon the air as those he passed drew signs to ward off evil. Few of the citizens, it seemed, had ever set eyes on one of his kind. He felt sorry for their deprived state, of course; nevertheless, he wished they would just get over it and accept him for what he was—naturally superior in every way.

With the Bay of Branchala at his back, he strode downhill from the palace, following directions given him by one of the emperor’s guards. Soon he arrived at the headquarters of the Knights of Solamnia, aware of the irony that the building that housed his former enemies should appear as a refuge from the rigors of traversing the city streets.

For a moment, he studied the marble building with its ornate columns and imposing portico and intricately carved double doors. A pair of knights flanked the entrance, standing rigidly at attention, their gaze fixed straight ahead. Galdar approved of their military bearing even as he disdained the elegance of the building they guarded. It was, he reflected, far too decorative a structure to house an order of warriors. He shook his massive bull’s head, at a loss to account for how the Knights of Solamnia ever managed to win the War of Souls if that was indicative of their moral fiber. At last, he marched up the steps, his long legs taking them two at a time, and approached the entry.

As one man, the two guards saluted and flung open the doors for him. Then one of them preceded him inside, evidently prepared to guide him to the council’s chamber. At least the knights had been alerted to expect his arrival, Galdar reflected, unlike the squad he’d encountered at the city’s outskirts the previous day. If the pair before him found the arrival of a minotaur at their doorstep surprising, they had the presence of mind not to show it. Galdar grunted and strode inside, stooping slightly as he passed through doors that for all their fancy carving were still too low to admit unbowed someone of his stature.

For just a moment, he wondered suspiciously whether they might not have chosen that building for that very reason.

Across town, meanwhile, in a poorer quarter of the city frequented by neither Julice nor Galdar, Gerard sat in the crowded common room of his inn, scratching at the bites left by the fleas and lice that had shared his mattress. Morosely, he stared at the bowl before him on the rough, warped planks of the table. He raised a bent pewter spoon and tipped it, watching the thin gruel dribble back into the bowl. Occasionally, a congealed lump fell from the spoon and landed in the bowl with a plop.

A harried, pinch-faced serving wench started to rush past his table. Gerard managed to catch her attention by leaning so far out on his stool that she was forced to either stop or run into him. “Yes?” she said with a put-upon sigh. “What is it?”

“I asked for porridge.”

She glanced at the chipped enamel bowl before him. “Yes, so?”

“This is gruel, not porridge. There’s a difference.”

She shook her head. “Not here there’s not. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other tables to see to.” She shoved past him, threatening to topple him from the stool as she forced him aside with her hip.

With a grimace, Gerard pushed the bowl aside and reached for the small loaf of dry, brown bread instead. He brushed a light dusting of ash from the loaf and broke it, wondering how long ago it had been baked. Inside, tiny weevils crawled about. He dropped the two halves of bread onto the plate in disgust and rose, deciding he would pick up something to eat on his way to the Knights’ Council meeting. For that matter, he would have to find where the meeting was being held, since the Knights’ headquarters in the High Clerist’s Tower had been destroyed.

He sought out the innkeeper to ask directions. Silently, he cursed Samuval, whose fault the whole mess was. After all, it was Samuval, whether he went by his former rank of captain or by his subsequent, self-conferred title of baron, who was responsible for Gerard’s appearance before the council.

Samuval’s presence so near Solace had created nothing but problems for the town. Unable to defend itself adequately from the predations of Samuval’s men whenever they were on leave, the town council of Solace had decided to send an envoy to request help from the Knighthood, hoping thereby to force Samuval to at least pretend to be a responsible neighbor instead of turning an openly blind eye to the troubles his men caused.

Gerard had serious misgivings about the Knighthood’s willingness to respond to the town’s need, any more than the Knights had heeded their sacred duty by ousting Samuval from Qualinesti in the first place. Palin Majere, however, as lord mayor of Solace, had initiated the audience, expecting to address the council himself. But at the last minute, pressing business in Solace forced Palin to entrust the entire mission to Gerard, the town sheriff, instead, explaining that he felt more than confident that Gerard’s former association with the Knighthood would be sufficient to prevail upon them to come to the town’s aid.

Clearly, Palin had more confidence in the Knighthood than had Gerard.

So Gerard had reluctantly turned over the keeping of the peace in Solace to his deputy, Vercleese, and had made his way with all possible haste to Palanthas, arriving just in time for the council’s opening deliberations. At least he would soon be able to return home, possibly even leaving by the end of the week if the council agreed to hear his petition right away. The Knights would listen with appropriate solemnity, would decline to act on Solace’s behalf, and Gerard would be on his way. However, he resolved not to say “I told you so” to Palin when he returned because that would be petty.

Well, maybe he’d say it only once… not more than a couple of times, anyway.

Soon Gerard was hurriedly making his way through the crowded streets of Palanthas, realizing that the time had gotten away from him. He would be late if he weren’t careful, and that wouldn’t put his request in a very favorable light with the council. There was no need to hand them a reason for denying his petition without even pretending to consider it.

At a tavern called The Bent Copper, he had to pause when a kender was thrown into his path. “How many times do I have to tell you?” someone bellowed from inside. “We don’t serve your kind here!” The tavern door slammed shut.

The kender got up and brushed himself off, smiling cheerfully as he opened the door and ducked back into the tavern, allowing Gerard to continue on his way.

A little farther along, Gerard was hemmed in by traffic streaming in the opposite direction, stuck behind a woman carrying a small child in some kind of pack on her back. The child stared at Gerard’s scarred face a moment before breaking into frightened wailing. The woman tried to hush the child, and even turned to see what had inspired the crying. Her expression tightened at the sight of Gerard, as if she considered him guilty of purposely disfiguring his appearance to terrify innocent children. Tight-lipped, she walked faster in an effort to outdistance him. She wasn’t entirely successful, however, because Gerard was in a hurry as well and quickened his own pace to match. Fortunately, his route soon veered in a different direction, and the sound of the child’s sobs diminished behind him.

When he at last reached the building where the council would meet, he paused involuntarily and sucked in his breath. He had to admit that it was an awe-inspiring structure, suited to the highest aspirations of the Knighthood, regardless how far short of those aspirations the knights fell in actual fact. Graceful white marble columns lined an elevated entrance that extended from the side of the building, sheltered by its own pitched tile roof. Marble steps led up to the resulting porch, effectively raising the building’s inhabitants above the mundane activities of the street. The lintel was a massive white-painted beam, beneath which stood two great carved wood doors high enough to make anyone entering them aware of his insignificance. On either side of the doors, a knight in burnished armor stood stiffly at attention.

Gerard let out a slow breath, certain that no one arriving to do business with the council could fail to be impressed. With conscious solemnity, he mounted the steps, which were set far enough apart that climbing them required some effort, further heightening the building’s overall effect. As he approached the doors, the two knights saluted. Gerard halted automatically, ready to return their salute, then forced himself to resume walking instead as he reminded himself he was no longer a knight. He was forced to stop again, however, when the knights lowered their halberds, crossing them and barring his way.

“Your name and business here,” one intoned, never shifting his gaze from whatever distance occupied both knights’ attention.

“Gerard uth Mondar. I come before the council representing the town of Solace—”

“That wouldn’t have been Sir Gerard, would it?” the second knight asked.

Gerard felt his face flush at the trace of sarcasm in the knight’s voice. Before he could respond, however, the first knight opened one of the doors, admitting Gerard into the building’s interior. “Second corridor on your right,” the knight said as Gerard passed him. “You can’t miss it.”

The door boomed shut, leaving Gerard alone in the echoing vestibule. So much for hospitality, he thought bitterly, and made his way forward.

He wondered how he would know the right door once he found the corridor but discovered that presented no problem. There was only one doorway, framing another set of double doors, at the far end of a short hall. He paused before them to run a hand through his windblown hair, knowing in advance any effort to subdue it was doomed to failure, for his hair ever stood out in startled confusion regardless of what he did to control it. Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent upon him to try before approaching the council. Then he reached for the handle of the nearest door.

Before he could grasp it, the door was yanked open from the other side. “Ah, there you are,” wheezed a grizzled, old knight, stiff with consciousness of his station as sergeant at arms for the council’s proceedings. “I was just going to send out looking for you. What are you doing here in the hall? Your case will be taken up soon by the council.” He stood aside, beckoning Gerard to enter.

Gerard stepped forward, deciding that the old knight’s words boded well. At least Solace’s petition would be high on the council’s agenda. What more could Gerard ask for than that?

Inside the chamber the council had begun its deliberations. A sizable crowd was in attendance, seated in rows extending in both directions off a center aisle. The sergeant at arms led Gerard quietly down the aisle to a seat near the front. From there, he had a clear view of the council, which occupied a horseshoe-shaped table on a raised dais. He noted with satisfaction that the head of the council, Sir Aldric uth Gaynor, was one of the officers Gerard had served under in Southern Ergoth, in the early part of the War of Souls. Oftentimes, Gerard had brewed the older knight’s morning mug of tarbean tea or written letters for him. Perhaps their former association would ensure an advantageous hearing to Solace’s suit.

Although Gerard expected to be called at any moment to address the council with that suit, he soon realized that the sergeant at arms must have exaggerated the dispatch with which the council would reach that point in its agenda. At the moment, the proceedings seemed bogged down on some technical point of order as members of the council wrangled with one another in overly polite tones that belied the tensions running beneath their words.

“Are you sneering at me?” one of the younger members of the council, a Knight of the Rose, suddenly demanded of his counterpart, a young Knight of the Crown, seated on the opposite arm of the dais.

The Knight of the Crown assumed an air of innocence. “Perhaps I sneered.”

The Knight of the Rose’s hand crept closer to the hilt of his sword. “But did you sneer at me?”

Gerard frowned, struck by the sense that he had heard the argument somewhere before. But he didn’t have time to dwell on the matter before older and wiser members of the council moved in hastily to calm their hot-blooded fellows.

Sir Aldric, a distinguished-looking Knight of the Sword with flowing white mustaches, sighed and rolled his eyes. “Gentlemen, if you would restrain yourselves, we have a great deal to cover in this session.”

The two firebrands settled back in their chairs, although the Knight of the Rose mouthed across the dais, “I’ll see you later.”

The Knight of the Crown yawned, causing the other’s hand to again inch toward his sword. But they left off their bickering for the time being, allowing the deliberations to proceed.

Gerard, grateful to be so far removed from the internal politics that at times could rock the Knighthood, let his attention drift. Idly, he glanced around the vast, circular chamber, elaborately constructed of white, black, and rose colored marble, surrounded by a colonnade and lit by a huge stained-glass skylight far overhead. The variously hued pieces of glass cast multiple tints upon the council and audience.

Abruptly, Gerard became conscious of eyes burning into him from somewhere in the room. He twisted around to get a better look and froze. On the far side of the chamber, a huge minotaur sat glaring at him. A one-armed minotaur that Gerard recognized immediately.

Galdar.

With a sinking feeling, Gerard realized who would be representing Samuval’s side against Solace. Gerard gave his opponent a tight, calculated smile and a curt nod before turning away. Inwardly, he chided himself for baiting Galdar that way and tried to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades at having so formidable an enemy so close at hand.

The council had better get on with business, he thought bitterly, if it didn’t want two members of its audience coming to blows.

At The Bent Copper, one of his favorite establishments, not the least because it was all but unknown to Julice, Poko Rome watched a kender get forcibly evicted for the umpteenth time. No sooner had the creature been thrown outside than he slipped back in, darting behind the spluttering tavern keeper’s back and scampering along a zigzag path between tables. The customers roared with laughter while the overweight tavern keeper puffed after him. The kender grinned at the merriment he was causing and bowed to customers as he hurried by.

Grimly, Poko turned from the commotion and resumed working on the task before him. On the table sat the ugly lead jewel chest. The strips from which it was assembled gave it a patterned effect, as if its creator had tried unsuccessfully to relieve the drab appearance of the dull gray metal. Two bands of brass encircled the chest, though whether they were decorative or functional, Poko couldn’t tell. His real concern was the small keyhole in the front of the chest. Pick in hand, he stared at it, daring it to continue thwarting him. He prided himself on being able to spring the cleverest lock, whether on a rich man’s treasure house or a willing maid’s bedchamber, with scarcely any effort. Locks practically fell open at his approach, so gifted was his touch. Yet the lead jewel chest refused to open.

He was beginning to get annoyed.

With a deep breath, he went back to work, ignoring the coldness of the metal that numbed his fingers and focusing so intently on his task that everything faded from his awareness save the needlelike tip of the pick and the unseen tumblers inside the lock. Several minutes later, he almost had them—

A hand trailing indolently along the length of his thigh shattered his concentration. With a jerk, he dropped the pick and glanced up into the smiling face of his favorite barmaid, Rosaline. “What are you doing?” she cooed.

“What’s it look like?” he snarled.

“Ah, you’re not angry with me, are you?” She seated herself on the thigh she had been stroking.

Poko pushed her off. “Can’t you see I’m busy? I almost had this thing licked.”

“Mm.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “Licked.”

He couldn’t help laughing. “You greedy wench, is that all you ever think about?”

“As if you ever thought about anything besides larceny.” She perched on the edge of the table and waved at the lead chest. “What’s the matter? Have you finally met your match?”

“I just seem to be a little rusty.” He frowned and flexed his fingers then favored her with a lascivious grin. “Maybe I should practice on the lock that guards your virtue.”

“Silly man, you know the way to my virtue requires no key.” She drew a finger languidly down his arm. “All it takes is cash.” With a musical laugh, she sauntered away.

Poko returned to the lead chest. Several times he thought he had the tumblers just right, but for some reason the latch wouldn’t open. Periodically, he paused to warm his fingers in his armpits. He began cursing the thing under his breath.

In his determination he lost all track of time. At last, someone sat down heavily on the stool opposite him. That time, Poko welcomed the distraction. He looked up at the lowering, bearded face of his brother. “Angrid,” Poko said with a terse nod.

Angrid didn’t bother returning the greeting. “What’s that?” he growled. Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed the chest and shook it, holding it up to his ear. “Sounds empty,” he said with a frown. Irritated, Poko reached for the chest, but Angrid pulled back out of reach, not yet ready to relinquish his prize. “This thing’s very cold! What’s inside?”

“I don’t know,” Poko admitted. “I haven’t been able to open it.”

Angrid bellowed with laughter. “What, the lock’s been invented that my little brother can’t spring?”

“Give it back,” Poko said tiredly, reaching again.

Angrid raised the chest in his blunt-fingered, massive hands, lifting it high overhead in readiness to hurl it to the floor. “I’ll bet I can get it open.”

Poko leaped from his stool. “Angrid, don’t!”

Angrid slowly lowered the chest onto the table and shoved it over to Poko. “Aw, I was only joking.” But his glaring expression suggested otherwise.

Poko drew Julice’s chest protectively close, surprised by the intensity of his own reaction. “What are you doing here?” he demanded of Angrid, seeking to hide his discomfiture.

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.” Angrid’s lips curled in what passed for a smile. “You might want to lay low for a while. I’ve got a job lined up tonight. By tomorrow, the city guard’s going to be anxious to talk to any Rome they can find.”

Poko nodded. “That suits my own plans just fine. I don’t want the owner of this chest finding me any too soon.”

“That thing?” Angrid scoffed, dismissing the chest with a wave. “It’s nothing compared to what I’ll be bringing home.”

“Well, thank you for that generous appraisal,” Poko said icily.

“It’s all right,” Angrid said with a shrug. “Think nothing of it.” He pushed himself onto his feet. “Just look that you keep out of sight for the next few days.” With that, he lumbered away.

Poko retrieved his lockpick, then thought better of trying to solve the problem just then. He was too angry to concentrate. Seeing Angrid always left him feeling that way. Instead, he glanced around for Rosaline. An hour or two’s distraction might be just what he needed.

Then he could get back to business.

Chapter 3

Galdar glared at the man who was undoubtedly there as Solace’s representative to the council, Gerard uth Mondar. The last time they’d seen each other, they had been on opposite sides during the War of Souls. How appropriate, Galdar thought, that they should turn out to be opponents here as well.

The realization didn’t make him any happier about encountering the former knight.

Gerard seemed equally surprised at seeing Galdar, for he had been peering around the chamber with a distracted air until he spotted the minotaur. He stared straight ahead at the dais as if the council’s current deliberations suddenly commanded his rapt attention, the tension in his shoulders and neck betraying him. Evidently he hadn’t known who would be representing Samuval at the session.

Galdar, who had been content to ignore whatever petty concerns might occupy the council until it was time to take up the matter of Solace, grinned at Gerard’s discomfiture. But just in case the latter’s abrupt interest in the topic under discussion proved to be important, Galdar decided to listen too. There was no need to give Gerard an undue advantage in their upcoming confrontation.

On the dais a great-bellied knight was droning on while the council members whispered among themselves or glanced idly around the room. “I therefore urge the council to consider the dire consequences should this action be forestalled further,” the speaker continued, “and remind my fellow members of the council of the dangerous precedent that would be set if we failed—”

A young knight approached the dais and handed the head of the council, one Aldric uth Gaynor, a message. Sir Aldric read the note, pursed his lips in thought, and scribbled a response at the bottom of the sheet. The young knight quickly bore the message away.

“Um, yes, as I was saying,” the large-bellied knight announced, speaking louder in an effort to reclaim Sir Aldric’s attention.

Sir Aldric took the opportunity to interrupt the speaker. “I think in view of the length of today’s agenda, we should move along to the next item,” he said.

“But we haven’t decided anything regarding the changes I proposed to the standard requisition form,” Big Belly complained. “We need to put the matter to a vote.”

“All in favor of adopting the new form,” Aldric said, looking around the table at the others. A couple of desultory hands went up. “Opposed?” A few more hands were raised, although most members of the council abstained. “It’s settled. Let the minutes so reflect the will of the council.”

“But—but—” Big Belly began.

“Next on the agenda,” Aldric said, reading from a sheaf of papers on the table before him, “is the matter of something called the Beloved of Chemosh.” He glanced around the room, frowning. “What is this about? Who are these so-called Beloved, and why are they any concern of ours?”

“I can speak to that,” said a whip-thin knight in the audience, rising to address the council. Although tall by human standards, Galdar noted with scorn that he would scarcely come to a minotaur’s shoulders.

“The council recognizes Beckwith uth Wangerin,” Aldric said, and nodded. “Proceed, Sir Beckwith.”

Galdar saw that Gerard had leaned forward in his seat, intent on the new topic for some reason. Galdar couldn’t imagine how anything involving the god Chemosh affected the minotaurs much, or the Knights of Solamnia either for that matter. Nevertheless, he listened closely.

The tall knight went on to describe how people were casting aside all responsibility and disappearing throughout Ansalon, as well, perhaps, as beyond, abruptly abandoning friends and families alike and taking to the road, gradually drifting east. They acted almost like converts of some kind in their determination to seduce others, gathering more young men and women into their debauched ranks wherever they traveled. In return for devoting their lives to him, Chemosh apparently granted them unusual powers, for the Beloved were incredibly powerful and couldn’t be killed. Galdar snorted, wondering at that last assertion. Clearly, the Beloved hadn’t come up against a real warrior if they were thought to be unkillable.

Aldric appeared to share Galdar’s assessment, for he asked few questions before signaling his intention to proceed to the next item. He was interrupted when Gerard jumped to his feet. “If it please the council, I have knowledge which bears on this subject.”

“Ah, the esteemed former member of our ranks,” Aldric said dryly, sending ripples of amusement through the audience from some of the younger knights. “I thought you were here to represent Solace in another matter.”

Gerard’s face turned red, but Galdar had to grant that the sheriff of Solace kept his voice calm. “I am indeed, Sir Aldric, but I’ve encountered the Beloved and can attest to what has been said about them.”

“Very well. The council recognizes Gerard uth Mondar. Proceed.”

“The Beloved are immune to any injury, including blows that sever limbs or wreak what should be mortal damage.”

“Do you mean they continue fighting, even without all their limbs?” Aldric asked, his piercing gaze riveted on Gerard. Galdar, too, listened intently, for Gerard had proven himself an able warrior, whatever else Galdar might think of him. The former knight wouldn’t pass on idle gossip.

“I mean the things—and I call them things, for they are corpses with the appearance of life rather than truly alive—come through such injuries unscathed, as whole as if nothing happened,” Gerard continued.

“Oh, I see. And you can testify to this yourself?” Aldric asked. “You have personally witnessed such things? Perhaps even fought with one of these, ah, Beloved?”

“No, not personally,” Gerard admitted. “But I have it from one who has experienced personally—”

“Yes, well, do let us know when you can testify to them on your own behalf, won’t you?” Aldric said. “Now, moving right along”—he consulted the pages before him—“ah, I see the good sheriff of Solace is here to address us on another matter.” He glared at Gerard, challenging him. “I trust this issue will prove worthier of the council’s time than does some harmless philandering by the region’s young people.”

Well, Galdar thought, settling back with satisfaction, that put Gerard on the defensive before he even began. The former knight’s purpose for being there hadn’t yet been broached, and already things were looking up for Samuval. And yet Galdar wondered why Aldric hadn’t paid more attention to the tales of the Beloved. Why had the older knight been so quick to dismiss Gerard’s testimony? Galdar sensed some tension between the two lurking beneath the surface of their words. Tension that perhaps had colored Aldric’s response.

Gerard knew he was in trouble. So much for his previous association with Sir Aldric working in his favor. The older man obviously held a grudge against Gerard for having resigned from the Knighthood.

Stiff with self-conscious formality, Gerard approached the dais. “Thank you.” He wondered whether he was speaking loudly enough to be heard by the audience in the chamber as well as the council itself, and pitched his voice louder. “I want to call the council’s attention to a serious matter: the predations against the town of Solace brought about by the notorious brigand, Captain Samuval—”

“That’s Baron Samuval,” Galdar growled loudly enough to be discernible from across the room. “And I must object to such loose calumny.”

“Ambassador Galdar, you’ll get your opportunity to respond in a moment,” Aldric said, stroking his long, white mustaches. “In the meantime, please let Sheriff Mondar proceed.”

Ambassador Galdar? With a sinking feeling, Gerard realized the minotaur had risen in the world since he had served with Samuval under Mina. Gerard tried to keep his misgivings about that turn of events from showing as he nodded to Aldric and went on.

“The problems we’re experiencing result from the widespread and indiscriminate misbehavior of Baron”—he gave the word savage emphasis—“Samuval’s men when they are on leave in our community from the various neighboring outposts set up along Qualinesti’s northern border. We—”

“So are Baron Samuval’s men engaging in organized and intentional acts of war or sedition against Solace?” Aldric asked, interrupting Gerard’s well-rehearsed speech.

“Well, no,” Gerard said, flustered at having his presentation derailed a second time. Squaring his shoulders, he gathered his thoughts and attempted to recover. “But we have endured nothing but insults and injury from the repeated presence of these men within our community, and now—”

“So what are you asking the council to do in this matter?” Aldric asked before Gerard could really get started again. “This sounds like a local dispute. I don’t see how it’s a matter for the Knighthood to become involved in.”

“Precisely,” growled Galdar. “The constant harassment of Baron Samuval’s law-abiding soldiers while on leave by the citizens of Solace is strictly between Baron Samuval and—”

“Ambassador Galdar, you will have your turn,” Aldric said sternly, giving Gerard the impression that the venerable knight wasn’t altogether happy about having to allow a minotaur to appear before the council. At least that might even Gerard’s chances of a favorable outcome to their dispute. “I must ask you to refrain from making any remarks in the meantime.” He turned again to Gerard. “You still haven’t answered my question. How does this involve the Knighthood?”

Before Gerard could answer, the courier who had brought a message to Aldric earlier returned, slipping another sealed communiqué to the older knight and standing aside to await a response. Aldric’s brow furrowed at the interruption, but he held up his hand to signal a pause in the proceedings. He broke the wax seal and quickly read the single sheet, his expression deepening to an impatient scowl. He scribbled a reply at the bottom of the sheet, whispered something to the young knight who had brought the message, and handed it back to him. The young knight saluted smartly and hastened from the chamber.

“Now, where were we?” Aldric asked distractedly. Before Gerard could answer, Aldric went on. “Oh, yes, you were about to explain how this involves the Knighthood.”

The interruption had given Gerard a chance to formulate his answer. “The Knights of Solamnia are known and respected throughout Krynn for maintaining law and order in even the remotest, most untamed parts of the world—”

At that moment it was Aldric who couldn’t resist a barbed remark. “It seems you’ve come to a more favorable opinion of the way the Knighthood carries out its responsibilities than you expressed when resigning your position with us,” he said acidly.

Again, chuckles at Gerard’s expense swept through the chamber. He felt his face redden and wondered whether Galdar was enjoying his advantage. Might he even be indulging in a smug expression—or at least as smug an expression as a bull’s face was capable of imparting?

Gerard’s former, very public criticisms regarding how poorly the Knights of Solamnia had upheld their precious honor in the case of Samuval’s occupation of Qualinesti weren’t earning him the support he needed. He almost regretted having made those past accusations… almost. “There is a small detachment still garrisoned in Solace,” he said, getting right to the point.

Aldric nodded, looking as if he regretted having goaded Gerard moments earlier. “An honor guard for the Tomb of the Last Heroes, I believe.”

“Yes. We are simply asking that this detachment be augmented in view of the current crisis.”

Aldric shifted in his seat, his expression decidedly unhappy. “You’re aware, surely, that the Knighthood’s resources are stretched very thin and that pressures of a more serious nature require our attention on many fronts. Why, in Solamnia alone, political unrest has forced us to intensify our presence.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Gerard said. “But surely an extra squad or two could be spared in so serious a case as this.”

“We’re not going to commit to any action until both sides of the issue have been heard,” Aldric growled. “Ambassador Galdar, it is your turn. What do you have to contribute to the discussion?”

Gerard sat but he did so unwillingly. He disliked having to yield the floor to his opponent. When Gerard was seated, Galdar stood—all seven feet of him—and spoke in the direction of the council, although Gerard sensed a personal attack against him lurking in the minotaur’s words.

“Sir Gerard—” He appeared to catch himself, abruptly changing his wording. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s Sheriff Gerard, not sir. In the time since he cast aside his duties with this noble body I have the privilege of addressing today, I understand the claimant has found employment in the community of Solace. And it’s honorable employment he’s managed to obtain, I’m sure—not in the least shameful or beneath him. He ought to be commended for his willingness to undertake such a distasteful but necessary occupation.”

Gerard’s face burned. Galdar was managing to undercut his suitability to testify before the council, all in the guise of civility.

“The worthy sheriff has called for increasing the Knights’ presence in Solace,” Galdar went on. “Augmenting, I believe he called it, the strength of the honor guard currently stationed there. But I must ask the council whether even the present, relatively minor force is necessary. What do they do there? They march up and down in front of a crypt, shooing away the occasional kender and idly passing the time until they receive real assignments in some region where an actual need exists.

“Meanwhile, this detachment of knights is part of the problem now confronting us. In their boredom, they often resort to taunting Baron Samuval’s otherwise-orderly men while they’re on leave in Solace. These knights, well-intentioned though they are, I’m sure, incite the very disorder that Sheriff Gerard claims they are needed to prevent. Baron Samuval is committed to administering in a respectable, peaceful manner the realm that rightfully became his responsibility after the recent war. He is a law-abiding citizen of Krynn and asks to be treated as such. He, therefore, respectfully requests that the unnecessary and sometimes provocative presence of the Knighthood in Solace be terminated at once. It presents a potentially hostile, aggressive force that threatens the security of his duly established border.”

“Duly established border?” Gerard spat, leaping to his feet. “That common ruffian overran Qualinesti by force and holds it against the wishes of its rightful citizens. If the Knighthood had simply done what it should have at the end of the war, we wouldn’t be faced with this problem now.”

Aldric turned to glare at him. “Ahem! Sheriff Gerard, you’ve had your say. Now the council wishes to hear Ambassador Galdar. You will refrain from any further outbursts or be removed from these proceedings.”

“Yes, sir. I apologize for speaking out of turn,” Gerard said, resuming his seat. With a sinking sensation, he realized he had voiced his true feelings on the matter after all. There went any help he might hope to receive from the Knights of Solamnia. “Please do continue,” he concluded unhappily.

“Now let me see if I have this right,” Aldric said, once order had been restored. “You”—he pointed to Gerard—“want the honor guard in Solace strengthened, and you”—he pointed to Galdar—“want that same force withdrawn entirely.”

Shadow engulfed the chamber, draining the brilliant colors that had filled the air. Gerard glanced up and discovered that clouds had obscured the sun’s rays coming through the stained glass skylight. Thunder rumbled somewhere close by. Gerard’s brow furrowed. He didn’t recall there having been any clouds overhead when he arrived. In fact, the day had been remarkably clear and sunny. A storm must have been blowing in off the bay.

Aldric appeared unaware of the sudden gloom as he paused, stroking his long mustaches in thought. “I believe we will adjourn this meeting until tomorrow,” he said abruptly. “At that time the council will announce its decision on the matter.” He banged a gavel, and the knights in the audience rose to their feet, standing as the council members left the dais and filed from the chamber in a solemn procession.

Gerard, taken aback by the unexpectedness of his move, stood as well. He wondered if Aldric were balking at the prospect of awarding a favorable decision to either party, whether former knight, now disgraced in Aldric’s eyes, or minotaur and onetime enemy.

Gerard grimaced at the thought of being lumped in the same category as Galdar. He waited for some of the crowd to clear from the chamber then made his way to the corridor, accompanied by bursts of thunder. Overhead, heavy rain began pelting the stained glass skylight.

While Galdar addressed the council in response to Gerard’s request, the messenger from Aldric had arrived at the Lock estate for the second time that day. He was promptly admitted to the library, where Capul Lock awaited his tidings with apprehension. He tore open the message he had sent to Aldric, pleading for help. As he read Aldric’s scribbled reply at the bottom of the page, his expression fell.

“Do you wish to send a return communiqué?” the messenger asked, having stood by patiently while Capul read Aldric’s note.

“Hmm?” Capul replied, distracted. “Oh, another message. No, I don’t think so. Sir Aldric has made his position on the matter quite clear.” He turned away and muttered under his breath, “Unfortunately.”

The messenger saluted and withdrew. Capul paid him no attention. Instead, he drew a deep, fortifying breath and summoned his daughter.

It was an audience he dreaded.

Apparently, Julice had seen the messenger arrive and was waiting outside the door, for almost immediately she entered the library amid a swirl of intricately embroidered silks and satins, her steps on the tile floor conveying as forceful an air as her smallish feet and stylish shoes allowed.

“Well, are they going to do their jobs and apprehend the miscreant?” she demanded. “I want to see him hauled off to jail and punished. After I get the chest back, of course.”

Capul cleared his throat. “Sir Aldric says his knights are much too busy at the moment, especially for a matter more suited to the city guard.”

“What?” Julice’s countenance darkened. “I thought you said this Sir Aldric was a friend of yours.”

“He is, he is,” Capul said quickly. “Well, sort of, anyway.”

“I won’t turn this over to any bungling city guard!” She stamped a dainty foot. “The very suggestion is an insult to our family. I want the Solamnic Knights to handle this, and I want them to do it now.”

“But, pet, they aren’t going to,” Capul whimpered.

“Oh, won’t they?” she said, her voice ominously soft. “Well, we shall see about that.” Without another word, she stormed from the room.

Capul trembled, wondering what she intended to do and fearful of finding out.

In the corridor outside the council chamber, people milled about, too intent on discussing the unusual events of the day’s proceedings to disperse. Gerard picked his way through the crowd, doing his best to ignore the aggressive shoulder jostling he received from some of the younger knights. He was determined not to be drawn into senseless arguments, especially not ones that could only end in a fight.

Up ahead, he caught a quick glimpse of Sir Aldric, talking earnestly to someone he couldn’t see. Gerard squeezed between two knights who did their best to ignore his effort to get past them. Finally, he reached the place where Aldric had been, only to see his former commander slipping away through the crowd, oblivious to Gerard’s approach. The person Aldric had been conversing with, however, was still there. Gerard turned to address him. “Excuse me,” Gerard began, “but do you know where he was go—?”

He stopped abruptly when he found he had to lift his gaze higher and higher to reach the person’s face. A fur-covered, fierce-eyed bull’s face.

“Galdar!” he hissed.

Instinctively, Gerard’s hand sought his sword. He caught himself in time, however, and awkwardly extended his hand instead as if it had been his intention all along to shake hands with his former enemy, not to cut him down where he stood.

The minotaur glared at Gerard’s outstretched hand. His eyes narrowed and his bullish nostrils flared. Too late, Gerard remembered Galdar’s missing right arm, which had been restored to him for most of the war then had been lost again in that conflict’s final battle.

“Do you dare mock me?” Galdar demanded in a gravelly voice, his gaze rising from the outstretched hand to peer into Gerard’s face.

With conscious effort, Gerard pulled back his hand, for it seemed frozen in place. “I only meant to shake hands with you, as one former campaigner with another.”

“But you reached with your right hand. You’re mocking me!” Galdar’s left hand twitched. Gerard was fairly certain the minotaur was not contemplating extending it for another try at a handshake. Gerard resisted reaching for his own sword, not wishing to precipitate an armed battle right there in the Knighthood’s halls.

“If I were mocking you, believe me, you’d know it,” Gerard said.

“So you were mocking me,” Galdar concluded. His left hand edged toward his shoulder and the hilt of the sword that was strapped to his back. Gerard grasped his own sword, preparing to defend himself.

The grizzled, old sergeant at arms seemed to materialize between them. “Ambassador,” he said to Galdar, seemingly unaware of the tension about to erupt between the minotaur and Gerard. “I’m glad I found you. If you’ll allow me, I’ll escort you to the entrance.” He chuckled. “Sometimes our guests tend to get lost in the labyrinth of this building.”

Gerard was certain nothing had escaped the old knight’s attention, and that he was intervening to prevent blood from being spilled just outside the council chamber. As if to confirm his judgment, the sergeant at arms turned to a couple of other knights standing nearby and said something to them too softly for Gerard to overhear. The pair immediately flanked Gerard. “This way,” one of them growled in his ear. “You get to have an escort too.”

For a moment, Gerard and Galdar continued staring at each other. The knights on either side of Gerard gripped his arms and brusquely pulled him back, out of fighting range. Gerard let them then shook himself loose from their grasp. Galdar’s lips pulled back in what might have been a minotaur grin. He straightened, letting his hand drop to his side. Between human and minotaur passed an unspoken acknowledgment that they had better never chance to meet alone somewhere, for only one of them was likely to emerge from the encounter alive.

Gerard flexed his sword hand with anticipation, finding that he looked forward to just such an opportunity to settle their differences once and for all.

With exaggerated civility, he and Galdar nodded to each other. The minotaur turned and strode from the hall, trailing the sergeant at arms, who did his best to keep up, determined to see to it that no further outbursts took place within his domain. But he had to quickstep it sharply to keep up with the minotaur’s longer legs.

Gerard waited until they were well out of sight then let out his breath, releasing the tension he’d bottled inside.

“This way, if you will, Sheriff,” said one of the two knights who still stood on either side of Gerard to escort him as well. To Gerard’s surprise, the knight nearly had to yell in Gerard’s ear in an effort to be heard over the blasts of thunder rocking the building. The storm had evidently already overtaken the city.

He allowed himself to be herded through side corridors to an unprepossessing door other than the grand entryway by which he had arrived. Apparently, the knights were taking no chance that Gerard and Galdar might run into one another outside the building and instead had ushered Gerard to a secondary exit. The young knight in the lead held the door open with stiff formality, silently exuding the disdain many of the knights felt for mere civilians, especially civilians who had once been knights themselves but had willingly relinquished that honor.

Gerard pretended not to notice, for to do otherwise would require him to take offense—which might have been exactly what the young knight wanted. Instead, he stepped out into a howling wind and pelting rain. Almost immediately, he was soaked to the skin. He shivered and turned up his collar, although it did no good. He staggered forward against the force of the wind, which pressed him back like a giant hand. The suddenness and ferocity of the storm puzzled him, but he didn’t have time to dwell on either very long, for the rain abruptly turned to hail. And not just any hail, but fist-sized clumps of rock-hard ice. The balls of ice smashed against the pavement at his feet and shattered, sending smaller fragments skittering across the stones and making footing treacherous. Gerard pushed forward faster, concerned about what would happen if one of the enormous hailstones chanced to hit him. Thus far, they all had somehow missed.

Gerard drew his coat over his head for whatever protection it might afford and struggled forward. He shivered at the realization of how far he had yet to go to reach The Juggler’s Balls where he was staying and hoped they had a good fire blazing in the hearth. He was certainly going to need it.

Then, inexplicably, he stepped out of the storm and into blinding sunlight. He almost fell on his face, so far forward had he been leaning to make headway against the wind. There was no wind, no hail, no rain, no massive cloud bank overhead. There were, however, a number of slack-jawed people staring past him in the direction from which he’d come. He turned to see for himself and felt his own jaw drop.

The building in which the council had met was engulfed by a raging tempest, a storm that, for all its violence, extended no farther beyond the building’s foundation than the middle of the street. Within the tumult, lightning flashed again and again, but where Gerard stood, no sound of thunder reached.

Someone, it seemed, was sending a message to the Solamnic Knights’ Grand Council. Gerard could only wonder what the nature of the message might be. He shook his head, grateful that it had nothing to do with him, and made his way toward the inn. It wasn’t until he’d progressed some distance that he realized his clothes weren’t wet any longer.

They’d dried as soon as he stepped free of the storm.

Chapter 4

The Palanthas rumor mill had devotees working day and night on its behalf in every quarter of the city. So it was that news of the strange storm reached the common room at The Juggler’s Balls well ahead of Gerard. By the time he arrived, half a dozen self-appointed authorities on the subject of aberrant weather conditions were already holding forth about the strange situation at the Knights’ headquarters, embellishing freely wherever facts were scarce.

“I hear lightning set the whole building on fire and it burned to the ground,” slurred one man, obviously deep in his cups. “Went up in a single burst of flame—a gigantic fireball that crisped everyone standing within a hundred yards of the place.”

“Naw, the rain keeps the building from catching,” another man countered. “But the hailstones, big as a kender’s grasp, killed scores of bystanders who got too close to the edge of the storm when they gathered to watch.”

“Everybody talks about how localized the storm is and how it hasn’t moved,” drawled a third, “but I don’t see anything unusual about that. Why, over in Sanction once, I saw the most fearsome twister sit atop a single house for three straight days and nights without shifting from the spot. When it finally lost strength and faded away as the merest breeze, barely strong enough to swirl the dust on the ground, nothing was left of the house. The twister had completely destroyed it, erasing every sign of its existence. But the buildings all around where the house had been survived without damage. Not even a loose roof tile or broken window pane testified that a twister had been close at hand.”

Gerard listened with only half his attention, knowing firsthand how exaggerated such talk of the storm really was. Nor did he feel any need to set the record straight. The speakers were too intent on enthralling their audience to care about such minor details as facts. Besides, who among the open-mouthed listeners would believe him? What they were hearing made for much better stories and kept the overworked serving wench busy refilling their mugs with wine and ale.

When the serving wench drew near enough for Gerard to catch her attention, he asked for tarbean tea and a bowl of stew, figuring that might be safe. The pinch-faced wench scowled at him, plunked down a half-empty mug of ale she was clearing off a nearby table after the previous drinker stumbled from the inn, and topped off the contents of the mug from a pitcher she carried. “Here,” she said, shoving the mug toward him so hard its contents slopped onto the table. “This is what I’m serving. Take it or leave it.” Without waiting for a reply, she hurried away.

Gerard frowned at an iridescent grease smear floating on the surface of the ale. With a grimace, Gerard wiped the mug’s rim and took a sip. He had to choke the swallow down, for the ale was vile and carried a nasty bite. He longed for a mug of Laura Majere’s ale, brewed with consummate skill at the Inn of the Last Home. Now that was a drink worth savoring, even if Gerard had partaken of it a little too freely on one or two occasions. For that matter, he wouldn’t have minded a platter of Otik’s spiced potatoes right then, especially after his stomach had finally acclimated to the dish’s strong flavor and no longer caused him social embarrassment as a consequence of eating it. Just thinking about Laura’s cooking made his stomach growl.

Just then a newcomer burst into the room from the street. “They’re calling for volunteers at the Knights’ headquarters,” he panted, leaning on his knees in an effort to catch his breath. “The storm is threatening to flood the building.”

Gerard leaped to his feet and headed for the door, intent on joining the inn’s patrons as they came to the aid of the knights. At the door he paused. The rest of the customers remained in their seats, eagerly discussing the new development. Gerard shook his head in disgust and went outside alone, where his eyes, accustomed to the dim light inside the inn, were blinded for a moment by the afternoon sun. When he could see without squinting, he loped toward the building and the storm he had so recently left behind. He might not be a knight any longer, but he couldn’t stand idly by while the headquarters of the Knighthood was in danger.

Fortunately, some other residents of Palanthas felt similarly, and when Gerard reached the edge of the storm, many were coming to help as well. He steeled himself against the tempest and strode into the thick of its fury.

Lashing rain blinded him. Wind howled and beat against his face and chest, trying to fling him back. Water ran in the street, reaching halfway to his knees at first, then higher even as he struggled to make headway against it. Fist-sized hail pelted the rushing current. Geysers erupted each time one of the balls of ice struck the water. Thunder boomed with a deafening roar as flash after flash zigzagged across the sky and struck the building. With determination, Gerard slogged forward through the freezing flow, hoping to avoid getting hit by any hailstones or lightning. Fortunately, Gerard didn’t have far to go, so closely did the storm encompass the structure.

Through the rain, he made out a cluster of figures working to barricade the doors and first-story windows against the rising tide. Two of the men turned out to be members of the Knights’ Council, the Knight of the Rose and the Knight of the Crown who had almost come to blows during the council’s session. They worked in unison, heaving bags of sand, blocks of masonry, and anything else they could lay their hands on, adding it all to the improvised barrier growing up around the base of one of the building’s many windows.

Gerard was preparing to join in when Sir Aldric appeared, looming suddenly through the rain. “We need volunteers to go up on the roof,” he shouted in an effort to be heard over the constant crash of thunder. “The stained glass skylight over the council chamber is in danger of shattering and needs to be boarded up.”

An uneasy fixity descended on the men, who appeared intent on studying the water rising around their thighs. “I’ll go,” Gerard said.

Aldric stared hard at him, unblinking despite the torrents of rain. “All right,” he said at last. “There’s a crew assembling at that corner.” He pointed then turned his weighty gaze upon the others. “It’s good to know that at least some of those present have the fortitude expected of a true knight.” With that, he waded away, seeking out other volunteers.

Gerard shook his head in disbelief at what he had just agreed to then began making his way in the direction Aldric had indicated. As he struggled against the waist-deep current, he tried to swallow down a mounting sense of panic, his mouth strangely dry. More than anything, he was terrified of heights.

Abruptly, however, that became the least of Gerard’s concerns, for the lightning and thunder stopped, producing a relative silence that still rang in his ears. Then above the shriek of the wind and the splash of hailstones, he heard a whoosh overhead, followed quickly by another, then yet more in rapid succession. Streaks of flame shot toward the building from high overhead. A burning stench thickened the air, nearly choking him.

Instead of lightning, the storm was hurling down fireballs of pitch and sulfur even in the midst of the continuing rain and hail. Heights or not, there was no time to lose. Gerard hurried into the building ahead of the others and began looking for a way to the roof.

Right about then, while Gerard and the handful of volunteers hastened to the roof of the Knights’ headquarters, a knock on Julice’s chamber door interrupted her mental ruminations. Hastily, she pushed the sheet of parchment she’d been perusing for the umpteenth time beneath the coverlet of the bed where she was sitting. “Who’s there?” she sang out, knowing full well who it had to be.

She heard her father clear his throat, a habit he had when nervous. “Uh, it’s me, pet. May I come in?”

“Why certainly, Poppy.”

The door swung open, and Capul Lock peeked around the room as if expecting to be greeted by something unpleasant. Only when he’d reassured himself that no horrible presence awaited him did he dare to enter. Julice struggled not to giggle at seeing how uneasy he was. If she played upon his discomfort properly, it would be good for a new pair of shoes at least.

He came a few feet into the room and stopped uncertainly. Julice let him stand thus for a moment then indicated a chair. “Won’t you sit?” she asked sweetly.

He bobbed his head and hurried to comply. He cleared his throat several times, but for a time he said nothing. All the while, he stared at the floor as if fascinated by it.

“What did you want to see me about?” Julice asked at last, tiring of the game.

“Hmm?” He looked up sharply. “Oh, yes. I, uh… well, that is, people are saying that something highly unusual is going on where the Knights’ Council is meeting.”

“Unusual?” She formed her mouth into a pretty pout. That it was pretty she knew from having practiced it in front of her mirror on numerous occasions. “In what way?”

“It seems the building has been engulfed by a peculiar storm that extends no further than the limits of the structure.” He risked peering intently at her. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, pet?”

“What do you mean by ‘peculiar’ exactly?” she asked, avoiding his question.

“Well, I’d say a storm that affects only a single building is peculiar, wouldn’t you?”

“Mm.” She kept her response noncommittal. “Is there anything else singular about it?”

“Yes, now that you mention it, there is. People seem to get soaked while they’re in the storm, but when they emerge from it, they find themselves unaccountably dry.”

“My, that does sound unusual.”

“And although the storm includes hailstones as big as a dragon’s eye, no one appears to have actually been struck or injured.”

“Oh?”

“And the fireballs, did I mention the fireballs?” Capul said, warming to his subject.

“No, I don’t believe you did,” Julice cooed, pleased with herself about the unusual tempest and anxious to hear about its effects. “What kind of fireballs would those be?”

“They come down as flaming sulfur and pitch despite the torrents of rain, raising a choking stench and terrifying all who see it. Yet they don’t ignite anything they touch.”

“Maybe the building’s too wet. You know, from all the rain.”

“Still, it’s mighty bizarre behavior for a storm, don’t you think?”

“I suppose it is,” she allowed.

“And you don’t know anything about it?” He studied her suspiciously.

“Why, Poppy, how can you even think such a thing?” She dropped her gaze and sniffled as if, wounded by his accusation, she were fighting back tears.

“Now, now, pet, don’t cry. I just thought… well, it occurred to me you might be trying to coerce the knights into helping you recover this jewel chest of your mother’s.”

“Do you think it might really cause them to do that?” she asked, full of innocence. She glanced at him from under lowered eyelids, gauging his reaction.

“It might,” he admitted slowly. “It just might at that.”

“Then this strange storm would produce a desirable effect, don’t you think?”

“Well, I guess one could look at it that way, perhaps.”

Julice almost smiled at how desperate he sounded to believe something beneficial could come about from so unsettling an occurrence. “Then I think we should thank whoever is responsible for the storm, don’t you?”

“Uh, I suppose so.” He shifted uneasily in his chair.

“Poppy,” she said as if finished with his topic, “do you think I could have a new pair of shoes? Mine are so dreadfully out of fashion. Why, just yesterday I saw Emerald Hathaway wearing an identical pair, and you know how behind the times her sense of style always is.”

“But, pet, didn’t you just get new shoes last week?”

Julice tapped her front teeth in thought. “You know, I hope that storm doesn’t start affecting any more of Palanthas than it already has. It would be a shame if it began hurting business in the merchandising district.”

“I do see what you mean about the shoes,” Capul said hurriedly. “Yes, I think a new pair is definitely in order.”

“Why, thank you, Poppy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m tired. I’ll have a little warm milk to help me sleep and go to bed.”

“Of course, pet, of course.” He slunk from the room, the very picture of defeat.

Once the door closed behind him, Julice allowed herself the smile she’d been holding back. She retrieved the letter from her mother she had thrust beneath the coverlet and read again the nature of her inheritance.

It was a legacy worth having after all, she had decided. She looked forward to being present when a squad of fully armed Solamnic Knights seized the chest from Poko. Maybe he would resist and they would have to take it from him by force, skewering the miserable wretch in the process. She only hoped he wouldn’t discover the secret to opening the thing before then. But its contents had been secure from prying eyes for generations. She shouldn’t worry about anyone opening it, not even the nimble-fingered Poko.

She went back to reckoning how best to turn her newfound knowledge to her advantage. Of course, she had to recover the chest before she could use it, but that should be simple enough. In fact, the conversation with her father had given her a couple of ideas how to exert more pressure on the Knights’ Council so they would help her get the chest back from that thieving knave, Poko.

Her smile broadened as she began tinkering with the spell that had brought the storm into existence.

Capul Lock retreated to the island of safety that was the library. In fact, he knew that the room offered only the illusion of safety, for mere doors and walls were insufficient to escape from his daughter when she wanted something. The situation at the Knights’ building was proof of that. After all, no matter what he had said in front of her, he knew only too well who was responsible for the unnatural storm. Well, Sir Aldric should have paid more sympathetic heed when he had the opportunity. He’d brought it on himself.

Still, if Capul wanted to avoid any possibility of the merchandising district being similarly afflicted, he had better get back in touch with Aldric and hope he listened to reason. He sat at the table he used for a desk, drew a blank sheet of parchment to him, and sucked on the nib of his quill pen in thought. When he had decided how to address the matter, he began to write. Or rather, he tried to. His forehead wrinkled in puzzlement as the pen scratched out letters on the parchment, leaving nothing to show but a slight wetness where the tip of the quill had passed. Abashed, he realized he’d once again sucked the ink from the nib, an old habit he reverted to only at times of severest stress. He dabbed the pen in the ink pot, blotted the nib on a cotton rag he kept for that purpose, and began again.

My dearest Sir Aldric, I realize I have imposed upon your patience twice already with the matter of my daughter’s stolen jewel casket and that you advised me not to disturb you with it again. However, I must beg your indulgence yet a third time. News of the unconventional tempest currently besetting your headquarters has already spread throughout the city, and there are fears that the storm’s influence will widen, perhaps eventually encompassing all of Palanthas.

Capul did not, of course, believe that last claim to be true, for not even the most powerful wizard or sorcerer—not even Raistlin Majere himself—could conjure a storm large enough to afflict an entire city. If other areas of Palanthas besides the Knights’ headquarters were to be affected, it would be one neighborhood at a time on a rotating basis, or something like that, not all at once. But Capul was gambling that Sir Aldric would not relish the specter of spreading citywide devastation.

After conducting a grueling inquiry into the situation, I’ve come to believe that your predicament and my daughter’s request are not unrelated. Therefore, in order to guard against a catastrophe of even greater proportions—and indeed, to free the Knights’ headquarters from its present tribulation—I consider it essential that you act immediately.

I urgently suggest that you entertain my daughter’s request with all due haste.

Capul felt justified in calling his inquiry “grueling,” for interviews with Julice tended to become just that, and that one had been no exception. As for the rest, he carefully refrained from placing direct responsibility for the storm on Julice’s head. Difficult as his daughter frequently was, he didn’t want to see that pretty head of hers severed from its shoulders by the executioner’s axe. He hoped Sir Aldric would draw the desired inference from the letter’s veiled allusions. Anything more straightforward Capul dared not risk.

After reviewing what he’d written so far, Capul felt something was missing—a conciliatory tone that would take the edge off what might otherwise read like a veiled threat. With that in mind, he continued:

Please be assured that I, too, will do everything in my power to resolve this situation satisfactorily and in as timely a manner as possible.

That was safe; he had no power over his daughter to exercise, so he could honestly promise to use his nonexistent influence in whatever manner Sir Aldric might find most reassuring. But a little more was still lacking—a note of social grace that would recognize Sir Aldric’s considerable standing.

Perhaps you and your noble wife would do me the honor of joining me for dinner. I look forward to seeing you both at your earliest convenience.

Upon reflection, he couldn’t remember whether Sir Aldric was actually married, but couldn’t risk inadvertently slighting the woman, if she existed, by overlooking her in the invitation.

Having gotten that far, Capul flexed his fingers to relieve their pent-up tension and wiped the sweat from his brow. The deceptively simple-looking letter was proving more difficult to construct than the multipage business contracts he was used to drawing up. But then, those had only to do with profit and loss, with the making and keeping of his sizable fortune. The letter, on the other hand, dealt with the far more complicated problems associated with raising his daughter. Not for the first time, he felt a pang of yearning for his long-dead wife. They hadn’t always gotten along wonderfully—far from it in fact—but at least she could have helped him cope with Julice. The sooner he married her off so she became someone else’s problem, the better.

Capul sucked on the tip of the pen again. He knew who he wanted for Julice’s husband—her distant cousin Marcus. Not only would that avaricious, sullen, handsome lad be easier to entice into such an arrangement than would someone of more upright moral character, but a marriage to Marcus would also keep the Lock fortune in the family after Capul’s death. He just hadn’t figured out how to get Julice, who took a dim view of anyone prettier and more petulant than herself, to agree to the union.

Well, first things first, and the first thing right then was to save Julice from any unfortunate consequences, such as execution, that might arise from what she had so impulsively done.

He signed the letter, after discovering he had again sucked the ink from the nib, and sealed it with wax. Then he summoned one of his most trusted servants.

“Deliver this letter directly to Sir Aldric uth Gaynor,” Capul said, handing him the letter. “See that you don’t give it to anyone but him.”

The servant, a corpulent man in a green cloak, nodded before hurrying out. Capul sighed and turned back with satisfaction to the far more enjoyable task of deciding how to swindle his latest business partner out of his share of a cargo of raw gems from the mountains of Karthay that had arrived in port earlier that day. Once cut and polished, the gems would be worthy of a dragon’s hoard, and Capul intended to keep as much of the wealth as possible for himself. That was an undertaking he could sink his teeth into with zeal, something a man could feel good about.

Unless that man was the unfortunate business partner who got rooked, Capul thought with a giggle.

Having gained the roof, Gerard and the others with him tried to move against the buffeting wind, hoping not to be hurled over the edge of the building or struck by any of the balls of fire. At least the hail seemed to have vanished during their time inside the building while they climbed the stairs. Gerard attempted to console himself with that development even as he fought against the vertigo of being atop a high building in a gale-force wind. Briefly, he wondered whether covering the stained glass skylight might be unnecessary after all since the hail had stopped. In that case they could all return to ground level. But he realized the skylight would need to be protected from the fireballs as much or more as from any hail.

The team that had assembled ended up linking themselves together by tying a single, long coil of rope around their waists, with each man at a ten-foot interval from his fellows. That way, if one of them was blown off the roof by the wind, he could be hauled to safety by the others. That arrangement did not make Gerard feel much better. In a way, it only reinforced the realization that being flung from the roof was a distinct possibility.

They worked their way, crablike and stooped, to the skylight to survey any damage. Miraculously, the stained glass was still intact, although the surface of the skylight was littered with the remnants of shattered hailstones, to which were being added flaming puddles of molten pitch and sulfur. The flames hissed and spat in the rain without ever being fully quenched. Gerard and the others took off their sodden cloaks and used them to smother the fires lest the heat crack the glass. When they had finished, at least for the moment (for the fire continued to descend throughout their efforts, compounding their task), Gerard examined the scorched remains of his cloak, stiff with solidified pitch and sulfur. He cast the useless garment aside and set about the next part of the job, ignoring the cold and wet as best he could.

The men hadn’t been able to carry the necessary planks up the stairs, of course, so they lowered a second rope and began the arduous task of hauling them up, one load at a time. As luck would have it, Gerard found himself closest to the edge of the roof throughout the operation. Several times, his feet slipped on the rain-wet tiles, and only the rope around his waist kept him from tumbling over the precipice. Once, he even hurtled right over the edge and ended up dangling in the air for what seemed an eternity, slammed repeatedly against the side of the building by the wind while his companions pulled him back up to the roof.

At last they got enough planking to the roof to cover the skylight. They put out the new blazes that had sprung up while they were bringing up the lumber, then covered the skylight, working carefully to keep the wet planks from slipping from their grasp and smashing into the glass. The whole time, they worked from crouching positions to minimize the chances of being blown around by the wind. Soon they had the planks nailed into place.

The storm chose that point to stop. Or rather, to blow out toward the bay, for Gerard and the others watched the boiling clouds and torrential rain drift to the northwest, away from the headquarters, as if whatever force that tethered it in place had ruptured. As soon as the edge of the mysterious storm cleared the building, the late-afternoon sun came out, shining warmly. The wind ceased with an abruptness that left the men staggering as though unmoored. All evidence of the disturbance vanished. The roof, which had been awash in rainwater and spotted with smoking fires, returned in an instant to its normal, dry, non-flaming self. The men’s soaked clothes dried so quickly they could feel the cloth grow lighter on their limbs. They stared about in wonderment.

“Look there,” said one of the men, peering down at the street.

Feeling queasy at the thought of looking down but not wishing to let his uneasiness show, Gerard joined the others at the edge of the roof. He braced himself for the worst, leaned out, and opened his eyes. To his amazement, no sign of the downpour remained in the street. Sandbags and impromptu levees barricaded the doors and windows below against the sudden onslaught of sunshine. The paving stones were dry, the fires quenched—in fact, more than quenched, for it was as if they had never been.

Had the storm been simply an illusion? wondered Gerard. His cloak, now miraculously undamaged, argued that it was. But if so, what had been the point?

He and the others stumbled downstairs and into the street, where cheering had broken out at the storm’s passing. Amid the tumult, a man’s voice could be heard. “Sir Aldric uth Gaynor,” he called, waving a sealed message. “Has anyone seen him? Is he here?”

“He was just here a moment ago,” said one of the knights, looking around in vain for the head of the council. “He’s been overseeing the building’s defenses. He won’t have gone far. You can’t miss him.”

“I can’t, huh?” the messenger, a heavyset man in a green cloak, said querulously. “I’ve been all over looking for him, and everywhere I go, it seems he left just ahead of me.”

“Here,” said the knight, reaching for the message. “I’ll see that he gets that.”

The messenger snatched back his hand. “No! My instructions were to deliver it to him alone.”

The knight shrugged. “As you wish.” He turned away, the messenger already forgotten.

The messenger stalked off, still calling out Aldric’s name.

Gerard and the others from the roof sank gratefully to the marble steps leading to the main entrance to the building, their limbs trembling from exertion. No sooner had they gotten comfortable, however, than a new arrival burst from a side street. “The storm!” he gasped. “Quick! We have to do something!”

“Ah, it’s gone,” said the man to Gerard’s right, waving the newcomer away. “Haven’t you got eyes? Look around you, man.”

“No, not here,” the newcomer insisted. “It’s sitting atop the palace now. Hurry!” With that, he was gone, darting back the way from which he’d come.

Gerard and the others looked at one another in disbelief. With groans of weariness, they forced themselves to their feet and followed.

Chapter 5

The Emperor Jaymes Markham was a man of few words, Galdar had concluded. Unfortunately, he used the same ones often.

“So it’s imperative that I firm up my power throughout Solamnia and bring it under unified rule in order to ensure the good of the realm,” he was saying at the moment.

Outwardly, Galdar nodded, pretending rapt attention. Inwardly, he groaned. Jaymes had a particular fondness for imperative, having used the word by Galdar’s count some dozen times in the past half hour alone. Apparently, Jaymes’s every action was imperative, which allowed him to justify anything he wished to do.

“That being so, am I then correct in assuming I’ll have the minotaurs’ full support in this matter?” he concluded.

Galdar perked up, trying to recall just what matter they had been discussing—or rather, what matter Jaymes had been nattering on about ever since Galdar returned from his exceptionally unfruitful session with the Knights’ Council that morning. The issue Galdar was presenting to the council was simple enough: withdraw all Solamnic Knights from Solace, allowing Samuval to bring his full influence to bear on the town for the good of all. Why couldn’t the council just acknowledge the legitimacy of his request and move on?

Instead, Galdar was stuck in the palace, listening to Emperor Jaymes complain on and on about his own problems with enforcing authority in his realm. By Sargonnas, the man was a swordsman! Had he forgotten how to behave as one? He could take a lesson or two from Samuval in that regard.

“I’m, uh, certain the minotaur nation will give the matter all due consideration,” Galdar answered evasively, hoping that would be a sufficient response to whatever Jaymes was talking about without committing the minotaurs to some imprudent position.

“Of course, of course,” Jaymes said, nodding vigorously. “I knew I could count on the minotaurs to respond favorably to sound counsel. This is imperative if I am to firm up my rightful governance here in Solamnia. Why certain knights can’t see how imperative this is, I’ll never understand. Do you know they even had the gall to suggest…”

Galdar stifled a yawn, having given up the task of counting imperatives. He tried his best to appear as if listening while not falling to the floor asleep. Years of practice through long nights of guard duty came to his aid; he managed to remain upright in his undersized chair, his eyes glazed but open.

There was no telling how long that might have gone on had not a servant scurried in and whispered something in Jaymes’s ear.

“What?” Jaymes demanded, sitting up straighter. “Why didn’t someone inform me sooner?”

The servant cringed but didn’t answer, from which Galdar judged he didn’t have a sufficient reply.

“Apparently, there was some kind of mysterious storm at the Knights’ headquarters this morning,” Jaymes continued, speaking to Galdar. “I’m surprised you didn’t encounter it.”

Galdar shrugged. He had dismissed the storm from his thoughts as soon as he passed beyond the limits of its reach, having decided it was a concern affecting the Knights alone. He had no wish to get caught up in their murky grievances.

“Has there, ah, been some further development in that regard?” Galdar asked, deciding that, in light of Jaymes’s vexation with the servant, the statement required a measured response.

“I’ll say there has!” Jaymes declared. “It seems the storm has left the Knights’ headquarters and is now headed this way.”

As if to underscore this assertion, the room darkened from roiling clouds that blotted out the light reaching the palace. A spatter of rain pelted the windows, rapidly turning into a deluge. Water streamed down the outer surfaces of the glass while fog condensed within, precluding visibility. The city plaza in front of the palace vanished from sight.

Galdar shrugged again. It was a storm, nothing more. A peculiar storm, granted, but that was no reason to get upset.

A solid splat! against one of the windows interrupted his thought. The first blow was quickly followed by others. Soon conversation inside the palace became difficult as the windowpanes reverberated under the repeated onslaught. Jaymes drew his brow down in puzzlement. “By the Abyss, what’s that?”

Galdar had an uncomfortable suspicion about what it was, having glimpsed one of the missiles at the moment it struck and slid down the outside of the glass, but he refrained from saying anything because what he’d seen was clearly impossible.

A frog? It couldn’t be!

He and Jaymes hurried over to one of the tall windows and peered through the fogged-up glass. Rain still poured down as if all the waters on Krynn were being dumped on Palanthas. In an effort to see more clearly, Galdar found a door leading outside and opened it. Wind shrieked and rain blew in at him. Thunder and lightning had returned, replacing the fireballs of sulfur and pitch from earlier in the day. The din was overwhelming. Already, the palace grounds were a muddy quagmire where great splashes showed that something more substantial than mere water dropped from the sky. For a moment, Galdar thought it must after all still be hail such as had been coming down when he left the Knights’ headquarters. Then his eyes took in the hopping, surging mass that was already beginning to fill the grounds.

Frogs, and not just a few frogs, but a great torrent of them—big ones, little ones, medium ones—they had replaced the hail and were raining down from the heavens. Even as Galdar stood there gaping, dozens of the creatures made their way through the open door and into the palace. Jaymes cursed. Galdar, stunned by what he was witnessing, finally realized the emperor was shouting at him to close the door.

Galdar did so from the outside, choosing despite the inundation of frogs to survey the wonder for himself. He tried to pick his footing carefully, but soon gave himself up to slipping and skidding over the squirming bodies that were already ankle deep in the grounds. A steady barrage of cascading amphibians slapped and splattered against his head and shoulders. One fat frog impaled itself on the tip of his left horn and had to be removed. Meanwhile, the rain drenched him. He couldn’t believe how high the water had risen across the grounds in so short a time. Even as he thought that, the cold touch of it closed over the tops of his boots. If he didn’t get back inside, he might be mired in the mud. And if the water continued to rise at that rate it would soon flood the bottom story.

He pushed deeper into the tempest.

And suddenly, he emerged into the calm of a clear, dry summer evening, with the last of daylight still fading from the sky. He staggered at the abruptness of the transformation and turned to look behind him. He could have reached out and touched the edge of the storm, so distinctly was its boundary drawn. Stranger still, his fur and clothes were as dry as if they had never been wet. Galdar frowned. The tempest had the feel of magic to it, and that bothered him more than any natural storm. Even as he watched, the deluge of frogs within the confines of the storm turned more sinister, becoming a barrage of falling snakes. The grounds, full of annoying but harmless amphibians moments earlier, writhed with hissing, coiling reptiles. Asps and adders, sidewinders and rattlers, cobras and constrictors and pythons milled about in great profusion.

In its own way, the storm reminded Galdar of the unearthly storm that had marked the beginning of the War of Souls. He couldn’t help smiling a little at the thought, for that storm had brought him into his first contact with Mina.

The smile faded at the memory of the last time he had seen her, after they buried the Dark Queen somewhere that appeared on no mortal map. What had become of her since? he wondered. He would have followed her leadership into the Abyss and back had she asked it of him. Would he ever see her again?

As he stood there pondering magical storms past and present, men began spilling out of neighboring streets, some of them pushing wheelbarrows and handcarts filled to overflowing with materials with which to barricade the palace doors and windows against the rising tide. Many of the new arrivals were knights. All had the look of stumbling weariness, as if they had been battling the storm elsewhere in the city before following it. At the edge of the storm, they paused, eyeing the snakes with evident dismay while they gathered the resolve to continue. A few turned back but most waded on into the heart of the tempest.

Although Galdar had little love for the men and women of Solamnia generally and the Solamnic Knights in particular, he admired courage in the face of adversity, and that quality he recognized in the determination the citizens of Palanthas were demonstrating. With a grunt of approval, he followed them into the storm. After all, he reasoned, he was a guest at the palace, and as such had a certain obligation to help out in time of need.

He didn’t allow himself to consider that his motive might involve anything more noble than that.

When Gerard reached the vicinity of the palace, he saw through the curtain of rain within the storm’s bounds that pandemonium held sway. Lightning more than daylight dominated the scene, making figures stand out in brief, garish relief. In its flashes, people batted at a cascade of falling snakes while steeling themselves against terror. And still it rained. The palace side of the surrounding streets, just within reach of the deluge, ran full to above the gutters, rushing like angry mountain torrents at the height of spring thaw. Intertwined clusters of snakes were swept along by the current like clumps of tangled seaweed flung toward shore by the incoming tide. The floating islands of reptilian life stood out like nightmarish tableaus, their motion frozen within each lightning flash. For a moment, Gerard hung back, reluctant to wade into so dangerous a flood.

The next zigzag of light inside the storm changed his mind. In the stark brilliance of the flash, a little girl showed clearly, wandering just within the periphery of the tempest and crying. Water came up to her knees and threatened to sweep her off her feet. But of even greater concern were the serpents that hissed and struck at her from every side. Without hesitation, Gerard ran into the rain to her, not even taking time to pull his coat over his head. He simply counted on speed to protect him from the fangs that snapped at his ankles. Miraculously, he wasn’t bitten, at least not that he could tell. He scooped up the crying girl and, working quickly, checked her arms and legs for bite marks. There were none, nor did she exhibit any sign of poisoning that he could see. Mystified, he stared out across the flood for a moment then turned to the girl. “There, there, it’s all right. What’s your name?” he asked as gently as he could while still having to shout to be heard above the noise of the storm.

She sniffled, her triangular, elfin face streaming with rain and tears. “Mar—Marissa,” she said, her little chin trembling. It would be a fine, firm chin when she grew older, but at the moment it quivered.

Gerard smoothed back the sodden blonde curls that lay plastered around her tiny face. “Well, Marissa, I think you’re a very brave little girl. What do you think of that?”

She looked at him incredulously, wondering at the concept.

“So tell me, where do you live?”

She pointed across the street, beyond the storm’s reach.

Gerard nodded. “Let’s take you home,” he said. He took off his coat and wrapped her in it to protect her from the combined precipitation of rain and snakes. Having covered her as best he could, he carried her as he walked through the writhing flood, treading deliberately.

As he passed beyond the limits of the storm and into the balmy weather that reigned over the rest of Palanthas, the girl vanished, leaving him with nothing but his empty coat cradled in his arms. For a long time, he just stared at his coat. Then he put it on and went back into the storm.

He must have presented a strange spectacle as he battled the elements in his effort to reach the palace, for he stumbled along absently, minding neither the rain (which had already drenched him anyway) nor the snakes (whose bites never managed to connect with his ankles, regardless of how slowly he walked).

Someone was going to a great deal of trouble to send a dire message. But what was it? And who was it a message for?

Inside the palace, Jaymes Markham melted wax onto the letter he had just written, then pressed his signet ring into the hardening puddle, sealing the letter. When the wax had cooled, he handed the missive to an elf who stood by, dressed in the livery of the emperor’s court. “Take this to Sir Aldric uth Gaynor,” Jaymes said. “See that he gets it right away. Tell him I await his answer.”

The elf nodded with a regal poise Jaymes secretly envied. Without a word, he stashed the letter in a leather pouch and strode from the room. Jaymes sighed, wondering whether there were anything else he could do. For that matter, what could Sir Aldric do? But Jaymes had to hope the head of the Knights’ Council would be able to offer some kind of help.

In the meantime, he concluded, he could go out into the storm himself and help with sandbagging the palace. Buoyed by the thought of doing something, anything, he marched into the maelstrom to take his place alongside the men and women of Palanthas.

The afternoon at The Bent Copper had been merrier than most, and the evening appeared likely to prove even jollier still. Rumors about each latest form the mysterious tempest had taken blew through the tavern like leaves scattered by autumn winds. The tavern’s clientele, living as it did on the fringes of society, had scant liking for the law as represented by the Knights of Solamnia and less still for the self-proclaimed emperor. As a result, every new report of chaos and disaster affecting those two institutions was accompanied by laughter and calls for drinks all around.

At first, Poko joined enthusiastically in the celebration. He drank and caroused and gambled with the best of them, Rosaline always on one knee while he slapped the other in time to music inspired by the day’s events and played by an impromptu band. While he reveled, the ugly lead chest with its curious rime of frost sat squat and forgotten on a table shoved deep into a corner, clearing space in the center of the room for dancing. The chest infuriated him with the way it defied his lock-picking skills. Moreover, vigorous shaking had failed to produce any sounds from within, and he suspected he’d been duped and that the chest was indeed empty. He half hoped someone would be moved to steal it.

“What is that thing?” Rosaline snapped at one point, seeing his gaze stray to it for the umpteenth time. “Why do you keep looking at it?”

“It’s nothing,” Poko said dourly. “Just a worthless piece of junk.” He brightened. “Why, do you want it?”

“Oh, thank you for the selfless offer, kind sir, coming as it did from the depths of your generosity. But despite your astonishing sales pitch, I think I’ll decline.”

“Aw, Rosaline, don’t be mad at me. I just thought you fancied the thing.”

She sniffed. “Even if I had, you’ve quite convinced me of its worthlessness.”

“Oh, come and dance with me,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “And I promise not to look at the thing again tonight.”

But he continued to steal glances at it, and often, wondering why Julice, who normally had such a keen sense of an item’s value, chose to display it in her room between two much more obviously enticing prizes. He also cursed himself roundly for not having taken one of those two chests instead.

Gradually, however, as the evening wore on, details about the storm’s strange behavior began to sink in. “Rain of fire,” one witness reported. “Flaming sulfur and pitch that doesn’t burn anything where it strikes.”

“The storm doesn’t move,” said another. “Just sits there over the Solamnic Knights’ headquarters, affecting nothing else.”

“No, it’s moved,” another observer claimed. “Now it’s concentrated on the palace.”

“Frogs,” reported yet another. “Thousands and thousands of frogs.”

“Snakes.” One witness, the latest in, shuddered. “The whole of the palace grounds is writhing with them.” His brow wrinkled. “Although it is true that no one seems to have been bitten.”

“Magic,” was the general whisper that coursed through the room, and the revelry took on a more desperate air. “Who is causing it? What could it mean?”

Poko had a realization. Suddenly he knew who was conjuring the storm, and it all had to do with the lead chest sitting in the corner. Julice must be thoroughly angry to go to that much trouble. Poko shivered. Apparently, there was something about the chest he had overlooked. As the reports trickled in, each new one serving to bolster his suspicions, his eyes drifted back toward the corner.

“What is it with you and that chest?” Rosaline demanded. “I’m beginning to think you’re more interested in it than you are in me.”

“How could you think such a thing, my sweet?” Poko drew her close enough to plant kisses on her neck, but she pulled away and flounced off.

Poko knew he should call her back, that he should give her his full attention, but he couldn’t bring himself to forget the chest. Something about the thing was beginning to fascinate him. He started feeling strangely protective of it. Eventually, he hovered around the table, guarding the chest from any overly inquisitive eyes.

So matters stood at a point well into the night, when his brother Angrid skulked into the building through the rear door. He picked his way around the shadowed periphery of the room to Poko, who had finally accepted the seemingly inevitable and seated himself at the table, his arms casually embracing the chest. Angrid sat as well, his back to the wall, his eyes on the other inhabitants of the tavern. He placed his blunt hands on the table and took to wringing them, apparently unaware that he was doing so. Poko studied his brother’s hands. They had been washed, and that recently, but traces of blood still discolored the creases. Poko glanced at his brother’s coarse tunic. Blood had spattered it as well. “What happened?” he asked, his voice a tense whisper.

“It was supposed to be just a simple job,” Angrid said, his eyes never leaving the room as he scanned its patrons. His voice carried a querulous, almost pleading tone. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”

“Tell me what happened,” Poko repeated.

At that Angrid did look at him, his expression anguished. “He wasn’t supposed to be home. I never meant to kill him.”

“What?” Poko straightened, taken aback. “You killed someone?”

“Shh!” Angrid commanded, his attention returning to the room as he tried to see whether anyone had overheard.

“What are you going to do?” Poko hissed.

“I’m getting out. I’m going up into the Vingaard Mountains, to the old family hideout.”

“That gloomy place? It’s a fair journey. When are you leaving?”

“Now. Tonight.”

Poko considered that news, his attention fixed on the lead jewel chest. He didn’t relish the idea of leaving, but by then he had decided that Julice was causing the magic storm, that she was tormenting the entire city, holding it hostage, until he had been tracked down and captured. He didn’t relish the whole Solamnic Knighthood descending upon him like a nest of angry hornets. “I’m coming with you,” he said at last.

Angrid shook his head. “I can’t afford to have you slowing me down, little brother.”

Poko thrust out his jaw. “I can ride just as long and hard as you can.”

“Not without taking time to romance every girl you see,” Angrid said with a snort.

“Angrid, you’re not the only one in trouble. I’ve got to get away from here as well.”

“Why, what’d you do?”

Poko gestured toward the chest. “I stole it. Took it from Julice Lock.”

“So? She probably would have paid you to take that old thing.”

Poko hesitated. “You know the magic storm?” Angrid nodded, and Poko went on. “Well, I believe Julice is responsible for it. She’s a powerful sorceress, and I think she has conjured the storm so she could force someone to help with getting the chest back.”

“She’s a sorceress? You never told me that.”

“She keeps it pretty quiet. It’s kind of a family secret. Shows up occasionally in the female line. I never had cause to mention it before.”

“Huh! I never would have guessed that self-absorbed chit had it in her.”

“She might surprise you, big brother, if you bothered to look close enough.”

The vehemence with which he uttered that statement startled even Poko. “I just mean you should give her a chance,” he concluded lamely.

“All right.” Angrid held up his hands, palms out in defeat. “You can come with me. But I swear to you now, if you slow me down by even an hour, I’ll leave you behind.” He raked the room with his gaze then stood. “We leave in twenty minutes.”

Poko grabbed up the icy chest. The unaccustomed weight of it upset his balance, and he staggered a little. “I’m ready now. Let’s saddle up.”

Angrid scowled at the chest. “You’re not bringing that thing?” he said, turning it into a question. “The ride will be hard enough on the horses as it is. The extra weight will only slow you down. It’s got to be worthless. Some old family souvenir.”

“I’ve gone to all this trouble. I’m bringing it.”

“Suit yourself.” Angrid shrugged. “Just mark my words, I’ll leave you behind if you give me so much as half an excuse.”

“Let’s go,” Poko said harshly. “And try to keep up.” He lumbered toward the rear door clutching the chest, his attempt at injured dignity upset by a gait as ungainly as that of a woman who suddenly finds herself nine months pregnant.

As Poko and Angrid threaded their way between the tables toward the door, Rosaline surreptitiously cast Poko a baleful glare from across the room where she sat on another man’s lap. When Poko ignored her, she turned to her new benefactor and laughed uproariously at something he’d said then began kissing him extravagantly. Poko fumed but kept going.

After leaving the tavern, it took the brothers only ten minutes, not twenty, before they were mounted and riding hard toward the northernmost reaches of the Vingaard Mountains. As the air whistled past Poko’s ears, he could have sworn he heard Julice’s voice like a siren call in his head, luring him back. Even though he knew the voice was just his imagination, to his surprise it pulled at him more keenly than had Rosaline’s more real, and warmer, entreaties to stay.

He set his jaw and spurred his mount faster. He would show Julice that not everyone danced to her tune.

About the time the Rome brothers were fleeing Palanthas, Sir Aldric uth Gaynor was surveying the safeguards being erected around the palace to protect it from flooding. A few guttering torches, half-drowned by the deluge, added their uncertain glow to the more intense but still sporadic glare of lightning that illuminated the work. Sandbags and other materials were being stacked high around every ground-level door and window to form levees and dikes against the water, yet still it managed to seep inside. The bottom floor was awash with water. Through the windowpanes, furniture could be seen floating around. Making matters worse, the level outside continued to rise. Already it engulfed Aldric’s legs to the knees. Soon the knights and other citizens of Palanthas who were working so feverishly wouldn’t be able to hold back the tide.

Aldric tried to stroke the white mustaches of which he was so proud, but they hung limp at the corners of his mouth, weighted down by the rain. He had long ago received the emperor’s letter entreating him to do everything in his power to stop the unearthly storm. Indeed, the emperor himself and all of his staff had since turned out to help with the preservation effort. The elf who delivered Jaymes’s message to Aldric had insisted on waiting for an answer until Aldric at last made it clear to him there could be no answer as yet, not until they knew what they were up against. Privately, however, the old knight had to admit that the term unearthly described the storm all too well.

Everyone, it seemed, wanted an answer from him, Aldric thought morosely as he supervised the work. Everyone had some problem to solve that they all felt only he could address. Earlier in the day (or had it been yesterday? he was no longer sure of the passage of time), Gerard and Galdar had each put his case before Aldric and the council, as if the two seasoned warriors, together with the parties they represented, couldn’t handle their disputes by themselves. Once the storm was finally dealt with, those two would still be expecting an answer, and each would expect that answer to favor him. Personally, Aldric didn’t feel inclined to offer a favorable opinion to either side, such was his antipathy for ex-Solamnic Knight and minotaur alike.

He was considering how he might put off rendering a decision on the matter of Samuval and Solace when a rotund man in a very bedraggled green cloak emerged before him in the rain. “Sir Aldric, it’s you!” the man exclaimed. “I’ve found you at last.”

Aldric, who hadn’t been aware he was missing, studied the man but couldn’t recall ever having met him. “And you are?” he asked coolly.

The man waved the question away. “The name doesn’t matter, I’m simply a messenger from Capul Lock.”

Aldric suppressed a groan. Not that pushy merchant again, he thought. Wouldn’t the man ever take no for an answer?

Meanwhile, Aldric waited in vain for the messenger to continue. “Yes?” Aldric prompted impatiently at last when the other appeared disinclined to continue.

“Oh, yes, the message. I almost forgot.” The man fumbled in a pouch slung over his shoulder and produced a letter almost as sodden as his cloak. “Here it is.”

Aldric accepted the message and moved to a nearby torch, where he broke the seal and scanned the single sheet. The ink had run badly from the rain, but fortunately the original letters could still be made out. As he read, his astonishment grew. He didn’t know whether to laugh or curse at Lock’s effrontery, suggesting his daughter might have something to do with the storm. What sort of fool did Lock take him for? Did Lock think there were knights to spare, men who were Aldric’s to command, whenever some addle-headed girl got a whim to have him hunt down some petty thief?

Aldric turned back to the messenger, prepared to tell him just what Lock could do with his veiled threats and innuendo, when he paused and thought, frowning. There had always been rumors about the Lock daughter, that she was a mischievous spellcaster of some talent. Aldric hadn’t believed the gossip, but magic made him nervous and something about the eerie storm was indeed unsettling.

Beyond the messenger’s shoulder, Aldric made out a shape in the rain, laboring to build up the barrier around one of the windows. The shape was a huge, bull-headed figure with only one arm. Slowly, the frown on Aldric’s face turned into a grin.

“Tell your master I may have just the individuals for his little job after all,” he said.

Chapter 6

At some point, Galdar realized it had quit raining snakes. He had been concentrating so hard on the work at hand, forcing himself to ignore the hissing reptiles that somehow failed to bite him despite constant strikes, that he fell short of noticing. Not only had the clouds stopped dropping snakes onto the landscape, but the ones on the ground were gone as well. Washed away by the water, Galdar concluded. He shrugged and kept up his efforts to barricade the palace from flooding.

The water had reached Galdar’s knees, or halfway up the thighs of those around him who were of human stature. They were an assorted lot, Galdar’s fellow volunteers, consisting of humans, elves, dwarves, and even an occasional kender, although those last creatures were more hindrance than help. Together, they formed a chain that passed sandbags from one person to another. The bags were then stacked to form a protective levee in front of one of the glass-paned entrances to the palace. Despite any differences between individuals on the work crew, everyone seemed inspired by a spirit of cooperation. A little way down the line of volunteers, Galdar even saw the Knight of the Rose and the Knight of the Crown who’d been ready to gut each other during the council session working side by side.

Much of the work had to be done half blind, for between the persistent cloud cover and the coming of night, everyone groped about, aided only by the intermittent glare of lightning and the paltry glow of a few sputtering torches.

In the semidarkness it was difficult to tell the passage of time. It seemed as if they had been working forever. Galdar’s arm and back ached from the strain of hefting sandbag after sandbag, which he had to do one-handed. No matter how much they accomplished, there was always more to do. Once the entrance they were working on was suitably barricaded, the effort shifted to another nearby window that reached from floor to ceiling, thus leaving it vulnerable to flooding. Even the foundation needed protection from the swirling water.

The sandbags kept coming, filled by yet more volunteers working somewhere up the line. Galdar didn’t know where the bags came from, and frankly he didn’t care as long as they continued to arrive. He developed a rhythm, accepting one of the heavy sacks from his up-line neighbor (a battle-toughened Solamnic Knight with a sword scar that cut diagonally across his weathered face), turning, and passing the bag to a slender young man who had to accept each bag with both hands. Then Galdar would pivot and perform the sequence all over again. It was exhausting work, and Galdar sweated despite the chill of the downpour.

Occasionally, he saw figures slip away through the gloom, evidently having contributed as much toward civic rescue efforts as they felt necessary. Most of the volunteers, however, and especially the knights, stood by their posts. They would make good warriors, Galdar noted with approval, even the civilians among them.

Much of the time, Galdar and his group worked at the north or guest wing of the palace, sealing off all entrances to the building’s numerous meeting rooms. At some point while they labored, strains of song began wafting to Galdar’s ears between peals of thunder.

Your father’s drowned and lies full deep;
In distant seas he takes his sleep.
So let his bones with coral keep,
And drink another round.

Galdar paused, wiped the ever-present rain from his face, and peered up at the spires of the palace, thinking the voices had drifted down from one of the parapets high overhead.

“What a scurvy tune to be singing at such a time as this,” came a woman’s voice, breaking off from the song. “The whole city’s like to drown.”

Galdar frowned, wondering whether the whole city was truly being afflicted by the storm or whether that was just a fear of what yet might come to pass.

“Here, that’s a fact, and I’ll drink to it,” a man’s voice answered the woman.

“And I’ll join you,” the woman said.

For a long moment, silence reigned—or such silence as there could be amid the fury of the storm—with both song and conversation interrupted by the singers’ need for refreshment. Galdar blinked against the steady downpour, still looking upward in an effort to identify the source of the voices.

The man and woman, apparently having finished their drink, launched into another verse.

Full fathoms five my shipmates lie;
The murky waters form their sky.
But I’ll not mourn them; no, not I;
So drink another round.

An elbow nudged Galdar’s hip, bringing his gaze back to ground level. “What do you make of that?” the knight next to him growled when he’d gotten Galdar’s attention. He pointed up-current through the obscuring rain. Galdar followed the direction of the man’s blunt finger. A hogshead of ale drifted into view, straddled by a bedraggled pair of refugees who were using the cask as a makeshift vessel to ride out the storm. The pair sat at either end of their little craft, facing each other. The vessel rode heavy in the current, much of its contents apparently still unconsumed. As Galdar watched, the pair floated closer.

“I need a refill,” the man said, lifting the edge of a cloak that covered the midsection of the barrel and exposing a ragged hole chopped through the wood. He extended a long dipper through the opening and used it to refill his cup.

“Ah, Stephan, you’ll not be getting ahead of me,” the woman cried, holding out her own cup. “Besides, I think this ship needs to ride higher in the stream, so let’s both drink deeply and deplete its stores as quickly as we may.”

By this time, the pair had drifted considerably closer to Galdar and the other volunteers, most of whom had also broken off their efforts in order to stare in disbelief at the new arrivals. The pair, however, seemed unaware of their audience until they spied Galdar. Stephan smacked his lips, then wiped them with the back of his hand. “What do you make of that devil over there?” he asked his companion. “I think I’ve escaped drowning only to die of fright at seeing such a horned creature.”

“Why, Stephan, you needn’t fear drowning,” snickered the woman, “for I’ve never seen a man in my life more suited for hanging.”

They both guffawed.

“Aye, but you’re right,” the woman went on, looking again at Galdar, “that one certainly is a monster.” She shuddered. “I might laugh myself to death were I not so terrified by the fierceness with which he glares at us. A cow’s head atop a man’s body. Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“Or is it a man’s body wearing a cow’s head?” Stephan said sententiously, posing the question as if making an important philosophical distinction. He paused to belch, for a moment challenging the thunder.

Galdar’s hackles rose at hearing himself discussed so casually, so callously. His hand balled into a fist at his side. But before he could act upon his anger, the hogshead had drifted past, partially obscured from view in the deluge. The disembodied voices of the vessel’s little crew, however, still drifted back to the listeners outside the palace. Galdar’s last view of the cask showed it caught by an eddy and turning lazily about as it made its way at an increasing clip toward the edge of the storm.

“Oh, make it stop,” the woman wailed. “My stomach is none too steady.”

“And what would you have me use?” Stephan growled. “I’ve nothing for a rudder.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of the woman’s ale being purged overboard.

“Here, watch you don’t get any of that inside the cask!” Stephan cried.

The last Galdar heard of them was an oath worthy of a sailor in the woman’s voice, telling Stephan just what he could do with the contents of his precious cask, followed by a muffled rejoinder in no less colorful terms from Stephan. Domestic tranquility, it seemed, was not to remain a constant between the seagoing couple.

At that point, the pair reached the periphery of the storm… and vanished! Galdar started, caught by the suddenness of their disappearance. He squinted through the downpour. They hadn’t emerged from the storm into the calm beyond the palace, deposited abruptly onto dry ground, for Galdar could dimly perceive that world despite the falling rain. Rather, they were truly gone, hogshead and all. They had winked out of existence as if they’d never been…

As if they’d been naught but illusion.

The fur, wet though it was, rose again on the back of Galdar’s neck. Maybe they hadn’t really existed after all. What if they really were just an illusion? What if that were true of the entire storm as well? But what would such a wonder mean? Was it some kind of warning, a glimpse perhaps of worse things yet to come? Might the entire city be somehow in danger?

Whatever it meant, Galdar was certain that such a work of magic, if indeed the magic he sensed about the storm extended that far, couldn’t bode well.

Just then, Galdar’s musings were cut short by a knight who strode through the rain calling out the minotaur’s name. “Sir Aldric would speak a word with you,” the knight said when he reached Galdar. “In private, beyond the pale of the storm.” He pointed toward the city plaza in front of the palace.

Galdar furrowed his brow in puzzlement as to what that might mean. Nevertheless, he left the line of those passing sandbags for the ad hoc dike around the base of the window and followed as the knight led in the direction indicated. As before, Galdar no sooner stepped past the storm’s verge than his clothes and fur dried as if they were never wet. The stars shone brilliantly overhead, for neither Solinari nor Lunitari yet had risen (or perhaps they had already set, for Galdar couldn’t be sure how far the night had progressed) and no clouds obscured the sky. The air felt warm and close. Crickets chirped and somewhere in the darkness a nightingale sang.

Galdar wasted no effort on wonderment but crossed the dry ground to where Aldric stood waiting, stroking the white mustaches that curved grandly upward at the corners of his mouth. “Ah, Ambassador Galdar!” the knight said effusively when he saw the minotaur approach. “How good of you to come.”

Galdar nodded curtly, sensing trouble like a faint odor of spoiled meat that someone had tried to disguise with spices.

“I’m glad to have this opportunity to talk with you, man to… uh, minotaur,” Aldric paused, seeming to expect a response. Galdar waited. After a moment, Aldric went on. “Yes, um, I’ve been thinking about what you’ve asked the council to do. There might be a way by which you could convince the council to look favorably upon your request.”

“You mean I could convince the knights to withdraw from Solace?”

“Certainly we would be inclined to view your request more sympathetically,” Aldric equivocated.

“But this would come at a price,” Galdar surmised. “What price would be exacted from me?”

“Not much of one. Hardly any price at all. We simply have a small matter that needs to be dealt with, a tiny favor, actually. Shouldn’t be hard for a man of your prowess.”

“And what is this… favor?”

“The daughter of an influential merchant here in Palanthas seems to have misplaced an item she values highly. A jewel chest of some kind, presumably containing a number of valuables.”

“Misplaced it? Do you mean it was stolen?”

“Precisely. And I would look upon it as a personal favor if you would undertake to retrieve this chest.”

If Galdar still had two arms, he would have folded them warily across his chest. “This sounds more like a matter for the Palanthas city guard than for the Knights to be involved with. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Telling you? Why, I’m telling you everything.”

“No, there’s something more.”

“Yes, well, it seems this daughter has something to do with the storm.” Aldric waved a hand at the tempest engulfing the palace. “She’ll stop threatening the city if we’ll help recover her chest.”

“She must be a very capable sorceress to be responsible for this mischief.”

“Apparently she is.” Aldric looked unhappy at having to make the admission.

“And why do you want me to do it? Why not a couple of your own knights?”

“You have an impressive reputation from the war. Seems among other skills you were quite a tracker early in the conflict in your capacity as a scout.”

Galdar bristled. “I don’t like to talk about that early period. It was at a time when my qualities as a warrior went unacknowledged.”

“Well, I’m acknowledging those qualities now,” Aldric said. “So will you do this for us?”

“And in return the Knights will withdraw their forces from Solace?” Galdar asked again. “Baron Samuval will be left to deal with his realm and its neighbors in peace?”

“Of course, of course. Well, at least we’ll consider your request more favorably.”

Galdar understood that he would get no firmer promise from the man. He weighed his options. “Very well,” he said sourly at last. “I’ll recover this misplaced jewel chest.”

Aldric rubbed his hands with enthusiasm. “Very good, very good indeed.”

Galdar turned to go, feeling tainted by having agreed to such an arrangement. But he would not let his friend Samuval down.

“Uh, there’s just one more thing,” Aldric said.

Galdar waited.

“Someone else will be working with you on this.”

“I’m not going to babysit one of your knights,” Galdar growled, rounding on Aldric. “Or did you think to have this person babysit me?”

“Babysit? Oh no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that we, well, we’re hiring another person to help with the task. We have to be sure you’ve got all the resources you need. We don’t dare risk further damage to Palanthas by slighting this effort.”

“And who would this other person be?”

“Oh, someone well versed in upholding the law. Not anyone to be concerned about.”

Galdar was immediately suspicious. “No one to be concerned about, eh? When do I meet this other person whom I shouldn’t be concerned about?”

“In the morning. You’ll meet at the Lock estate. But, um, you already know him.”

Galdar squinted at the knight, saying nothing.

“It’s Gerard uth Mondar, you see,” Aldric said hastily. “Naturally, we wouldn’t want him to know about the little arrangement you and I have made in private, as he is merely being hired for the task, so it would be best not to talk about it with him.”

Galdar glared hard at Aldric. “Do you take me for a fool? Have you made a similar deal with Gerard? Promised him a favorable decision as well?”

“No!” Aldric exclaimed. “Why would I even dream of such a thing?” He sneered. “Reward a man who abandoned his position with the Knighthood to become a common sheriff? No, we suspected he might be for hire these days and made a simple financial arrangement. The truth is, this little job gives me an excuse to get rid of him and show you favor.”

Galdar hesitated, not trusting the knight. But the man’s injured innocence sounded real enough. Finally, Galdar nodded and stalked off, returning to his task of barricading the palace, where he hoped the rain would wash him clean. He felt sullied from having agreed to Aldric’s proposition, but though he turned it around in his mind, he couldn’t see the fault in it. In truth he’d rather perform some little errand for Aldric than stay around here and make speeches to the council. If that got him the concession from the Knights that Samuval needed, fine. Meanwhile, handling sandbags was a far less dirtying task than playing politics with humans.

Aldric, still standing in the city’s central plaza, watched with disgust as the minotaur passed within the veil of rainfall. Once Galdar was gone, Aldric spat. Contemptible minotaurs, every one of them!

It had been true, what Aldric said, that no similar deal had been worked out with Gerard. At least not yet. When Aldric was satisfied that Galdar was well inside the storm, he turned to the orderly waiting nearby.

“Go find that deserter Gerard,” he snapped. “Bring him here.” The orderly saluted and started toward the curtain of rain. Aldric stopped him with an upraised hand. “But see to it that you are not spotted by the minotaur.”

The orderly nodded and disappeared into the rain.

At the south end of the palace, Gerard, too, had been laboring feverishly to protect the building from the storm. It was hard business, and it raised a hunger in him, for he’d had little to eat that day. Fortunately, a nearby tavern owner recognized the need to feed the volunteers, and he and his servants arrived at the palace with a couple of canvas-draped wheelbarrows. The smell of food arose to tantalize Gerard’s appetite. The exhausted volunteers sat here and there in the rain, seeking such meager protection as they could find, and the newcomers unveiled a whole roast, a couple of large wheels of cheese, and several loaves of bread. They set about slicing the various items, enclosing slabs of meat and cheese between hunks of bread. The result was a novel product, a kind of handheld meal, which they distributed along with skins of wine to the crowd.

Gerard accepted his food gratefully and tore into it with ravenous zeal, ignoring the fact that it quickly became as sodden as he in the ever-present rain. He couldn’t remember when anything had tasted so good. Soon the bread began to crumble in his hands, falling away with wet plops into the surrounding water. He ate faster. At one point, a Plainsman who had been working with Gerard handed him one of the wineskins that was making its way among the workers. Gerard wiped his mouth with the back of a wet hand and drank greedily. He was surprised at how thirsty he’d become while working in the rain. He made himself stop after he’d had an amount he deemed appropriate, considering how many thirsty throats out there needed quenching. He handed the skin to a dwarf who sat on his other side. The dwarf grunted his thanks and drank deeply, smacking his lips as he handed the skin to the next person in line.

“Not exactly dwarf spirits,” he said to Gerard, watching the skin with regret as it passed from person to person away from him. “Still, mighty welcome under the circumstances.”

Gerard nodded in agreement, too busy stuffing a bite of food in his mouth to say anything.

“Some storm, aye?” the dwarf said with a careless toss of his head at the skies. He shook water from himself with the exuberance of a dog freshly emerged from a bracing swim. The spray of droplets was quickly swallowed up in the downpour. Just as quickly, the water he shook free was replaced as the rain again drenched his hair and beard. “Can’t say I understand why you topsiders like living up here on the surface, considering all you have to put up with in the name of weather. Makes me miss the subterranean halls of Thorbardin. At least there one kept dry.”

Gerard swallowed again and wished the wine would make its way back to them. “Never cared much for the idea of living underground, myself, although at the moment it sounds tempting.” He paused to stare out at the rain. “Something about this storm isn’t right. This isn’t ordinary weather.”

“That I wouldn’t know,” the dwarf admitted. “Still, I have heard similar assurances from others. They say the mages at the Tower of High Sorcery are claiming this is some kind of magic storm. There’s even some among the different orders who are blaming their brethren in other orders for causing it. Others among them are saying that a sorcerer must be to blame. Mages from all three orders have convened to put a stop to the storm, but so far without effect.”

The Plainsman, close enough to overhear, leaned in to contribute to the conversation. “That’s what I’ve heard tell as well. I’ve even heard that the storm is being caused by the sorcerers who are in town, trying to demonstrate their superior power over the mages. Of course, the sorcerers deny this and claim to be working among themselves on ending the tempest, just like the mages. And unfortunately, with just as little success.”

“Magic!” The dwarf spit. “I don’t care who does it, it always works out ill.”

“But we don’t know that either the mages or a sorcerer is behind this,” Gerard said. “We can’t jump to conclusions without knowing all the facts.”

“Spoken like a lawman,” the dwarf said contemptuously.

“I am a lawman. I’m sheriff for the town of Solace.”

“A sheriff?” said the Plainsman, his voice acquiring a higher pitch. He edged back, looking shaken.

Gerard nodded.

“You here chasing someone?” the dwarf asked. He sounded hopeful of receiving some juicy bit of gossip he could pass along in the taverns of an evening.

Gerard turned to him. “No, I’m here to address the Council of the Knights of Solamnia. I’m not after anyone.” Nevertheless, he noticed the Plainsman edge away as he spoke, spooked at the prospect of rubbing elbows with an officer of the law. Gerard shrugged. It wasn’t his responsibility to apprehend everyone walking around with a guilty conscience. The jails would fill up quickly if he tried.

He started to take another bite of his soggy food, glancing down as he brought it to his mouth. Suddenly, he stopped and threw the food to the ground in disgust, his appetite gone. All around him, others were doing likewise. Cries of distress and outrage ran through the crowd. No one, it seemed, was willing to eat any more of the rain-soaked meal.

The rain had turned to blood.

Gerard and the others went back to work, their hunger unsatisfied but no longer interested in eating. Gerard felt wearier than he remembered ever having been in his life. He waded through blood, not water, and it came to above his knees. Blood soaked his clothes and obscured his vision with a red haze. The smell of it clung to his nose, the coppery taste of it sat heavily in his mouth. The oppressive presence of so much blood made his stomach churn. Gerard’s gorge frequently rose in his throat, threatening to vomit up the meal he had so recently devoured. The only good thing about the latest change in the weather was that the blood at least fell at body temperature. The rain had been cold.

Gerard constantly struggled to maintain his balance against the crimson river as he worked well into the night at the palace, trying with a small army of volunteers to protect the building from the rising flood. And still the blood tide rose. Once in a while, one of the volunteers in the chain would stumble and pitch headlong into the flood, swept off his feet by the current, only to flounder upright again and resume his place in line.

Not all the citizens of Palanthas were as industrious or concerned about civic rescue efforts, however. Rumors as well as barricade materials passed down the line, recounting tales of numerous inns and taverns that were doing a booming business during the deluge. The dwarf, Loren, drank up each new report as eagerly as if they were draughts of his much-lamented dwarf spirits. In fact, Gerard, who had his doubts about the validity of such accounts and held aloof from receiving or relaying them, suspected that the dwarf’s tirelessness was fueled in part by outrage and so was willing to quietly overlook his companion’s thirst for scandal as long as it helped him continue working.

After an interminable time, the work was interrupted by a voice calling out. “Gerard uth Mondar! I’m looking for Sheriff Gerard!”

“Over here,” Gerard yelled back, wiping blood from his face. Through the red haze that constantly bedimmed his eyes, he watched a knight approach.

“Sir Aldric uth Gaynor would have a word with you,” the knight shouted over the din of the storm when he was close enough to be heard.

Gerard looked quizzically at the man, but the knight gave away nothing, merely indicating that Gerard was to follow. Gerard shrugged and accompanied him out of the storm.

Anything had to be better than that wretched, magical, blood-soaked tempest.

If Aldric thought he was brokering the perfect deal, one that would solve his most pressing problems, Capul thought no less of the transaction he was arranging at the same time. “We have an agreement, then?” he asked the handsome young man sitting across the table.

“And I would inherit everything?” the young man asked.

Capul frowned. “When I’m dead, yes.”

The young man shrugged. “Yes. When you’re dead. Of course.” He looked up from the carved figurine he’d been examining indolently. “And when might that be, do you imagine?”

“Not for a long time yet,” Capul snarled.

The young man shrugged again and went back to examining the figurine.

Exasperated, Capul snatched the little statue from the young man’s hands. “Then do we have a deal?”

The young man stood lazily and began examining the books on the shelves of Capul’s library. “I suppose.” He flicked a calculating glance at Capul. “In the meantime, I would need to receive a dowry, of course.”

The corners of Capul’s mouth turned down in distaste. “Of course.”

“A sizable one.”

“Yes, yes, you’ll get more than enough to pay your gambling debts.”

“Ah, so you know about those.” The words, a simple statement rather than a question, held neither apology nor embarrassment.

“Half of Palanthas knows,” Capul said acidly. “And the only reason the other half doesn’t know is that it hasn’t bothered to listen. Town criers practically bellow the news of your losses from every street corner of late.”

“Hmm.” The young man pulled a book from the shelf, thumbed its pages without really looking, then replaced it upside down. Capul sighed and followed behind, righting the book. “That would explain why I haven’t found anyone willing to accept my credit of late.”

“It would go far toward accounting for that fact.”

If the young man noticed the sarcasm, he didn’t give Capul the satisfaction of acknowledging it. “And I would be in charge of the search? I’d want that made clear from the outset.”

“No, you would not be in charge, Marcus. After all, I want the miscreant caught. You would simply be assisting two professionals—and making your report to me.”

“Ah.” Despite the rebuke, no resentment tinged Marcus’s voice. His brow furrowed as he thought Capul’s proposition through then nodded. “At least that way I won’t be burdened by the responsibility of command.”

As if you ever felt yourself burdened by responsibility for anything, Capul thought. Aloud, he said, “Then shall we bring Julice in and tell her the good news?”

For the first time, Marcus looked shaken. He edged toward the door. “I really think it would be best if you told her. After all, you’re her father.”

“And you’re a spineless worm,” Capul declared. “What, you won’t even stand up to a defenseless woman?”

“I fully admit that I’m a little on the timid side when it comes to Julice. Whatever made you think I might be otherwise? But if you consider your daughter to be defenseless, you’re the one who hasn’t been paying attention.” Marcus rubbed his shoulder absently. “The last time she and I tangled, she came near to breaking several of my bones.”

“That was when you both were eight. Haven’t you gotten over that little mishap yet?”

“Yes, it was when we were eight, and it was no little mishap. I still have a scar.”

“If you’re so afraid of her, then how do you expect to manage her when you’re married?” Capul demanded.

“Simple. By staying as far away from her as I can.”

“Hmm.” Capul decided not to push the point. It was, after all, the strategy he had long ago adopted for dealing with Julice as well. “Well, at least you’ll be here when I tell her,” he said hopefully.

Marcus shook his head with such vigor that Capul thought him in danger of dislodging it. “No. I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “By which time I trust you will have told her the good news.”

“Coward!”

“I believe we already established that.” Marcus opened the library door a crack and peered out. Seeing the way clear, he slipped into the corridor and slunk away, leaving her father with the task of breaking the joyous tidings to Julice that she was soon to be wed.

Chapter 7

You agreed to let Marcus do what!” Julice demanded half an hour later. “Did you say marry me?”

“Now, pet, don’t be like that,” Capul pleaded, angling so the table stood between them. “Surely you must have realized this day would come eventually.”

“But why Marcus, Poppy?”

Capul winced at the sudden shift to her childhood name for him. That never boded well.

“He’s just so… so pretty!” she added.

“But he’s not half as pretty as you, pet.”

Julice awarded him a scathing look. “I thought you said I was beautiful.”

“You are, pet, you are. As I’ve always said, you’re extremely—”

“Because being pretty isn’t the same as being beautiful,” she continued as if he hadn’t said anything. “Any dairy maid can be pretty, but only a woman of elegance and regal bearing can be truly beautiful.” She took a couple of well-rehearsed steps to demonstrate her noble carriage, her eyes scanning the library walls as she searched for a mirror.

Inwardly, Capul sighed, wondering why he hadn’t been blessed with a son instead of a daughter. But then, a son might have turned out like Marcus, in which case things were better off as they stood.

Marcus for a son-in-law—there was a prospect to give a man pause. At least Capul’s fortune would remain in the family after his death—until Marcus attempted to squander it all, that was. But Capul knew Julice would give as good as she got.

“At any rate,” Capul said, trying gamely to change the subject, “marrying Marcus is my price for arranging to have your jewel chest returned.”

That mollified her, although so abruptly that Capul wondered whether he had set sufficient store on what the chest meant to her. What was in that thing? Had he underestimated its worth?

“How many knights are they sending, did you say?” Julice asked sweetly, interrupting his thoughts.

“Uh, Sir Aldric didn’t say knights, exactly.” Watching her countenance darken, Capul hurried on. “He said he was sending two, well, sort of professional volunteers, one an experienced tracker, the other familiar with bringing criminals to justice.”

“The only justice Poko deserves is a blade thrust through his liver. But very well, I don’t care who does the deed, and these two sound adequate for the job. I suppose we shall have to make do with them. Although, if Sir Aldric really cared about his precious buildings, I should think he would send his precious knights.” She wrinkled her brow in thought then added, “I trust these two work together well? I can’t imagine Marcus will be of much use.”

“Sir Aldric did say they had come into contact during the war,” Capul answered evasively.

“Good. I’d hate to think we might be hobbled by two men who didn’t know each other or, worse, didn’t get along.”

“Mm.”

If she noticed his ambiguous response, she didn’t say anything. “When are they going to get started?”

“In the morning.”

“Good. With luck, I’ll have my jewel chest back and Poko will be on his way to the Abyss by evening.” She started to leave the room.

“Uh, pet. What about the magical storm?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t you think you should lift it now? After all, Sir Aldric did agree to your terms.”

“Stop it now, before Poko’s even been caught?”

Capul nodded hesitantly.

“Oh, very well. If there are problems with Sir Aldric’s men, I can always conjure it again… and worse than before. I might even use it against the Great Library next time. Get those aesthetics scurrying about, worrying about all their precious books.” She laughed snidely and made an odd gesture in the air then sashayed from the room, leaving Capul to breathe out a sigh of relief. That had gone more smoothly than he’d hoped. He had to fret only about how she would react in the morning when she found out that Aldric’s two “volunteers” had been mortal enemies during the war.

Was it too much to hope that the two had come to terms with each other since?

Gerard paused as he walked back to the palace, staring at its blood-streaked walls and wondering whether the building would ever be washed fully clean, or whether the red stain would seep into the stone and leave it permanently discolored. The centerpiece of the city, he suspected, would long bear silent witness to the mysterious deluge. With the palace tarnished, fair Palanthas would not appear so fair thereafter.

Suddenly, even as he looked, the storm vanished. The early morning sky arched blue overhead, with only a few fluffy white clouds and an unobstructed sun rising above the Vingaard Mountains some distance to the east. A lark sang in a nearby pomegranate tree, its notes beating against the lofty vault of heaven. He squinted his eyes against the abrupt glare, welcome though it was, and peered around to glimpse the extent of the damage done by the storm.

He expected to find the palace awash in blood, probably coagulating where it stood and certainly spoiling everything with which it came into contact. He expected leaves strewn about the grounds and tree limbs blown down by wind and rain. He expected the stinking carcasses of innumerable frogs and snakes. He expected burn scars from the lightning, if not from the balls of burning pitch and sulfur. He expected, in short, to see evidence of a building recently besieged and damaged by violent, magical elements.

What he saw was none of those. Instead, children played noisily under the trees, their voices rising in some youthful, carefree chant as they chased one another with boisterous enthusiasm over a green sward swept clean of all debris. No high-water marks stood on the building as silent witnesses to the extent of the flood, no bloody discolorations stained paint that looked freshly applied to the gleaming walls. Trees, including the pomegranate where the lark sang so merrily, seemed to have lost none of their leaves or branches, but were flush instead with verdant profusion. Birds banked and soared in the summer sky.

The streets in the area around the palace were already filled with people earnestly plying their trades. Pedestrians strode along, chatting amiably as they made way for horses, weaving around the numerous wagons and carts that rumbled and jolted over the cobblestones. Shopkeepers unshuttered windows and doors to their establishments then stood back to greet arriving patrons with waves and smiles. Smells of baking bread and pastries drifted on the air, making Gerard’s stomach rumble with anticipation of breakfast. From somewhere nearby, a blacksmith’s hammer rang out in measured strokes as he shaped some tool or implement. Out on the tranquil bay, the sails of merchant ships billowed like so many bellies made pregnant by an insistent breeze.

The crowd had stopped amid its bustle to stare at the palace. Like the volunteers who had been actively working on the storm relief, the citizens of Palanthas peered around with mute incomprehension. And yet there was about their manner something placid, as if such happenings were already old news, unworthy of too much concern. By that time the following week, the storm would be largely forgotten in favor of newer events.

Gerard observed it all with disbelief, shaking his head at the complacent ways of city dwellers who took such wonders in stride. He saw with amazement that his clothes, so recently drenched with blood, were no dirtier than they had been from his travels. Then, noting the angle of the sun, he turned and headed for the Lock estate. It was time to learn more about the venture to which he had agreed.

He felt unhappy about Sir Aldric promising him a favorable decision in return for his help with the search, especially as Galdar had also been brought in as a sop to his pride as well as for a fee. Some kind of private payoff, Gerard assumed. He found the political maneuvering highly distasteful but decided it was necessary in order to guarantee Solace the support it needed. He would simply have to grit his teeth and abide for once with the coolly political way of doing things.

At length, he arrived at an imposing structure, one of the largest houses he had seen in all of Palanthas. A haughty elf answered Gerard’s knock and admitted him into the mansion’s spacious interior. They proceeded along lengthy polished marble corridors lined with exquisite sculptures of heroes and gods, fine tapestries depicting the history of Palanthas and Solamnia, and ostentatiously oversized oil paintings of individuals Gerard assumed were forebears of the Locks, each rendered as if the lineage were royalty rather than merchants. Gerard, long used to family wealth, was nonetheless impressed by the richness of the art displayed—a reaction he was certain viewers were intended to experience.

They finally reached a small library deep in the heart of the building, where the elf announced Gerard and withdrew. Gerard stepped into the room and immediately revised his opinion of the library’s size, for it was small only in comparison to the rest of the Lock mansion’s foyer and corridors. In actuality, although the room’s holdings would not rival the Great Library’s collection by any means, it was undoubtedly a major assemblage to have been acquired by any one family. Shelves lined every wall from floor to ceiling high overhead, and the amount of wall space devoted to books, scrolls, and other documents extended considerably deeper than was apparent from the corridor.

Small wonder then that Gerard at first overlooked the one occupant of the room, a smallish, scrawny, gray-haired man with a calculating shiftiness to his eyes. Gerard wondered whether Capul Lock realized how greatly the room diminished his already modest stature. Probably not, or he wouldn’t have chosen it for an initial meeting.

“Sit down, sit down,” Capul said when they had shaken hands. The invitation was extended with the air of someone used to being obeyed in all things. Gerard sat self-consciously on the expensive chair Capul indicated, hoping his travel-stained clothes wouldn’t besmirch the leather upholstery.

Evidently, Capul hadn’t thought through his command for Gerard to sit, for when he saw the latter’s dirty clothes make contact with the leather chair, he scowled. But it was too late to say anything.

“Your father, Mondar uth Alfric,” Capul said after asking as to Gerard’s family. “I believe I’ve had several business dealings with him. He’s in the shipping trade, is he not?”

Gerard nodded.

“Yes, I thought so. A most… how should I put it? An exceedingly scrupulous man.” Capul offered the judgment with a trace of disapproval in his voice, as if he himself would never be found guilty of such foolishness. “But you chose not to follow in his footsteps, I take it?” he went on.

“Sir?”

“In the family business, I mean,” Capul explained. “The shipping trade.”

“No.” Gerard considered asking when his interview would get to the point but decided to hold his questions for the time being.

“And your mother’s family?” Capul asked. “Who are they?”

On the other hand, Gerard thought, the small talk seemed destined to go nowhere. “Master Lock, do you mind telling me why you’ve summoned me here? I assume you’re interested in something more than just my family connections.”

Capul chuckled, although it had a studied sound as if the man didn’t often yield himself up to real laughter. “Do you always get right to the point, Sheriff? Well, I admire your directness. However, we’re waiting for a few others to join us first. I prefer not to make any explanations twice when a modicum of patience would render that unnecessary.”

Gerard had the distinct impression that he was being rebuked. Inside, he bristled. He had the sense that Capul never did anything without weighing all the costs and benefits that might fall to him as a result of his actions. Besides, Capul seemed to enjoy his little game of cat and mouse. He would get down to business when the occasion suited him and not one moment sooner. Of that, Gerard was certain.

Capul kept up the facade of idle chitchat a while longer until the door to the library banged open and two new arrivals entered the room without waiting to be announced.

“Ah, my nephew, Marcus Lock,” Capul said to Gerard, indicating the young man in the lead. “And I believe you already know his companion.”

Indeed, Gerard did. He got to his feet, his stance widely spaced just in case, and dipped his head in the merest fraction of a nod. “Galdar.”

The minotaur snorted but didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to Capul. “Send this one on his way. You don’t need both of us, and I have better things to do than to be joined in harness with the likes of him.”

“You prefer pulling the plow by yourself?” Gerard snapped, immediately regretting it. They hadn’t been in the same room together for five minutes and already Galdar had gotten a rise out of him.

“Do you dare mock me again, insinuating I am some farm animal suited only for pulling a plow?” Galdar snarled, turning on him.

Gerard raised his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. “Look, I’m sorry. Let’s just make the best of this we can and get it over with.”

Galdar snorted again.

“Well, this promises to be an interesting meeting,” Capul observed dryly, eyeing first Galdar then Gerard and taking in their mutual disdain. To Marcus he added, “Did you have any trouble finding him?”

Marcus, a handsome young man whose good looks were marred by perpetual sullenness, shook his head. “He was helping sandbag the palace.”

Gerard’s astonishment must have registered on his face, for the minotaur scowled. “What, did you think two arms were necessary to heave a sandbag in place? Or did you think a creature such as I would stand idly by while the palace is destroyed? What kind of guest of this city would that make me?”

Gerard, reassessing his opinion of the minotaur, at least in this one respect, prudently said nothing. He sat down again with effort, attempting a show of nonchalance. “Are we ready to start?” he asked.

“As soon as—” Capul began. He was interrupted by the door banging open forcefully. A strikingly beautiful young woman with dark hair and penetrating amethyst eyes entered amid a swirl of costly brocade skirts. “Ah, my daughter, Julice,” Capul said, rolling his eyes. “Making a dramatic entrance, as always.”

Julice stopped short when she saw Galdar. “You!” she spat. “What are you doing here?”

“Have we met?” Galdar asked.

“You forced me off the road the other day, causing me to ruin a perfectly good dress.” She turned to her father. “Why is he here? Send this bull creature away.”

“Now, pet, he’s agreed to help retrieve the jewel chest,” Capul wheedled. “You wouldn’t want to jeopardize the recovery effort just on account of a dress, would you?”

“It was a very good dress,” Julice noted with a sniff. “The first time I’d had a chance to wear it.” Nevertheless, she let the matter pass, her gaze settling on Gerard instead. “Ew! This one’s ugly. Has he been sent by that nasty old Sir Aldric as well?”

“I assure you, Gerard has plenty of experience bringing miscreants to justice.”

“Justice enough for them to have to look at him,” Julice muttered. She turned away, but her gaze kept straying to Gerard’s face. Gerard felt his ears go hot. He exchanged a glance with Galdar, seeing, fleetingly, a flicker of amusement as well as sympathy.

“Well, if everyone will have a seat, I’ll get straight to the matter at hand,” Capul said, suddenly all business. Marcus did so, followed more grudgingly by Julice and Galdar, who rested his bulk clumsily on a human-sized chair. When they were seated, Capul went on, “My daughter, Julice, is an only child, a very headstrong girl who is soon to be the bride of young Marcus here.” He waved vaguely in Marcus’s direction. “Unfortunately, however, Julice recently fell under the spell of a young profligate named Anton Rome, a son of one of the most notorious families in Palanthas.”

“When you find him, you should run him through,” Julice said. “Skewer him good.”

At that Galdar raised an eyebrow, stealing a glance at Gerard.

“Yes, well, it’s certainly true that the Romes are the leading family in the local Thieves’ Guild and the bane of every law-abiding merchant in the city,” Capul went on. “I learned of the young man’s questionable attentions toward my daughter and intervened in time to prevent a most scandalous elopement.

“Having been foiled in his primary objective of seducing Julice and getting his hands on her inheritance, Anton, or Poko as he’s commonly called, showed his true nature by absconding with a valuable heirloom from my daughter, a small jewel chest of incalculable value. The two of you are acknowledged champions who have demonstrated your talents during the war as well as since, and I am told that you have consented, as a favor to Sir Aldric, to join forces with Marcus in tracking down Poko Rome and restoring the jewel chest to my daughter.”

Capul, having evidently finished, sat back and waited. Galdar was first to break the silence. “Huh! You want me to play nursemaid to this calf”—he jerked a thumb to indicate Marcus, whose lip curled in a sneer—“while he chases down a rival for your daughter’s hand?” The minotaur, who was hunched on the chair too small for his outsized frame, stood. “I was led to believe this was an assignment of some merit and consequence.”

For once, Gerard had to agree with Galdar. He nodded silently.

“But I understood from Sir Aldric that certain, ah, agreeable arrangements had been made between you in return for your help,” Capul said, his expression one of knowing complicity.

Gerard’s opinion of the minotaur, which had risen a notch or so, dropped with the reminder that his onetime foe was doing it for mere money. Not that being a party to Aldric’s intrigues was any better, he told himself.

“Yes, some of us have entered into certain arrangements with Sir Aldric,” Galdar said darkly, his eyes on Gerard.

Gerard’s face burned. Did Galdar suspect that he and Sir Aldric had reached a secret agreement? Impossible! How could he know?

“A jewel chest,” Galdar went on disapprovingly. “So we are expected to waste our time hunting down some silly girl’s baubles?”

“How dare you!” Julice stood and stamped her foot. “Poppy, admonish him at once!”

“Sit down, Julice,” Capul said tiredly.

Julice snorted, her eyes wide as if in disbelief that anyone could be so bold as to talk to her like that. But she sat. “And there are no mere baubles in that chest,” she muttered.

“What is in the chest, then?” Gerard asked, leaning forward.

“Something… something of great value,” Julice said lamely.

“Such as?” Gerard prodded.

“I can’t go into that. You’ll just have to take my word that it’s worth any effort.”

Gerard doubted that. However, Sir Aldric seemed to think it was important. And thus, in order to defend Solace from the predations of Samuval and his men, he must first protect Palanthas, which apparently meant enduring the tantrums of a spoiled girl and recovering her missing trinkets. And he had to do all that with the help of his longtime adversary, Galdar.

It was a fool’s errand, but one he couldn’t figure out how to turn down.

“All right,” he said with a sigh, “what does the chest look like?”

“About so big.” Julice gestured with her hands. “Made of lead. Very cold, often icy. Ugly thing.” She glanced at Gerard and opened her mouth, then decided against saying anything further.

Capul cleared his throat and looked away, Marcus took a sudden keen interest in a loose thread on his cuff, and Galdar—well, Galdar occupied himself with whatever thoughts a minotaur pursued in the privacy of his own mind. Besides, who knew what constituted a minotaur’s standards of beauty?

“Sir Aldric implied that the search for your jewel chest is in some way connected with the magical storm that was afflicting parts of Palanthas,” Gerard said, hoping to divert everyone’s attention from his looks. “What assurance do we have of that?”

For a long moment, those piercing amethyst eyes held him without blinking. “Do you wish a demonstration?” Julice asked at last.

“No!” barked Capul. “I’ve told you before, not in the house!”

Paying him no attention, Julice inscribed a series of arcane symbols in the air, her eyes never leaving Gerard’s. As she wrote, she muttered the words of some incantation.

Suddenly, a fierce wind howled through the library, hurling books from the shelves and ripping out pages. The air grew thick with swirling sheets of parchment and paper. The light dimmed as if from clouds obscuring the sun. Lightning flashed in a jagged array and thunder boomed with deafening force within the confines of the room. Balls of flaming pitch and sulfur streaked down from a ceiling grown immeasurably higher. Gerard choked and coughed on the stench of brimstone. Rain fell in a cascading torrent, rapidly pooling on the floor. The cold touch of water rose like a dead man’s clutch around Gerard’s feet. Hailstones as big as a gully dwarf’s head sent geysers of water shooting into the air. Frogs and snakes plummeted down upon him, the serpents entwining themselves around his neck and arms and legs.

All that in an instant. Then, as abruptly as it started, the storm was over. The library was just a library again, its books and scrolls still safely arranged on the shelves, the musty air redolent with the smell of learning. Galdar looked bored. Marcus yawned. Capul whimpered and scurried about the room, checking his acquisitions, assuring himself of their safety. “How many times do I have to tell you?” he moaned. “Don’t go bringing bad weather indoors. It’s very upsetting.”

Julice ignored him. “Well?” she asked, her attention still fixed on Gerard.

Gerard took a deep, shaky breath. “But it was just an illusion,” he said. “None of that was real.”

“Do you think that will matter should I decide to disrupt the tranquility of Palanthas? Will merchants continue to do business undeterred amid such seeming devastation? Will the citizens go about their daily tasks with disregard for what appears so palpable, so real around them? Will the knights continue their ridiculous council?”

“No, not the merchants,” Capul pleaded. “Julice, that would disrupt our livelihood as well.”

“We have assets enough to survive a long siege from the elements,” she said. “But can the same be said of others in the city?”

Although she said that in answer to Capul, her words were directed at Gerard.

“This is coercion,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

She shrugged. “I must get the jewel chest back. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to see that done. Sir Aldric has agreed.”

She smiled then. Gerard wondered afterward whether it was just another trick of hers, an illusion of something quite unreal, but for a moment he saw not the spoiled child of a wealthy merchant, but the responsible adult it was still possible for her to become, the woman she might someday be.

“Very well,” he said, hoping he spoke for the silent Galdar as well, “we’ll get your jewel chest back. Only spare Palanthas.”

“And I have your word on this?”

“You have my word.” He looked around at Galdar, who hesitated, met Gerard’s eyes, then dipped his head almost imperceptibly.

For the space of a heartbeat, Julice hesitated. Then she nodded. Unfortunately, the gravity of her acquiescence was marred by the return of her usual smirk, reminding Gerard that she was an indulged hellion getting her way. “Good,” she chirped. “Now let me tell you what needs to be done.”

At about the same time, several leagues to the northeast, Poko lay in the cool grass near a stream where Angrid was washing the blood from his hands and clothes. Afterward, they would catch a couple of fish and start a fire with which to dry Angrid’s clothes and cook their breakfast. But that might be a while, for Angrid was scrubbing with determination, his conscience haunted by every speck of blood.

Meanwhile, the day promised to be warm, with dandelion seeds already drifting in the balmy air. Sleep pulled at Poko, for they had spent most of the night riding. The grass tempted him with its cushioning embrace. Insects hummed a sleepy song. Even the purling water conspired to lull him. But he couldn’t surrender to sleep just then. There was something that still needed doing.

He was fairly certain that Julice herself would search for him, maybe not alone, and certainly not out of a sense of moral obligation. But she wouldn’t leave the task for others; she would be too angry with him for that. She would want to personally see him caught and punished. In fact, Poko was relying on her need for vengeance to bring her back to him. Meanwhile, he had to find a way to leave markers letting her know she was on the right path. Clues only she would decipher.

As he mulled the problem over, snatches of song wafted to him from beyond the rise that shielded them from the road. He crawled to the top of the embankment and peered down the other side. A girl, farm fresh and near to ripening, skipped along the road, carrying a basket of eggs to market. Poko stood and stretched indolently, trusting that she would see, for she was just the kind of marker he needed. When he was sure of her attention, he sauntered down the slope toward where she watched him with more curiosity than alarm, his eyes twinkling and his mouth assuming its cocky, characteristic grin.

There was one sign Julice was certain to look for, certain to read.

Chapter 8

When they left the Lock estate, Gerard and the others split up, spreading out through various parts of the city in search of Poko Rome. Galdar took The Bent Copper. Julice had heard of the place from Poko, and there was a certain Rosaline who frequented the tavern whom she wished to question personally. Gerard and Galdar insisted that one of them should scout the place first.

Gerard set out to talk to the city guard, despite Julice’s objections that she didn’t want any “petty, bungling commoners” involved. Gerard had to explain that, while the guard was undoubtedly made up of men lacking refinement and culture, they might know the whereabouts, or at least the likely haunts, of notorious lowlifes such as members of the Rome family.

“You mean because the guardsmen are so much like common miscreants themselves?” Julice said with dawning comprehension.

“Sort of,” Gerard hedged.

“Then what shall Marcus and I do?” she went on petulantly after Gerard and Galdar had divided those two jobs between them. “What’s left for us?”

Gerard looked past Julice’s shoulder at Galdar, who shrugged. “Uh, do you know where Poko stables his horse?” Gerard asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I think so. Why?”

“You and Marcus should check to see whether Poko has taken his horse. If he has, ask the hostler whether he gave any indication where he might be headed.”

“In case he has left the city?”

“Well, it’s… possible.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, the wretched coward,” Julice said. “He probably knows I’ll be after him and has fled Palanthas in terror. He knows what I’ll do to him when we catch him.” She made wringing motions as if she held his neck within her hands.

“Yes, well, try not to kill him right away. We’re supposed to question him first.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” Julice muttered darkly. “But I’m not making any promises.” Julice hurried out, a grinning Marcus in tow.

Gerard and Galdar watched them leave; then the minotaur turned to Gerard. “I wouldn’t put much stock in her promises anyway.”

Gerard stroked his beard in thought. “There has to be any number of places in Palanthas where someone with his family connections might hide. Why would he leave the city?”

“Why indeed?” Galdar shrugged, still watching the departing Julice and Marcus as they disappeared down the street.

“Well, let’s get to work.”

Galdar grunted and Gerard turned toward the headquarters of the city guard. Galdar stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Something you should know, Gerard uth Mondar. Just because we work together on this doesn’t mean I’ve changed my opinion of you one whit.”

Gerard nodded then gave the minotaur a tight smile. “I feel exactly the same way.”

“Good.” Galdar started walking toward The Bent Copper, his long stride covering ground at a rate that would have had Gerard running to keep up. Gerard watched him go, glad they could pursue their separate tasks. He was certain the lull in their hostilities was only temporary. As soon as the job of recovering the jewel chest was over, they could get back to despising each other. The decision on behalf of Solace at Galdar’s expense would clinch their permanent enmity.

“You’re wanting to know about who?” the rookie guardsman on desk duty asked for the second time.

“Whom. And as I said, it’s Anton Rome. Goes by the name of Poko.”

“Poko Rome.”

Gerard wasn’t sure whether the guardsman meant it as a question, for each time Gerard had uttered the name, he thought he’d made it clear enough. Nonetheless, he nodded again.

“Poko Rome,” the guardsman repeated, clearly speaking to himself. “And your name again?”

“I told you, it’s Sheriff Gerard uth Mondar, from Solace,” Gerard said, beginning to lose patience.

“So you claim to be a sheriff, eh? Well, maybe you are, but then again, maybe you aren’t.” The guardsman tapped his teeth with a dirty fingernail while he sized Gerard up as if measuring him for a cell. After a moment, he nodded covertly to a couple of other guards who had been lounging near the door. Gerard spotted the gesture and heard the quiet scrape of booted feet on the floor behind him as the two guardsmen stood. He pretended not to notice, wondering what was going on.

The rookie guardsman got to his feet as well and strode from the room. “Let me get my sergeant,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He spoke that final statement as if uttering a command, although the effect was somewhat diminished by the high-pitched nervousness of his voice.

Gerard waited, his appearance relaxed. Inside, however, he braced for action, should that become necessary.

Moments later, the rookie guardsman reappeared together with a grizzled, older man, obviously in charge, who wore his rank with an ease borne of long familiarity. “Sheriff Gerard,” the newcomer boomed as soon as he entered the room. “Corporal March, why have you kept the good sheriff waiting?” He gestured discreetly for the two guardsmen behind Gerard to stand down then shook Gerard’s hand. His grasp was firm, assured. “Sergeant Torrengood, at your service. I hear you’re asking about our old friend Poko Rome. Why don’t you step into my office, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Torrengood led Gerard to an austere, functional room. “You must forgive Corporal March,” he said, indicating for Gerard to have a seat. “He’s new at the job and takes himself far too seriously.”

“No harm done,” Gerard said. “A man’s got to start somewhere when he’s learning the ropes.”

“Good of you to take so tolerant a view.” Torrengood shook his head and chuckled. “Sometimes I think I owe these gray hairs more to the likes of Corporal March than to any of the criminal element we deal with.”

“We have our own version of the corporal in Solace as well,” Gerard said with a smile.

“Now, as to your inquiry,” Torrengood said, suddenly all business. “Do you mind telling me the reason why you’re asking about him?”

“Not at all. It seems Poko stole a valuable jewel chest from Julice Lock, and we’ve been engaged by the family to help retrieve it.” Gerard decided not to mention the involvement of Sir Aldric.

Torrengood groaned.

“I take it you know of her,” Gerard observed dryly.

“You might say she has earned something of a reputation for snobbishness among the guard. Ordinarily, I might be rather offended at an outsider being called upon to investigate a theft affecting one of our leading citizens, but in this case I’ll gladly make an exception. Believe me, you’re welcome to her.”

“Thanks.” Gerard invested the one word with all the sarcasm he could muster.

“The reason Corporal March reacted as he did is that at the moment we’re very interested in one of the Romes as well—Poko’s brother, Angrid.”

“Oh?”

Torrengood nodded. “Seems last night a simple robbery went sour, and Angrid ended up killing a man. We’d like to get our hands on Angrid, of course, but in the meantime we wouldn’t mind finding Poko. If we find him, we can question him as to his brother’s whereabouts.”

“Do you have any idea where Poko could be?”

“We’ve already looked hard but with no luck, I’m afraid. Assuming they’re together, wherever the brothers are lurking, it’s not one of their usual spots. We’ve got men watching all their known hideouts.”

“I take it that includes The Bent Copper.”

Torrengood snorted. “That den of iniquity most of all. We tried talking to the clients there about Poko and Angrid, but naturally they denied knowing any of the Romes. As if every rascal in the city didn’t have regular dealings with them!”

“Well, thanks for your time,” Gerard said, standing to shake Torrengood’s hand again. “If we find either of the Rome brothers, we’ll let you know.”

“Do. Meanwhile, good luck with Julice Lock. You’ll need it.”

A hush descended upon The Bent Copper the moment Galdar walked in, stooping beneath the low lintel. Galdar ignored the stares and whispers as insignificant. He would be glad to return once more to his native land, where men of true stature lived, and not these puny, flesh-faced examples of humankind. “Poko Rome,” he bellowed into the silence of the room. “Anyone seen him?”

A curvy young woman, whom Galdar judged would be considered attractive by the men of her kind, separated from the cowering bodies huddled around the periphery of the room and sauntered toward him with a saucy gait. Her gaze measured him slowly up and down. “And do you have the other attributes of a bull as well?” she purred.

“What?”

She came close enough to pat him with unwanted familiarity. “Just wondering,” she said. “A girl likes to know these things.”

Galdar scowled, although he refused to step back. He wouldn’t give ground to any mere human, and an unarmed one at that. “Poko Rome,” he repeated. “I’m looking for Poko Rome.”

“The city guard has already been here before you. What makes you think you’ll learn anything more than they did?”

“Do you have anything to tell me or not?” Galdar said fiercely.

“You’re well provided with tact, aren’t you?” she said, casually circling to gauge all sides of him with her measuring stare. “You’re obviously not one of the guard yourself, so I suppose there’s no harm telling. I’m Rosaline, and I know Poko well.”

“Then you know where I’ll find him?”

She shook her head. “But I can tell you he was here until late last night, when he left with his brother Angrid.”

“His brother…?”

“Angrid.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

She laughed, though it carried no humor. “He was barely speaking to me. He was more interested in some stupid box than he was in me.”

“A box?”

“Yeah, about so big.” She gestured. “Ugly lead thing. Cold as the Abyss. He tried to give it to me, but what would I want with something like that? He spent most of the night trying to open it. But even the deft fingers of Poko Rome were no match for the lock on that box. I applaud the locksmith who invented it, for I’ve never seen that happen before. The thing infuriated him, I can tell you that.”

“Did he take the chest with him when he left?”

She shrugged. “I guess so. It wasn’t here afterward, so yes, I suppose he took it with him. And may he have no luck with it, seeing as how he preferred whatever scant virtues that box possessed more than he did mine.”

“Thank you,” Galdar said, consciously adopting that standard of empty politeness to terminate the conversation. “You’ve been… a big help.”

She looked him up and down again, her eyes lingering over choice parts. “Any time you’d like to return the favor…” She let the words trail off suggestively.

Galdar backed away, eager to be rid of the odd creature who was eyeing him so attentively. He stooped beneath the lintel again, cursing the paucity of human dimensions and the architecture it produced. Why couldn’t humans make a doorway suitable for someone his size? Did they think the whole world populated by their meager kind?

Once outside, he headed back to the Lock estate to see what Gerard had learned. Strange, he thought with a snort, for him to be teamed up with Gerard uth Mondar, the scourge of Mina and her followers during the War of Souls. But as soon as their job was finished, there would be an accounting between the two of them. Of that, Galdar was certain.

On arriving at the stable, Julice had to hold up the hem of her dress to keep it from dragging through the manure and mud that seemed everywhere underfoot. She scowled all around her lest anyone mistake the extent of her disapproval.

Marcus rang a bell that served to announce customers.

When the hostler waddled into view, he was so grotesquely fat that it was hard to imagine a horse big enough to carry him. A fringe of tightly curled hair encircled his head, but the bald top of his scalp shone as if rubbed with lard—which might be the case, Julice reflected, noting the man’s nervous habit of running a greasy hand over his head. She tried halfheartedly to suppress a giggle.

The hostler frowned and ran his hand over his head again, unaware that the gesture had contributed to Julice’s amusement. “You two looking for horses?” he asked, his voice surprisingly high pitched for so big a man. “Maybe going for a romantic ride?”

As if to underscore his pitch, a horse whinnied somewhere in the stable behind him.

“No, we’re here for information,” Marcus announced importantly, inspecting his fingernails. He wrinkled his nose against the pervasive smell of fresh manure. “Is this where Poko Rome stables his horse?”

“Might be,” the hostler said. He ran one hand over his head while holding the other out, palm up. “Forgive me, my memory isn’t too good these days.”

Marcus stared at the outstretched hand. “I take it coins would improve your memory.”

“They’ve been known to,” the hostler said, his hand remaining in place. His other hand stopped rubbing his scalp and jingled the coins in a leather purse hanging from his belt.

“Pay him something,” Marcus said to Julice. “He’s not going to talk otherwise.”

“Me?” Julice protested. “You’re the one who brought the subject up.”

“But I have no money. I lost it gambling.” If he felt the least embarrassment over this state of affairs, it didn’t show in his voice.

Julice sighed heavily and searched through her own purse. She pressed a coin into the hostler’s hand. He looked at it and scowled. “For that paltry sum, I couldn’t even tell you what I had for breakfast.”

“Methinks you ought to skip breakfast once in a while,” Julice replied sweetly. She added a slightly larger coin to the one in the hostler’s hand then reached to take the other one back. Before she could retrieve it, however, the hostler snapped up both coins and whipped them away. “Yes, Poko keeps his horse here, when he keeps it anywhere.”

“When he keeps it anywhere?” Julice said. “What do you mean?”

The hostler stretched out his palm again, the original coins having vanished. He whistled to himself, as if unaware of what his own hand was doing. In the background a small boy emerged from the stable with a barrow and shovel, having apparently been mucking out the stalls. The stench of horse dung grew stronger as he approached. He wheeled the barrow around the corner of a neighboring building and disappeared.

Julice rolled her eyes and placed a fresh coin in the hostler’s waiting hand.

“Poko keeps his horse here when he’s not riding it,” the hostler explained, wrapping his fat fingers around the coin. “Which is precisely what he’s doing now—riding.”

“You mean he went out for a ride?” Julice asked. “When do you expect him back?”

She had to sacrifice a fresh coin on the altar of the hostler’s palm before he replied, “Not for a while, I reckon. He and his brother Angrid seemed in a hurry to leave. When a Rome wants gone, he’s generally got good reason for going.”

“His brother went with him?” Julice asked with a frown.

The hostler’s palm reappeared. Julice fed it yet again. “Yeah, Angrid was with him, though he was skulking about in the darkness as if he didn’t want to be noticed. But I seen him, and Poko asked for both of their horses.”

“When was this?” Marcus asked.

When the hostler’s palm made an appearance, Julice turned her coin purse upside down and shook it out, showing it was empty. The hostler’s expression narrowed. Nevertheless, he smiled and answered the question. “In the middle of the night, it was. Poko came banging on my door so long and hard, I had to get up and answer it. The missus swore up and down we were getting robbed, so loud was the commotion. I was sure it would wake the neighbors. Poko insisted I come out and saddle both horses right then. Wouldn’t wait until morning. Said he had somewhere to be. Of course, he paid extra for the trouble this put me to, what with my not usually doing business at that time of night.”

More like the hostler held the horses hostage until Poko crossed his palm with sufficient coinage, Julice thought. The hostler struck her as a man who could judge the severity of another’s need and capitalize on it to the fullest extent possible.

“Did he say where he was headed?” she asked.

“You know, I think my memory’s starting to fade.”

“But I gave you everything I had! I showed you!”

“Nice ring you’ve got, though,” the hostler said, indicating her hand.

Julice snatched her hand away. “Beast! You’re asking for my ring?”

“Course not. I was just commenting on it is all. Although perhaps if you did take it upon yourself to give it to me…”

“Give it to him,” Marcus said, sounding bored. “It’s the only way we’re going to learn anything.”

Julice scowled, even though she knew that made her face look less attractive. She slid the ring off and placed it in the hostler’s waiting hand. He made it disappear and smiled. “No.”

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no, he didn’t say where he was going.”

“But I gave you my ring.”

“And I answered your question.”

“But… but…”

“Come on.” Marcus tugged at her sleeve. “He’s told us everything he knows.”

“But my ring!” Julice wailed. “He got it for nothing.”

“Let it go. You’ve got plenty of rings. Come on, let’s head back and see what the others have learned.” He started to lead her away.

Looking back over her shoulder, Julice muttered an almost silent incantation, her lips scarcely moving. As she did so, she drew symbols on the air behind her back. The hostler had turned away, looking smug. Suddenly, he shrieked, spying the mountain of horse dung that had materialized and was overflowing the whole of the yard. If he’d still had hair atop his head, the vigorous way he chafed his scalp would have rubbed it off. “Yikes! What is this?! Where did this horror come from?”

“For a price, I could make it vanish,” Julice said darkly. The hostler could only sputter and fume as Marcus dragged her away.

On the way back to the Lock mansion, Julice marched in silence, bitter over the loss of her ring and angry with Marcus for preventing a confrontation. When they came within sight of the mansion, however, she stopped and spoke to him in a confidential manner.

“Poko must have taken the chest with him when he fled the city,” she said.

“Then I guess it’s lost, at least for now. But he’s bound to come back eventually, and maybe he’ll bring the chest with him.”

Julice shook her head. “We have to go after him. We’ve got to retrieve the chest before he opens it.”

“Why? What’s in the chest, Julice?”

“I… I can’t tell you. But it’s very, very important to me.”

“Fine.” He pursed his lips in disapproval. “Keep your secrets.”

“Look, all I can say is that we have to get it back. If you help me, then I’ll owe you a favor, won’t I?”

“You know your father promised me your hand in marriage if I helped retrieve this thing?”

“All right, then, I’ll marry you. Probably.” She noted his scowl and amended herself quickly. “Almost certainly. But first you have to help me get this chest back.”

“But you heard the hostler,” Marcus said, waving a hand in the direction of the stable. “Poko took off, left the city, and we don’t know where he went.”

“I think I might. At least in a general way. His family has a cabin or some such in the northernmost reaches of the Vingaard Mountains. Poko told me about it once and said they hide there whenever things get too hot for them in the city or when they need somewhere to stash their plunder for a while before putting it on the market.”

“That’s pretty vague.”

“I think I could find the way, if I went along with you and the sheriff and the bull-man.”

“You!” Marcus scoffed. “Your father would never approve. And that sheriff seems a rather stuffy fellow. I don’t think he’d allow it. I myself don’t look forward to tramping around with that grouchy minotaur.”

“No, I suppose not.” Her brow furrowed in thought; then she brightened. “If Julice can’t go, then I think your brother might be a welcome addition to the small group. He’s always so helpful and humorous.”

“My brother?”

“Yes, your brother Allyn.”

“I don’t have any…” He stared at her, then broke into a cynical laugh. “You know, I think that might just work.”

When Gerard returned to the Lock mansion, Galdar was already waiting. “That didn’t take long,” Gerard said.

Galdar studied him a moment as if deciding whether this remark carried an implied rebuke. He must have decided it didn’t, for he shook his massive head. “There wasn’t much to learn. In fact Poko was at The Bent Copper until late last night, and he had the chest with him. Then his brother showed up, and he and Poko disappeared abruptly. Apparently, Poko took the chest with him when they left.”

“Hmm, that fits with what I learned from the city guard.”

“I thought it would,” Galdar said. “The guard had been at the tavern before me, looking for either Poko or Angrid Rome.”

“Yeah, it seems Angrid killed a man last night in a botched robbery. It sounds like he and Poko have gone into hiding together, taking the chest with them. I don’t know how we can figure out where they went. The sergeant I talked to at the city guard station said they had already checked all the likely places.”

“I think we can speak to that,” Julice said, entering the room and smiling as if she had just bested the two warriors at their own game. “Poko and Angrid got their horses in the middle of the night and hurried out of town.” She quickly explained what they had learned from the hostler, leaving out how much it had cost her for the information.

Gerard pursed his lips in thought. “Then they might have fled almost anywhere. We don’t have any idea where to start looking for them.”

“Oh, but I do.” Smiling even more broadly, which made Gerard and Galdar nervous, Julice told them about the Rome hideout in the Vingaard Mountains.

“I don’t know,” Gerard said, tugging gently on his beard. “The northernmost reaches of the Vingaard Mountains—that leaves an awful lot of territory for us to cover. I’m not sure this information really changes anything. I think we had better consult with Sir Aldric, don’t you, Galdar?”

“Pooh on consulting!” said Julice. “Sir Aldric asked you to help, didn’t he? I can’t believe you’ll just give up.”

“No, I suppose we shouldn’t. I did give my word to Aldric,” Gerard agreed reluctantly. He looked at Galdar. “What do you say?”

The minotaur snorted. “I gave my word too, and I don’t intend to go back on it.”

“Nobody said anything about going back on your word,” Gerard said, sounding testy even to himself. “I just wondered how far you intend to go gallivanting around the countryside in order to keep it.”

Galdar growled deep in his throat. He took a menacing step toward Gerard, who widened his stance, anticipating battle.

“Stop it, both of you!” Julice snapped. “Bring my chest back, then you two can fight all you want. But not until then, understand?”

Galdar snarled and turned away. Gerard nodded, his face hot. “Let’s meet back here in an hour,” he said. “Be ready to ride.” He glanced at Galdar. “That is, if that’s all right with you?”

The minotaur scowled fiercely and snorted, which Gerard decided to take as an affirmation.

The first order of business Gerard attended to after leaving the Lock estate was to find a good place for breakfast, which meant it had to be somewhere—almost anywhere—other than The Juggler’s Balls. One thing he had learned in the military was to always eat a good meal when facing a tough campaign, for you never knew when the next opportunity might come along.

He found a place where the locals ate, and once inside, he located a seat with some difficulty, for all the available places were taken. Only when the occupants of a long bench at one of the room’s many trestle tables shifted closer together, making room for him companionably, was he able to squeeze into the throng. Fortunately, patrons were helping themselves to food served from communal platters spaced along the tables, so he didn’t have to wait for one of the harried serving girls to take his order. He dished up a hearty pile of scrambled eggs, half a dozen sausages, and a couple of fluffy rolls still warm from the oven, washing it all down with tarbean tea dispensed from a great copper kettle in the middle of the table. It wasn’t as good as the fare Laura Majere cooked at The Inn of the Last Home, but it would do.

After breakfast, he returned to The Juggler’s Balls and paid for his room and board. He told the innkeeper that he might return in a week or two. Then he hastened back to rejoin the others, picking up Thunderbolt on the way.

On the street, he threaded his way through the boisterous, noisy throngs. He led the spirited horse rather than trying to ride it in the crowded streets. As he walked, coaxing Thunderbolt along, he discovered he was drinking in the fresh air and whistling. His whistling was relatively tuneless, he knew, but the horse seemed to find it soothing. The animal’s ears, which had been laid back in fear from all the jostling it was being subjected to, cocked forward and the horse quit trying to pull the reins loose from Gerard’s hand. Instead, it lowered its head and came after him obediently.

As they neared the Lock mansion, the crowds thinned. The horse calmed further and clopped along, adding a steady if somewhat off-rhythm percussive beat to Gerard’s whistling.

Galdar was already at the mansion, awaiting the arrival of Gerard and Marcus. Galdar didn’t have a horse, a fact that caught Gerard by surprise at first until he noticed that his own horse’s nervousness had returned as they approached the minotaur. No horse would accept the half-bull, half-human creature as a rider. With dismay, Gerard realized their progress on the road would be limited to Galdar’s pace on foot.

Capul Lock came to see them off, although Julice was nowhere around. Gerard thought it just like the girl, who struck him as vain and self-centered anyway, to fail to show up for the quest she had initiated. She was probably in her chamber trying on new dresses. Galdar muttered that they ought to hurry before she showed up.

Marcus arrived soon after Gerard, sauntering along as if he had all the time in the world and leading a compact chestnut horse. He saluted as he drew near.

“Well met by moonlight, gentlemen,” he said in an offhand manner.

Galdar’s eyes narrowed. “Moonlight?”

Marcus waved indifferently at the sunny sky. “Yesterday’s storm can’t have passed so completely, so I must conclude that this isn’t sunlight we now enjoy, but moon’s glow. The hour is not day, gentlemen, but night.”

Galdar snorted and turned away from the young man’s foolishness. Gerard wondered what Marcus, who had been so dour to that point, was playing at. He felt dismayed at the prospect of spending so much time in the company of a prickly minotaur on the one hand and a frivolous, petulant coxcomb on the other.

“Well, you had best get on the road,” Capul said impatiently. “The sooner you recover that wretched jewel chest, the sooner my daughter will be married.” He winked at Marcus, who flashed a cynical smile. Each had the appearance of the cat who would swallow the proverbial canary if given half a chance, Gerard thought. The only question was which one would turn out to be the cat and which the canary.

Gerard and Marcus swung into their saddles, and the three of them headed for the northeastern road out of the city.

Chapter 9

After leaving the Lock mansion, their progress was slowed not by the minotaur’s pace, but by heavy traffic, for it was market day and people were thronging into the city to buy and sell. Of course, it helped somewhat to have a towering, fierce-looking minotaur in their party, Gerard decided, for people scurried to the sides of the road at the first sight of him. But as they tended to abandon their carts and wagons in the middle of the road, barring the way, the scattering of the crowds wasn’t as helpful as Gerard would have preferred.

The day seemed ill suited for haste anyway, he tried to convince himself philosophically, and he listened with only half an ear to Marcus’s incessant chatter. Marcus, who had struck Gerard from the first as a normally truculent person, clearly had something up his sleeve, but until he showed his hand, there was no point in trying to guess his charade. Meanwhile, he was going on about some adventure at sea he had heard at third or fourth hand, from what he said. Apparently, he was unaffected by either Gerard’s indifference to the tale or the minotaur’s glaring hostility. Minotaurs were excellent seamen, Gerard knew, and Galdar probably had far greater experience with maritime matters than had Marcus. Even Gerard, poorly versed in naval lore, could see the illogic and obvious inconsistencies in the young man’s storytelling.

Gradually, they approached the edge of the city. They had almost left the last houses behind, with the landscape changing abruptly from urban neighborhoods to tilled farmlands, when they came to a section of the road flanked by a pair of enormous, ancient elms. Marcus turned off the road under one of the elms and drew up rein.

“Let’s rest here a while,” he said, already dismounting, with an exaggerated yawn.

“But we just got started,” Gerard objected, bringing his own mount around. “We should make time while we can. There’s no telling how far ahead of us Poko might be.”

Marcus lay down on the grass beneath the elm, sprawling on his back so he could gaze at the few white clouds overhead. “Oh, I’m sure Poko will be taking breaks as well, especially since he doesn’t know we’re hot on his heels. Say, doesn’t that look like a draconian hatching from its egg?”

Gerard whirled around, instantly alert, then realized Marcus was pointing to a cloud formation, not an actual birth of one of the accursed creatures. He relaxed his guard but sulkily remained in his saddle. “Really, I think we should keep going while we have the light and such good weather.” He turned to Galdar, appalled at having to seek an ally in the minotaur. “What do you think?”

Galdar scowled from one to the other as though wary of aligning himself with either fool. “There is sound counsel in what you say,” he admitted to Gerard at last, his reluctance palpable. “It is too soon to stop.”

“There, you see,” Gerard said, returning his attention to Marcus, who now seemed to be anxiously searching the road behind them rather than studying the clouds in the sky. “If he agrees it’s too early for a rest, when it is he who must run alongside the horses instead of riding, then we should press on.”

Gerard didn’t think he’d said anything objectionable in that, but an angry snuffling from the minotaur brought him up short. He looked to see Galdar glaring at him and breathing heavily through distended nostrils. “What?” Gerard asked. “I didn’t mean to say anything offensive.”

“Do you mean that I’ll slow down the hunt?” Galdar demanded. “Or are you suggesting that I’m somehow less than you because I cannot ride a horse?”

“I… I wasn’t saying either of those things,” Gerard said, guiltily aware, however, that he had thought them. “All I meant was—well, look, we should make use of the opportunity we have to really cover some necessary ground on such a glorious day.”

“I’ll wear the horses right out from under you and not even be winded!” Galdar vowed. “Then we’ll see how well you do afoot.”

“Oh, relax,” Marcus said, his eyes still on the road behind them, although he pretended to be staring off into a nearby field. “Hey, that scarecrow over there reminds me of a man I once knew. It seems this fellow could never win at bones, or khas, or any game of luck or skill. It got to be after a while that whenever he joined in a friendly game, everyone knew to bet against him no matter how favorable the odds appeared on his side, for you always stood to win money by betting on him to lose. The problem was, after a while word got around and no one was willing to take up such a bet when offered.…”

Marcus droned on about the fellow at length, as if Gerard and Galdar were hanging on every word. Gerard rolled his eyes and shifted in his saddle, reluctant to dismount but loath to pass up an opportunity to stretch his legs, given that they had stopped anyway. Galdar, disdaining the company of either man, stalked over to the second elm and leaned against the trunk, arms folded defiantly across his chest.

“… so they all convinced him to enter the big game against these six foreigners—” At that point, Marcus broke off. He clambered to his feet and peered back down the road. “Look, someone’s coming!”

“That’s hardly an observation worthy of news,” Gerard growled. “After all, we’re on one of the major roads out of the city. It would be more notable if there weren’t others on the road today.” Nevertheless, he turned to look as well.

A single horse bore down on them, its rider pushing the beast hard. To Gerard’s surprise, the rider, a slightly built youth with a face drawn tight in concentration, drew up as he approached the two elms, as if he had found his quarry. The boy had a dirt-smudged face that badly needed washing and tousled, sandy-colored hair that stuck out from under his cap at odd angles, making even Gerard’s recalcitrant locks look presentable by comparison. His trousers, worn threadbare in the knees and ragged at the cuffs, looked to have been originally tailored for someone a size or three larger, and he held them up with a length of rope for a belt. Gerard suspected that he probably carried a frog in one pocket and a slingshot in the other, so typically boyish did he appear.

“Allyn!” Marcus cried, the exclamation sounding strangely rehearsed. “What brings you here?”

The youth nodded to Marcus. “Brother,” he acknowledged. Then, looking at Gerard, “I came hoping to join your company.”

“Well, I don’t know—” Gerard began warily.

“Certainly, brother, certainly,” Marcus said, cutting him off. “We’d be glad of your fellowship.”

Gerard scowled at Marcus. “I really don’t think we should be adding to our numbers.”

“What’s this?” Galdar growled, coming up to join them. “Another human wanting to step up the pace from what poor Galdar can manage? Leave it to the minotaur, I suppose, to slow everyone down.” He stared a challenge from one of them to another, the expression even on his bull’s face clearly defiant. “We’ll soon see who has the greater stamina.”

Gerard glared at Marcus.

“He’s a good tracker, my brother, and really good company,” said Marcus blithely. In an undertone, he added, “We kind of stick together, like brothers always do.”

Gerard stared at Allyn, who grinned sheepishly. He didn’t look like much of a tracker or such good company. The sheriff turned and looked to Galdar for support.

“Who’s wasting time now?” barked Galdar, mistaking Gerard’s sharp glance.

“Well, on that note, it’s time to get going, don’t you think?” Marcus said, swinging back into the saddle and grabbing the reins. “What are you all waiting for?” He spurred his beast forward but drew up to wait for the others. Allyn promptly fell into line behind him as if the matter were decided.

And so it was. Gerard felt a slow burn ignite in the pit of his stomach, but when the minotaur, too, joined the pair in the road, he had to admit himself outvoted. Or outmaneuvered, he wasn’t sure which.

Galdar, who had been irritated enough by the first stop to rest, grew indignant when that first stop was followed soon by a second. “Now what?” he demanded when the others drew rein in the middle of the road.

Marcus swiveled around to look at him. “We have to decide which way,” he said, pointing to the fork ahead. “Fortunately, I have something that will help.” With that, he pulled a map from his saddlebag.

“A map?” Galdar said warily.

“A kender map,” Marcus explained. Gerard rolled his eyes at mention of the irrepressible race, famous for map making and collecting. (Too often, Galdar knew, a kender map needed decoding or deciphering before it was of any use.) With a sigh, Gerard took one edge of the map as Marcus pointed first along the left-hand route then along the one on the right. Looking up, they saw a pretty farm girl walking toward them, coming to market in Palanthas with a basket of eggs.

“A kender map!” Galdar exclaimed. “And we are to trust ourselves to the accuracy of that?”

“Why not?” asked Marcus. “This one cost me a fair amount, and its accuracy was guaranteed.”

“I’m opposed to banking the outcome of this venture on a map drawn by any such creature,” Galdar countered.

Gerard looked up from the map and studied him. “The map shows the right-hand road as leading into the Vingaard Mountains. If the way marked is to be believed, our journey will be a very winding, treacherous one from this point on. How do you propose we proceed if not with the aid of a map? Do minotaurs possess some better method of tracking?”

Galdar, who had been a scout and tracker during the early phase of the War of Souls, felt personally affronted by the reliance on, of all things, a map produced by kender. But let the humans flounder about if that was their stubborn intention. He wouldn’t deign to glance at the ridiculous map.

“Perhaps I will simply sniff out this Poko fellow,” he said with a sneer. “You humans certainly possess your own peculiar stink.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

The girl who was pretending to be Allyn stared from Gerard to Galdar and back again, obviously annoyed with them both. She looked ready to say something, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, she urged her horse forward and paused just out of earshot, where she leaned down to speak with the approaching farm girl carrying a basket of eggs.

“Let’s go right,” Marcus was saying to Gerard. “The other route leads more northward to the coast. From what Julice told us, Poko and Angrid will be headed as directly as possible into the mountains.”

Galdar ignored them, preferring instead to watch Allyn, whom he knew from the scent of her (though he wouldn’t have admitted it) was only Julice disguised by a spell. As Julice talked to the farm girl, the latter blushed deep red, giggled, and refused to meet Julice’s gaze. When the girl responded, it was at length to whatever Julice had said. Even from a distance, the exuberance with which she spoke was clear.

After a while, Julice straightened again in the saddle, allowing the farm girl, still giggling and hiding her face behind her free hand, to proceed past their party.

“This way, gentlemen,” Julice called, interrupting Gerard’s and Marcus’s deliberations and heading along the right-hand fork. She waited impatiently for the others to catch up. Meanwhile, the girl with the eggs continued down the road, giggling as she left them behind.

“How do you know this is the right way?” Gerard challenged, coming up to ride alongside her, for Julice had spurred her horse into motion as soon as the others drew abreast of her.

Julice rolled her eyes, her lips curiously set in a disapproving frown. She jerked a thumb in the direction of the farm girl. “Easy, I asked her if she’d ever heard of Poko Rome, at which she blushed deeply and started gushing at great length about ‘Poko this’ and ‘Poko that.’ ” Julice drew her lips tighter, pursing them. “Shameless hussy,” she muttered under her breath.

Galdar watched as Gerard stared at her, clearly baffled by the intensity of Allyn’s reaction.

As they continued on, Gerard wondered why the farm girl should be considered the shameless one, when it might have been Poko Rome who was to blame. Nevertheless, he had to admire Allyn’s resourcefulness.

Thus was the precedent set for how they began tracking Poko, who seemed to have left a string of similarly moonstruck girls behind him like a trail of bread crumbs marking his path through the forest. At each possible fork in the road, they first consulted the map. If that failed to reveal a definitive route, they simply asked the first pretty farm girl or village lass they saw whether she had encountered anyone named Poko Rome. If she got weak kneed and dreamy eyed at the mention of him, they knew they were on the right road. If she stared at them with incomprehension, they knew they needed to backtrack and try another route.

Gerard noticed that on each occasion when they relied on that, it struck Galdar like a challenging blow to his status as chief tracker. The fact that the minotaur had nothing better to offer only seemed to make matters worse. Gerard wished he could put Galdar at ease but knew if he said anything, the minotaur would take it as a personal attack.

Allyn, too, looked as though he found their manner of tracking their quarry repugnant, for he grew ever more tense and tightlipped as the chase wore on. He obviously disapproved of Poko’s philandering. He muttered threats and swore oaths.

Clearly, Gerard noted, the boy was jealous.

After all, Gerard reasoned, the boy had reached an age where he was beginning to notice girls, and he saw himself wholly outclassed by Poko Rome’s womanizing skills. How could Allyn not feel overshadowed by such obvious mastery?

Thus they passed the first two or three days on the road, with Poko seeming to draw them purposely ever deeper into the hinterlands of Solamnia. They passed through one tiny village after another, communities with raw frontier names: Forgotten, Lonely, Heartbreak, Beyond, and (Gerard’s personal favorite) Who Knows Where. Many of those towns were too small for even a single inn, and the companions spent their nights huddled deep in the hay mounds of some obliging farmer’s barn.

Galdar continued to attract considerable attention as they traveled, for people often stared with wide eyes and gaping mouths when he passed. Many fled at the sight, fearing for their lives. Those isolated communities seldom saw travelers from distant parts, evidently, and few could claim knowledge of the race of minotaurs. Each time he was so greeted, Galdar pretended indifference, his attention fixed on the way ahead. But Gerard noticed how Galdar’s eyes invariably narrowed and the minotaur huffed audibly whenever they passed through some hick settlement.

But it was Allyn’s predicament that most aroused Gerard’s sympathies. Along about the second day, he took it upon himself to educate the boy in the ways of dealing with women. If Allyn felt more at ease with his own competence in that regard, Gerard reasoned, he wouldn’t feel so intimidated by Poko’s skill. So Gerard sought him out, where Allyn had taken to riding, at the rear of the group.

Allyn looked up from whatever thoughts occupied him and noted Gerard’s presence with surprise. “What is it?” he asked, sounding alarmed. He glanced uneasily about, as if bandits might be about to beset them. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Gerard shrugged, careful to appear casual around the boy’s jumpiness, trying to set him at ease. “I just thought you might want a little company. You’ve been riding back here by yourself the whole time we’ve been on the road.”

The boy’s tense expression suggested that, if it were left up to him, he would still be riding alone, but he said nothing.

“This is pretty country,” Gerard observed with a jerk of his chin to indicate the landscape around them. “Remote as all get out, but pretty.”

Indeed, the land they’d been traveling through was lovely, having risen slowly from the coastal farmlands near Palanthas to rolling meadows as they climbed ever closer to the northernmost arm of the Vingaard Mountains ahead. Tracts of timber had begun to dot the landscape, deciduous trees gradually giving way to stands of pine and fir. Streams cut channels through the notches between hills, exposing the rich, black soil beneath and babbling on their way to join their larger brethren nearer the sea. Larks and finches sang among the trees. Butterflies flitted around the numerous patches of wildflowers to either side of the road. The air smelled redolent of grasses and evergreens and loam.

Allyn looked about him and nodded diffidently, as if he hadn’t noted their surroundings before.

They rode in silence a while; then Gerard chuckled. “This Poko is quite the ladies’ man, isn’t he?”

If that was intended to lubricate conversation, it failed miserably. Allyn’s lips pursed with displeasure, and his gaze dropped to his lap in evident glumness.

Gerard sighed inwardly and tried again. “You know, there’s no great mystery to his success. Anyone can manage it if he puts his mind to the matter.”

Allyn glanced up with surprise then immediately dropped his eyes again.

Gerard slogged on, feeling the burden of striking up a dialogue alone. “Yeah, I felt much as you do for the longest time. Why, you might not believe it to look at me now, but I was once quite intimidated at the prospect of talking to pretty girls.”

The sound that emerged from Allyn’s throat sounded suspiciously like a chortle, although it was promptly masked by a contrived fit of coughing. Gerard frowned at the boy’s rudeness but assured himself it probably derived from acute self-consciousness at the thought of discussing so painful a subject.

“What you need to do is begin by telling a lady something about yourself. Invent accomplishments if need be, but keep them reasonable. You don’t want to get caught in outright fabrication. Whatever you do, don’t make the girl the topic of conversation, as this is likely to focus too much attention on her and get her uncomfortable. And be prepared to talk this way at some length so she’s not obliged to fill in any gaps. This will give her time to set herself at ease before she has to say anything. Nothing slows a conversation like moments of awkward silence.”

Allyn looked up, his eyes suddenly sparkling with merriment. “And this works for you, does it?”

“Oh, yes, every time without fail,” Gerard said, glad to see the boy’s spirits so effectively lifted. All he needed was a bit of sound counsel to boost his confidence. Gerard glanced around, noting that they had come to a small farm. Near the barn, a girl perched on a three-legged stool, milking a tethered cow. “Go over there and try it,” he said, indicating the girl. “We’ll wait for you here.” He drew up and signaled for the others to halt as well. “Go on,” he urged in fatherly fashion when Allyn hesitated, looking ill at ease. “It’s easy, you’ll see. Just talk about yourself.”

Allyn turned his mount and let it plod over to where the girl had looked up from her work and sat waiting. She had red hair and freckles cascading over her cute pug nose and laughing cheeks. When he reached her, Allyn dismounted and, with a glance back at Gerard, began to converse with her. Gerard wished he were close enough to hear what Allyn was saying but had to content himself with observing the girl’s facial expression. That went from curiosity to starry-eyed sighing to sudden, fierce indignation.

“What’s the calf doing?” Galdar demanded, coming over to Gerard. The sheriff thought he detected a note of amusement in the minotaur’s words. “Is he taking time from our journey to indulge in romance? He should just pick her up and carry her off like a man.”

Gerard ignored him, intent on the scene being played out across the yard. At length, the milkmaid reached up and slapped Allyn’s face before returning resolutely to work. Gerard winced at the fury with which she attacked the cow’s udder as she resumed her milking. Even the cow had something to say about it, for it bawled as if begging for mercy. Meanwhile, Allyn stalked off, looking angry as well, and rejoined his comrades.

“Don’t worry,” Gerard told him, spurring his horse into motion again. “You’ll get better at it with practice.”

Allyn muttered something indecipherable, and Gerard felt sorry for him. The poor lad’s cheek glowed with the sting of the slap he had received. Gerard would wait until Allyn’s temper and cheek had both cooled before attempting to discuss the debacle further. Marcus, however, was not so easily deterred. “What did you say to her?” he said, trying with only partial success to stifle his laughter.

“I asked whether she had seen Poko Rome,” Allyn said in a sullen monotone, sparing a glance at Gerard.

“Ah, that would account for the dreamy look,” Marcus said. “So she had seen Poko. Did she say when?”

“Yesterday. He and Angrid spent the night in her barn.”

“I see. And where did she sleep?”

Allyn responded in a low mutter that Gerard couldn’t hear.

“What’s that?” Marcus demanded, his laughter getting the better of him.

Allyn shot his brother a vicious look that might have frozen a lesser man on the spot, although Marcus looked unfazed.

Marcus’s only response was a further fit of laughter. Allyn spurred his horse savagely and rode forward. Gerard sighed deeply and resolved to talk to the boy later in the day. He just needed to refine his technique a little.

Chapter 10

Gerard, who happened to be in the lead, rounded a grove of trees about midafternoon and halted, signaling the others to draw up.

“What now?” Galdar growled. “Why are we stopping? Don’t tell me your horse needs another rest.” He loped up alongside Gerard, sounding no more winded after having run at a clip for several hours than he had on starting out that morning. Gerard couldn’t help but admire the fellow’s stamina.

Upon reaching Gerard, Galdar stopped and frowned. “Oh,” he said. He looked at the road ahead then at the separate roads branching off to both left and right. “We’ll have to figure out which direction he took.”

Gerard consulted the map. “It could have been any one of these, you never know with a kender map. To save time, we should split up and check out each route at once. We can regroup here in a couple of hours.” He looked at the minotaur. “What do you think?”

Galdar’s eyes widened in surprise as he took in the fact of Gerard’s having asked his opinion. After a moment, he nodded. “I agree.”

By that time, the other two, deep in conversation, had reined in behind them. Or perhaps, Gerard thought as he noted how oblivious the pair seemed to the fact that they had stopped, their horses had merely halted of their own accord, having caught up to the two in front. At last, Marcus broke off in the midst of whatever he was busy saying. He peered around like a person emerging from a deep sleep. “Huh? Where are we?” he asked. “What’s happening?”

Gerard waved at the crossroads. “According to this map, they could have taken any one of these routes. In the interests of time, we need to canvass each direction and scout ahead. Galdar, how about if you take the road to the right?”

The minotaur nodded.

“I’ll take the one straight ahead,” Gerard went on, “and you two”—he looked at Marcus and Allyn—“will check out the road to the left.” Squinting at the sun, he estimated its distance above the horizon. “We’ll meet back here in a couple of hours, all right? Let’s hope that gives us enough time.” He urged his horse forward but immediately drew up. “By the way, Allyn?”

The boy appeared not to have heard until Marcus’s elbow caught him in the ribs. “Uh, yes?” the boy said, turning abruptly.

Gerard grinned. “Try not to ask anyone who might have encountered Poko whether they also fell in love with him, all right?”

Allyn turned bright red and began spluttering in response, while Gerard, chortling at the boy’s discomfiture, started forward again. Marcus snickered as well and even Galdar chuckled. Gerard felt a little guilty at having gotten a laugh at the boy’s expense, but it was just a bit of harmless ribbing. He’d apologize to Allyn later if the boy’s feathers were still ruffled.

He rode for some ways before coming across any sign of a settlement where he could inquire about Poko. The sun shone warmly, bringing out the resinous smell of pine sap. Squirrels chattered away, scolding him as he rode by as if he were interrupting their important work. From a particularly large tree just ahead came the rapid-fire tap-tap-tap of some kind of woodpecker—possibly a flicker from the glimpse Gerard had of a whitish, gray-speckled breast—searching for insects under the bark. It vanished into another nearby stand of trees, where it soon resumed pecking for its dinner.

A little later, Gerard heard the unmistakable hum of a large number of bees whose hive was evidently close at hand. Soon he spotted several of the creatures rising and dipping among a cluster of wildflowers alongside the road. His mouth watered at the thought of the honey their presence no doubt heralded, and he was sorely tempted to search out the hive. From the sound, it couldn’t be located very far from the road. But he thought of the others in the group diligently pursuing their own searches for Poko Rome and let his horse plod on, sighing at the prospect of passing up honey. Maybe, if Poko had come his way, he and the others could pause long enough to find the hive when he returned with them. Or perhaps he would stop long enough to collect a couple of honeycombs on his way back and surprise his companions when they met up again at the fork in the road.

Finally he came to a small town. It was not merely a village, as were most of the communities they had seen in the past couple of days, but an actual town, complete with a real inn. At that, Gerard entertained a thought sweeter and more tempting even than honey—the possibility that he and his companions might be able to spend the night in real beds instead of burrowed under some farmer’s haystack or, worse, wrapped up in their cloaks and saddle blankets on the cold, hard ground. The days might be warm, but the higher they climbed toward the Vingaard Mountains, the sharper the nights had grown. He fervently hoped Poko had come that way so he and his companions would have an excuse to pass the night there. By the time they arrived, he calculated it would be just about sunset, which would make it the perfect time to call a halt in the hunt.

He drew up at the inn. Of course, it might be necessary to purchase a mug or two of ale, strictly as a means of putting the innkeeper in a mood to share any information he might have. But downing a couple of cool ales on such a warm afternoon was a sacrifice Gerard found himself willing to consider for the sake of his quest. He dismounted and stretched some of the stiffness from his limbs, then looped his horse’s reins loosely around a post and strode inside.

A goose roasted in the huge hearth, giving off a savory aroma as a small potboy indolently turned the spit. Every now and then, the boy paused long enough to baste the bird with a long-handled brush. The juice he used to coat the goose hissed and spat as it dripped onto the hot coals. Then the boy would wipe away the sweat that seemed to be basting him, using the sleeve of his rough, homespun shirt, before resuming his turning. So industrious was he at his task that he didn’t even turn when Gerard entered the room, doubling its occupancy.

“Hello,” Gerard said after a moment. “Is the innkeeper at hand?”

The boy jumped, almost joining the goose in the fireplace. He spun around with a fierce scowl on his face, as if outraged at having been startled. “Pa!” he called, still staring hotly at Gerard. “A stranger’s here.” Cautiously, he went back to work, although he kept glancing over his shoulder, apparently not trusting that Gerard wouldn’t try sneaking up on him again as soon as his back was turned.

A man as big and fat as the boy was small emerged from the direction of what Gerard took to be the kitchen. He wiped his hands on the grubby rag that seemed to be the badge of every innkeeper Gerard had ever encountered and draped it over his shoulder. “What can I do for you, my good fellow?” he boomed, coming to stand before Gerard with his massive legs set in a wide stance and his heavy arms akimbo. “Can I get you a room for the night, perhaps? Or maybe some dinner? The goose will be ready pretty soon, although there’s other fare I can offer if you’re not of a mind to wait.”

Gerard pulled a stool from under a nearby table and sat down, wishing mightily for just such a dinner and lodging. “Just an ale at the moment,” he said, trying not to sound too wistful. “And perhaps some information.”

The innkeeper dragged out a second stool and perched his enormous bulk on it as delicately as if he were balancing an egg on the point of a knife. “What kind of information might you be after? What are you looking for?”

“More like who,” Gerard said. “I’m following someone and wondered if you might have seen him. A stranger who would have passed this way a day or so ago.”

“A stranger.” The innkeeper’s glance skittered across the room to alight on the back of his son. “What sort of stranger?”

“Someone the townspeople might have been relieved to see the back of as soon as possible.”

The innkeeper turned his attention toward the ceiling, stroking his chin as he considered this. “And who might you be?”

“Gerard uth Mondar.” Gerard hesitated then added, “I’m a sheriff. Sheriff of Solace, as it happens.” He didn’t think it necessary to mention that he wasn’t tracking Poko in an official capacity. Let the innkeeper reach his own conclusion.

“Huh, heard of Solace. Never been there.”

“Nice place,” Gerard said noncommittally.

“This fellow you’re after. If we were to, say, turn him over to you, would there be any kind of reward?”

“Sorry, no,” Gerard replied sincerely.

“Hmm. But you’d take him off our hands, right?”

Gerard nodded.

The innkeeper turned to his boy, who was still laboring industriously over the goose. “All right. Get Rudy and Lance and have them bring the prisoner up from the cellar. Then get Maisy ready with that old, broken-down saddle in the barn.”

The boy darted from the room.

“You’ve got him right here? As a prisoner?” Gerard asked in surprise, taking another swig of ale.

The innkeeper grunted. “Caught him stealing from just about everybody in town.”

Gerard chuckled. “That sounds like the one I’m after, all right.”

“He’s a slippery devil, I’ll say that. The others were all for hanging him as soon as we ran him to ground.” The innkeeper winked at Gerard. “Course, we didn’t know a lawman was about to come and take him off our hands. And hanging costs a rope, not to mention a fellow’s conscience.” Footsteps sounded from the direction the boy had gone. The innkeeper turned toward the door. “Here’s your prisoner. That should be Shaddup Celerywater hisself,” he boomed.

“Shaddup Celerywater?” Gerard sat up straighter. “Wait a minute, I don’t think—”

“I’ve told you, it’s Shaddoc Barleywort,” came the high, clear, unmistakable voice of—

—a kender!

“You really should be more polite to guests in your establishment,” the kender said, emerging into the inn’s common room between a pair of burly humans. Like all of his kind, the creature had a childlike stature and an exuberance to match; he promptly took stock of his surroundings as if measuring all the objects in terms of what might fit into his pouches. His clothes hung torn and bedraggled, his topknot stuck up askew, grime smudged his face, and one eye sported a distinct purple bruise. Yet he grinned irrepressibly, clearly delighted.

While Gerard took all this in with a sinking feeling, the men wrenched the kender, whose arms were firmly trussed up with rope, forward.

“Shaddup!” bellowed the innkeeper. To Gerard, he added with a grin, “You see why we call him that.” Over his shoulder he spoke again to the kender. “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t care if your name is Maggoty Melonrind.”

“Maggoty Melonrind?” said the kender. “No, thank you for asking, but I don’t know anyone by that name.” He brightened. “Unless you mean Mistress Mellowbind. But I think her first name was Marly, not Maggoty. Say, are you a friend of Marly Mellowbind?”

“Shaddup!” the innkeeper growled with more weariness than force. “And you’re not a guest here, you’re my prisoner. Fortunately, however, not for long. The sheriff here has come to take you off my hands.” He gestured toward Gerard, who smiled wanly.

“Oh, hello,” said the kender cheerfully, slipping his hands from the rope and trotting forward, his right hand extended to shake. “We haven’t met before. I’m Shaddoc Barleywort. Er, that is, Sedgewick Fennelroot.” He gave Gerard a conspiratorial grin and leaned forward to whisper, “I’m traveling incognito for personal reasons.”

Gerard stepped back hurriedly, his hands automatically checking his possessions, especially his purse. “There’s been some kind of mistake,” he told the innkeeper. “This isn’t who I’m looking for.”

The innkeeper had been staring open-mouthed at the bundle of rope in a tangled heap on the floor between the two very flustered-looking men. But at Gerard’s words, he whirled on him. “Hey, you’re not trying to back out of our deal, are you?”

“Deal? I wasn’t aware we had any deal.”

“Sure we did,” the innkeeper said. “The agreement was that I’d serve you my finest ale and then produce the reprobate you were tracking, and then you’d show your gratitude by dragging his miserable carcass out of here. Sooner rather than later. Pronto.” He turned to Rudy and Lance. “Show these two out, will you? Forcibly, if you have to.”

Gerard drew his sword enough to expose a few inches of naked blade. “Look, I don’t want any trouble. And I certainly don’t want any kender. Now I’ll just be on my way, and you take care of Sedgewick, or Shaddoc, or whatever his name is, however you see fit.”

“Oh, they’re going to hang me,” said the kender happily. “They keep telling me that. That’s how I know. I’ve never been hung before, so this should prove an interesting experience. After that I’m going to Palanthas. I’ve never seen it before either.”

“Sounds like you’ve got yourself a traveling companion,” the innkeeper said, planting himself in front of Gerard while Rudy and Lance split up to flank him. Gerard backed away, exposing more steel.

“I told you, I’m not in the market for a kender.”

“Oh, I’m not just any kender,” said Sedgewick. Or was it Shaddoc? “Remember? I’m traveling incognito. That means I’m in disguise. All right, you’ve forced it out of me. It’s because I’ve got A PRICE ON MY HEAD.”

He said it just that way, in capital letters, as if that were some great honor someone had bestowed upon him.

“See!” beamed the innkeeper. “He comes all primed for arrest. With A PRICE ON HIS HEAD.”

Suddenly, the boy’s voice sounded right behind Gerard. “Pa, I’ve got Maisy all ready. Now what do you want me to—oof!”

The boy uttered the latter exclamation as Gerard, trying to back out of the inn, tripped over him. They went down heavily in a snarl of arms and legs. Gerard’s sword flew from his hand. He looked up in time to see either Rudy or Lance grin at him maliciously while raising a stool high overhead. It came down with a crash on Gerard’s skull.

Mercifully, the stabbing pain was brief, for Gerard promptly lost consciousness.

While Gerard had ridden out, heading toward his fateful encounter with Shaddoc Barleywort (er, Sedgewick Fennelroot), Galdar, too, had ventured forth into the glory of the day. He, too, saw butterflies alighting amid fields of flowers, heard songbirds caroling contentment with their lot, felt a whisper of breeze ruffle his fur, and smelled the tang of piney resin. What he didn’t experience was the taste of hops and malt in a cool draft of ale.

And he had developed a powerful thirst.

Towns were becoming few and far between as he and the others journeyed ever deeper into the wilderness reaches of the Vingaard Mountains. As towns grew scarce, inns and taverns became even scarcer, and it had been some while since Galdar last enjoyed a mug of ale. He smacked his lips at the thought and walked on, his attention distracted from his surroundings by a thirst that water could not satisfy.

Eventually, he came to a small cluster of farmsteads—not a town, certainly, nor even a village, but sign at least of habitation. He went from one door to another to ask whether the dwellers had seen anyone conforming to Poko’s description, but no one seemed to be home at any of the houses. Or maybe, he thought, looking around suspiciously, the occupants had fled at first sight of him.

Well, at least there was no sight or word of Poko Rome. And it was getting late, Galdar decided. Best turn back and find the others. Nevertheless, he pushed on a little farther.

At a turning in the road just up the way from the houses, where the rutted tracks rounded a steep bluff, Galdar suddenly halted. Voices drifted to him from around the bend, fragments of conversation between two young humans, one male and one female.

“Kathryn,” the male gasped between what sounded like deep, wet kisses, “I can’t keep my hands away from you.”

“Nor I you,” the female sighed. “Promise me we’ll be together always.”

“Forever and beyond,” the male whispered with eerie intensity.

Galdar rolled his eyes at the extravagance of young humans in love and started forward again, intending to clear his throat as warning of his approach. But the female’s next words stopped him.

“I can’t believe we’ve only just met, and already I can’t bear to be parted from you.”

Galdar’s eyes narrowed. The two had only just met? That sounded like none other than Poko himself, in the midst of one of his hasty seductions. Galdar inched closer, hunching forward as he strained to listen.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about first,” the male was saying.

“You want to talk now, at a time like this? Let’s talk later, when we have all the time in the world. Look, there’s a bed of leafy branches. We can make ourselves comfortable.”

“Wait, we must talk first.”

That sounded odd coming from such a notoriously eager lover, Galdar thought. Well, Poko might want to talk, but Galdar had heard enough. Silently, he slid his sword from its scabbard and prepared to spring.

“I’ll lie down with you in a moment,” the male said. “But first, you must give yourself to Chemosh.”

“Chemosh?” The female’s laughter rippled through the air. “That moldy old god? Come, lie over there with me and whisper to me of Chemosh.”

Galdar crouched, transfixed with disbelief. What was Poko Rome doing talking about Chemosh—at that or any other time?

“Swear!” the male said, cutting the female’s laughter short.

“If it’s that important to you, I’ll swear,” the female said teasingly. She added with a giggle, “Once we’re comfortably lying down, I’ll swear anything.”

Galdar didn’t wait for them to get more comfortable. He bounded around the rock face, waving his sword. “Now I have you!” he bellowed.

The young woman was trying to pull the young man over to a pile of green branches while he was seeking to draw her into a tighter embrace. At the sight of Galdar, the woman froze, her eyes wide with fright. The young man paid no attention as he took the opportunity to grab her around the waist. “Swear yourself to Chemosh,” he insisted.

“Ow! Let go,” the woman cried. “You’re hurting me!”

“Swear!”

The young woman wrenched herself away and retreated toward the pile of branches, circling them to put the foliage between the young man and herself. Her eyes darted from him to Galdar and back again, as if unsure which threat terrified her more. The young man started to give chase then turned to Galdar instead. Immediately, his eyes narrowed. “You!” he hissed. “What are you doing here? Why does a follower of Sargonnas interfere with me?”

“Uh, you need to come with me, Poko. You are Poko Rome, aren’t you?” Galdar said, the tip of his blade aimed at the young man’s throat.

“Poko Rome?” the young woman repeated from the other side of the branches. “Theostan, what’s all this about? Who is this horned creature?”

The young man laughed and swatted the blade aside. He leaped over the branches with inhuman strength and turned to face Galdar from the other side. “Report to your god what you have seen,” he taunted. “Little good will it do him.” With that, he laughed louder and fled into the forest.

Galdar swore and ran to catch him. He took no time to go around the branches, but tried to leap over them the way his quarry had. He didn’t quite clear the pile, however. No matter, he told himself as his foot came down among the boughs. He had located his quarry, and he was on the trail of Poko Rome.

But even as he thought that, his foot continued its descent ever deeper into the pile—ankle deep, knee deep, hip deep, always seeking purchase on the firm ground beneath. Too late, Galdar realized there was no firm ground to be had. There was only empty space.

He plummeted into darkness, landing at last with a force that drove the breath from his lungs.

Gradually, Gerard regained consciousness, his body being jostled mercilessly while his head pounded. To his surprise, he had been flung across Thunderbolt’s saddle, his hands bound tightly behind him.

He started to call out but had to curtail his words when his stomach suddenly decided to empty itself. It was worse than being seasick, he reflected miserably. Afterward, however, he felt a little better.

Thunderbolt stopped trotting.

“Oh, are you awake now?” someone called out pleasantly. Gerard groaned, recognizing the voice. A second horse dropped back to stand beside his own. Although Gerard could see nothing of its rider from his position, he realized who it was.

“I was starting to get a little worried,” said the kender with the changing name. “Well, maybe not so much worried as kind of wondering. Extremely curious, actually. I’ve never been knocked unconscious before. What’s it like?”

You really want to know, you miserable wretch? Gerard thought. Come closer and you’ll find out.

Aloud, he said, “Where are we? Why am I tied up?”

“We’re on the road to Palanthas,” the kender chirped. “They said I was to leave you tied up until we were well out of town. I didn’t want to offend them, so I said yes. They were rather excitable people. You think we’re far enough away for me to untie you now?”

“I’m sure we are.”

“Let’s not have any false courtesies, tell me exactly what you think.”

“Yes! No!” Then, when that eruption threatened to split his skull, Gerard continued in a softer tone, “No, they, ah… I’m sure they stayed behind in the town. It would be safe to untie me now.”

“All right.” The kender, whom Gerard decided he might as well refer to as Shaddoc, slid from his horse and started plucking at the knotted rope. In a moment the bonds fell away from Gerard’s hands. Painfully, he eased himself down from the saddle and stood on wobbly legs on the side farthest from the kender.

They were on the section of road where Gerard had seen the flicker earlier, so thankfully they were going in the right direction. The innkeeper might just as well have sent them heading away from the rendezvous point.

For a moment, Gerard grimly entertained himself with the notion of returning to the inn to teach the innkeeper and his two minions a lesson. Protecting Palanthas from the magical ravages inflicted by Julice was proving more difficult than he had anticipated.

His musing was interrupted by the second horse clopping around Thunderbolt to where Gerard stood. He looked back and beheld the worst-looking steed he’d ever seen. Sway-backed, knock-kneed and galled, afflicted with glanders, spavins, and the staggers, its splayed legs shoulder-shot and its rheumy eyes festering, Gerard wondered how the beast had managed to come so far without collapsing.

Shaddoc clambered back into a broken-down saddle with mismatched stirrups and patted the horse’s mangy neck. “Isn’t she beautiful? She’s the first horse I ever owned.” His brow furrowed. “Well, the first one that was ever actually given to me. All the others I kind of borrowed. So where are we headed?”

Gerard dragged himself into his own saddle, where he slumped, holding the reins in one hand and his aching head in the other. “We aren’t going anywhere. I’ve got a job to do, and you’re going… well, wherever you’re headed.” He eased Thunderbolt into a walk, wishing the animal wouldn’t bring its hooves down with so much force at every step. His head felt ready to come off.

“Oh, they told me I’m to stick with you,” Shaddoc said, bringing Maisy alongside Gerard.

Gerard started wearily to argue. Instead, he closed his mouth and stared, his lips set in a grimace. “Where’d you get the sword?” he asked, noting a familiar-looking weapon at the kender’s waist.

“Sword? What sword?” Shaddoc straightened himself in the saddle again and looked down. “Huh! I wonder where that came from?”

“It’s mine.”

“It is? Well, I must have picked it up during the fight at the inn. Thank goodness for that, eh? Not that it was much of a fight, really. You went down kind of early. I’m a pretty good fighter myself. Maybe later you’d like me to give you some tips.” Shaddoc handed the sword over.

Gerard patted himself over carefully. “I don’t suppose you rescued my purse as well. It also seems to be missing.”

The kender avoided his gaze. “They took it from you. Said you owed them for the ale and the broken stool.”

Gerard winced and put a hand to the goose egg on his head.

“Anyway,” Shaddoc went on, “I thought you might need it, and really, it didn’t seem right for them to charge you for the broken stool. After all, they’re the ones who broke it, although your head did kind of participate. So when they were busy tying you up, I sort of borrowed your purse back and kept it for you.” He held it out. “Here.”

Gerard hefted it, noting that it was lighter than it had been before. He wondered which of the kender’s pouches his coins had taken refuge in.

The shadows had lengthened considerably by that time. Gerard began to worry about reaching his companions in time for their appointed rendezvous.

“So where are we headed?” Shaddoc asked for the second or third time. “Is it Palanthas?”

Gerard considered sending the kender on toward the city. At least that way Gerard would be rid of him. But unleashing Shaddoc on the community might prove more damaging in its own way than Julice’s magical storm. No sense snatching Palanthas out of the frying pan only to cast it into the fire.

“Some companions and I are pursuing a thief who stole something valuable,” he said nonchalantly. “Of course, you don’t have to come along.”

“Oh, but that sounds exciting!” Suddenly, Shaddoc looked wary. “Hey, I didn’t take it, whatever it is. Whenever something’s missing, everyone always blames the kender. It’s not my fault I happen to be good at finding things. So… I’ve been meaning to ask, do you sing or play an instrument?”

“Huh?” said Gerard, startled by the abrupt shift in topic. “Sing? No, not at all. No instruments, either.”

“That’s too bad. I can whistle. Do you recognize this tune?” Shaddoc pursed his lips and produced a high-pitched piping.

Gerard clutched his head. “Oh, please don’t,” he moaned.

“All right,” Shaddoc said, looking disappointed. He brightened. “Shall we tell all about ourselves instead? I’ll go first. I was born in Kendermore. Have you ever seen it? It was a wonderful place to grow up, I assure you, because there were kender everywhere…”

Gerard winced at the thought and hoped they would reach the crossroads soon. He didn’t want to keep the joy of Shaddoc’s company all to himself. Better to share it with the others.

“And then when I was three,” Shaddoc was saying, “I met Uncle Trapspringer…”

The journey to the crossroads seemed to take far longer than it had when Gerard was traveling in the other direction.

Chapter 11

Gerard, you’re back at last!” Marcus exclaimed as Gerard approached the crossroads through the gloom of twilight. “We’ve been worried.” Immediately he added, “Who in the Abyss is that with you?”

“Meet Shut-up Barney’s Wart,” Gerard said grimly. “Or is it Frederick Flannel Rot?”

“It’s Shaddoc Barleywort,” the kender sang out merrily. “But I’m traveling incognito under the name Sedgewick Fennelroot.”

It occurred to Gerard that he still had no real idea why the kender felt it necessary to go by an assumed name, but after the interminable life history he’d been subjected to for the past hour, he wasn’t about to risk a lengthy explanation by asking.

He peered through the half-light, noting only Marcus and Allyn. “Where’s Galdar?”

“Who knows where the minotaur’s gotten to?” Allyn said, his voice pitched high with tension. He shrugged. “We’ve been waiting here for hours for both of you.”

Gerard tried to keep his own uneasiness at that news from showing. No sense making the boy’s anxiety any worse than it already was. “Did you find out anything about Poko in your direction?”

Marcus shook his head. Allyn’s mouth tightened in disapproval.

“Nor did I,” said Gerard. “By process of elimination he must have gone in Galdar’s direction. Let’s hope that is the case. It could be that Galdar came across word of our quarry and has been tracking him further. Maybe he just hasn’t had a chance to get back to us yet.”

As Gerard spoke, he tried without success to convince himself that was a possibility.

“Who’s Galdar?” asked Shaddoc, his curiosity piqued. “And who’s his quarry?”

“A minotaur, one of our companions,” Gerard explained. “And never mind about the quarry.”

“Ooh, you didn’t tell me we were going to meet up with a minotaur. I’ve never seen one before. Is it true they’re the fiercest-looking creatures on two legs? When’s he coming? I hope he brings the you-know-what with him,” he said. “Quarry,” he added pointedly, for Marcus and Allyn’s benefit.

They glared at Gerard, who rolled his eyes and made gestures to ignore the kender.

“We can’t wait here forever,” Gerard muttered. Aloud, he said, “We might as well head in the direction he took. We’re sure to come across him soon, and that has to be the road we ought to take in any case.” He guided his horse toward the right-hand road.

“Wait a minute,” Marcus hissed, mounting his horse. “We’re not bringing him along, are we?” He jerked his head in the direction of the kender.

“Good luck trying to get rid of him,” Gerard said. “I haven’t had any success.”

Marcus eyed Shaddoc’s mount dubiously. “We could probably outpace that decrepit beast of his at a leisurely gallop.”

“Yes, but at the moment I’m not up to anything even resembling hard riding,” Gerard said.

Marcus looked at him questioningly, but Gerard didn’t feel like explaining. For one thing, it was too embarrassing. “Besides,” Gerard added, “we need to go slow and make sure that we find Galdar.”

“Don’t worry about Maisy,” Shaddoc cried, pleased to be the subject of their attention. “She can keep up. Can’t you, girl?” He patted the animal’s neck affectionately.

Throughout all that, Allyn remained quiet. Without a word, he clambered into his own saddle and spurred his mount forward with the others. But he looked distinctly unhappy, lost in some private contemplation. Gerard wondered whether the lad regretted having come on their journey, much of which had involved slow progress, poor food, and primitive accommodations. Perhaps he had expected something more glamorous—a dashing chase across the countryside culminating in a wild battle to recover the stolen jewel chest.

By then, it was almost full dark, which further slowed their pace, for it was nearly impossible to see the road in the pale light cast by Solinari and Lunitari, neither of which was at full. They rode in silence, each wrapped in his own concerns, with Gerard in the lead, his head still throbbing—a condition that guaranteed the kender would be with them for the foreseeable future.

The night bathed them in a deceptively pleasant air, as if nothing more untoward could be occurring in the world than minor nuisances. A nightingale sang somewhere nearby, adding its voice to the chorus of crickets and frogs that enveloped them. The clop-clop of the horses’ hooves contributed a syncopated rhythm to the chorus. The rich smell of green grass hung in the night.

Occasionally, they passed the farms and homesteads of residents in that distant, isolated region of Solamnia. Candlelight glimmered in the windows, creating a welcoming glow that seemed to invite strangers to stop and spend the night. The smell of wood smoke drifted from the chimneys, mingled with the aroma of food simmering on the hearths. Gerard considered asking at those places whether anyone had seen Galdar, but the cottages were all set well back from the road and they could clearly see signs that he had passed by. Given time, they were bound to catch up to him.

It wasn’t as if the earth could have swallowed him up.

Galdar, stunned by his fall, stared up at the circle of daylight high overhead. “What do you make of it?” someone was saying. Four or five human faces appeared around the edge of the pit and peered down at him. Galdar recognized the young woman as one of them. Kathryn, he seemed to remember the young man calling her.

“Do you think it’s one of the Beloved?” the speaker, a scrawny man with a protuberant Adam’s apple, continued.

“Only one way to know for sure,” Kathryn said, all trace of her earlier arousal replaced by a flat, businesslike tone. “Cut off its head. If the creature puts its head back on as if nothing happened, it’s one of them. If it dies”—she shrugged—“then it wasn’t.”

The previous speaker shuddered. “That seems a mite drastic. Can’t we simply look to see whether it has the mark of the Beloved on its breast?”

“You want to go down there and do the looking?” the woman asked, her voice dripping sarcasm. “You could ask it politely to show you.” She snorted. “At least I think we can cut off its head with a long poleaxe from up here.”

“Strange sort of critter,” said a moon-faced man, cocking his head as if to better take in the sight. “What do you think it is?”

“Don’t know,” Adam’s Apple said. “I’ve never seen the like.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t know whether to put such a beast to work pulling a plow in my field or slaughter it and eat it for beef,” Moon Face continued.

Galdar groaned and got shakily to his feet. The faces drew back a little, even though they were still too far overhead to be within grasp. Tall as he was, Galdar couldn’t reach them, nor could he climb the sheer sides of the pit. “How dare you imprison me!” he snarled. “What do you humans think you’re doing?”

“It talks!” Moon Face exclaimed, disappearing from sight in terror.

“If you call that talking,” muttered Adam’s Apple. “I’ve heard trained birds that could talk better. Sounds more like a growl to me.” Nevertheless, he too backed away from the lip of the hole, well out of harm’s way.

“You know, I’ve got the biggest field hereabouts,” Moon Face said, curiosity bringing him back into view once it became obvious Galdar wasn’t going to make an imminent escape. “This man-beast does look like it could pull a plow real well if anyone could figure out how to get it into traces meant for a four-footed beast. That is, of course, assuming it isn’t one of the Beloved and we don’t cut its head off.”

“Let me out of here!” Galdar bellowed.

“What do you think it eats?” Moon Face asked, ignoring Galdar’s outburst.

“Why, grass, of course,” Adam’s Apple said. “What’d you think, with a head like that?”

“I dunno,” Moon Face said.

“Well, where’s the mouth, in the man part or the animal part?” Adam’s Apple demanded.

“The part that’s talking, dodo.”

“Let’s throw down some grass,” a redheaded third man suggested. “See if the creature likes to eat it.”

As they argued his fate dispassionately, Galdar roared in fury but to no avail. The country folk continued talking about him as though he weren’t there.

“Well, it’s not going anywhere, whatever it is,” Kathryn said, rejoining the conversation. Her expression was filled with pitiless hate. “If it’s one of the Beloved like the thing that attacked the farms hereabouts, taking my Jamie along with the others, it can stay down there till it rots. I’m just sorry the first one got away.”

“Let’s go see if we can find any more of them in our other traps,” Redhead ventured. “We might not be able to kill them, but at least we can catch them and keep them from doing any more damage.”

Despite this suggestion, the group remained overhead, peering down with fascination.

“I say we gather the others and consider what to do with the first one we’ve been lucky to trap,” Adam’s Apple said. “After all, they’ve got a stake in this too.”

Galdar balled his hand into a fist and forced himself to keep silent. He would get out eventually, although as the afternoon wore on and stars came out in the darkening circle of sky overhead, he still had no idea how. But somehow, he would escape.

Then let those miserable humans face a minotaur’s wrath!

Gerard was beginning to despair of finding Galdar when he and the others came at last to several houses clustered close to the road. Some of the buildings were lit from within by the welcoming glow of candles and hearth fires, but others stood dark and desolate, as if whatever life they had contained had been snuffed out. Gerard and the others tried banging on the doors of the ones showing the light of habitation, but even those seemed deserted.

At length, they were forced to go on, having learned nothing of Galdar’s whereabouts for their effort.

“Maybe the people who lived back there were attacked by dragons,” suggested Shaddoc hopefully, the only member of the group to speak up in the oppressive silence that had permeated the little community and that spread over the four companions as well. “Or maybe they all went on a picnic. A picnic by starlight. Ooh, wouldn’t that be fun? You wouldn’t be able to see what you were eating, so each new item would come as a surprise. You could even make a game of it, trying to guess what food would come next…”

Gerard tuned out the kender’s stream of prattle as they neared a spot where the road curved around a steep promontory. Suddenly, he halted, raising his hand. “Shh!” he ordered.

“… like at the Ice Wall where they have to hold their picnics indoors and blindfolded, since it’s too cold to picnic by any kind of light that near the Ice Wall. But that would be all right because—oh, you mean me,” Shaddoc said, becoming aware at last of Gerard’s command for silence. He turned to Marcus and Allyn behind him. “It’s all right, he was talking to me. I don’t think he meant you two have to stop talking.”

Marcus and Allyn, who hadn’t been saying anything, stared hostilely at Shaddoc, who clearly thought it was some kind of game and stared right back.

Ahead, a murmur of voices drifted from a sizable group of figures huddled around what looked to be a hole in the ground. Several of the figures held torches, by the light of which they were gawking at something within the hole. “That’s the really strange thing about him. You really think one of the Beloved would have only one arm?” a voice demanded.

“Who knows what some of them might or might not have if they’ll take creatures as frightful looking as this beast,” someone answered.

Gerard turned in his saddle to look at the others, all of whose eyes showed round in the light of the partial moons. Gerard cocked an eyebrow, as much as to say, “Well, I think we’ve found Galdar.”

Shaddoc opened his mouth to praise his leadership, but Allyn, who was right beside him, leaned across and clamped his hand over the kender’s mouth. “Mmph!” Shaddoc mumbled, probably voicing an objection to his treatment, although it was well-muffled. Allyn’s hand remained firmly in place.

Gerard nodded. “Good,” he whispered. “Keep him quiet. I’m going to sneak up there and see what the situation is.” He slid from the saddle and handed Marcus the reins, figuring he could get closer if he weren’t mounted. Silently, he crept toward the voices. An argument had broken out among the onlookers, which helped mask Gerard’s approach. As he went, he rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, not only to keep the weapon within easy reach but also to muffle its rattling.

“I still say this can’t be one of the Beloved,” someone insisted. “And a fellow this strong would be useful around my farm, even if he does have only one arm. I’ll give you twenty-five steel for him, and he’ll be my responsibility.”

“I’ll give you thirty,” another voice offered.

“Thirty-five!” shouted a third from the back of the group.

“What!” cried a young woman. “You think I risked my life just so you could bid for this monster? It’s not for sale!”

“Now, Kathryn, let’s not be hasty,” said a skinny little rooster of a man with a prominent Adam’s apple. “Let’s see what they’re willing to offer.”

But Gerard had figured things out. It was Galdar in the pit for some reason, and he needed to get him out of there and make good their escape with a minimum of violence, all while fending off the minotaur’s captors. He eased his way back to his companions, trying desperately to formulate a strategy.

“So what do we do?” asked Marcus in a nervous whisper when Gerard returned and reported the situation.

“Yeah, what do we do?” asked Shaddoc more eagerly and certainly at a higher volume. He stared about with round eyes as if searching out the source of the outburst then, realizing it was him, lowered his voice so it carried only halfway to Palanthas. “Shall we go in fighting, take them all on at once? Because I’m an excellent fighter, you know.”

“I’m sure you are,” Gerard said quickly, patting him on the shoulder, “but I’ll need you for a more important job, staying here and guarding, uh, your horse especially, because after seeing the bidding frenzy those people are in over Galdar, I’m sure they’d want to auction off Maisy next.”

“They’d better not!”

“Then you be sure to keep a close eye on her. And be ready to ride when Galdar and I break free of the crowd.”

“What about us?” Allyn asked. “I suppose you expect us to do something as well.” His petulance gave way to a wry grin. “Surely you don’t want us to guard our horses too?”

“No, I’ll need you and Marcus to create a diversion on the far side of the group.”

“What kind—?” Marcus cleared his throat and brought his voice down an octave. He kept glancing over his shoulder as if expecting to be overwhelmed by an angry mob at any moment. “What kind of diversion?”

“Whoop and yell, or anything at all. Just see that it takes their attention off Galdar long enough for me to ride up and pull him out.”

“How long is that going to take?” asked a skeptical Allyn.

“I wish I knew.”

Marcus watched him expectantly, waiting.

“That’s it,” Gerard said after a moment.

“You mean that’s the whole plan?” exclaimed Marcus.

“Yes, that’s the whole plan.” Gerard shrugged. “Hey, it’s the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment. Everybody has their job, and if you do it right, we should be fine. They’re only ordinary farm folk, after all.” Under his breath, he added, “Waving weapons and carrying on about the Beloved.”

Marcus snorted and turned away in disgust, studying the road ahead.

“That’s right, a perfectly good plan,” Shaddoc said. “The best one we could come up with on the spur of the moment. Isn’t it, Gerard?”

Gerard’s gaze measured each person in turn—from Marcus, whose eyes shifted uneasily while he gnawed his lower lip, to Allyn, who met Gerard’s stare with an inscrutable one of his own, to the kender who squinted around at the darkness with severity as if daring anyone to try stealing his horse. “All right, as soon as you get done making your commotion, then break away and ride on ahead,” Gerard said at last to the two brothers. “I’ll get Galdar out, and then we’ll catch up to you as soon as we can.”

“Yeah, we’ll be riding hard,” said Shaddoc, assuming he would be part of the ‘we’ catching up. He stuck his thumbs in his belt in a diminutive swagger then added more softly to his horse, “Won’t we, girl? Don’t worry, I’d never let them auction you.”

Gerard wondered who would bother bidding on such a decrepit animal. Not even a dishonest butcher intent on selling the horse’s meat as first-rate beef would trouble himself to bid, for all he’d have to do was hang around for the horse to keel over dead and he could get the carcass for free. He could probably even charge the owner a steel or two to haul it off.

The kender apparently didn’t realize that the plan would leave him on the opposite side of the crowd from where Gerard and the others would be after the rescue. But it was better that way, Gerard decided. He was certain Shaddoc would come to no harm, and if anything, he feared for the farm folk if they grabbed the kender and Maisy.

He nodded to the two brothers. “You two get going. Start making a racket as soon as you’re in position. I’ll be ready.”

“That’s right, we’ll be ready,” put in Shaddoc.

As Marcus and Allyn led their horses quietly off the road and around through the forest to the other side of the crowd, Gerard gave the kender a piercing look. “You do know what your required role is, right?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me,” Shaddoc said brightly. “I know exactly what I’m supposed to do, and so does good ol’ Maisy.”

Gerard hesitated, wondering whether to point out that Shaddoc’s knowing what he was “supposed to do” wasn’t exactly the same thing as agreeing to do it. The question was whether the creature’s curiosity would get the better of him once the plan began. The safest course, Gerard decided, was to free Galdar as quickly as possible and get away before the kender could attract any notice.

Gerard let his horse amble slowly up the road, giving Marcus and Allyn time to sneak ahead and get into position. Then he waited just out of range of the light thrown off by the torches.

In the crowd, a tall, gangly man seemed to have offered the top bid, for he grinned with triumph at his neighbors as he slouched toward the pit to claim his purchase. But before he could take two steps, shrieks and ululations burst forth from the darkness farther up the road. Galdar’s purchaser froze, a puzzled expression on his face, and all eyes turned to see what the cause of the uproar might be. “The Beloved!” someone wailed. “They’re coming in force!”

Gerard spurred Thunderbolt forward, yelling as loudly as Marcus and Allyn in an effort to clear a path through the crowd. People in front of him spun around, startled by the new tumult on a second front. They stumbled back in terror, tripping over one another in their haste to get out of his way. Gerard rode as furiously as he dared to the center of the throng, where the rooster-like man stood with mouth agape. When the latter saw Gerard approach the pit that held so valuable a prize, raising his sword aloft as if to cleave any defenders in two, the little man squawked and scurried away, waving his hands as if to shoo Gerard like some barnyard trespasser. Gerard froze, sword held high, but not because of the man’s pitiful efforts to secure his property. The little man made a couple more abortive attempts to dissuade Gerard, then ran away, his elbows flapping like useless chicken wings. Gerard remained transfixed.

The path was clear. The plan was working. He just had no way of getting Galdar out of the pit.

He swore under his breath and turned this way and that in the saddle, using his sword to threaten the crowd as it edged back toward him, pressing in upon him. The people closest to him tried to hang back, fearful of the flashing blade, but pressure from those behind pushed the foremost inexorably closer. Gerard felt trapped, loath to abandon Galdar but unwilling to cut down unarmed citizens.

Suddenly, a series of squeals and startled movements marked someone’s passage through the crowd. Though the approaching figure was too small for Gerard to see him amid the much taller humans, the shrill voice was unmistakable. “Make way, make way!” Shaddoc cried. “Coming through!” He burst through the front ranks and came to a halt in front of Gerard’s horse, arms and legs akimbo.

Was it Gerard’s imagination, or did the kender’s pouches bulge more heavily after his passage through the crowd?

Meanwhile, farther up the darkened road, the racket from Marcus and Allyn continued unabated.

“I thought I told you to wait for me,” Gerard hissed at the kender.

“Yes, well, I’m waiting, aren’t I?” He paused to stare into the pit at Galdar. “Wow, so is this the minotaur. Big fella, isn’t he? Aren’t we going to set him free now?”

Gerard, too, peered down and met the gaze of Galdar staring back at him. The minotaur’s face looked fixed with grim resignation. Gerard gritted his teeth. “How?”

Galdar snorted and turned away, as if he had expected nothing better from his onetime foe.

“I’d say a rope would be mighty helpful.” Shaddoc proceeded to rummage through one pouch after another as though an angry crowd weren’t milling around him. After a moment, he pulled out a length of frayed, dubious-looking rope. “Will this one do?”

“It’ll have to,” Gerard said with a surge of hope, though he inspected the rope with misgivings. He dropped one end to Galdar, who stared at him in disbelief, and tied the other end to his saddle. When the rope was secure, he clucked to Thunderbolt. The kender had grabbed Gerard’s sword and waved it at the crowd while the minotaur let Gerard and the horse pull him free.

Evidently, Marcus and Allyn saw that Galdar was out because the noise from that direction had stopped. Gerard hoped they were already putting distance between themselves and the crowd.

“I am Galdar the minotaur,” Galdar bellowed, setting the crowd to shrinking back in fear. “Step closer, whoever wishes to be first to die!”

“And I am Shad—er, Sedgewick Fennelroot, the fearsome kender,” Shaddoc cried as Gerard quickly took back his sword. “Not Shaddoc Barleywort at all. No, he’s quite a different fellow. Although a very fine one, from what I gather. Why, I’ve heard tell that he once—”

“Shaddoc, we need to get going,” Gerard urged, leaning down to offer the kender a hand.

“Heh heh! He likes to joke,” Shaddoc said to the crowd. “As I told you, I’m not Shaddoc Barleywort, I’m Fedgewick Sennelroot. Uh, Sedgewick Fennelroot.”

“Now!” Gerard insisted.

Shaddoc glanced wistfully at the crowd as if reluctant to leave so attentive an audience but took Gerard’s hand and allowed himself to be lifted up behind Gerard’s saddle.

“Galdar, let’s go,” Gerard demanded, uncomfortably aware of the kender’s presence behind him and wishing he could protect his purse and other valuables while he rode.

“I would sorely like to kill three or four of them before we go,” Galdar snarled.

The citizens closest to him dug their heels into the earth and tried to backpedal, churning up the ground in an effort to remove themselves from danger, although the presence of their neighbors close behind them kept them from making much progress.

“Galdar, we must go now!” Gerard hissed.

The minotaur struggled with himself but at last opened his fist. “Very well, we’ll do it your way. This time.”

Gerard angled his horse in the direction that would take them deeper into the Vingaard Mountains after Marcus and Allyn.

“Wait!” Shaddoc cried at his back. “The other way.”

“What?” Gerard demanded, still trying to keep the crowd at bay. “Why?”

“We’ve got to go back for Maisy!”

Gerard growled an incoherent oath but turned his horse in the direction from which they had come. He couldn’t very well abandon Shaddoc’s mount, not after Shaddoc had come to his rescue with the rope. He kicked his heels into Thunderbolt’s flanks, and the horse leaped forward. Gerard continued waving his sword threateningly. People fell back before him, climbing over one another in their determination to clear a path. Gerard pressed on, trusting the minotaur to stay close behind him. When they reached the edge of the throng, Gerard spurred Thunderbolt into a gallop. Galdar ran effortlessly at his side, giving the nervous horse a wide berth.

When they reached the spot where Shaddoc had left Maisy tethered, Gerard helped the kender onto the nag’s back. That done, they were forced to retrace their steps back toward the mob. That time, however, the citizenry was ready for them. Those not carrying torches had collected pitchforks and staves. Gerard, Galdar, and Shaddoc halted, staring at the crowd, which had grown in size. For a time, the two groups seemed at an impasse. Then with a growl that clawed its way up from a dozen or more throats at once, the crowd started forward. “It looks like you’ll get your wish to fight them after all,” Gerard said to Galdar.

Galdar snarled a battle oath, his mouth set in what Gerard was sure was a minotaur’s grin.

Abruptly, the torchlight in the crowd flickered, drawing Gerard’s attention to the darkness beyond. Torches guttered and dimmed in an unexpected gust of wind. The gust intensified, swirling around the citizenry and flinging grit into their eyes. Several torches blew out altogether, further obscuring the scene, but by the remaining light, Gerard saw people throw their arms up to protect their eyes, turning their heads away from a whirlwind that seemed to come from every direction at once. The wind moaned about them like a dying thing. Several people staggered back, eyes clenched tight, trying ineffectually to escape the sand pelting their faces. Others stumbled blindly.

A touch at Gerard’s elbow brought him back to himself. Galdar stood next to him, remarkably unfazed. “Well, human, shall we venture together into the teeth of the storm?”

“Storm,” said Gerard, the word giving rise to a disquieting suspicion. He shook himself from further reverie. Right then they needed to make good their escape. He nodded to Galdar.

Swords at the ready but not needed, the champions forged ahead, followed by Shaddoc. Wherever the little band of companions went, the eye of the whirlwind followed, as if anticipating their every move. They passed unseen and unchallenged through the midst of the throng. Around them, people blundered about, calling to one another, still afflicted by the curious wind.

The three companions made their way to where Marcus and Allyn waited, and once reunited, the little band hurried into the night. The last thing Gerard saw on looking back over his shoulder, before a bend in the road took him out of sight, was the citizenry of the town milling about like so many blind maggots, still whipped mercilessly by the wind.

The companions had to keep their pace slow so Maisy and Shaddoc could keep up. Galdar loped easily alongside. Fortunately, there was no sign of pursuit.

“Why did you come back for me?” Galdar asked Gerard at one point during the long night that followed, coming as close to Thunderbolt as the horse would allow. “We are not friends, you and I, who have vowed to see to each other’s backs. Why’d you do it?”

Gerard glared down at him. “Because for now, we are fellow members of this company.” He snorted in derision. “But don’t worry, it won’t last any longer than that.”

So saying, he spurred Thunderbolt to greater speed, leaving a startled Galdar peering after him in surprise.

Chapter 12

The companions journeyed through the night. But they didn’t go swiftly, for they were slowed by the darkness and strange terrain. Even had the lack of light not slowed them, Shaddoc’s mount would have, for the animal’s breathing grew increasingly labored the higher they climbed. Often they advanced at little more than a crawl over the uneven, wooded landscape.

Throughout it all, Gerard shivered. How did Galdar stand it, going without a cloak? Of course, he had the benefit of a furry hide. Gerard was dressed in lightweight clothing and envied the minotaur. The air was noticeably colder at the higher altitudes than it had been in Palanthas, and Gerard had brought only warm-weather clothes on his journey. When he left Solace, he hadn’t expected to need the clothes he’d packed away at the end of winter. How he longed to lay his hands on that trunk!

By daybreak, the air turned frigid, and Gerard’s shivering became uncontrollable. He felt wretched and looked forward to the sun’s rising, when he would finally warm up again. The only advantage to the cold as far as he saw was that the violent shaking helped keep him awake so he didn’t fall out of the saddle.

It wasn’t much of a trade-off.

They decided to press on, despite the general bone-weariness. Without much evidence to go on, they felt instinctively that they were close behind Poko and his brother.

As they rode, Shaddoc “entertained” them with tales about his innumerable, insufferable relatives. He said he knew from experience that storytelling could lighten the burden of even the longest journey, and he was determined to bring that benefit to his companions. At one point, Gerard muttered a plea that someone would put a stop to his endless chattering, to which Galdar responded by starting to draw his sword. Gerard had to restrain him, assuring the minotaur he really hadn’t meant to suggest a solution as dire as spitting the kender.

Nevertheless, it was a tempting prospect.

When daylight came, Maisy’s infirmities continued to slow their pace more than Gerard liked. But he had to admit that after a day and a night of grueling travel, none of the animals possessed the will or stamina to go much faster. Nor, for that matter, did their riders.

With daylight, Gerard rode snoozing in the saddle. At least with the sun out, it was pleasantly warm. But he was grumpy at the soreness that came from spending so long in the saddle. Every plodding step Thunderbolt took sent new levels of pain shooting through his backside and up his spine.

He brooded over the events of the past several days, reflecting on the similarity between the storm in Palanthas and the smaller storm that had allowed the companions to escape Galdar’s captors the night before.

The mystery of the previous night’s windstorm was closely related to the mystery of Julice’s disguised presence on their trip, he decided. Yes, Allyn was Julice, no doubt about it. He’d begun to wonder about Allyn before then, but magical storms were Julice’s specialty.

He decided to talk privately with Julice. She, on the other hand, seemed determined to avoid him. Every time Gerard maneuvered his horse alongside Allyn, she came up with some excuse to move elsewhere among the companions. She needed, so she claimed, to talk with Galdar or Marcus or even Shaddoc—anyone, apparently, other than Gerard. That did nothing to alleviate the foulness of his mood.

The day wore on, as endless in its way as had been the night before. At last, they called a halt for a much-needed rest. Despite a weariness that extended to the core of his being, Gerard volunteered to find a farmhouse up ahead where they could get something to eat. And he made a point of choosing Allyn to accompany him.

One way or another, he was determined to talk to her.

Earlier that day, along the same stretch of road, Poko had found an opportunity to leave his signature touch on the female landscape like someone spreading a trail of breadcrumbs to mark his passage through the forest. That time, however, the gambit hadn’t gone as smoothly as before.

“I still don’t know what you could have been thinking,” Angrid snapped at him as they rehashed the day’s events. “What were you doing, romancing a girl at a time like this?”

Poko stared ahead at Angrid’s rigid back as they rode, intending at first not to answer. He shifted his gaze to the highest reaches of the Vingaard Mountains, rising ahead. There, in a secluded mountain valley, sat the remote hideaway that had sheltered the Romes during times of trouble, usually trouble brought about through their less-than-savory family occupation. The hideaway had done its duty by the Rome family for at least three generations.

There, the brothers intended to wait out the period when they would be least welcome in Palanthas. The hideout was full of stolen items waiting to be fenced. As Poko thought about the leaden jewel chest hidden in his saddlebag, he recalled having seen a box rather like it once, somewhere in the nooks and crannies of the hideout. It had seemed too ugly to be worth trying to sell and so had remained up there for uncounted years.

“Huh,” he said aloud at his realization.

“Huh, what?” demanded his brother, still waiting for an answer to his last question.

Without thinking, Poko delicately touched his fingers to his cheek. “Ow!” He jerked his hand away and studied the blood on his fingers. “How was I to know her boyfriend was right around the corner?” he answered at last.

The words came out as a mumble as he probed the inside of his cheek with his tongue to see if the gash he had suffered had penetrated to the interior of his mouth. Apparently, it hadn’t.

Angrid sighed. “Well, you might have looked. You’re just lucky we got you out of there with no worse harm done than that.” He turned and with a sweep of his hand indicated the knife wound on Poko’s face.

“That boyfriend’s just lucky you dragged me out of there before I did far worse damage to him,” Poko grumbled. But even as he said it, he knew the words were empty bravado, for the boyfriend had several companions with pitchforks who were hurrying over to lend a hand even as the Romes galloped out of the farmyard. It had been a close scrape, and Poko knew it. He must be losing his touch.

But he wasn’t about to admit as much to Angrid, who had come down on him like the Lord High Mayor of Righteousness once they were well clear of the farm where they had stopped to scrounge a meal. Of course, Angrid hadn’t any problem with Poko’s romantic inclinations as long as he didn’t indulge them until after the brothers had eaten their fill. On the road, food came first, to Angrid’s thinking, and wooing a distant second. He still hadn’t forgiven Poko for depriving him of what had promised to be an exceptionally tasty dinner at the farm. Instead, the brothers had made do with a single scrawny chicken swept up from the farmyard as they fled and broiled hastily over an open fire later in the evening.

What would Angrid say if he knew the real reason for Poko’s assignations on their trip? That he was leaving a secret trail for Julice?

Poko grinned at the notion, then winced at the pain that caused. Well, at least the folks at the farm would remember them, should anyone come asking. At that thought, even the stinging in Poko’s cheek couldn’t stop him from grinning. Anyone chasing the Romes who lost track of them at that point had to be blind in both eyes and slow between the ears.

Gerard and Allyn plodded along, letting the horses rest as much as possible. Allyn hung back, determinedly riding single file even though the road was wide enough there for tandem. Gerard was forced to speak over his shoulder to carry on a conversation.

“So, Julice,” Gerard said pointedly when they had passed out of earshot of the others, “when were you planning on letting us know who you really are? Or did you think to fool us the whole time?”

The boy, who had been staring glumly at his horse’s neck, shot an angry scowl at Gerard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you can drop the act with me. I’ve got you figured out.” Gerard frowned. “All except the why. I mean, why go to all this trouble just for some old jewel chest, even if it was given to you by your mother? Is it really worth all the trouble you caused in Palanthas or the dangers you’ve put us through since then?”

Julice clenched her jaw, refusing either to answer or to meet Gerard’s eye.

“What I’m thinking is that you’re pretty good at working illusions,” Gerard went on. “But they lack substance, don’t they? Palanthas never was in any real danger.”

Julice muttered something almost indistinguishable.

“What’s that? Oh, yes, I see what you mean. The hazard from the storm wasn’t real, but the city was in peril from the people themselves. In their terror, they might have torn the city and one another apart. So how do you think they would react to my telling them where the real source of their danger lay? What would they do to you if they found out?”

The look she gave him was pure venom.

“So you’re determined to continue this masquerade, are you?” Gerard went on after waiting for a response that never came. “Well, I think maybe it’s a matter we need to discuss with the others.” He turned to face forward again, leaving Julice Lock to stew.

A mile or two farther on, Gerard and Julice came to an isolated farmstead. In the yard, a pretty, red-haired young woman with her hair done up in braids was spreading grain for a brood of eager chickens. Three or four young men worked with hoes and scythes in a field nearby.

“What do you think, Julice?” Gerard asked, not bothering to turn around. “She looks a likely candidate for information about your Poko, don’t you think? Shall we ask her? Or will what she’s bound to tell us make you cause another scene out of jealousy?” Without waiting for a response, Gerard turned off the road and into the farmyard.

The young woman looked up at the sound of their horses’ hooves, then glanced nervously toward the field where the men were working.

“It’s all right,” Gerard said soothingly, dismounting so the young woman could speak with him at eye level. “We don’t mean any harm. We’re just looking for something to eat.”

“Poko Rome,” Julice said belligerently, reasserting her guise as Allyn. “That name mean anything to you, young lady?”

The young woman blushed deeply, her general color coming to resemble that of the freckles that spilled across her nose and cheeks.

“I see that it does,” Julice said with sour satisfaction. She leaped down from her horse and advanced on the other woman, focusing on the girl whatever resentment she had been harboring. “When was he here? Did he seduce you? Did you sleep with him?”

“Julice,” Gerard hissed, noting the alarm on the farm girl’s face and the young men swarming toward them from the field. “I really don’t think that’s helping the situation.”

The young woman tried to back away, almost tripping over the chickens still scrabbling at her feet. Julice grabbed her by the front of her dress and hauled her close. “I suppose it was just a little harmless flirting? Oh, no harm in it, I’m sure. Except when someone else’s heart is involved.”

The young woman looked around wildly. “Branagan!” she wailed, catching sight of the young man in the lead. He dashed the last few steps to her side and caught Julice by the wrists. Gerard started to intervene, but two other men grabbed him from behind and held him fast.

“Bad enough some stranger comes through here earlier today, making eyes at my intended,” Branagan snarled. “He got some of what he had coming to him. Well, we may be naught but simple country folk, but I think we also can teach you two a thing or two about manners.” He produced a knife with one hand, still holding Julice firm with the other.

“Branagan, no!” the young farm woman cried.

He glared at her. “Stay out of this. You caused enough trouble earlier, encouraging that fellow the way you did. This time I intend to see justice done. Stand back and watch what happens to any man who dares to challenge Branagan Yawler’s property.”

Gerard struggled to free himself and was rewarded with a blow to the gut that robbed him of his breath. He sagged and would have fallen to his knees but for the arms roughly hauling him back to his feet. A calloused hand from one of his captors wrenched his face up to look at Branagan and Julice.

“Observe my handiwork, friend,” Branagan said amiably to Gerard, “because you’re next.” He turned back to Julice, whose mouth moved silently, her eyes fixed on some distant vision. “Now, shall we gouge an eye out? You’ve got two. Or shall we merely cut off your lips, so you dribble your food and drink for the rest of your days?”

Approaching footsteps made Branagan pause, the knife inches from Julice’s face.

“Step away from him, human,” growled Galdar’s voice behind Gerard. Gerard’s captors whirled at the sound and gasped, almost letting him go in the confusion of encountering their first minotaur.

Branagan pulled Julice closer and held the knife to her throat. “Stand back, bull-man, or by all the gods, I’ll cut him a new smile.”

Galdar laughed, a truly terrible sound. “You mistake me. Cut him a nice smile. Fine. I’ll drink his blood, and then I’ll feast on yours.” Gerard heard the sound of a sword being drawn from its scabbard. “Can that knife of yours stand up to my blade?”

The men holding Gerard let go and fled, casting terrified glances over their shoulders. Several times, their inattention sent them sprawling, but then they scrambled wildly to their feet and plunged on again. Gerard ignored them, turning instead to Galdar.

The minotaur stood at the edge of the farmyard, huge and terrifying, his great sword raised high in his right hand. His bull’s lips were pulled back in a minotaur’s grin. Gerard hoped never to witness so fierce an expression again. Even with his left arm missing at the shoulder, the minotaur made a formidable opponent.

Branagan, left alone, shoved Julice aside. Gerard caught the motion from the corner of his eye and turned just in time to be rammed by the man, who knocked the still-winded Gerard out of the way, dropping the knife and grabbing Gerard’s sword in its stead. Assuming a wide-legged fighter’s stance, the young man brandished the blade, getting the feel of it. His weren’t a practiced swordfighter’s moves, but they promised to be deadly enough. “You don’t scare me, bull-man. Let’s see if I can speed your passage back to the Abyss where you belong.”

Galdar made several intricate sweeps through the air with his sword and stepped forward. Branagan, evidently not given to idle flourishes, held his ground, the tip of his sword never wavering from a line that ended at the minotaur’s belly. Galdar stopped just out of reach and laughed again, although Gerard thought the sound possessed a desperate edge. “I’ll tell you what, human,” Galdar said. “I’ll trade you blow for blow. You take the first swing. Do your worst. Then it’ll be my turn.”

That was when Gerard staggered forward, fighting the nausea still washing over him.

“Branagan, look out!” the young woman cried.

Branagan whirled and swung the sword with more spirit than skill. Gerard ducked the blade and dived for the young man’s knees, which produced a satisfying crunch. Branagan screamed and went down, dropping the sword. Instantly, Julice straddled his chest, ignoring his anguished moans and displaying the knife he had dropped earlier. “Now you choose, Branagan,” she hissed. “Shall I slit your nose, or just slice off one of your ears?”

“Please, don’t,” the redheaded woman begged, tugging at Julice’s arm. “Leave him be. He didn’t mean any harm. He was just… trying to protect me.”

Julice snarled at the young woman but allowed herself to be dragged from Branagan’s chest. The young woman turned her attentions to Branagan, who sobbed with pain. Gerard retrieved his sword, then leaned on Julice while they made their way to the horses. As he clambered into the saddle, Gerard looked around for Galdar, but the minotaur had disappeared.

Once they were well away from the farm, Gerard turned to Julice. “Strange, don’t you think, that Galdar would abandon us like that.”

“Maybe he had to get back,” Julice said, avoiding his gaze. “Maybe we shouldn’t mention any of this to the others. It might embarrass him, saving humans.”

“Hmm.” Gerard affected a thoughtful expression, rubbing at his beard. “You know, there’s one thing I don’t understand. How did Galdar manage to wield his sword with his right hand, seeing that his right arm was the one he lost in the war?” He held her with his gaze. “He’s left-handed, Julice, or hadn’t you noticed?”

She said nothing, although the blush that crept from her neck to the roots of her hair gave evidence that she had heard.

“When we get back to the others, I think it’s time we all had a nice long talk,” Gerard went on. “They need to know who they’re really traveling with. Of course, Marcus already knows, I’ll wager. Maybe Galdar does too. Maybe I’m the last to know. But you need to level with us, tell us just what’s so important about this missing jewel chest of your mother’s. There’s more to that story than you’ve chosen to tell.”

She spun on him so rapidly, the movement almost flung her from the saddle. “You can’t force me to do anything!”

“We’re putting our lives at risk for you.”

“The chest is mine! Besides, it’s worth any risk.”

“Why, Julice? What makes it so important?”

Silence.

They rode that way for a time. As they reached the final bend in the road that would bring them back to the others, Julice said, “There’s one thing you’re mistaken about, you know.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“That illusions carry no power.”

Before Gerard could ask what she meant, a strange tingling took hold of his lips. His head suddenly felt large and heavy. “What are you doing?” he demanded, though the words had something of a barnyard sound.

“Now you’ll learn the power of illusion,” she said, kicking her horse into a gallop.

Galdar looked up at Gerard and Allyn’s arrival, grateful for the interruption to Shaddoc’s endless prattle. Galdar had been entertaining himself with visions of Shaddoc roasting on a spit over glowing coals. He wouldn’t have followed through with that, of course, for he was, after all, a civilized being, despite what most humans might think. But that didn’t stop him from fantasizing. “You brought no food?” he asked when he noticed that they came empty-handed. “What happened?”

“Yes, brother, what happened?” Marcus asked, the corners of his mouth twitching as he put emphasis on the word.

Gerard’s eyes flashed fire, and he opened his mouth to speak. “Mooooo!”

Galdar tensed. Did the former knight dare to mock him?

Gerard’s eyes went wide. Looking horrified, as though suddenly realizing the severity of his offense, he slapped a hand over his mouth. At length, he tried again, pointing at Julice. “Moooo!”

The drawn-out lowing sounded like a bad imitation of a lovesick cow. Galdar leaped to his feet, his hand on his sword.

“Mooo, moo, moo!”

As Gerard’s utterances grew more and more frantic, Galdar’s fury soared. Not everyone was distressed by the situation, however, for Julice chortled at every outburst. Marcus attempted unsuccessfully to hide his mirth with a fit of coughing. Only Shaddoc appeared distressed by Gerard’s performance.

“Gerard, I don’t think you should be doing that,” he said, eyeing the minotaur nervously. “Galdar doesn’t like you making fun of him.”

When that produced no effect, and Gerard continued as before, the kender tried kicking him surreptitiously in the shins.

“Ow!” Gerard danced on one leg, grasping the injured shin. “That hurt!”

“Well,” Galdar growled, “I see you’re capable of ordinary speech after all.” His voice dropped ominously low and uninflected. “Was the other just for show, then? Perhaps you think it is funny to make fun of me?”

“Oh, good, you can still talk,” Shaddoc said to Gerard. He lowered his voice to a whisper that nevertheless carried to all sides of the little clearing. “So this would be a good time to explain to Galdar that it was only a misguided joke.”

Gerard let go of his leg and patted his face and head anxiously, as though his features might have altered. Looking relieved, he again pointed at Julice, who pretended indifference. “Moo!”

His hands flew to his face again.

Galdar drew his sword from its scabbard with a hiss of steel. “Step aside, kender. He appears to be having trouble with his head. He won’t mind if I remove it for him.”

“Uh, Gerard,” Shaddoc hissed, louder than before. “You better stop. I think he means it. You’re just making him mad.”

“You idiot, I’m not doing it on purpose!”

Shaddoc stiffened, taken aback by Gerard’s vehemence. He balled his hands into fists and rested them on his hips. “It’s not nice to call someone names, you know,” he said with a disapproving frown.

“It’s not nice to make fun of someone’s appearance, either,” Galdar mimicked, testing the sharpness of his blade with a thumb.

Gerard grasped his head gingerly, as if expecting it to be much larger than it was, and rocked it. “I don’t understand,” he moaned. “What’s happened to me?” Abruptly, he looked up, meeting the gaze of Shaddoc, Galdar, and Marcus in turn. “You understood what I said that time, didn’t you?”

Shaddoc nodded and Marcus turned away, still pretending to cough. Galdar met Gerard’s gaze with cold fury. Gerard took a deep breath. “It only happens when I try to tell you about moo,” he said, enunciating slowly and carefully. “Moo… moo… moo…”

With a roar, Galdar lunged for Gerard, swinging his blade overhead.

Gerard sprang aside just in time to keep his head attached to his shoulders. Galdar’s blade whistled harmlessly through the air where he had stood. Gerard grabbed for his own sword, his eyes widening in horror. Even Galdar, whose understanding of human expressions was like a foreign language one learned to speak with effort, recognized the meaning of Gerard’s countenance.

His sword was gone!

“Shaddoc!” Gerard bellowed.

“Hey, look what I got,” the kender said, standing several feet away and attempting to demonstrate his swordsmanship with a few balletic lunges and parries. “Not bad, eh?”

Galdar snorted with faint amusement. Marcus guffawed. Julice tried and failed to stifle her own laughter.

Gerard tried to dash to where the kender stood, but Galdar sent his sword singing past an ear, convincing him to reverse direction. While he ran, Gerard continued to clutch his head as if it were proving cumbersome.

“Hold still!” Galdar cried. “I’ll remove that brainpan of yours if it afflicts you so.”

Gerard darted behind a tree and cautiously peered around the other side.

Thunk!

Galdar’s sword bit into the tree trunk, sending wood chips flying, just as Gerard jerked back his head. He ducked and bolted for safer ground. Galdar swore mightily in the language of his youth, calling upon Sargonnas for aid as he wrenched the sword free from the tree. He looked around to see Gerard fleeing. The human appeared oddly unbalanced by his head, for a glance back at his pursuer cost him. He stumbled and almost fell. He forced himself upright again and ran faster, attempting in vain to overmatch Galdar’s longer, more powerful legs.

Galdar uttered thanks to his god and closed the distance between them effortlessly.

“Wait!” Julice exclaimed, laughing so hard, she could scarcely speak. “Gerard, Galdar, come back! It’s all right. Let me explain.”

Galdar ignored her, intent on pursuing his quarry.

Chapter 13

As Gerard ran, he grabbed a particularly stout branch that had fallen from a tree, spun with it, and faced his attacker.

“So you decided to meet your death like a man and not run like a coward,” Galdar said, swinging his sword. “I’ll speak well of your demise to any calves sired from your loins.”

Gerard flung the branch up with both hands to parry the blow. The blade hit with bone-jarring ferocity that numbed his arms to the elbows. The branch fell from his nerveless fingers, neatly severed in two. But the branch absorbed the brunt of the blow, and the blade barely cut him as it slid across his chest.

Barely, as in the wound didn’t look like it would cause him to bleed to death, he thought, as he looked down at the crimson stripe that welled up to stain his tunic. At least not right away. But it hurt like the Abyss.

“Galdar, Gerard, look, I can do that too!” Shaddoc cried. He flung a twig in the air and tried to chop it with Gerard’s sword, missing the twig but nearly taking off three of his toes. “Oops,” he said. “Hey, stop your fighting. Marcus, can’t you do something?”

Marcus threw his hands up and shook his head, backing away to put as much distance between himself and the kender as possible.

“Allyn,” Shaddoc said, “you’ll help, won’t you?”

But Allyn looked absorbed by the fight. In fact, his lips moved as if he were offering up a prayer for the safety of one or the other of the combatants.

Gerard dodged another blow and ducked around a boulder that lay half embedded in the ground. Each time Galdar tried to round the boulder after him, Gerard shifted to keep the rock between them. Galdar bellowed in fury and charged around the obstruction, but Gerard managed to stay out of reach of the minotaur’s deadly blade.

“Shaddoc!” Gerard cried. “Give me back my sword!”

“Just a minute, I’m practicing,” Shaddoc said, still trying to hack a twig in two. At last he thought to lay it on the grass in front of him. With effort, he lifted the sword blade a couple of feet off the ground then let the tip drop. The sword hit the stick with the flat of the blade, but it was sufficient to break the twig. “Look, I did it! Did you see that, everyone? I chopped it in two, just like Galdar! Hey, Gerard, you want me to teach you how to do that?”

But Gerard was busy. “Look, you big ox,” he said to Galdar, sidestepping another potentially lethal blow, “whatever I said, I’m sorry.”

The minotaur only howled and pressed all the harder.

“Um, Gerard,” Shaddoc called from the safety of the sidelines.

“What!”

“I don’t think he liked that crack.”

“What crack?”

“About him being an ox.”

The minotaur’s blade cleaved the air so close to Gerard’s head that he heard the hum of its passage. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the one about an ox being a gelding.”

“But I wasn’t… oh.” Gerard feinted right and dodged left, mentally preparing himself for the inevitable. When he died, he reflected frantically, he planned on coming back as a ghost and haunting Julice for the rest of her life for causing this to happen.

From the left-hand fork of the road, the sound of whistling and the rattle of cart wheels drew near. A moment later, a heavily-laden peddler’s cart drawn by a handsome pony with gaily-tinkling bells on its harness rounded a curve and approached the fork. When the peddler reached them, he reined in the pony.

“Whoa, Simon!” The pony obediently came to a stop, and the peddler let the reins fall slack. “Good evening, folks,” he said, as if there were nothing untoward about two figures racing around a boulder, the one with the bull’s head trying to chop the other to pieces. “It’s getting near sundown, and this looks like an agreeable spot for the night. Mind if I join you?”

Galdar paused in his chase, taken aback by the imperturbable calm of the man. The minotaur stared, his shaggy head cocked in puzzlement as if to suggest that the behavior of humans would ever remain a mystery to him. On the other side of the boulder, Gerard panted for breath, his hands on his knees, and a head that felt to him equally shaggy hanging wearily while he took advantage of the respite.

“I used to know a fella who ran his milk cow around in circles like that,” the peddler said conversationally to Galdar, gesturing toward Gerard. “Said it made her give pure butter. No need even to churn the stuff.”

Galdar stared at the man in disbelief. Suddenly, he burst out laughing. “And does this wretched excuse for a man remind you in some way of a milk cow?” he asked.

“Could be.” The peddler—a sturdy fellow with a great mane of flowing white hair and a grizzled, bushy beard—descended from his seat and went around to the back of the cart, where he began pulling out pots, pans, food, and blankets. “But don’t let me interrupt your sport,” he said as he worked. “I promise to stay well out of your way.”

Instead, Galdar sheathed his sword and strode away from the boulder without another look at Gerard. “I think for now, I’ll let the milk cow live. The need to kill him seems to have left me.” He paused to glare at Gerard over his shoulder. “Though it could return at any moment.”

The peddler nodded and went about unharnessing his pony, which he hobbled and left to graze for the night. Gerard, his breathing somewhat eased, stalked over to where Shaddoc was still “practicing” with his sword. “Give me that!” Gerard snapped, grabbing the sword away from him and returning it to its place on his hip.

“All right, all right, you don’t have to get all huffy about it,” Shaddoc said. “I was only borrowing it. I was going to give it back.”

“Lot of good it would have done me after Galdar had run me through,” Gerard said. But even with the return of his sword, he was careful to keep clear of the minotaur for the time being.

The crisis averted, the companions realized how late the day had grown and proceeded to follow the peddler’s example by setting up camp for the night. They got a crackling fire going, its sparks spitting upward to rival the stars that began peeking out in the darkening heavens. After dinner, the peddler produced a large pot, Marcus and Allyn located a nearby stream and brought back a pot of water, and the aroma of steeping tarbean tea soon blended with the night smells of mist and pines and grass.

As soon as Julice lifted her spell, Gerard resolved to wring her neck. In fact, the more he thought about how willing she’d been to see Galdar skewer him, the angrier he became. If it hadn’t been for the peddler’s timely arrival, Gerard might well be dead.

While they sipped tea and Gerard sat stanching the blood from his wound, the peddler looked around at the others. “Pardon my lack of manners!” he cried jovially. “Why, I never introduced myself. The name’s Leonid. And what about each of you?”

Galdar, Marcus, and Allyn gave their names, to each of which Leonid nodded. When it came Gerard’s turn, the peddler listened to his name, then said, “Here, let me take a look at that.”

Gerard was about to gruffly decline, but the older man had already grabbed the wad of cloth with which Gerard was trying to stem the blood that still seeped from the gash on his chest. He peered at the wound, turning Gerard this way and that to better see the injury by the light of the fire. “That could fester,” he said, as if inspecting bloody wounds were an everyday occurrence. “But I have just the salve for it.” Before Gerard could protest, Leonid rooted around in a leather bag and produced a small pot of foul-smelling ointment.

“Now this may sting a bit,” he warned as he scooped some onto his fingertips and prepared to apply it.

“The cursed sword cut hurts bad enough already,” Gerard groused. “I don’t see how much worse your ointment could possibly—ow!”

Leonid had already turned away and gave no indication of having heard Gerard’s howl of pain. “Now what about you, little fella?” he asked the kender. “What’s your name?”

“My name’s Shaddoc Barleywort, but I’m going by the name Sedgewick Fennelroot.” He leaned closer and whispered, “I’m traveling incognito.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Well, I don’t like to say, but since you ask, it’s BECAUSE I KILLED A MAN.”

There it was again, a statement uttered with all the gravity of having been inscribed in capital letters, despite the fact that Shaddoc kept his voice subdued—or as subdued as was possible for an excited kender.

Galdar laughed. “He must have been a very old and decrepit man, indeed, to have met his end from you. What did you do, kick his cane out from under him so he tumbled down the stairs?”

Once again, Leonid had the good grace to show no evidence of having heard. “I saw you practicing with a sword earlier,” he said to Shaddoc. “Your sword craft is impressive. Did you kill this man in a duel?”

“No,” Shaddoc admitted then added quickly, “but I might have. I’m that dangerous with a blade.”

“You’re dangerous, all right,” Marcus said. “I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near you when you were carrying one.”

Shaddoc puffed up proudly at that.

“So how did you kill him?” Leonid prompted.

“Oh. Well, I was going through his pockets—not to steal anything, mind you, just kind of taking inventory in case he lost anything later and needed to know what he was missing. Anyway, he was pretty old, just like Galdar said, and he suddenly clutched at his chest like this”—Shaddoc gave a dramatic rendition of a man experiencing acute chest pains—“and fell over dead at my feet. Naturally, I knew I had done it.” The kender looked ready to cry. “But I didn’t mean to kill him, really I didn’t. It was an accident.”

“Of course it was,” Leonid said soothingly. “You just didn’t know the deadliness of your own ability, that’s all.”

Shaddoc brightened and grinned at the others. “That’s it, I didn’t know my own ability.” He paused to peek up at the peddler with round, pleading eyes. “You really think I do have an ability?”

“Oh, undoubtedly,” Leonid said, ignoring Galdar’s snort of disgust. “In fact, I dare say you’ve got a couple, from the sound of things. After all, how many people could go through someone else’s pockets without that person catching him?”

“Well, anyone in my family,” Shaddoc said rather too quickly. “For that matter, every kender I know can do that.” His expression fell. “Most people don’t regard it as an ability. They just throw us out of town for our troubles.”

The peddler stroked his graying beard, his gaze far away. “Still, there are times when just such a skill is called for,” he said to no one in particular. Suddenly, he slapped his knees. “Well, it’s late, time for an old man like me to get some sleep. I need to be off to an early start in the morning.” He nodded to the others and rolled up in his blankets. Soon he was snoring softly.

Gerard glanced over at Galdar, who avoided his look but seemed to have dropped his hostility. The others drifted off to sleep. He sat awake long after Leonid and the others were sound asleep. Idly, he stirred the embers of the fire with a stick and put a new log on every now and then to keep the flames alive through the night—no telling what wild beasts might be on the prowl so close to the mountains. The fire would help keep them at bay.

Gerard’s mind wasn’t on wild beasts. Instead, he puzzled over the peddler’s strange remark about Shaddoc’s acquisitiveness being a valuable skill rather than mere nuisance. Gerard had been a sheriff long enough to recognize the covetous voice of larceny when he heard it. He hated feeling suspicious of anyone as likable as the old man but couldn’t help wondering what possibility had presented itself to Leonid’s mind when Shaddoc mentioned his particular trait. Gerard made up his mind to keep an eye on the peddler in the morning and make sure he didn’t try to take advantage of Shaddoc’s naïveté.

Soft light on his face woke Poko Rome where he lay in the straw of a farmer’s hayloft. He gazed past the lantern to the maid who held it. Rosy-cheeked and buxom, she was as likely a wench as any he’d yet seen on this journey. Though still groggy with sleep, he awarded her his most winning smile.

“Wh-who are you?” she demanded, fear riding in her voice.

Poko sat up, shifting slowly so as not to startle her. She was like a nervous deer and apt to bolt if he moved too fast. “I’m Poko,” he said as if that explained everything.

She took a step back. “What are you doing here?”

“I was sleeping, but not anymore.” He patted the straw at his side. “Come sit by me a while. We can talk more softly that way and won’t risk waking my brother.”

Her eyes darted frantically, searching out that new source of danger. “Where is he?”

“Safely burrowed into the hay. Don’t worry, he won’t trouble us.” He patted the straw again. “Come.”

For answer, she grabbed a pitchfork and brandished it in one hand while holding the lantern in the other. “Are you one of the Beloved?”

“Why, yes, I’m truly beloved,” Poko said, confused by the sudden shift in subject. “But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t keep each other company, warming each other through a cold night.” He gave a shiver for emphasis.

She stabbed with the pitchfork. Poko, startled, barely dodged in time. Had she not been hampered by the lantern, the outcome might have been different. He shivered at the thought of four pitchfork tines piercing his body.

“Get out!” she hissed. “Both of you, get out of here now!”

Poko, taken aback by the savagery of her response, asked, “Can’t we at least finish out the night here? We’re very tired, and we’re not hurting anyone.”

“Not hurting anyone!” She spit the words, the pitchfork at the ready again in her hand.

“Then what about a little breakfast to see us on our way? We haven’t eaten since…” He tried to remember when they’d shared that one scrawny chicken but had lost track of whether that was the previous day or the day before that. Whenever it had been, he was very hungry at the moment.

“There’s little ones here,” she said, almost sobbing. “My brothers and sisters. Please don’t harm them. Go back to wherever you came from. Please.”

“Palanthas?” He chuckled, although the sound emerged strained with bewilderment as he eyed the pitchfork tines warily. “I’m afraid we can’t go back there just now.”

“Then return to the Abyss, where you belong. Just get away from this farm. Leave us be. We’ve suffered enough from your kind hereabouts as it is. Now go!” She emphasized her words with another jab of the pitchfork.

“All right, all right!” He put his hands out toward her, palms foremost, in submission. “We’ll go. But I still don’t see what harm we were causing.” He turned, located a booted foot in the straw, and tugged. “Angrid, wake up. We’ve got to be going.”

“Why, is it day already?” Angrid asked blearily, emerging from the hay mound. He looked around and snorted. “What are you doing, little brother? It’s still dead of night.” He swept away bits of straw clinging to his hair, hanging over his face and obstructing his view. “Oh,” he said, noticing the girl with the pitchfork. He looked at Poko and scowled. “What have you been up to this time, Anton?”

It was a measure of his annoyance that he used Poko’s formal name.

“Nothing, I swear it,” Poko said, his eyes never leaving the tines, which danced between the two brothers as if uncertain which posed the greater danger. “She’s just taken uncommon offense at our having made ourselves comfortable in her barn.” He felt a little hurt that his usual charm hadn’t worked on the girl and allowed a trace of petulance to enter his voice. “Wants us out of here right away.”

Angrid turned and rummaged in the straw for his saddlebag. “I still think you must have had something to do with it,” he said irritably to Poko. “A girl doesn’t just up and check her hayloft in the middle of the night then turn out two perfectly harmless strangers into the cold for no good reason.”

Ten minutes later, the two brothers had recovered their horses from where they had turned them into the farmer’s corral and were on their way again, yawning and shivering in the darkness.

“Tell me again why we’re out here at this time of night,” Angrid said, sounding cranky. “Poko, this has to be all your fault somehow.”

“Why does everybody always jump to the conclusion that I’m somehow to blame?” Poko demanded.

“Because usually you are,” Angrid said. “I’m just not sure what you did in this particular case. When I woke up, the girl was standing there, waving that cursed pitchfork as if she’d like to have impaled the both of us. What happened earlier between you two?”

“Why won’t you believe me?” Poko cried. A thought occurred to him. “Maybe she was jealous. She asked if I was beloved. I told her I was. After that, she grew extremely hostile.”

Angrid sighed. “Little brother, for someone so adept at romantic entanglements, you can be remarkably dense sometimes.”

“Why? What do you mean?” But Poko wasn’t really paying attention to his older brother’s scolding. Instead, he was replaying the conversation with the girl in his mind. “No, she didn’t ask if I was beloved; she asked if I was ‘one of the beloved,’ whatever that means.”

“It means you got us kicked out of a warm bed, that’s what it means!” Angrid said with an angry snort.

“She also said they had suffered enough from our kind around here already. Are there other branches of the family working this area?”

“Not that I know of,” said Angrid sleepily. “We usually keep to the cities, where the pickings are better. Maybe she meant something broader, like vagabonds or thieves generally.” He said it with bitterness, for the Romes considered themselves superior to the common riffraff. For the Romes, thievery was an art form, as respectable and demanding as any image painted on canvas or figure chiseled from a block of stone.

“I don’t think so,” Poko said, remembering the conversation. “She was oddly frightened.”

“Wise girl, considering who she was faced with,” Angrid muttered. “Though wiser still if she had taken a knife and left you singing in a higher key.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Poko demanded hotly.

“It means that if you hadn’t been so keen on romancing that Lock girl back in Palanthas, we might not have had to be out in this wilderness now, seeing you to safety!”

“And what of your little escapade in Palanthas that had the city guard so actively seeking to put your head on a pike? If I recall, you’re the one who killed a man. I’m not the only one who had to leave in a hurry.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Angrid muttered. “And it certainly isn’t going to put breakfast in our bellies. So if you have something to contribute in that regard, I’d be glad to hear it.”

After that, they rode in silence, with only the grumblings of their empty stomachs to keep them company, until well into the day.

“Gerard!” Shaddoc whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Gerard, wake up!”

“Mmm?” Gerard turned over, trying to escape the jostling. He opened one eye and promptly closed it again. Predawn light was just turning the eastern sky gray; the pinks and golds of full dawn would come an hour or two later. “It’s too early. Go back to sleep.”

“But I didn’t do it!” Shaddoc persisted, still rocking him. “Someone has to know that.”

Gerard slapped the kender’s hand away from his shoulder. “Stop that! Didn’t do what?”

“I didn’t take it.”

Gerard groaned and opened his eyes, relinquishing sleep unwillingly. Leonid’s cart and pony were gone. Gerard looked where the old peddler had been sleeping, but his place around the fire lay vacant. Strange that he hadn’t said good-bye. Still, he had told them he’d be leaving early. Gerard glanced at Galdar, Marcus, and Julice, all of whom were still sound asleep. Lucky them, Gerard thought uncharitably. He sat up, stretched, and suddenly remembered his sword wound, startled that its soreness hadn’t troubled him. He looked at his chest and was even more surprised to see that the gash had already closed over, forming a new, red, pain-free scar. “Huh! That salve was really something after all. Wish I knew what it was.”

“Gerard, listen to me,” Shaddoc said, squatting down to push his face right into Gerard’s line of sight. “I know everyone’s going to blame me, but I didn’t do it, really. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Didn’t do what?” Gerard repeated. “Shaddoc, you’re not making any sense. By the way, did you see Leonid leave?”

“Yes, but he’ll be back as soon as he discovers the loss.”

“Loss?” Gerard wished desperately that he could go back to sleep. “What loss?”

Shaddoc rolled his eyes. “That’s what I’m telling you. All of Leonid’s stuff.”

Gerard put his head in his hands, disappointed to discover that it still felt as oversized and shaggy as it had last night. “Shaddoc, if you’re going to insist on waking me up this early, you’ve at least got to explain what you’re talking about.”

“Leonid’s things, in his cart,” Shaddoc said. “I got up really early and, well, I was curious. I just was curious,” he went on hurriedly. “I didn’t take anything. But when I looked in his cart and all those bulging bags and bundles strapped all over it—well, there wasn’t anything there. Not in any of them.”

“What do you mean? He’s a peddler. He has to have items to sell.”

Shaddoc shook his head. “I tell you, they were empty. In fact, more than empty. There wasn’t even straw in the bags and bundles to give them that full look. Just… nothing.”

Gerard scowled at the kender. “That’s impossible.” Nevertheless, he got to his feet, shivering in the early-morning chill, and strode over to the road where the peddler’s cart had stood. He peered into the gloom up the road in the direction Leonid had come from then down the road where he must have gone. There wasn’t anything to see, of course. Frowning in thought, his gaze dropped to his feet, where he idly kicked dirt around on the road.

“Shaddoc,” he said quietly to the kender, who had followed him like a haunting spirit, “go stir up the fire. Get a brand burning and bring it here.”

Shaddoc hurried to comply, eager to be given a job. Gerard, meanwhile, stooped and tried in vain to study the dark surface of the road. He was careful not to stir up any more of the dirt. He tried to stroke his beard, as he was wont to do when thinking, but found the sensation of stroking a cow’s chin an unsatisfactory substitute.

A few minutes later, Shaddoc returned, a crackling pine branch in his hand throwing wavering patches of glare and shadow around him. Gerard took it and held it close to the ground.

As he suspected, no tracks showed where the cart or pony had stood the evening before, no boot prints in the soft dirt revealed where Leonid had unpacked or repacked his gear—in short, no evidence remained at all that the peddler and his equipage had ever been there.

Gerard turned and stared through the tenuous light to where Julice slept, innocent as the proverbial babe. Absently, he rubbed the half-healed sword wound on his chest.

Perhaps she hadn’t been so willing to sacrifice him to Galdar’s blade after all.

Chapter 14

With morning came a mist that gradually thickened into heavy fog. The chilly wetness of it penetrated everything, leaving Marcus feeling cold and damp. This only accentuated his reservations about this trip, for he was having to work harder to obtain Julice’s hand than he’d expected. Capul Lock hadn’t let on that the trip would be as risky and grueling as it was. Marcus hadn’t been able to shave, which left him with dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. That was all right because it made him look more rugged. He never minded an opportunity to appear as manly as possible. But he hadn’t been able to bathe either, which caused his hair to lie lank and oily against his scalp. His hair was his finest feature, and he resented the loss of its usual body and waves.

Marcus was having doubts as well about whether Julice would accept him as her husband, despite the deal she’d made with her father. That troubled Marcus even more than his dirty hair, for if she rejected him, he didn’t know how he would pay off his creditors. Marrying Julice was essential.

He watched Julice steal away from camp into the swirling whiteness and he followed her, seizing the opportunity to learn where he stood in her eyes. She thrust her way into a dense thicket of bushes, and he took up a station at the periphery.

“Allyn, you require more privacy than any boy I’ve ever known,” he said with a mocking lilt, keeping his voice pitched low so as not to be overheard in camp.

“Marcus, what are you doing here?” Julice whispered indignantly from within the bushes. “Go away!”

“Why? Can’t I strike up a conversation with my little brother?”

“What do you want?”

“I just want to talk with my intended.”

“Can’t it wait until I get back to camp?”

“Privately.”

She was silent a long moment; then the bushes rustled as she forced them aside and made her way out again. “All right, talk,” she said with a frown when she stood before him. “But I’ll have you know I couldn’t do anything, what with you watching me and all. If I wet my pants, I’m blaming you.”

“Look, I just want to know whether you intend to honor the arrangement you made with your father regarding me.”

“That’s what this is about? Whether I’m going to marry you?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged, her face a battleground of conflicting emotions.

“It’s Poko, isn’t it?” he asked.

Silence.

“So you really love him?”

“I—I don’t know. I didn’t think I did. Now I’m not so sure.”

“He’s not worthy of you, you know.”

“And I suppose you are?”

Marcus decided that was a question best left unanswered. “Look how lightly he’s been treating your affection, chasing after all these women as though you meant nothing to him.”

Her countenance darkened. “That’s just Poko’s way. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“And will it remain his way once the two of you are together?” he asked, pressing his advantage.

She glowered at him, and he knew he’d overstepped his bounds. “You know how I feel about you, right?” he asked, changing tack and adopting a look of the utmost sincerity.

“Yes, I know!” she snorted. “You feel that you need me to pay off your gambling debts.”

Marcus abandoned the attempt at sincerity. “Does everyone in Palanthas know about those?”

“Pretty much.”

He winced. “Then I don’t suppose I could get you to loan me some money.”

“Loan you money, when I can hardly get Father to provide me with adequate upkeep as it is?”

“We’re two of a kind, you know,” he said softly, the full realization of it hitting him. “That’s why we belong together, you and I.”

She stamped a dainty foot. “If we’re two of a kind—and I don’t know how you can insinuate that—then it’s precisely why we shouldn’t ever be together!” With that, she flounced back to camp.

Marcus stood there, uncertain and strangely bereft in a blank, colorless world without features or reference points. At last he walked off in the opposite direction, away from Julice, away from the realization of all he had lost. He didn’t know where he was going nor did he care. He just needed to get away for a while.

Muffled voices rose from the camp behind him, the words rendered indistinct by the fog. He wondered vaguely who was talking and whether it was about him, only to discover he no longer cared. Let them think what they liked. It was of no consequence to him.

He continued on into the fog, letting it embrace him, feeling himself at his most dramatic.

Poko halted his horse and turned to look at the valley they had left behind during the night. Fog lay thick in the depression between two ridges, lapping at the foothills of the mountains like some vaporous sea. Sunlight gleamed on the surface of the fog, turning it to silver. Obscured within the depths of all that cloud lay the farm they had fled while darkness still inhabited the land, driven off by the girl with the pitchfork and the peculiar warnings. Poko shivered, though not from the cold, and wished the oppressiveness of her words had vanished with the passing of night. Instead, they clung to him more tenaciously than ever, dimming even the brilliance of the day in which he and Angrid rode.

Somewhere in that milkiness below, their pursuers also went about their business—assuming anyone had bothered to pursue them. What troubled Poko was that Julice might be among their number. If so and she, too, was tracking him, was she being exposed to some unseen danger hinted at by the farm girl? For a moment, he considered doubling back in search of them.

Poko patted his bulging saddlebag reflexively, assuring himself that the lead chest was still there. He wondered whether the chest was worth all the trouble it was causing, both for him and for anyone pursuing him.

“Poko, come on!” Angrid called, his voice clear in the thin, mountain air. “This is no time for dawdling.”

Reluctantly, he faced forward again and kicked his mount to a trot, eating up the distance that separated him from his brother. Angrid watched him approach with narrowed eyes. Poko had to be careful of those eyes, for they noticed everything. “I think there’s something you’re not telling me,” Angrid said when Poko reached him. “You’ve been acting funny this whole time.”

“It’s nothing,” Poko insisted. “Just nerves over having to leave Palanthas so hastily.”

Angrid studied him, but whatever conclusions he reached went unsaid.

Together, they headed toward the family hideout. With luck, they would reach it by afternoon. But Poko kept falling a few lengths back from Angrid, not wishing to get caught up in conversation, which mostly consisted of bickering anyway. Poko, never before one for serious introspection, found himself with much to ponder after the events of the preceding night, none of it easy or comfortable.

Foremost among his thoughts was the question of his feelings for Julice. The girl at the farm had asked whether he was beloved. Well, actually she had asked whether he was “one of the beloved,” but assuming that meant the same thing, the answer was probably yes. He suspected that Julice loved him, as much as she was able. In fact, his certainty that all the girls he met and romanced ended up loving him formed a cornerstone of belief in his young life. Nothing so far had occurred to shake that conviction. But its obverse—whether he loved Julice in return—was a new possibility for him to consider. Oh, he had told her he did, of course, but that went without saying. Girls always wanted that assurance from him, and he was only too happy to provide it… if it gained him what he wanted. But he’d never before considered whether he might actually mean it.

The possibility that he did troubled him, for if he really loved Julice, the fact seemed to carry enormous implications. He wasn’t sure what those were, but had the uneasy feeling that they would require curtailing certain of his behaviors with regard to other women, at least if he wanted to retain Julice’s favorable impression of him. Assuming, of course, he hadn’t ruined that already.

When she had broken off their relationship back in Palanthas, he’d been primarily indignant. He left girls when he tired of them; they didn’t up and leave him. Unwilling to let matters stand with so unsatisfactory a resolution, he had stolen her leaden jewel chest because he suspected it would force her to seek him, unable to let him simply walk out of her life with something she valued. And he had wooed the various girls along the way because not only was it an enjoyable pastime for him, but he knew she would find it an irresistible goad to keep pursuing him.

So Poko pondered and felt a sensation unfamiliar to him, more troubling than indigestion, more persistent than saddle sores. His face flamed and his heart grew heavy. Damn, he really did love her!

Meanwhile, the brothers climbed ever higher. The road had become little more than an overgrown track, scarcely discernible among the weeds and grass. The forest pressed closer around them, forcing them to ride single file. Many of the trees represented ancient growth, for no logger’s axe had cleared the way and caused the woods to ring with the bite of blade and the crash of falling trees. Angrid paused now and then to read the cryptic signs indicating the path to the hideaway, marks known only to the Romes. The signs had been handed down in the family for three generations and were among the family’s most closely guarded secrets.

It occurred to Poko, as he surreptitiously broke another branch to mark his passage, that he was going to be leading them right to that family secret. Without having been conscious of doing so, he had weighed his choices between family and Julice, and his family came up lacking. Regaining Julice’s feelings for him was more important than protecting the most valuable secret his family possessed.

He left the tiny pine branch dangling by a piece of bark, signaling to anyone with the eyes to see it that someone or something had come that way. From the freshness of the break in the branch’s stem, an observant pursuer could deduce how recently it had taken place. With no more farm girls to woo along the way, that was the best recourse Poko could devise for indicating his trail. Besides, for the first time in his life, he felt oddly reluctant to woo where he had no intention of straying. It was a new sensation, but strangely satisfying.

At last, the brothers emerged onto a relatively flat, high country meadow, golden with dandelions in full bloom. Within days, the blooms would fade and be replaced with puffy white seed balls, but for the moment the flowers turned the meadow resplendent.

Angrid led the way around the edge of the meadow, preferring not to cross it directly where their horses’ paths might be seen. Instead, they advanced half in sunlight, half in shadow, not fully relinquished by the dense forest through which they had journeyed. The sun shone warm on Poko’s left shoulder, reminding him how chilly the forest had been.

At the far end of the meadow, snug up against the base of a summit, stood a dilapidated shack, half fallen in. The brothers angled toward it. When they reached the shack, they dismounted, unsaddled the horses, and turned them loose in a secluded corral, easily missed unless one knew what to look for. The brothers shouldered their various packs and picked their way through the slanting timbers of what appeared to be the collapsed roof and one wall of the shack. The appearance had been carefully maintained for as many years as the shack had stood there, for it had never been a completed structure.

Inside the shack, while Angrid wasn’t looking, Poko secreted the lead chest. Poko didn’t know why, but he didn’t want Angrid paying any more attention to the chest than he’d displayed when he’d seen it at The Bent Copper. Some things it was better his older brother didn’t know or investigate too closely.

At the back wall of the shack, flush against the mountain, Angrid tripped a hidden latch, and a section of wood planking swung forward, revealing the dark entrance to a shaft carved from the native rock. It led down a gradually descending path into the heart of the mountain where it joined with a naturally occurring series of caverns. Cool air from the mountain’s depths breathed out at them from the opening, smelling of distant water and ancient stone. Angrid searched inside the entrance and produced a box of candles, flint, and loose fiber twists soaked in oil. He struck a flame on one of the twists and lit two candles, handing one to Poko. They both stuck reserve candles in their pockets, closed the secret access behind them, and began the long descent.

Their candles threw wavering pools of light on the rough-hewn stone walls of the tunnel and cast even longer shadows on the floor behind them. Their footsteps echoed and reechoed from both ends of the tunnel until it almost sounded as though they were being preceded or followed. Occasionally, Poko looked backward with a keen edge of regret, knowing he had passed beyond the reach of his pursuers despite his best efforts to lead them to him. There was no way they would find the secret access that opened onto the tunnel in the mountain, even if they managed to locate the shack and the hidden corral where the Romes’ horses waited. His pursuers would assume the brothers had trekked on foot from that point and would search in vain for some sign of the direction they had taken up the mountain. The chase would end there, and it would all have been for naught.

Poko, his saddlebags slung over one shoulder, felt the unaccustomed lightness where Julice’s leaden jewel chest didn’t bump against the small of his back as he walked. He wished he’d been able to open it, for it belonged to him at that moment. Perhaps he would always possess it, unopened, as a testimony to the love they had almost shared.

His heart ached at the realization that he would never see her again. So he clomped downward behind Angrid, his steps as leaden as the box he had stolen and hidden away.

Marcus, too, clomped along with leaden steps, his universe narrowed down, not unlike Poko’s, to the oppressive closeness of a forested world devoid of color and shadow. He felt trapped in unwanted intimacy with a fog that insinuated its cold, damp fingers into his bones and lungs. He felt cast off, alone, bereft.

In short, he cut a very romantic figure. If only Julice could see him.

He made sure not to stray too far from camp, unwilling to become lost and, hence, truly cut off in the fog. Even so, he tripped frequently over rocks and logs and exposed roots, his progress impeded by the gray, swirling mist. He intended to walk until he dropped, unable to go a step farther. He would become mere carrion for whatever wild beasts lurked in those woods. If he were lucky, they would wait until he died to start feasting on his carcass. If he weren’t so lucky… but he preferred not to think about that possibility, a prospect whose notion produced a chill of terror more penetrating even than the cold fog.

His toe caught on something and pitched him forward again. He sprawled on the ground, the searing pain in his ankle preventing him from getting back up. What was the use anyway? He lay there, rubbing his ankle and awaiting certain demise. He wondered whether Julice would miss him when she realized he had died out in the wilderness somewhere.

But what was the use of being dramatic if she didn’t see, if she didn’t know?

He forced himself to get up and hobble forward, his ankle throbbing. But at least the fog appeared to be clearing. He had an easier time keeping his footing. He was considering heading back toward camp when a shape materialized out of the thinning mist ahead. “Who’s that?”

The shape coalesced into a strikingly pretty young woman lounging under a tree as if she were on a picnic. At the sound of his approach, she glanced up. She noticed Marcus and smiled salaciously. “Welcome, friend. Come sit a spell.”

“Are you lost?” he asked, more than his curiosity piqued. “Do you need help?”

“Lost? No, I don’t think so. And the only help I need is to make your acquaintance.”

Marcus was about to make an excuse and turn away, heading back to camp, when a realization struck him. Julice was drawn to Poko in part because she couldn’t control him. She tried to manipulate everyone around her then looked down on anyone she was able to command. Poko made her jealous and resisted her domination, and that fascinated her.

Well, two could play at that game. Marcus could make her jealous as well—and have some fun in the bargain.

Thinking of Poko made Marcus aware that the woman wore the same dreamy, lovesick expression they had encountered before, after women had met with Poko Rome. That was odd. Perhaps Poko had gone that way before him.

In any case, a bit of harmless dalliance would be just the thing to help him get over being jilted. Or maybe returning to camp with his new lady friend in tow would be even more effective. He had tried playing the agreeable courtier with Julice, and that hadn’t worked. Maybe a different tack would.

“Come,” the young woman said. She patted the ground by her side. “Sit with me.” As she spoke, her eyes remained fixed on Marcus, her expression languid, beseeching. “Give yourself over to Chemosh and be with me forever.”

Chemosh? What did that musty old god have to do with anything?

Marcus smiled. “No, you come with me instead. I want to take you to meet some of my friends.”

She scowled. “What kind of friends? Are they human, like you and me?”

“Yes.” Then he thought of Shaddoc and Galdar and added, “Mostly.”

“And will you give yourself to Chemosh when we get there?”

Marcus swallowed hard, wondering what she meant. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

She smiled and got to her feet. “Then let’s go. Lead the way.”

Marcus grinned at her. He scarcely looked where he was putting his feet, so attentively did he keep his gaze fixed on the beautiful young woman. He even forgot the pain in his ankle.

In that manner, they made their way back to camp.

Angrid slipped out of the tunnel and into the shadowy interior of the old shack. Even though he was well away from Poko by then, his movements remained furtive and silent out of habit. Stealthily, he made his way to where Poko thought he had secreted the lead chest without his brother noticing, before they descended into the tunnel. Poko’s possessive concern for the chest had not been lost on Angrid during the trek, nor had his attempt at hiding it. Ordinarily, Angrid would have paid no attention to such a worthless-looking item, but Poko’s behavior intrigued him. He was determined to discover whatever riches the old box held.

He studied the mysterious jewel chest that Poko had gone to such lengths to hide, and he determined to open it.

The chest was surprisingly heavy, even for lead, with a dull gray color and general lack of ornamental design. Squarish with rounded corners and a couple of simple brass bands encircling the whole from front to back, the box appeared to have been made of separate strips of metal in a parquetlike fashion. A simple keyhole, located just below the lid, revealed which face was the front. All the faces showed the scarring consistent with such a soft substance as lead.

Angrid first tried picking the lock, even though he knew Poko had tried it and failed. Poko was the acknowledged expert at picking locks. Nevertheless, Angrid tried. He used the prong on his belt buckle, sharpening it to a point on a stone. All he succeeded in doing was ruining a perfectly good buckle. Poko had probably already managed to pick the lock, maybe even removing the box’s contents. But then why would he still be lugging it around?

Well, Angrid would see for himself.

The seam for the lid was evident enough but didn’t respond to insistent prodding or pulling. Cautiously, he shook the chest, holding it up to his ear, but he heard nothing. He scowled and looked around for a rock. A quick search turned up one just suited to his hand, smooth and rounded from having been tumbled in a streambed. He pounded hard on the chest with the rock, trying to knock the lid loose from whatever gripped it shut, but that produced no noticeable effect—not even new scars.

He grew angry at the thing’s recalcitrance. How dare it keep him out when he was going to so much trouble! He took his knife from its sheath, inserted the tip in the thin seam beneath the lid, and used the rock to hammer the blade in deeper. It made a little progress, then stopped, resistant to even the most forceful banging. When he attempted to pry the lid open, all he managed to do was break the tip off his knife. He cursed and replaced the blade in its sheath then hurled the rock aside in disgust.

What made the chest and its contents so special?

The more he thought about it, the angrier he grew. And the angrier he grew, the more determined he became to see inside for himself.

He again studied the keyhole, which had proven so useless before, and the hair-thin seam between lid and base. Finally, in a state of wrath, he raised the chest overhead and smashed it down against the fake hearth stone from the shack’s equally fake fireplace. Nothing happened. He battered the chest over and over against the stone, eventually wearing himself out. He flung the chest aside and slumped miserably to the ground, staring at the offending thing.

One of the brass strips had been knocked loose from the lid. Other than that, the chest showed no sign of damage. Angrid wrenched the brass strip the rest of the way off, vandalizing the chest as much as possible in his frustration.

Then he noticed, in the middle of the lid, beneath where the brass band had been, a small hole, too neatly formed to be a flaw. Angrid stared at it, perplexed. He tried poking a stick into the tiny opening but couldn’t find one thin enough that wouldn’t break as soon as he inserted it. He again removed his belt buckle, which he’d had to keep refastening to hold his breeches up since his earlier attempt at picking the lock. Using another rock from the fireplace, he further sharpened the prong until it was needle thin. It just fit in the opening. Beyond that, however, Angrid didn’t know what to do, for there wasn’t room enough to wiggle the prong around in the hole as he had done with the lock, trying to trip the mechanism.

He was about to pull the belt buckle free in defeat when something shifted in the side of the chest. He turned it around and stared. One of the parquet sections had retracted, leaving an empty space in the design. Perplexed, Angrid tried pushing it in further, but it wouldn’t budge. In doing that, however, he discovered that an adjacent section slid into the space freed by removal of the first. He continued pushing and pulling at other neighboring sections. Gradually, like a puzzle box with numerous interlocking pieces, he uncovered a complex pattern to the way the segments moved.

At last, he felt more than heard a satisfying click when he moved the final section aside, and knew the lock mechanism had been released. The keyhole in front of the chest served no purpose except to misguide someone attempting to break into it. The keyhole was a ruse, he realized.

Angrid chuckled, wondering at the fact that the keyhole had defeated even the notorious Poko’s attempts to get inside. Well, he, Angrid, had succeeded where Poko had failed.

Overcome with curiosity, Angrid slowly raised the lid.

Chapter 15

We can’t just go off and leave him,” Gerard protested. “He’s your moo, er, your brother, Allyn.”

Julice sniffed. “So? He’s the one who went tramping off into the forest in a huff. We can’t give up the chase just on account of him.”

“Wait.” Galdar, struggling not to slit Gerard’s throat after his latest incident of lowing like a lovesick cow, raised his hand for silence. “I hear something.”

The noise, faint at first, quickly grew until it sounded like five or six people crashing through the forest. Galdar snorted. Only Marcus could make that much noise.

Moments later, Marcus did indeed emerge through the rapidly thinning mist, pulling at the hand of a young woman with a sultry look who sauntered along behind him. Marcus was limping heavily, which accounted for the majority of the noise. But Galdar’s attention was focused on the young woman. Something about her troubled him, although he couldn’t put his finger on what.

“Look at that tart!” Julice whispered. “Giving Marcus such a wanton look!”

Galdar turned to Allyn, his expression quizzical.

“I just mean, a look like that, well, it’s really only appropriate in private, not put on public display. And amid a group of strangers, at that!”

Galdar returned his attention to the new arrivals, uninterested in human courting behavior, private or otherwise. The woman in particular bothered him. Could it be that he had seen her before?

The woman, meanwhile, had noticed the others and immediately turned her provocative gaze to include them as well.

All except for Galdar and Shaddoc, that was. Galdar couldn’t fault her taste with regard to the kender. But he found it strange that she would treat the rest of the humans, total strangers, to such an openly flirtatious expression. Galdar had never pretended to comprehend human mores, but even to his limited understanding, that seemed peculiar.

Something about her niggled at his memory. He had the feeling it was important. Gerard, too, seemed puzzled by her and had come forward to observe her more closely.

“I found someone who can tell us about Poko,” Marcus was saying, his gaze completely riveted on the strange woman accompanying him. “She has the same besotted look as the others we’ve encountered—”

The sound of Galdar’s blade being jerked from its scabbard cut him off. “Stand back!” Galdar ordered, his sword whistling as it spun overhead.

Gerard, too experienced a warrior to argue with a naked blade, jumped out of the way, dragging Marcus with him. “Hey!” Marcus cried. His weight came down on his injured ankle. “Ow!”

Galdar, meanwhile, rapidly advanced on the young woman, who regarded him somewhat dispassionately. She continued looking without apparent interest even when he brought the sword down in a vicious arc that cut deep into the side of her neck.

“No!” Marcus wailed and would have closed the distance between himself and the beautiful young woman were it not for Gerard’s restraining grip still on his elbow.

“Galdar!” Julice cried shrilly. “What are you doing?”

Galdar wrenched the sword free and promptly gutted the woman, who suffered the whole proceeding with a bemused expression. When Galdar withdrew his sword, twisting it back and forth for good measure as he pulled, she toppled forward, her entrails spilling onto the ground in front of her. And still she looked unconcerned.

Galdar stepped back, his sword held at the ready. Remarkably little blood stained the blade, nor did it flow from the woman’s gaping wounds onto the ground. “We need to get ready to leave,” he said in a low, intense voice. When no one moved quickly enough, he added, “Now!”

Julice doubled over instead, retching. Marcus, too, looked sickly pale, though he hobbled over to comfort Julice instead of trying to get to the young woman. Gerard let him go. “For a follower of Mina and Takhisis, that was especially admirable,” Gerard said to Galdar. “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, for all our differences.”

“Me neither!” Shaddoc chirped, looking confused. “Gerard, what do you mean by praising such madness? And Galdar, what could you have been thinking, killing an unarmed woman like that?”

“That’s no ordinary woman,” Gerard said solemnly, his attention still warily on the corpse. “I’ve seen her like before.”

“I, too,” said Galdar, “the first time back when I was tricked into that pit. The man had the same expression. Didn’t you notice the dead look in this one’s eyes?”

The corpse, meanwhile, sat up, rotating its head from side to side as if to work some stiffness out. As she did so, the wound in her neck healed over. She pushed her entrails back into her abdomen and that flesh, too, reformed. She looked at Gerard and grinned. “Give yourself to Chemosh,” she said in a low, sultry voice, stretching a hand toward him. She rose to her feet as if nothing had happened.

“One of the Beloved of Chemosh,” Gerard explained. He drew his own sword and came to stand beside Galdar. “You realized it before I did. We all owe you a debt of thanks.”

“Not yet,” said Galdar grimly.

“No, not yet,” cooed the young woman, who hissed at Gerard’s closeness to the minotaur and angled toward Marcus and Julice.

“It’s quite dead,” Gerard explained to the others, who were gaping in fear, “although it possesses all the appearance of youth and health and life. It wants other followers who’ll devote themselves to Chemosh.”

“Not dead enough,” Galdar said, snorting at the name of the rival god and swinging his own sword up. “Stand back, human, for this time I will finish the task.” He slashed crosswise with the huge blade, and when it whistled past the woman’s shoulders, her head rolled, still smiling, across the grass.

She gathered her head up in her arms and set it back upon her neck then continued her advance undeterred.

The minotaur gave a nod to Gerard, who edged away from the menace. Galdar growled and charged the thing, his sword hacking and cutting a shining path through the air. He didn’t step back until the woman’s corpse lay in numerous widely scattered pieces, looking more like the chops and cuts on a butcher’s block than an enticing woman.

Almost immediately, the pieces quivered and began to regroup. The disconnected hands clawed through the grass, gathering an elbow here, a leg joint there.

“Quickly,” Gerard cried, gesturing to the others. “To the horses!”

“Oh no!” Shaddoc cried. “Something’s wrong with Maisy!”

Warily, Gerard turned to look. Indeed, the old horse lay full length on the ground, her chest rattling and wheezing for breath. Shaddoc raced to her, falling on his knees and wailing in grief as the horse gasped its last.

“Grab that kender,” Galdar said. He motioned toward the corpse, the hands of which were scrabbling about in the grass, collecting more pieces of itself. “How fast can that thing run?”

“I don’t know,” Gerard admitted. He fell back a step. “Nor do I want to find out.” He spun toward Julice. “Allyn?”

Julice didn’t seem to hear. She was sobbing softly into Marcus’s shoulder, Galdar was surprised to see.

“Allyn!”

She turned a tear-streaked face in his direction, her eyes wide in horror, though whether because of him or the Beloved, he couldn’t tell.

“I need you to conjure something,” he said. “Or more accurately, someone.”

It took a moment for the words to penetrate her shocked state; then she affected a look of perplexity and tried for an Allyn-like tone. “I don’t know what you’re talki—”

“We don’t have time for a discussion,” Gerard snapped. “Conjure someone. Quickly! Make him young and healthy, and have him come toward us from the woods.”

She only glared at him.

The thing on the grass was almost fully reassembled. Half of a face grinned lewdly at Gerard while the hands, attached once again to arms, continued their job of reconstruction. Gerard fell back another step. “Moo, please! We have to lure this thing into the woods.”

“Do it, Julice,” Marcus said. “We have no choice.”

Galdar, holding his sword at the ready, watched and listened to all that with a frown.

Julice awarded Marcus a disapproving look then turned back to Gerard. “Oh very well,” she said, the haughtiness in her voice giving way to sharp-edged terror as the corpse continued to reestablish itself, “although I don’t know what good it will accomplish.”

As they watched in horror, the corpse finished its reassembling and rose gracefully to its feet, its hands still fixing a severed ear in place. It sauntered toward Marcus, hips swaying. “Give yourself to Chemosh,” the thing insisted. “Gain life eternal and spend it with me.”

Julice’s eyes had taken on a distant focus. Her lips were moving rapidly, although no sounds emerged.

Whistling, together with approaching footsteps, sounded through the trees. Galdar recognized the jaunty tune the peddler had whistled the previous day.

“Not him, Allyn,” Gerard started to say. “Someone younger—”

A figure that might have been the peddler’s son or even the peddler himself at an earlier stage of life strode forward into their midst, looking the bloom of manliness.

The corpse-woman paused and studied the new arrival, looking at first perplexed, then intrigued.

“What is this mischief?” Galdar growled. He turned to peer suspiciously at Gerard and Julice.

The peddler—for Galdar didn’t know who else the person could be—stopped, leaned against a tree, and smiled at the corpse-woman as seductively as she had smiled previously. “Well, well, my pretty,” he said, his voice low and inviting, “you’re a sight to warm me to my toes.” He gave a cursory, dismissive glance around at the others. “And other places,” he added with a wink, returning his rapt gaze to the corpse-woman. “What say you and I go off by ourselves for a while?”

The corpse-woman hesitated, frowning.

“Chemosh,” Gerard whispered to Julice, hurrying over to stand beside her. At his feet, Marcus still crouched, staring at the thing with wide-eyed horror. “Have him offer to give himself over to—”

Julice shot Gerard a silencing glare. “I know what I’m doing in this department. I’m building up to it. Back off. Give me a little elbow room, will you?”

“What are you two whispering about?” Galdar hissed. He stared hard at Julice. “Hey, are you—?”

“Yes, I’m a woman, and so is she,” Julice whispered tensely. “She may be dead, but she’s still a woman. She needs to be seduced.”

The corpse-woman, apparently drawn by their conversation, regardless of how muted, turned toward them with renewed interest. She took another step in their direction.

“I don’t think we’ve got time for many subtleties,” Gerard said, grabbing Julice and Marcus and pulling them back with him a couple of steps.

“Hey, I’ll give myself to Chemosh! Love to do it, in fact. Wondered when you’d ask!”

The voice came not from the peddler, but from Shaddoc, who stood beside the dead horse, tears streaming down his face.

“You can’t take my friends,” he said and sniffled. “I won’t let you. Take me instead. I’ll willingly give myself to Chemosh.”

The corpse-woman looked puzzled again, staring at the kender. Then she laughed harshly, a sound that made Gerard grit his teeth against the fear it evoked. “What does my lord Chemosh want with a kender?” she demanded. “He wants warriors, not pickpockets.”

“But I’m a very great warrior! Famous among kender! Of course I’m incognito at the moment,” Shaddoc said. “But you should have seen me earlier with Gerard’s sword.”

“Shaddoc, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Gerard warned in a low voice.

“Here, let me show you. Gerard, let me borrow your sword.”

“Shaddoc—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give it back, I promise.” The kender’s brow furrowed at a sudden doubt. “I’m only… borrowing it.”

“Shaddoc, I’m not giving you my—”

“Not that I much care what happens to me, what with Maisy being dea… dea.…” He stopped, unable to form the word.

“Hey, what about me?” the peddler interrupted. “Think I’d make a good warrior for your god? How about if I give myself to Chemosh?”

The corpse-woman spun, hunger lighting her face with a hideous glee. But when she faced the peddler, she again looked at him doubtfully. “What sort of creature are you? I sense you are different than the others.”

“Exactly what I’d like to know,” Galdar muttered quietly.

“What do I look like?” the peddler asked.

She shook her head. “Not what you are, I think. Still…” She looked from the peddler to the kender, torn.

“Get her to go with him,” Gerard whispered to Julice just loud enough for Galdar to overhear.

“I’m trying,” she said with a touch of desperation.

Gerard leaned closer and whispered so softly, the corpse-woman wouldn’t possibly overhear. Julice looked at him questioningly then turned to her creation. Galdar frowned, wondering what had been said.

The peddler stepped away from the tree he had been leaning against and tore open his shirt, exposing his chest over his heart. “I’m begging for Mina’s kiss,” he said softly. “Does it matter what I am, as long as I’m willing to give myself to your god?”

Galdar stepped back, stunned at the evocation of Mina. What had she to do with the drama that was being enacted?

The corpse-woman, meanwhile, took a hesitant step in the peddler’s direction, doubt yet written on her face.

When she had advanced a couple more steps, he backed toward the trees from which he’d emerged. Immediately, the corpse-woman froze.

“Not here,” the peddler urged. “Come into the woods with me.”

The corpse-woman didn’t budge.

“What, are you afraid of me?” the peddler asked, a mischievous grin playing on his lips. “Afraid of what might happen if I get you alone?”

She swung her head in a slow arc, taking in the others, who watched with keen interest. “What about these others? They’ll get away.”

“No they won’t,” the peddler said. “Or at least they won’t get far. Meanwhile, I’ll lead you to where my friends and I are camped.”

She scowled and strode forward with a cautious air. The peddler kept grinning and backing away.

As soon as the peddler had led her out of sight, Gerard clapped Julice on the back. “Well done!”

Galdar glowered at first one of them then the other. “And what exactly has the calf done? Though I begin to have my suspicions.”

“Conjured an apparition, relying on the one most recently created for a template, I imagine. But a full explanation can wait. For now, let’s get out of here!” Gerard pulled Marcus to his feet and got him hobbling toward the waiting horses then turned to Shaddoc. “Come on, you’ll ride with me.”

Shaddoc was staring off in the direction the peddler had gone. “You know, he looked just like Leonid. Only younger.”

“Yeah, amazing, isn’t it?” Gerard said, pulling the kender along. “Now let’s go!”

“Bye, Maisy!” Shaddoc whispered sadly as Gerard climbed into the saddle and hoisted the kender up behind him. “You were a good horse.” He buried his face in Gerard’s shirt, spilling hot tears into the cloth and sniffling.

They fled. When Gerard’s horse tired from carrying a double burden, they switched Shaddoc to ride behind Marcus and, when his horse tired, to riding with Julice. The whole time, Galdar loped tirelessly alongside them.

They hastened higher into the mountains, passing a farm where a red-haired woman stood in the yard, hanging laundry. She looked up from her basket and squinted in their direction as the companions raced up the road, gasping when she saw Galdar. Oddly, Galdar thought she did so more out of recognition than out of horror, though he didn’t recall ever having seen the woman before. It didn’t actually matter, for within minutes she and her farm had been left far behind.

They came to no more towns nor forks in the road, so there wasn’t any need to inquire whether the Romes had come that way. Instead, they kept going as long as the horses could bear to run. Eventually, however, they had to drop back to a canter then a walk, for the road led ever more sharply upward into the Vingaard Mountains. The horses were winded not only from the uphill climb and the haste at which they traveled, but also from the thinning air as they rose farther and farther above sea level. To Gerard’s surprise, however, it was Galdar who finally turned aside into a fallow field and called a halt.

“I thought you could run the horses out from under us,” Gerard said. But he did so with a good-natured grin, reining in his horse and clambering gratefully from the saddle.

“And so I could,” the minotaur answered seriously. “And soon will have if we don’t give them a rest. Meanwhile, I think there are things going on that we all need to know about.”

“Yeah,” Shaddoc chimed in, sliding down from behind Julice. “For instance, who was that man who looked like Leonid’s son?” He frowned. “I hope he’s all right, being left with that… that thing, whatever she was. I certainly liked Leonid well enough and wouldn’t want his son to come to any harm.”

“Careful of what you say,” Gerard advised them, giving Julice a meaningful look. “You may end up sounding quite unlike yourself.”

She flashed him an angry scowl, then sighed and dismounted as well. Her lips moved and the air shimmered around her. Once and for all, Allyn’s features vanished, replaced by the dark hair and amethyst eyes of Julice. Instead of a boy’s slim form, she now bore the fuller figure of a very pretty young woman.

“Wow!” Shaddoc gasped. “That disguise looks almost real. Are you going to travel incognito as well, Allyn?”

“I’m not Allyn,” she said. “This is what I really look like. My name is Julice.”

“Oh, gotcha,” Shaddoc said with a wink. “You’re going by Julice now. I understand.”

Gerard cleared his throat to get her attention. “Are you going to take care of me now too?”

“I don’t know,” she said carelessly. “I was getting used to hearing you talk that way.” When he began to splutter, she held up her hands to ward off his response. “All right, all right, I was just joking.” Her lips again moved silently.

Gerard’s lips tingled. “Thank you… Julice,” he said, trying the name out tentatively.

“Now more than ever, I think a full explanation is due,” said Galdar.

“It may take a while,” Julice replied, heaving another sigh.

“The horses can use the rest,” Galdar assured her. “Besides, I think we’ve escaped that cursed follower of Chemosh. There are easier pickings now between it and us.”

Julice brushed loose bark from a fallen tree trunk and sat down. The others gathered, sitting or squatting in a semicircle around her as they waited to hear her tale. She stooped, plucked a dandelion seed ball from its leafy base near her feet, and began methodically destroying it. No other sign betrayed whatever emotion she felt, for her voice, though low, remained steady during her account. She looked, Gerard thought with amazement, self-possessed instead of self-absorbed.

“Poko and I had planned to get married. We were going to do it secretly because I knew my father would never approve. But we were deeply in love. Or at least I thought we were.” She frowned. “The evidence I’ve seen on this journey—the smitten young women he’s left in his wake—makes me doubt the sincerity of what he claimed he felt. And truth to tell, I was undecided in my own heart.”

She shook her head. “No matter. What matters is that my father found out about us and ordered me to put a stop to our relationship. He had other plans for me.”

Marcus coughed discreetly.

“Yes, he wanted me to marry Marcus, thereby keeping our wealth in the family. It wasn’t such a bad match—”

As if embarrassed by the offhand tone of her statement, Marcus shifted, seeking a more comfortable seat in the grass.

“—after all, Marcus and I had been playmates since youth. We grew up together, and were at ease in each other’s company.” She cast the stripped dandelion stalk aside and looked Marcus full in the face. “But I know now I don’t love him. Not that way.”

Her cousin broke from her gaze and looked away, his face red.

“However, I tried at first to comply with my father’s wishes. I told Poko it was over between us. I thought he understood. Instead, he took advantage of my distracted state to steal something of great value from me—the jewel chest we seek.” Again, she gave her head a toss. “Maybe he just wanted to get back at me for breaking off our engagement. I don’t know what prompted him to do it, nor do I know why he took this particular item when others of greater apparent value stood readily at hand. But this jewel chest holds a… a rare gem that has been in my family for untold generations, handed down from mother to daughter with instructions to keep it safe.”

“Safe, Julice?” Gerard said, marveling at the way his voice again sounded like him. “Why? Is it perhaps the source of your magic power?”

She shook her head. “Sorcery runs through the female line in my family, but it doesn’t seem connected to the… the gem. In my case, that power gives me the ability to temporarily alter the appearance of things. Conjure illusions, as it were.”

“Such as a terrible storm that curiously does no damage,” Galdar said. He scowled. “I see.”

Julice leaned forward and placed a hand lightly on the minotaur’s arm. “I needed help in recovering the jewel chest. I realize now that you are honorable heroes and have done all you could for me. Please forgive me.”

He didn’t respond to the unspoken plea in her words, but neither did he withdraw his arm from her touch.

“Wow, can you make me look different?” Shaddoc asked. He edged closer and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “It would help me travel incognito if I didn’t look so much like me.”

Gerard studied Julice a moment. “Is there anything else you’re not telling us?”

“No,” she said firmly, her amethyst eyes on another dandelion seed ball she plucked. She blew on it gently and watched the seeds drift away. “No, that’s all there is.”

Gerard observed her, his brow furrowed, certain she was withholding something. What?

“I think I’d like to look like Uncle Woodlot,” Shaddoc mused. “He’s always been the handsomest one in the family. Even handsomer than Uncle Trapspringer, if you can believe it. Or, I know”—he brightened—“you could make me look like me, and I’d tell everyone I was traveling disguised as Shaddoc Barleywort, but that I was really someone else. Nobody’d ever figure that one out!”

Who but a kender would come up with a plan as lamebrained as that? Gerard wondered. But Shaddoc appeared quite excited by the idea.

“I can describe myself to you, in case you need help figuring out what I should look like,” he went on. “First, I’m about this high.” He stood and placed a hand on the top of his head. “And I have a topknot that looks just like this one.” He gave the said feature a tug.

Julice smiled wanly, looking grateful for the distraction, and waved a solemn hand in Shaddoc’s direction. She mumbled what Gerard thought might have been a child’s nursery rhyme, although she spoke so softly it was hard to be sure. “There,” she announced. “Now you look just like Shaddoc Barleywort.”

“Wow, magic! And I didn’t even feel anything!” Shaddoc cried. He turned to Gerard. “What do you think? Do I look like me?”

“The spitting image,” Gerard said, an involuntary smile playing on his lips.

Marcus had wrapped his arms around his knees and was hugging them to his chest as if seeking comfort. “So even if we recover this gem—”

“When, not if,” Julice corrected. “We must get it back.”

Again, Gerard had the feeling much was being left unsaid.

“When we recover it,” Marcus went on, “you’re still not going to marry me, are you?” He gazed forlornly at his cousin.

“No,” she said, meeting his eyes with her own amethyst ones. “No, Marcus, I can’t marry you.”

“What about your father’s word that I would have your hand once this venture is successful?”

“I’m sorry. He had no right to pledge me where I have no will to go.”

“Well,” Marcus said with a sigh, getting to his feet and dusting off his breeches, “we should get going. We have most of the day before us. This Poko Rome can’t be too far ahead. I, at least, will honor the word I gave.” He turned without waiting for a response and limped to where the horses stood cropping grass.

Gerard watched him, but his mind was still elsewhere.

“Tell me more about this gem,” he said sternly to Julice.

“Yes,” echoed Galdar.

“No, we should hurry—” she began, turning to follow Marcus.

“Tell us!” Gerard and Galdar said together, stepping close to block her.

Abruptly, Julice sat down with a moan. “Poko!” she said unhappily, looking around frantically, like a trapped animal. “We have to hurry before he does anything foolish.”

“And what would that be?” asked Gerard. “It seems to me stealing the gem is foolish enough. What could he do more foolish than that?”

“I hate it when people do foolish things,” muttered the kender, coming up close to listen.

“He might open the box.” She spoke with her head bowed, her voice so soft Gerard almost couldn’t hear.

“What?” scoffed Galdar. “Hasn’t he opened it by now and taken the gem out?”

“Go ahead, Julice,” said Gerard. “What aren’t you telling us? What doesn’t Poko know?”

For a long time, she remained silent, looking trapped and doleful. But at last she spoke. “Untold generations ago, in the days when the Graygem rampaged through the world, spreading chaos, a piece of the gem split off. A flake of Chaos itself inhabited the broken piece, manifesting as a chaos wretch that wreaked destruction wherever the fragment chanced to end up. Finally, the piece of the gem found its way to a small village, where, as before, it caused great havoc. But this time, the wretch was trapped by a daring sorceress, a distant ancestor of mine.”

“The Graygem!” said Galdar wonderingly.

“Go on,” urged Gerard.

“This sorceress couldn’t destroy the piece of gem or the wretch, but she was able to confine them both in a specially designed magic puzzle box, reinforced with powerful spells of binding. Since that time, the box—the jewel chest we’ve sought—has been handed down through my family from mother to eldest daughter with instructions to keep it safe at all cost. Never was the box to be opened, and in all that time it hasn’t been.

“After that first sorceress, the women in my family weren’t required to be sorceresses themselves, as the box now possessed its own magic. Nevertheless, magic runs in the family blood, along with a tendency to run to daughters, and many of the women became sorceresses in their own right. I am the last of these, at the moment. On her deathbed, my mother gave the box into my keeping, and I have kept it safe—until now.” She glared at Gerard. “Now we stand in danger of the chaos wretch being released again unless we recover the box before Poko finds a way to open it. We must see to it that doesn’t happen.”

For once, Gerard had to agree. He and Galdar exchanged worried looks. The kender tried to catch their eye, trying to look just as worried. Gray, the kender was thinking, was a very unattractive color for a gem.

They rounded up their horses and began mounting up. Before Gerard could climb into Thunderbolt’s saddle, however, Galdar called him aside.

“Look at this,” the minotaur said, gesturing to a tree near the road where a small branch hung from a strip of bark. The sap at the break was fresh, indicating a recent rupture.

“Yes, we’ve seen other such signs. Someone passed this way not long ago,” Gerard said.

Galdar nodded. “Yes, but take a closer look at this one. How did this break occur?” He motioned toward the road, a few feet away. “I think Poko Rome also has a secret he hasn’t told us yet. This didn’t happen naturally in the course of someone’s passing. It was done deliberately.”

Gerard was silent a moment, studying the branch. “Yes, you’re right!” he said excitedly. “Someone left us a sign. One of the Romes must want us to find them.”

Again, Galdar nodded. “It could be a trap. I think we should proceed with caution.” He pitched his voice low so as not to be overheard by the others.

It was a strange day, Gerard thought, when he found himself in agreement not only with Julice, but with Galdar as well.

Chapter 16

Poko!” Angrid had demanded several hours earlier. “How many times do I have to call you?”

Poko had roused himself sleepily to Angrid’s irritated voice. “I’m over here.”

Angrid stepped around a great stalagmite that rose from the cavern floor and merged with a matching stalactite hanging from the ceiling, lost in the flickering shadows overhead. From somewhere nearby came the steady drip—drip—drip of more stone formations in the making. “What are you doing over there?” Angrid demanded. “I’m setting up a game of body thief and need you to be the second player.”

Second player? The game needed at least three to be even halfway challenging. Nevertheless, Poko got to his feet wearily and made his way to where his brother stood, torch in hand.

He let Angrid guide him back to a small, central cavern, harshly lit by the glare of a gnome device that simulated the light produced by a million fireflies trapped in a single jar. The cantankerous device had been intended for one of the great mansions of Palanthas until the Romes set themselves to acquiring it. The family that owned the mansion had tried to get the gnome to replicate his apparatus once the first version of the contraption was stolen, but even exorbitant offers failed to sway the old inventor, who had since become fascinated with reproducing other phenomena of nature—such as a musical instrument based on the harmonics of barking dogs.

The device had the gnomish tendency to break down at frequent intervals, but for the moment it was working fine. The chamber glistened in the brilliant light, for the stone there, as elsewhere in the caverns, was alive, still being shaped by the slow trickle of water. The light brought out the subtle hues that made up the various ribbons and layers of stone, from softest pink to palest blue, with faint washes here and there of yellow and brown and lavender.

Poko wished Julice could see it. She would love the beauty of the place. But it seemed lackluster without her.

Angrid had moved aside some of the stolen loot that cluttered the chamber and laid a plank across a pair of trestles. He seated himself at the makeshift table and stirred the tiles. Poko took the seat closer to the lighting device’s main unit, a squat box bristling with tubes, coils, wires, and gauges. A roll of the dice determined that Angrid went first, and he turned over one of the tiles, revealing a right shin bone. As they took turns, more tiles were turned over, and each brother tried to produce an entire skeleton—a simplified one, of course, there being fewer than a score of bony sections to each body.

“Poko!” Angrid sounded angry.

“Hmm?”

“Are you going to play or what?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.” He looked at the table in bewilderment. “Whose turn is it?”

“Yours! You just rolled the dice, don’t you remember?”

“I did? Oh.” Poko looked at the combination of faces showing on the dice. “Thief!” he announced with surprise.

“No kidding,” Angrid grumbled.

Poko selected body parts to raid from his brother, including one of the all-important skulls. Not only did that disrupt Angrid’s efforts to construct an entire body, but the resulting pieces put Poko further ahead toward that goal.

To his amazement, and the disgust of Angrid, Poko won the first round. “Body,” he said without enthusiasm. He slid the completed skeleton to one side, and they began playing the next round.

“Stir the tiles,” Angrid growled. “I’ll show you how to fill a graveyard yet.”

The next round went to Angrid, as did the one thereafter. “Well, look who’s winning now,” he gloated, raking in a batch of purloined tiles and completing another skeleton. He slid it over to join the others filling up the graveyard he needed to win the game.

Poko rolled his eyes. He would hear about the victory for days. Angrid was a poor loser, he thought miserably, and even more unbearable when he won. It was, Poko decided, going to be a very long couple of months. If only they had been pursued, if only they had been overtaken by their pursuers, he might have been captured, forced to return to Palanthas, and thus be spared his fate.

Angrid rolled the dice. “Thief!” he cried with glee, plucking more tiles from Poko. “I’ll have a graveyard before you know it!”

Poko stifled a yawn. It would be a very long couple of months, indeed.

That had been a few hours earlier. Poko finally feigned sleep as a way out of the seemingly endless game of body thief. Sleeping was a common practice at the family hideaway, and Angrid had not appeared offended. That Angrid wasn’t offended made Poko suspicious.

Sure enough. No sooner had he pretended to doze off than Angrid slipped out of the cavern and began the long ascent to the surface. Poko followed stealthily, keeping well back from Angrid and wondering what his brother was up to.

Poko had reached the mouth of the tunnel. He peeked out from the secret door at the back of the cabin and looked for Angrid. Angrid squatted some yards away, working away at something Poko couldn’t see but could guess at: the lead jewel chest. Well, let him try to open it. Poko had certainly failed.

After long moments, Angrid straightened, evidently having finished whatever it was he was doing. Well, look at that! He had managed to pry the lid.

“Angrid, leave that be!” Poko snapped, stepping from inside the tunnel. “That’s mine!”

Poko’s cry was too late. Angrid had already lifted the lid. As Poko watched, his brother jerked back in horror. He dropped the chest and scrambled to his feet. From the box spilled what looked like nothing more than a pile of sand. A pile that kept growing and growing, and still more of it spilled from the little chest until it rose as big as a man.

The pile moved. It drew in upon itself, assuming vaguely human form. “Run!” Poko cried, more out of dread than through any understanding. But Angrid stood before the thing, paralyzed with fear. Poko jerked a dagger from the sheath on his belt and sliced at the thing from behind. The blade passed through the figure with the soft hiss of sand against steel. The thing seemed not to notice. Poko, however, felt the whisper of infinite chaos brush against his mind, leaving him shivering with cold and terror.

He struck again, causing no more damage than before. The thing, meanwhile, advanced on Angrid. It flowed in a curiously sinuous manner, covering the ground between them. Angrid remained transfixed, staring straight ahead, scarcely breathing. With leisurely deliberation, the thing streamed around him, engulfing him in a sheath of sand. For a moment, an Angrid-like sand figure stood in the clearing, as if shaped by some precocious child on a beach. Then the sand began to melt and vanish.

It took Poko another moment to realize the sand was entering Angrid’s body, going in through his brother’s nostrils. It was almost as though Angrid were inhaling it, although his chest didn’t rise and fall in keeping with the rhythm of the sand’s disappearance. Instead, the sand appeared to enter him of its own volition.

“Oh, Angrid!” he moaned piteously. “Angrid, what have you done?”

When the sand had vanished, Angrid opened his mouth and screamed. He fell to his knees, retching violently. Poko feared his brother would turn himself inside out with the force of it. But if his body were trying to rid itself of its unwanted inhabitant, the effort proved futile. At length, Angrid lay stretched out on the floor, writhing. He moaned, he wailed, he wept. Foam flecked the corners of his mouth. He chewed on his tongue as if that could stop the agony. The foam at his mouth turned pink, then bright red. And still the torment continued.

Poko could do nothing but watch in horror. At one point, Angrid uttered a long howl. But his cry carried none of the anguish he had voiced previously. It was more like a shriek of triumph. Demonic glee washed across his face. He sat up. He clenched and unclenched his fingers, looking at them like newly discovered things. Leaning back his head, he laughed—a sound more hideous even than his howl of exultation had been.

Suddenly, he sprang.

One moment Angrid was sitting on the ground, Poko thought; the next, Angrid stood before him, snarling and snatching at him. No time separated one state from the other. Poko stumbled back, barely evading the creature’s grasp. For it was no longer Angrid, he realized. It was something far different.

If Angrid were lucky, he’d already died.

But Poko didn’t have time for rumination. He was much too busy keeping free of the creature’s clutches. He feinted with his dagger, hoping to drive the thing off. The creature only grinned evilly. Poko slashed again, drawing traces of blood across the creature’s chest. Still grinning, the thing took a wobbly step forward. Poko backed away, matching the creature’s progress. His dagger again cut a glittering path through the dim light in the shack. Another bloody track appeared on the creature’s chest but to no avail. Poko dropped back farther.

The thing snarled in vexation and turned. It took a shambling step forward, looked down at its legs, and took another, firmer step, evidently growing accustomed to its new body.

That didn’t bode well, Poko realized.

The creature spied the lead chest in which it had been imprisoned and howled in ecstasy. It picked the chest up and slammed it down on the hearth stone, smashing it again and again with more than human strength. The hearth stone cracked, but still the creature hammered it down hard. At last the chest was no more than a crumpled mass of lead. The creature hurled it aside. With increasing agility, it headed toward the corral. At its approach, the two horses snorted and shied. The creature managed to pin down Angrid’s horse in one corner of the corral. Poko, trailing behind, wondered if the creature inhabiting his brother’s body actually planned on riding the horse.

A strange mixture of expressions rippled across the creature’s face. With a start, Poko realized those weren’t expressions; they were the flesh itself, heaving and buckling as if from unbearable strain. Nor were the disturbances confined to the face, for its arms, legs, and torso oscillated with ever wilder intensity. The creature clamped its hands over each new bulge, attempting to suppress them by squeezing, but they only grew more pronounced. The creature threw back its head and roared with a mixture of frustration, rage, and what might have been pain.

The thing’s transformations grew more and more pronounced, with the shifting protuberances rippling across Angrid’s body. Poko cursed and tried ineffectually to thrust his dagger at the swaying creature. The thing remained unfazed by the dagger thrusts, although it continued to swell. Angrid’s body looked like a pig’s bladder inflated for a child’s toy at butchering time. His features were almost entirely obscured. Blood dripped from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The creature—or was it Angrid, still alive somewhere inside?—bellowed with anguish. Tissue rent and sinews popped with a ghastly sound.

Suddenly, the overstretched body burst, rupturing from the strain. But it didn’t simply tear open, releasing the pressure; rather, the pig’s bladder popped, and Angrid fragmented into a thousand pieces of living flesh. He rained down in gobbets upon the corral, showering Poko and the horses with gore. As soon as he dared open his eyes, Poko wiped the grisly remnants from his face and peered around for the creature, seeing the world through a red-tinted haze. The reek of blood and ruptured bowels was overpowering. The horses stamped and whinnied with terror. Poko’s stomach churned. In spite of that, he held his dagger ready.

Somehow, the sand figure of the creature had remained standing and intact after Angrid’s body exploded. It swiveled around and fixed upon the closest living being—Angrid’s horse. The horse’s eyes rolled and its nostrils flared. Nevertheless, it remained rooted to the spot. To Poko’s horror, the scene he had witnessed when Angrid became possessed played itself out all over again with the horse providing the body that served as the sand creature’s host. Once the transformation was complete, the horse stood a moment on unsteady legs, bucked twice, and galloped away, effortlessly leaping the wall of the corral.

Poko brushed bits of something gritty from his sleeve, realizing as he did so that it was flecks of bone. His stomach clenched, and he struggled not to gag. He sat down heavily, his legs buckling. At least the thing was gone. His brother was dead, gone, obliterated, but he was safe.

Belatedly, he remembered what lay in that direction, not two leagues distant from where he sat. A mining town had sprung up there a few years back. Its presence had concerned Poko and Angrid, who feared the miners might accidentally tunnel into the cavern that formed the Rome hideaway.

The unsuspecting town stood directly in the creature’s path.

Poko staggered upright and set about saddling his nervous horse. He had to do the right thing for once. He had to warn the townspeople. He only hoped he wasn’t already too late.

The road the companions followed became a track, which became a path, which became little more than a game trail. Finally, it disappeared altogether. Fortunately, the way continued to be marked by occasional obvious signs, such as the broken branch Galdar had spotted earlier.

Galdar and Gerard said nothing to the others, who chatted amiably as they rode along, oblivious to the watchful eyes the two warriors trained on the surrounding forest and the way the pair kept their sword hands always close by their weapons. By mutual consent, Gerard rode at the head of the company, while Galdar brought up the rear, where they could guard against straying into an ambush or be overtaken unawares.

As they rode, Julice seemed particularly absorbed in talking with Shaddoc, carrying on a private conversation with him in tones too low for the others to hear. Gerard was too distracted to pay the matter much mind but thought Shaddoc looked especially serious and puffed up with self-importance by whatever Julice had to say.

Finally, the companions reached a highland meadow, resplendent with dandelions in full bloom. Whereas dandelions at lower reaches had already passed from blossom to seed ball, there the season had been delayed by the colder climate, and the flowers were in the first flush of luxuriance. The meadow appeared carpeted with the golden blooms.

Gerard halted the group at the edge of the forest before they could emerge into the open, although Julice, Marcus, and Shaddoc were eager to ride ahead and chafed at the delay. Gerard ignored their protestations and took Galdar aside. “I don’t like it,” he said quietly. “It puts us in the open. It could be a trap.”

Galdar knelt and examined the soft dirt. After a moment, he stood again. “Apparently, the Romes didn’t like it either,” he said. “They didn’t go directly across here. Let’s spread out and see if we can pick up their trail again.”

Galdar went left and Gerard went right, after instructing the others to wait right where they were. Under no circumstances were they to venture into the meadow. Julice and Marcus immediately caught the air of tension that radiated from the two warriors. Wide eyed and wary, they nodded, searching the forest themselves for they knew not what. Gerard pulled Shaddoc aside and told him he was in charge of the two humans’ welfare, and that it was up to the kender to ensure that the others didn’t go wandering off. Shaddoc agreed, puffing up even further.

A few yards around the edge of the meadow, just within the periphery of the trees, Gerard found another snapped branch, signaling the way, then another and another. He turned his horse and retraced his path to where Shaddoc had Marcus and Julice herded together like a broody hen with her chicks. Gerard called the kender over and leaned down to whisper, “I think it would be all right to relax your vigilance just a little, encourage the two of them to sit down and be patient.”

Shaddoc studied the pair officiously before trotting over to them. “All right, you heard the sheriff. Sit down. And no wandering off!”

Rolling their eyes, Julice and Marcus happily obliged.

Gerard grinned and proceeded on until he found Galdar, where he told the minotaur what he had found.

“We should go on alone from here,” Galdar said. “The others would only slow us down. And they’ll get in the way if there’s a battle. I have a feeling one is brewing.” He fingered the grip of his sword meaningfully.

“I don’t know.” Gerard stroked his beard. “That would leave them here unprotected.”

Galdar grunted, but in the end they could conceive of no better arrangement than to continue in the manner they had been going, with Gerard at the lead and Galdar bringing up a watchful rear. They got the others and resumed their trek, advancing very slowly.

In fact, the trail led to a tumbled-down shack built right against the base of a mountain and half collapsed over the years. There, all sign of the Rome brothers vanished. Gerard and Galdar set about scouting in ever-widening circles, telling the others to wait outside on the dilapidated, sun-washed porch of the shack.

In the end it was their noses that led Gerard and Galdar to the discovery of the hidden corral, not their eyesight, for the stench of violent death still hung heavy in the air.

“What do you make of it?” Gerard said softly, his sword out as he studied the strange scene in the empty enclosure.

Galdar sniffed the air again. “It smells like a battlefield, all right, and what are all those little piles? Gobbets of something. Gobbets of human flesh, I’ll wager.”

Gerard winced, realizing the minotaur was right. “Whose flesh is what I wonder.” He pointed. “The horse droppings are fresh,” Gerard said. “Let’s see if we can pick up any evidence that they left here.”

Galdar nodded and they again fanned out to search the ground.

Julice and Marcus were falling asleep in the warmth of the sun, so Shaddoc used the opportunity to prowl through the wreckage of the building. At length, he tiptoed quietly and sat down beside Julice, poking her awake. His face was scrunched into a bemused frown, but he waited for her to speak first.

“You remember what we talked about earlier?” she asked.

He nodded.

“And you’ll be ready when the time comes?”

Another nod was his reply.

“All right, what’s up?” she asked after a few minutes of further silence, so unlike his usual demeanor. “Why aren’t you talking away like a chipmunk?”

“I was just thinking,” he said. “Why would anyone want a door into the side of a mountain? And why would they hide that door, making it look like part of an old wall?”

Julice spun toward him. “What?”

He pointed behind him into the ruined structure. “They did a pretty good job of hiding the door. Not real good, but pretty good. And the hidden release wasn’t all that hidden. But someone went to a lot of effort, and I’d hate to let them know how easy it was to figure it all out. It might hurt their feelings.”

“Are you saying there’s an entrance into the mountainside hidden in there?”

“Well, yes. But I don’t think we’re supposed to know about it.”

Julice jumped up. “Show me.”

Shaddoc hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” He leaned closer and whispered, “I think it’s supposed to be SECRET and PRIVATE.”

He uttered those words the same way he had spoken previously of the doom hanging over him, as if the notion of privacy were dangerous and not altogether understood.

Julice remained adamant. “Show me.”

“All right,” Shaddoc said unhappily. “But if somebody gets mad or worse happens, don’t blame me.”

They left Marcus snoozing in the afternoon sun, and Shaddoc led Julice through the half-fallen timbers of the building. “Is this going to fall?” she asked nervously as they passed under the shadow of a sagging wall.

“Oh no, it’s built to look that way,” Shaddoc said cheerfully. “The building never appeared any different than this. It’s meant to look fallen-down. Pretty clever, huh? Come on, it’s over here.” He guided her to the back wall, where he stepped aside and indicated the unbroken wooden expanse with a dramatic flourish. “See?”

“See what? That wall?”

“Oh, that’s what it’s supposed to look like, a wall. But watch.” Shaddoc fiddled with something, and a section of the wall swung open, revealing the dark mouth of a tunnel that led into the mountain. Cool, moist air breathed from the opening, as if the mountain were a living, slumbering being.

“All right, now I’ve shown you,” Shaddoc said, closing the hidden door again. “But don’t tell the others because this is supposed to be SECRET and PRIVATE.”

Julice whipped around and headed back to the front of the shack, walking with more confidence through the seemingly dilapidated structure than she had before. When she got to where Marcus slept, instead of resuming her seat, she kept on walking, intent on finding Gerard and Galdar.

Immediately, Shaddoc bounded in front of her, blocking her path. “I told you it’s a secret,” he insisted. “And Gerard told us to stay here.” He held his arms out to prevent her from going around him.

She eased him out of her way and strode on.

“But—but—” he spluttered.

“Your job is to keep your eye on Marcus,” she said over her shoulder. “See that he doesn’t go anywhere.”

Since Marcus was still asleep in the sun, that proved an easy task to perform. Nevertheless, Shaddoc took his responsibility seriously. He was, therefore, extra careful not to wake Marcus while going through his pockets, inventorying his possessions for him.

Julice found Gerard some ways from the shack, still combing the ground for sign of the Romes. “Forget it,” she said. “You’re not going to find anything.”

“Is that your magical ability speaking?” Gerard asked with irritation, duck-walking awkwardly as he searched the dirt and grass. “Does it extend to prognostication now as well? Or perhaps you’re more adept at tracking than you’ve let on.”

“I can show you exactly where they went,” Julice shot back. “And it didn’t take any magical ability to find. All it took was a curious kender.”

Gerard sat back on his haunches. “A kender, huh? Well, for your information, we think they rode out of here, or at least their horses left in a hurry. They’re gone. Now we’re trying to figure out where they were headed. So if you think you can shed some light on the matter, by all means, let’s see what you and the kender have found.” He stood, stretching the stiffness from his legs.

“We should get Galdar too,” Julice said, ignoring his sarcasm.

“All right, I’m sure he could use a break as well. Wait here. Don’t roam around and get lost.” He disappeared around a clump of bushes, reappearing moments later with Galdar. “So show us this all-important revelation of yours.”

She bit back an angry retort and led them into the shack, guiding them toward the rear. Shaddoc, looking alarmed, followed. When Julice reached the back wall, she turned to Shaddoc. “Show them,” she said.

Instead, the kender clasped his hands behind his back and whistled tunelessly, staring here and there into space.

“Shaddoc! Show them.”

He leaned toward her and whispered. “It’s someone’s secret. It was our secret too. You weren’t supposed to tell.”

“Shaddoc, we don’t have time for this. Trip the damned release or whatever it is.”

“All right,” he said grumpily. “But next time someone scolds a kender for not respecting other people’s privacy, I want you to remember that I tried to keep this a secret.” He pulled a loose plank aside, reached within the space behind it, and flipped a small lever. A portion of the back wall swung open, revealing the passage down into the depths of the mountain.

Galdar whistled softly.

“Julice, I apologize,” said Gerard.

“Shaddoc discovered it,” she admitted.

“It’s SECRET and PRIVATE,” said the kender, nonetheless beaming.

“I’m glad you found it,” said Gerard. “I suspect the Romes took off hoping to lure us away from here before we came upon them. The lead jewel chest can’t be far away now.”

“No, it can’t,” Shaddoc said from beside a cracked fireplace hearth. He held out a smashed lump of metal that had gone unnoticed amid the building’s wreckage. “Isn’t this it? Because it looks like it used to be a lead jewel chest, only I don’t think it’s much good anymore.”

“Oh, Poko!” Julice moaned, her eyes widening at the sight of the ruined chest. “Poko!” She darted to the tunnel entrance and called louder down into the depths, “Poko, are you there? Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

But only the echoes of her own cry returned in answer from the bowels of the earth.

Chapter 17

Gerard gently drew Julice away from the mouth of the tunnel. Her face was anguished, and she little resembled the spoiled, petulant girl he had first seen in Palanthas. “Galdar and I think if we can track the horses, we’ll find where the chaos wretch is headed,” he said. “Maybe we can save Poko and his brother. But before going after them, we need to know how it is best to kill the creature.”

She stared past him, still haunted by the tunnel. But she shook her head, showing that she had heard. “That’s the problem. You can’t.”

“What?” Gerard said. “But there must be a way—”

She shook her head more emphatically. “You think my ancestress wouldn’t have killed it generations ago if that had been possible? There is no way, I tell you. It can’t be killed. It can only be trapped or contained. That’s why the jewel chest was made.”

He held out the remains of the chest as if making an offering to some god in hopes of appeasing it. “Then perhaps can you fix it?”

She accepted the chest, looking it over as if it were a thing unknown to her, and again shook her head disconsolately.

“In that case we’ll just have to make another,” Gerard said determinedly.

She gave a high, thin laugh that contained no humor, only despair. “Another? I don’t even know how this one was made. That skill was forgotten centuries ago.”

“So what do you think we should do?”

She let the ruined chest fall to the ground and dropped her head in her hands. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I don’t know anymore.”

“How powerful is this thing?” Galdar asked softly, coming up behind them.

She shook her head. The light in the room was fading, and there in the ruined shack, the gloom deepened. “I tell you, I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t even know whether it’s even reached its fullest power yet.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gerard.

“It might have been weakened from the centuries of captivity. Maybe it’ll get stronger the longer it goes free.”

“Is there anyone who knows about these things?” asked Galdar solemnly.

“The aesthetics at the Great Library in Palanthas might. But we don’t have time to go back and ask them.” She sighed. “We just don’t have enough time to do any of the things we ought to do.”

“Or enough knowledge,” Gerard added.

“No, we don’t have enough of that either.” She remained silent for several minutes; then abruptly, she went on. “All the lore that was handed down, passed from mother to daughter for generations, had to do with protecting the secret of the chest and keeping its contents safely locked away. No one considered what was to be done if the thing got out. That prospect was too dire even to contemplate.”

“Well, we must contemplate it now,” said Gerard firmly, and Galdar nodded in agreement. “And act whether we have time and knowledge enough or not. Too many lives could be lost if we don’t.”

“Too many lives may be lost anyway.” She choked back a sob.

“What else do you know about this thing that might help us?” Galdar asked after a while.

“Only that it can see in the dark.”

“Oh, that’s great! It grows stronger and isn’t hindered by the dark!” muttered Gerard. Galdar shot him a look.

“Is there anything else?” asked the minotaur.

“Not that I can think of.”

Gerard pulled Galdar aside. “I’ve heard enough. It’s time to leave. We must go after the horses and do what we can against the thing. The longer we wait, the stronger it may grow…”

“She says there’s nothing we can do against the chaos wretch once we find it,” mused Galdar.

“Yes,” agreed Gerard unhappily. “The situation is dire, I admit. But we gave our word to help the poor girl.”

“Yes, we did,” said Galdar firmly, grabbing Gerard by the arm and looking him in the eye. “We are honor bound to do our best.”

“Honor bound,” agreed Gerard, hoping that he sounded braver than he felt.

At least they must try. They couldn’t simply walk away from the chaos wretch and let the thing wreak devastation unchecked. They must place their bodies between it and the innocent world, and when their bodies proved insufficient to defeat the chaos wretch, they would likely die, knowing that at least they had done what they could, regardless of the cost to themselves.

“Let’s go,” he said to Julice. “All of us. Together.”

Yet again she shook her head. Gerard was beginning to think she was in a state of shock. “He might still be down there”—she pointed to the tunnel mouth—“perhaps in danger. I must go to him.”

Gerard glanced at Galdar, who nodded. It would be wiser to keep Julice and the others, who were not warriors, safe there while the sheriff and the minotaur went alone in search of the wretch.

“Fine,” he said tensely. “Shaddoc, you and Marcus accompany Julice. Make sure she stays safe and gets out all right.”

Shaddoc, who had been uncommonly quiet throughout all the discussion, had been hoping for a more important role in the dangerous mission ahead. But he realized that someone had to protect poor Julice, who was acting in a stupor. So he nodded vigorously, pleased, as he saw it, to be put in charge of her and Marcus.

Marcus stared at the tunnel opening. Even in the half light, he looked pale and afraid. “What if the wretch is still down there?”

Gerard hesitated then shook his head. “I doubt it, my friend,” he said in a low voice.

Marcus swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Then all right, I’ll stay here,” he said. “And if Poko is down there, I’ll do my best to rescue him, even though he is my accursed rival.”

Gerard eyed him warily. “All right,” he said after a moment. “As soon as we pick up the horses’ trail, we’ll be on our way.”

“But it’s almost dusk,” Julice said, coming to herself somewhat. “It’ll be dark soon. Remember what I said!”

“Yes, I remember, thank you very much,” Gerard said acidly and hurried off to make some progress while there was still a little daylight left.

They discovered the horses had headed cross-country toward a distant ridge. Soon Gerard was in the saddle again, uttering quiet, empty promises to Thunderbolt about rest and plenty of oats at the end of their journey. At least he didn’t have to worry about Galdar. The minotaur ran alongside him with nary a complaint; indeed, he seemed almost infused with fresh energy, as though eager to do battle with the chaos wretch.

Gerard was consoled by the thought that at least they had been well away from Palanthas when the chest was opened. He hated to think what would have happened to the city had the chaos wretch been released in its midst. Of course, if the wretch couldn’t somehow be trapped or contained, there was no way to ensure it wouldn’t end up in Palanthas yet—as well as every other city in Ansalon, given time. Truly, they had a challenge ahead of them.

Some time after full darkness had overtaken them, Gerard noticed that even Galdar was breathing harder than usual. Not that the minotaur would ever complain of exertion or admit that he was tired, but the hard traveling had exacted a toll from him as well.

Conversation was difficult. They were both bone weary, yet had to remain especially alert at night, even traveling at reduced speed. Small branches constantly whipped at Gerard’s face and arms. Now and then even the surefooted Galdar stumbled in the dark, only to catch himself and jump up and keep running.

The trail was hard to follow. The light from Solinari, at full, and Lunitari, not far behind, helped considerably, but still the way was dim and the signs few. As they topped a ridge, however, they saw, nestled in a quiet valley below, a sparkling town. The windows of several houses glowed as if to welcome weary travelers. But the only sounds drifting on the still night air to greet the new arrivals were booms like intermittent thunderclaps. Gerard scanned the night sky, thinking a storm was moving in, but the stars and both moons gleamed undiminished overhead. With a sick feeling, Gerard realized it wasn’t thunder he was hearing.

Filled with foreboding, he and Galdar descended from the ridge and made for the town.

Inside the mouth of the tunnel, Shaddoc rummaged around and emerged with candles, along with flint and twists of oil-soaked cord.

“How did you find these?” Julice asked. “It’s so dark in there.”

“Easy. I just thought, ‘Where would I be if I were a candle?’ and just like that there was a whole box of them.”

Julice opened her mouth to ask something but then decided that however the kender had found candles and flint, it was fine with her.

Thus armed, the three of them proceeded into the depths of the mountain. They went in single file. Shaddoc insisted on taking the lead. “Gerard put me in charge of protecting you,” he said solemnly. “I mustn’t shirk that responsibility.”

Julice snorted softly. That was a good sign, Shaddoc thought. She was gradually recovering her nerve.

As for Marcus, he was happy to volunteer to keep to the rear. “To guard against being overtaken,” he said stoutly, though his eyes were wide and rolling with terror, his skin glistening with sweat.

The low, narrow shaft cramped Julice, and she advanced hunched over, her curled shoulders occasionally scraping the sides. As she went, she tried to quiet the excited chatter of Shaddoc. Even though the tunnel was SECRET and PRIVATE, the kender said, he was thrilled that an actual adventure was under way at last.

“Maybe we’ll encounter trolls,” he chirped.

“Shh!”

A minute or two of silence ensued. Then he said, “Or ogres. I’ll bet they like caves.”

“Shaddoc, hush!”

Another respite was all too brief.

“Of course, this isn’t really a cave. I mean, it’s not a natural formation. Someone had to dig this tunnel.”

Again she made a doomed attempt to quiet him.

“That’s a good point, if I do say so myself. Who do you suppose dug this tunnel? I’ll bet it was dwarves. They probably mined gold and precious gems down here long, long ago.”

“Cursed dwarves,” Marcus grumbled. “Leave it to them to dig a tunnel too small for any creature of reasonable proportions.”

“Assuming it was dwarves,” Julice whispered irritably.

Her commands to Shaddoc for silence grew more insistent the deeper they went, and still the efforts proved fruitless.

“The fact that dwarves might have dug this tunnel as a mine for jewels is pretty funny when you think about it,” he observed cheerfully, “because here we are, centuries later, trying to find a precious gem as well. I mean, it’s not one that has been mined or anything, at least as far as I know, but it is a gem and—oomph!”

Julice finished her silent incantation and fixed Shaddoc with a meaningful glare. Where his mouth had been, there stretched only unbroken flesh. His face writhed in a silent plea.

“If you’re very good and very, very quiet, I’ll give your mouth back to you when we’re finished down here and safely back outside. Understood?”

Shaddoc nodded, his eyes suddenly round and serious. But he must have found the novelty of his situation interesting as well, for he danced around, pointing out his mouthlessness to Marcus as if being magically transformed were an accomplishment to feel proud about.

However, at least he was quiet.

“If only you’d thought of that sooner,” Marcus groused. “Say, the moment he first showed up.”

The only sounds came from their cautious footsteps, a hushed shuffling that nevertheless reverberated off the stone walls and echoed in front and behind them. Several times, Shaddoc raised a hand imperiously to halt the group, thinking that the sounds he heard might be the steps of others approaching. But each time, the sounds died away as soon as the trio stopped walking. Probably it was an echo of their own footsteps, he thought.

They went down, down, shuffling along slowly under their faint candlelight.

Behind Julice, Marcus’s breathing grew labored. She glanced back and saw him staring about wildly, his face glittering with a clammy sheen. A little farther, he stopped walking. “I can’t do it,” he whimpered. “I can’t breathe down here. I feel all suffocated. I’ve got to get out. I’ve got to get out now!” He turned awkwardly in the cramped space and started scuttling toward the surface.

“Marcus, wait!” Julice called, but it did no good. Soon his candle glow vanished into the distance. Either that or in his haste the candle had been blown out.

Whichever the case, he had abandoned her and the kender.

The stench greeted Gerard and Galdar before they reached the first house. At first, they thought the smell was due to the carrion they found spread over a large circular area of flattened grass and trees on the outskirts of town. From a few twists of horsehair and a partial hoof, they concluded that one of the Romes’ horses had burst in the center of the circle, rupturing into myriad bits of flesh that were flung outward by some incomprehensible force. The blast had been like the one whose remnants they had discovered back at the corral. The only difference was the blast with the horse bits had been stronger. There, trees lay toppled, hurled in a pattern radiating from a small crater. The trees’ root balls still clung to the earth in which they had grown, pulling clumps of dirt and stone from the ground and exposing them to the unfamiliar air. But of the horse itself, they found scant remains—the explosion had annihilated all but the tiniest traces of the animal.

Gerard was developing a theory, one he hadn’t wanted to share earlier with Julice. The theory was that the explosion at the corral had resulted from one of the Rome brothers—he couldn’t say which—becoming possessed by the chaos wretch. Evidently, the wretch’s influence was more powerful than mortal bodies could contain. They simply burst into fragments under the strain. He had heard about such strange things in his late-night talks with Palin in Solace. Palin had traveled widely and told interesting stories.

If that were true, then the horse’s demise paralleled that of whichever Rome brother had died. The horse might have survived a little longer, he reasoned, because the animal was so much larger and stronger than a man. That might have enabled it to contain the wretch for a longer period before succumbing to its horrible internal pressures. But in the end its fate was the same.

Gerard wondered which Rome brother had blown to pieces—Poko or Angrid. For Julice’s sake, he hoped it was the latter. One brother was certainly still alive; Galdar pointed out tracks at the corral, those of a human on horseback who was pursuing the possessed horse. The pursuer’s tracks continued on, past the blast site where Gerard and Galdar stood, into the town itself.

Then Gerard and Galdar reached the town. The stink of death grew overwhelming. It pervaded the community like some fatal miasma exhaled from the very ground. Like a charnel house or butcher’s market, the reek of blood and gore and ruptured entrails was everywhere. Gerard gagged. His eyes streamed and his nose ran. Even Galdar bent double, gasping for breath.

When they could stomach the assault on their senses, they proceeded down the town’s single street. Numerous smaller blast areas pockmarked the ground. Buildings had been spattered with gobbets of flesh. Blood had formed crimson streaks down the walls before drying. In several places, buildings sagged, having been partially blown apart by the force of bodies exploding.

In several places, larger pieces of victims remained: a foot too small for an adult, a hand whose flawless condition belied the violence that had wrenched it from its wrist, a severed ear caught in a rose bush.

Gerard paused long enough to vomit behind the rose bush.

As he swung into Thunderbolt’s saddle again, a young man on horseback trotted toward them along the darkened street.

“I’m sorry,” he moaned. “Oh, gods, I’m so terribly sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?” Gerard asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”

The young man roused himself. “Then you’re not from here? You don’t know? Quickly, you must go back. Leave now before it’s too late!”

He was close enough that Gerard made out a face that might have been roguishly charming under different circumstances. At that moment it simply looked defeated, ravaged.

“Oh, Angrid,” the newcomer sobbed, more to himself than to them. “What did you do? And yet how could you have known?”

Gerard’s head shot up. “Poko?” He peered closer at the young man’s face. “Poko Rome? Is that your name, young fellow?”

The young man stiffened and reined in his horse. “Who’s asking?” He turned his horse partway around, as if preparing to take off again in the direction from which he’d come. “What do you want of me?”

“It’s all right,” Gerard said soothingly, realizing their quarry was nervous and about to bolt. “We mean you no harm.”

“Who are you?” Poko repeated, looking with alarm at Galdar. He made no further move to flee, but neither did he relax his guard.

“We were commissioned by Capul Lock to find you, to recover Julice’s jewel chest,” said the minotaur.

“Ah, the jewel chest. If only I’d had wit enough to steal a different one, all of this might have been avoided.”

“We know what happened to the chest, Poko. We know what it contained,” said Gerard.

But Poko was peering past him. “Is she with you? Did Julice come too? But she mustn’t come here. You didn’t bring her here, did you? Hurry, you have to get her to safety!”

“She’s safe, Poko. She’s back at the tunnel. She went inside the mountain looking for you.”

“Safe inside the mountain.” He gave a nervous laugh. “Gods, would that I were safe there with her. There’d be no need for either of us to ever come out.”

Gerard opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Galdar tapped on his shoulder for his attention and gestured down the street. “Someone’s coming.”

A man had staggered into the road from between a couple of buildings. When he saw the three of them, he stumbled in their direction. But he seemed to be having trouble with his legs, and his body was so swollen it could barely be contained by his clothes. Poko, catching the direction of Gerard’s and Galdar’s gaze, turned to look. “Oh, gods, run!” he cried to them. “If you value your lives, flee!”

Meanwhile, a howl emerged from the new arrival’s throat, though whether of triumph or anguish, neither Gerard nor Galdar could tell. The man froze midstep, as if no longer remembering how to use his legs. He looked down at them in perplexity. His body continued ballooning, straining overstretched cloth even more. Even from that distance, they could hear seams rip and tear. And it wasn’t only cloth they were hearing.

The man’s body was being rent as well.

A sudden thunderclap set Gerard reeling back in the saddle. As abruptly as that, the man disappeared, his body replaced by a grisly red mist hanging in the air. Flecks of tissue and bone rained down on the street. Gerard wiped gore from his face and peered at the small crater where the man had stood. Another figure had replaced him, a vaguely human form that looked to be made of sand.

The sand figure advanced clumsily toward them. In the stillness of the silenced town, the creature moved with the soft, almost inaudible sound of a thousand grains of sand rubbing against one another. The soft hiss of it made Gerard’s skin crawl.

“It’s coming,” Poko cried, wheeling his mount around. “Come on! We have to get out of here!”

They needed little encouragement. Poko led the way back out of town and up the ridge, retracing the path to the Romes’ secret lair. Gerard spurred Thunderbolt to a noble gallop. At Thunderbolt’s side, Galdar puffed and strove; even his mighty limbs were faltering. Every now and then, Gerard risked a glance back. Something moved in the darkness behind them. Something was giving chase.

The chaos wretch! It was following them back to the tunnel!

Inside the tunnel, Julice’s leg muscles began to cramp from the strain of the ever-descending slope, which continued downward into the mountain with monotonous regularity. After a seemingly endless period of walking, during which the fire in her legs increased and her muscles trembled more with each step, she realized the angle had steepened. Abruptly, as if to compensate, the passage turned into a series of switchbacks instead of one smooth, continuous decline, allowing for shorter lengths of tunnel with a gentler pitch. That made walking easier, but she and Shaddoc inched from one sharp turn to another, pausing at each to peek around the bend for possible danger.

Each time they were destined for disappointment. Julice began to think they would never reach the end of the blasted tunnel.

As they descended, a concern for stealth had come over them. The chaos wretch might yet be down there, Julice realized. So, for that matter, might Angrid, and she had no idea what kind of reception to expect from him.

At last, she touched Shaddoc’s shoulder and motioned for silence. They left their candles burning in the tunnel behind them and felt their way forward. Around the next corner, Julice became certain of what she had seen ahead: an unusually bright glare. She drew in a sharp breath. Either some chamber burned with the light of numerous torches—unlikely at such a depth—or…

Perplexed, she wondered whether magic might account for it. But the Romes didn’t traffic in magic. Oh, they might purchase the odd spell now and then, but certainly no one in the family wielded any power of his or her own, as far as she knew. Nor did she know of a spell that could produce so much light for an extended length of time.

She and Shaddoc crept up to the next bend and once more eased round to the other side. There, they found themselves in a natural cavern, the most immediate chamber of which was lit by a strange device whose glare was so brilliant that, after nothing but the glow of candles during their long descent, she and Shaddoc could only fling their arms over their eyes, blinded by the light.

Whatever awaited them in the chamber, they were helpless before it.

The eastern sky had turned distinctly rosy by the time Gerard and the others reached the shack hideaway with its secret entrance to the subterranean tunnel. It was going to be a beautiful day, Gerard thought glumly. Too bad they might not live long enough to see it. Gerard and Poko leaped from their mounts and swatted them sharply on the flanks to drive them to safety, out of the chaos wretch’s reach. The two men and Galdar ducked into the greater darkness of the shack’s interior, heading for the tunnel.

“Wh-who’s there?” stammered a high-pitched, nervous voice not far ahead of them.

“Marcus?” Gerard exclaimed. “Is that you?”

“Oh, Gerard, you’re back!” Marcus cried, hurrying out of the dark depths. “At last! I was… well, I was worried about you is all. So I gather everything is all right?”

“No time to explain,” Gerard said, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him around. “Back into the tunnel. Hurry!”

“What? No, I can’t go back in there!”

“You can’t stay out here, that’s for certain.” Gerard pushed him none too gently. “Quick, get inside!”

Whimpering, Marcus complied, but once he was in the tunnel, he was hard to budge. “I can’t,” he pleaded. “Please, I can’t go down there.”

Gerard ignored him. When they were all safely inside, he slammed the door shut. A darkness so complete as to seem palpable enveloped them. “There, that should keep the chaos wretch out,” he said without much conviction.

“Yes, and keep us in,” Galdar grumbled. “What is your plan? What have you achieved by this gambit?”

“Well, I—” Gerard broke off, aware that he hadn’t thought the matter through that far. His only thought had been to get them to a place of refuge. “We’ll just wait it out,” he said firmly at last. “The thing won’t stay out there forever. It’ll go away eventually.”

“The thing? Wait it out?” Marcus cried. “In here?” He began to wail inconsolably.

Chapter 18

Once in the antechamber of the tunnel, they lit candles, filling the tight enclosure with a welcome glow. Gerard hoped that would calm Marcus. Finally his wailing subsided to whimpers.

That was when a tremendous boom sounded from the door.

“I think it’s trying to get in,” Galdar said. “I don’t think it’s going to be content to wait for us outside.”

Marcus resumed shrieking in terror, crying that they were all going to die.

“Well, at least it’s a very solid door,” Gerard said, gritting his teeth against Marcus’s piteous wails. “It’ll keep us safe.”

The chaos wretch, however, was not deterred. Another boom crashed in upon the companions, and a sliver of dawn light showed where the door had separated from its frame along one edge.

“Move!” Galdar ordered.

“Where?” Marcus sobbed. “There’s nowhere to go but further down into the mountain.”

“Then go there. Now!” The minotaur pushed Marcus to get him moving. Still Marcus stood his ground, transfixed and sobbing. Poko took him gently by the elbow and tried coaxing him along.

Gerard hung back, letting Poko and Marcus get ahead of him. They had to mount such defenses as they could. He motioned Galdar ahead of him as well, thinking it would be harder for the minotaur to maneuver in the tight confines of the tunnel.

“No,” Galdar said. “You go. I’ll bring up the rear.”

Gerard started to argue with him; then another shuddering blow admitted more light through the tunnel door, at which point he decided this was a pointless way for the two of them to spend what might be their last moments of life. He hurried after the others just as a slight flow of sand began trickling through the opening between door and frame.

At first, Galdar thought the battering from the chaos wretch had loosened some bit of earth around the frame. Then he realized it was the wretch itself, seeping inside after them.

Over his shoulder Galdar watched as Gerard, Poko, and Marcus hurried down into the mountain’s depths. The tight space made him nervous, and Marcus’s continued screaming only made things worse. The tunnel was longer, far longer, than he’d anticipated.

Gerard felt reassured to hear the rustle of Galdar scraping against the walls and ceiling of the tunnel behind him. At least the minotaur wasn’t making some misguided, solitary last stand against the wretch while the rest of them fled.

“Faster,” Galdar hissed at him at one point, sounding right by his shoulder. “It’s gaining on us.”

Gerard scuttled faster, urging Poko and Marcus to a quicker pace as well. He hadn’t expected just how cramped the tunnel was, nor how it forced him to stoop as he went. His legs began to tremble with the effort of forever loping in a half-bent crouch. He pitied the minotaur, who had things even worse in the low, narrow space.

Suddenly, Marcus tore loose from Poko’s grip and began frantically shoving back past Gerard. The force of his passage wedged Gerard against the wall so tightly that he could scarcely breathe. “Marcus, what are you doing? Calm down,” he said.

But Marcus kept struggling, driven more frantic by being jammed against the wall. At last, he slipped free of Gerard and scrambled past Galdar. Marcus wrestled his way with the determination of a condemned man seizing his last chance to escape. Once past the minotaur, he scrambled back toward the surface—but also toward the chaos wretch following them.

“Marcus, no!” Galdar shouted and tried to pull him back.

In his mad haste, Marcus’s candle had gone out. He kept running, all the more desperate because of the suffocating darkness. Gerard listened to his footsteps recede up the tunnel. Abruptly, they stopped. So, too, did the inexorable hissing of the chaos wretch’s sand avatar.

Then they heard Marcus scream. He’d been screaming all along, of course, but it was different, the sound of someone touched by boundless evil. The scream went on and on.

When the screaming finally ceased, Marcus’s footsteps resumed, although more hesitantly, as of someone unused to his body. The footsteps approached Gerard and the others.

They quickened their pace down the tunnel. Gradually, as the chaos wretch became acclimated to Marcus’s body, the following footsteps accelerated. The sound of them echoed through the tunnel, seeming to converge upon the three pursued figures from all sides at once.

The explosion, when it came, rocked the tunnel and brought rocks and dirt cascading from the ceiling. The sibilant hiss of sand sliding against itself started up again, and again it began to draw closer.

At some point, Gerard realized he wasn’t hearing Galdar’s steps behind him any longer. He turned and saw the minotaur’s candle glowing some distance back up the tunnel. Galdar’s back was toward him, his attention fixed on something farther up the tunnel that Gerard couldn’t see. But Gerard didn’t have to see to know what it was. “Keep going!” he told Poko. “As quickly as you can. And don’t turn around, no matter what!” Cautiously, he began retracing his steps, fearful of what he was certain he would find.

He found it, just as he suspected: Galdar was fixed as if frozen in place, staring while the chaos wretch inexorably advanced toward him. Only a few feet separated them. “Galdar!” Gerard barked. “Come on! Snap out of it! Don’t let that thing get you!”

“Go,” Galdar said, speaking softly as if afraid he might send the chaos wretch scurrying for safety like some startled bird or squirrel. “Make use of whatever little time I can buy.”

“What are you talking about? What are you doing?”

“I’m the strongest one of us,” Galdar whispered. “I stand the best chance.”

Gerard bristled, then realized the minotaur was speaking only the truth. As far as sheer physical strength went, he was the strongest of the companions. “The best chance of what?”

“Of holding out for a while.”

“But—but—” Gerard stopped, not knowing what to say.

“Go!” Galdar ordered. “Make my death count for something.”

The chaos wretch had halved the distance between them.

Still, Gerard hung back, uncertain.

“Go!”

Galdar roared the word, the last he spoke before the thing swarmed around him, obscuring all but his outline. He dropped his candle and it went out. Gerard remembered with a start that Julice had said the chaos wretch could see in the dark. Gerard couldn’t help Galdar; all he could do was honor the minotaur’s noble death. He turned and hurried down the tunnel. Behind him, he heard Galdar groaning and thrashing in the dark.

Julice poked among the stolen items stashed in the cavern. Some of the loot looked valuable, such as a pair of ornate gold candlesticks she was fairly sure she had once seen gracing the table of another wealthy family in Palanthas. Other items appeared to be of more dubious worth, some of them showing signs of having been in the cavern a long time—items that probably had looked good for stealing in the press of the moment but that on further reflection hardly warranted fencing. She also found Poko’s and Angrid’s beds, a generous supply of food, a change of clothes for each of the brothers, and a game of body thief that had been interrupted. She turned up a couple of the tiles idly, then hurriedly turned them over again, feeling guilty about interfering. They would want to resume the game when they returned.

Wherever she went, she wondered whether Poko had examined this or that stolen item, perhaps even taken it himself, or what thoughts had occupied him while holed up down there. Had he thought of her? And as she let her fingers trail over the brooches and rings and cutlery the Romes had accumulated, she wondered at her own concern for the minutiae of his daily life.

So engrossed was she that she forgot all about the mouthless Shaddoc until he plucked at her sleeve for attention. “Oh, that spell,” she said as she turned, “I should undo it.”

Then her eyes took in what he was holding.

It was an unadorned brass box about the size of her lead jewel chest with an inscription engraved on the lid: Who opens me shall lose whatever I look on.

A lose-it box. In her early training as a sorceress, she had heard of such rare items but never expected to see one for herself. Shaddoc started to raise the lid, but she hastily slapped his hand away before he could gaze into the interior.

“Trust me,” she said, “you wouldn’t want to experience what happens if you saw what’s in there.” Although, given the limitless extent of a kender’s curiosity, she wondered whether that were exactly true.

The box might prove valuable in their situation. If only she could get word of it to Gerard and Galdar.

From the opening of the tunnel, she thought she heard a distant noise.

Galdar had found the tunnel confining, but it seemed spacious compared to the claustrophobia he felt as the chaos wretch engulfed him. Sand pressed in upon his eyes, his ears, his mouth, his nose. It bound his sole arm to his side and prevented his legs from moving. So heavily did it weigh on him that he thought he would suffocate.

And then he wished he had.

A gritty inward trickle started at his nose, a trickle that became a stream, then a river, then a torrent. As the sand filled his body to capacity, the mind of the chaos wretch consumed him. It squeezed his awareness down to the size of a pea, located somewhere around his feet. Unconsciousness would have been blessedly welcome, but it eluded him. On some level, Galdar remained excruciatingly aware of every injury he was sustaining. He felt sinews pop and joints dislocate. His skin stretched until it threatened to rip, then stretched still further. Worse than the immediate agony, he felt as if he himself had experienced every injury the wretch had ever done to others. A myriad of lives and beings flowed into him along with all their sufferings and deaths.

He screamed and didn’t know whether it was he himself who bellowed in torment or the noise that emerged was the chaos wretch’s cry of triumph. And amid it all, he clung to the certainty that only by enduring continued anguish could he hope to save his companions.

If only he could recall just who those companions were.

After a while, the sounds behind Gerard diminished. He assumed he’d left the chaos wretch far behind, content for the moment to feed—or whatever it did—on poor, brave Galdar.

In time, he saw Poko’s candle somewhere ahead, although he, too, was hurrying, and Gerard overtook him slowly.

A sound from the slope behind him almost made him stumble, so unexpected was it. Had the thing finished off Galdar already and come upon him from behind? But no, it couldn’t be, he reasoned. There had been no explosion yet. He paused and turned, thrusting his candle out, hoping to see by its pitiful glow.

What he saw made him wish he hadn’t tried. Galdar lurched and shambled some ways behind him, his bull’s jaw clenched, blood trickling from one corner of his mouth and matting his fur.

“Keep… going… human,” he gasped. “I can’t… stop it… can only… slow it… down.”

Gerard needed no further urging. He turned and redoubled his speed, resolved to get the others to safety before the chaos wretch overtook them all. But his thought almost made him laugh aloud with bitter realization. There could be no safety in that subterranean sepulchre. They were trapped there with that thing that would eventually track them down and destroy them all.

Well, the thing might win, but they would fight it in the meantime as best they could. The chaos wretch would have to work hard for its victory.

He tried to block the shuffling sound of Galdar’s footsteps behind him, block as well the rasping of Galdar’s tortured breathing from his ears.

He thought he must be gaining on Poko, for the gleam ahead had grown more pronounced. Then he realized it wasn’t candles he saw, but something brighter. Whatever it was, it was a welcome sight, for it meant at long last he must be nearing the end of the tunnel.

Galdar’s footsteps had grown indistinct, and Gerard no longer heard his labored breathing. Evidently, he had outdistanced the minotaur for the time being. He hated to think what effort it must be costing Galdar to buy them that additional increment of time.

Moments later, he burst into a cavern. Poko was hugging Julice with one arm while Shaddoc was buzzing happily at the young Rome as if they weren’t being chased by a gruesome and certain death. In his free hand, Poko held some kind of box.

When she heard Gerard arrive, Julice broke from Poko’s embrace and turned. “Where’s Galdar?” she asked, her eyes darting between Gerard and the tunnel.

“I think the chaos wretch has got him,” Gerard said, panting heavily. “Galdar’s buying us what time he can.”

“How can he hold out against that thing?” Poko asked incredulously.

Gerard bent over, too winded to speak.

“Is he still alive?” Julice asked, the fire of anger blazing in her amethyst eyes.

“I don’t know. He’s right behind me,” Gerard gasped.

“Stand aside,” she ordered.

“What are you doing?” Poko demanded.

“Something I should have tried sooner,” she said, positioning herself so she had an unobstructed view of the tunnel’s mouth.

All too soon, they heard dragging footsteps approach. Galdar stumbled into the light. Blood seeped from his eyes and ran from his nose; it trickled from his ears and dripped from his mouth. Instead of taking in deep, labored breaths, his chest scarcely moved. His eyelids fluttered; his eyes, where they hadn’t pooled with crimson blood, showed mostly white. The knuckles of his fist, too, gleamed white under his fur with the strain of clenching, either against pain or with determination. Maybe, Gerard thought, it was some of both.

Galdar opened his mouth as if to speak, but only blood gushed out. He took another faltering step and sank to his knees on the stone floor. Swellings rippled and flowed across his body.

The minotaur was dying. Without thinking of himself, Gerard stepped toward the fallen warrior.

“Wait!” Julice commanded. Her lips moved in silent invocation. A steel cage sprang into existence around Galdar as the minotaur somehow heaved himself back onto his feet. He stared at the steel bars as if barely comprehending what he saw. But he must have understood, for a struggle began to play out across his countenance. Finally, his eyes rolled back in his head.

The thing that controlled the minotaur stepped forward, advancing toward the others. It didn’t even pause at the bars but strode through the mirage unhindered.

“It’s not affected by my illusions!” Julice cried.

Gerard would not be stopped as he stepped forward to block the chaos wretch’s advance. “You want a fresh victim?” he said. “Come and take me.”

“Gerard, what are you doing?” Julice demanded. Her footsteps could be heard behind him.

“Wait,” Poko said, evidently grabbing her.

“But, Poko, that thing will kill him.”

“Give him a moment,” Poko insisted.

Gerard scarcely listened, his attention riveted on the thing that was slowly destroying Galdar. He drew his sword but hesitated. He didn’t want to wield it against Galdar, assuming Galdar wasn’t already dead, Gerard reminded himself. Nevertheless, he didn’t dare risk it.

The chaos wretch itself paused a couple of steps from Gerard. For a moment, the two stared at each other, Gerard seeing the figure of someone he would have gladly killed in battle mere weeks earlier and that he now hoped desperately to save. They might come to blows yet, Galdar and he, but it would be a worthier death for one or the other of them than the ghastly creature that seemed certain to kill them both. Gerard would deliver the minotaur from so ignominious a death if he could.

But something had begun dribbling from the minotaur’s nostrils. He glanced down at the cavern floor. A mound of sand started to form at Galdar’s feet. Gradually, the sand rose around the minotaur until it encased him. At last, the sand figure stepped free of Galdar, and the minotaur toppled to the floor as though spent. The chaos wretch paid him no mind as it closed the distance to Gerard.

Gerard tried to run but found that his legs wouldn’t move. The chaos wretch exerted a mysterious hold over him. His muscles weren’t his own. He sucked in a deep breath, wondering how long he could go without breathing. Would the chaos wretch be able to make its way inside of him if Gerard didn’t inhale?

Suddenly, something hit him from behind, knocking Gerard aside. He was dimly aware of Julice shouting something. “Poko, no!” she screamed. Feeling groggy, Gerard turned from where he lay sprawled on the floor and looked back to see Poko standing in his place. “What are you doing?” he mumbled, his muscles still not working properly after being ravaged by the chaos wretch.

But Poko didn’t answer. With obvious effort, he brought his arms up in front of him. He clutched something in his hands. The box, Gerard realized, the one he’d been holding when Gerard entered the cavern. Poko lifted the lid. From his angle on the floor, Gerard had a brief glimpse of a mirrored interior.

The chaos wretch froze. It tried to take a step back but couldn’t. Inexorably, beginning one grain at a time, its substance flew across the intervening space and into the box as if driven by some terrible wind. As the flow of sand continued, the rate at which it streamed increased. Soon it became a sandy torrent. Gerard was sure the flood would overwhelm the small box, yet the box seemed to fill up again and again. At last, the chaos wretch vanished entirely into the box, and Poko slammed the lid shut.

“Now, Julice,” he cried, “put whatever binding spells on it you can.”

“But I work only illusions,” she protested.

“For all our sakes, you’d better create a binding spell, at least this once. Hurry!”

The box jumped and lurched in his hands. Poko clutched it more firmly. Shaddoc materialized next to him, helping to hold the wildly lurching box.

Julice’s lips moved soundlessly. Her expression looked grim, but she summoned whatever skill she possessed. The box quieted down. “There,” she gasped at last, “that’s the best I can do.”

“Then we’ll just have to pray it holds,” Poko said, setting the box down gently on the floor. He glanced at Gerard. “Are you all right?”

Gerard nodded.

“Then let’s see what we can do about helping Galdar.”

Between them, they hoisted the minotaur onto his feet. His sacrifice would not go unacknowledged, for they owed him their very lives. His breathing was shallow, and his pulse fluttered, but at least he still lived. Gerard and Poko and Shaddoc half carried, half dragged Galdar to the mouth of the tunnel. Once there, however, Gerard waved Poko back. “We won’t both fit through the tunnel with him,” he said. “I’ll see to him. You bring Julice.”

Poko nodded. Shaddoc skipped ahead with a lit candle. Every few yards, Shaddoc yelled over his shoulder to encourage Gerard onward or to ask how he was doing. Gerard shut his ears against the kender’s chatter and concentrated on putting one weary foot in front of the other. Galdar, semiconscious, groaned and stumbled. Between them, they staggered toward the surface.

At one point, Gerard started to put Galdar down, needing to catch his breath. “We have to keep going,” Julice said from behind them. “My binding spell is nothing like what my ancestress put on the original chest. Mine won’t hold that thing in for long.”

Gerard nodded, got a better hold on Galdar, and stumbled on.

After a while, it seemed that Gerard’s legs trembled too violently to hold him up much longer. At last, he realized it was the tunnel that was shaking, not just his legs. A particularly fierce spasm rent the ground, causing dirt and rocks to fall from the low ceiling. Gerard struggled to keep his footing. “What’s happening?” he gasped.

“The chaos wretch is shattering the spell,” Julice said.

“Hurry!” added Poko.

Gerard wanted to retort that that was precisely what he’d been doing already, but he didn’t have the breath for it. Instead, he put all his effort into propelling himself and Galdar forward, step by excruciating step. He would not leave a fallen comrade, one who had given so much, behind. In front of him, Shaddoc kept up his encouraging banter until Gerard didn’t know which one’s neck he wanted to wring more, Julice’s or the kender’s.

Dirt and rock continued to rain down. The tremors gained in intensity. The floor became cluttered with fallen debris, making footing treacherous. Time after time, Gerard stumbled, barely keeping his balance. Galdar sagged ever more heavily in his grasp, weighing him down on one side. Gerard’s muscles screamed in protest at the unaccustomed burden. Still, he struggled on.

“Hurry,” Julice urged behind him.

“We must hurry!” echoed Poko.

“Come on,” Shaddoc said in front of him. “We’re almost there. Well, not really ‘almost,’ but… well, keep going.”

Gerard longed to throttle them all. Instead, he staggered forward, climbing, always climbing. His legs trembled from the strain until he didn’t know which shook harder, the ground or him. He didn’t allow himself to think in terms of distance covered, or of distance remaining. He focused his whole being on each succeeding step. Once, the floor of the tunnel quaked so hard that he was thrown to his knees. Stones pelted him, some as large as his fist. Dust clogged the air. Somehow, he clambered back to his feet. Galdar lay in the new-fallen dirt that choked the tunnel.

“Help me,” Gerard mumbled, not sure to whom he was speaking. “Help me get him up.”

Unseen hands—either Julice’s or Poko’s, maybe both—heaved from behind, and Gerard once again got the minotaur up onto his shoulder. They staggered on. Galdar, too, took such faltering steps as he was able, reeling like a toddler just learning to walk.

Gerard noticed the fresh gore that had spattered the walls and that lay pooled on the floor. Rocks littered the way, blasted loose from the tunnel’s ceiling. Gerard hoped Julice wouldn’t realize that the gore was the extent of Marcus’s earthly remains or that the rubble represented the only tomb he would receive.

An interminable time later, Gerard became aware of Shaddoc shouting something faintly. Gerard forced himself to listen, compelling the sounds to form words. “We’re there, Gerard! We made it!” The words remained meaningless. He took another step and another. Shaddoc’s candle burned brighter. No, Gerard realized at length, the candle had almost burned out. The glare came from the mouth of the tunnel, just beyond the kender. But that, too, meant nothing. He concentrated on another step.

He didn’t know when he fell, wasn’t aware of falling. He simply tried to put his foot out in front of him, and found it lodged beneath his body. Galdar pressed down upon him. “Gerard,” Julice was calling. “Gerard, can you hear me? You have to get up! We have to get out of here!”

Up? Out of here? Out of where? Gerard tried to make sense of the words swirling around him, but sense eluded him. There was only the tunnel, extending forever before him. He strove again to move forward, unable to comprehend why his feet wouldn’t move. How could he keep taking steps if his legs wouldn’t move?

A particularly large stone dislodged from the ceiling, hitting Gerard in the head. The pain shot through him, stirring him from his lethargy. He was half lying on the tunnel floor, Galdar collapsed over him. They were rapidly being buried under falling debris. He attempted to get to his feet, but his legs crumpled. Instead, he crawled, pausing every foot or so forward to drag the minotaur with him. In that way, they inched through the opening of the tunnel.

No sooner had they cleared the mouth than the earth shook with renewed violence. The tunnel roof gave way, caving in and completely blocking the passage. Dirt and dust roiled from the opening. The mountain rumbled long and hard. The tunnel ceased to exist as the earth reclaimed it. Gerard was glad he was already on the ground, for he couldn’t have kept his balance. Around him, Shaddoc, Julice, and Poko collapsed as well.

At last, the quaking ceased, the earth apparently satisfied with what it had repossessed.

Gerard sat up with difficulty. He checked Galdar. To his relief, the minotaur was still breathing, though unconscious.

“What happened?” he managed to choke out at last.

“The box must have exploded,” Julice explained, gasping. “The chaos wretch burst the binding spell, and in doing so brought the mountain down on top of it. I—I think the wretch is trapped in there.”

“We did it,” Poko said wearily beside her.

Gerard was certain there was some cause for rejoicing in that development, but he didn’t feel very happy. He lay back down. He would sleep for a while, he thought dispiritedly; then he would try to make sense of all that had happened and what had been said.

Chapter 19

Gerard rolled over drowsily in bed, stirred by the smells of fresh hotcakes and tarbean tea. He smiled to himself, content with the thought of hotcakes for breakfast. He could eat a whole stack of them just as soon as he finished sleeping. He started to drift off again.

Abruptly, his eyes popped open. Bed? Hotcakes?

He lay in a huge featherbed under a down comforter, in a plain, unassuming room. Honey-colored wood walls matched the polished wood floor, and a cheery fire burned in a nearby grate. Outside the window, sheep bleated, pigs snorted, and a cock crowed.

Was it another of Julice’s illusions?

With effort, he propped himself up on his elbows. Every muscle in his body ached. If Julice were going to offer him the comfort of an illusion, he wished she would provide him with rested muscles to go with it.

“Hey, everybody!” Shaddoc’s voice rang out near Gerard’s left ear. “He’s up! He’s awake!” A moment later he added, “And I didn’t wake him.”

The door opened, admitting Julice and Poko. “This kender had better be telling the truth,” Julice said with mock severity. “He better not have awakened you.”

“He didn’t,” Gerard assured her.

“That’s it, everybody automatically disbelieve the kender,” Shaddoc said under his breath, pitching it just loud enough for everyone to hear. But he was in too high spirits to be dejected long. “Guess what, Gerard, I’ve got a new horse.”

“Uh, that’s nice,” Gerard said. Then to Julice he added, “Where am I? How’s Galdar?”

“I’m calling him Maisy II,” Shaddoc said.

Poko started to splutter in protest.

“Oh, what’s in a name?” Julice said to him. “Marcus’s horse by any name will still run as swift.”

“If I knew where the name lodged in the beast, I’d cut it out,” Poko muttered. “Save him from embarrassment.”

Julice elbowed him playfully.

“It was Marcus’s horse,” Shaddoc explained unnecessarily to Gerard, oblivious to Poko’s reaction. “Julice said I could have him, if I ‘honored’ Marcus’s memory. But this Maisy isn’t going to die on me like the other one did.” He turned to Julice. “Will he?”

She laughed. “No, Shaddoc, he won’t.” To Gerard she said, “You’re in a farmhouse not far from the tunnel—”

“Former tunnel,” Poko corrected. “It now has a mountain blocking anyone from using it.”

“—where they took us in and tended our injuries. Galdar’s were the worst, of course, but he’s mending. In time, he should be as good as new.”

Gerard tried to force himself upright. “I want to see him.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Julice said, pushing him gently back down on the bed. “Don’t worry, he’s getting good care. You need to preserve your strength. We’ll be returning soon to Palanthas.”

“He kept the chaos wretch from killing us, you know,” Gerard said, sinking wearily back into the sheets. “Without him, we’d all be dead.”

“And without you, he’d be dead,” Poko said. “That makes the two of you even.”

“Yes, well,” Gerard said, flustered by the praise. “We don’t leave our own behind. He’d have done the same.”

“I thought about calling him Marcus,” Shaddoc said. “The new horse, not Galdar. On account of… well, you know. But that didn’t seem like a good name for a horse.” He turned quickly to Julice. “But don’t worry. I intend to honor Marcus’s memory in all kinds of other imaginative ways.”

“I’m sure you will,” she said. “And I’m sure Marcus would approve of the horse’s new name. Wouldn’t he, Poko?” Her voice dripped innocence.

“Mm,” he said noncommittally.

The cottony oblivion of sleep tugged at Gerard, pulling him back down. He struggled against it. There were still questions to be asked. “What was that box you used?” he said to Poko.

“Something Granny Rome picked up,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “She always said it would be good for disposing of something we didn’t want, but she was always saying all kinds of crazy things. We didn’t pay the box or her any mind. After she died, the box just wound up at the cavern. Nobody ever opened it because it was obviously empty. And it was such an ugly box, too ugly to keep anything important in. But when I stole Julice’s lead box”—he glanced nervously at her, still uneasy with his theft—“it reminded me of Granny Rome’s old box. When Julice and Shaddoc got to the cavern, she had instructed him to look for her lead jewel chest. Of course, it had been destroyed, but Shaddoc looked anyway—”

“Just in case,” Shaddoc said.

“—and found Granny Rome’s lose-it box instead. Fortunately, it was still there.”

“And fortunately no one had ever opened it and looked into the mirror inside,” Julice added. “Otherwise they’d have ended up in the box instead of the chaos wretch. A lose-it box can only be used the one time.”

“Granny Rome always said to choose carefully what we wanted to keep in the box,” Poko said. “I never understood what she meant. I thought it was to be something of special value, not something we wanted to get rid of.”

The lure of sleep was proving irresistible. Gerard decided to nap a little more before having hotcakes. “What about you two?” he mumbled as unconsciousness took him. “What happens now?”

He wasn’t sure, but thought Poko said something about there never having been a tale of more joy than that of Julice and her Poko Rome. And then she kissed him.

Gerard slept.

A week and a half later, Galdar sat stiffly in the Council Hall of the Knights of Solamnia. Sir Aldric uth Gaynor droned on about the political unrest throughout Solamnia and about the responsibility the Knights had to preserve order and ensure justice. But Galdar’s attention wasn’t on the venerable knight; he was surreptitiously watching Gerard’s reaction to the speech halfway across the chamber. Every time Aldric used the words responsibility and justice, the sheriff of Solace grimaced as if he’d bitten into some unexpected rottenness. Oddly, Galdar, still recovering from his wounds, experienced a similar reaction.

The journey back from the Romes’ former hideout had been leisurely. Gerard kept it that way, insisting he wasn’t up to hard travel, although Galdar suspected his real concern was for Galdar’s own injuries. Ordinarily, Galdar would have bristled at such treatment, yet on that occasion he felt strangely grateful instead. The minotaur was too proud to limit the pace for his own sake, but he’d been struggling. It would be some time yet before his injuries fully healed.

Meanwhile, the fresh air and moderate exercise had done him good. Summer was at its peak. Even in the foothills of the mountains, the days were warm. Birds sang, flowers bloomed, and fields ripened, anticipating a favorable harvest. Julice and Poko talked together constantly, planning their wedding. Each predicted objections to the union from his or her family—Julice’s because she would be marrying into a family of professional thieves and Poko’s because he would be seen as abandoning his family trade for the concerns and responsibilities of ordinary folk. The pair had, therefore, contrived to be married in secret first, a small ceremony, before they announced the union to their families. Then they would hold a larger, second wedding for the sake of form.

Their enthusiasm had been infectious, and even Galdar found it hard not to be swept up by it. Yet his heart had been heavy, and he found his steps growing more and more reluctant the closer they got to Palanthas. He had tarried longer with each passing day, putting off the inevitable.

The thing about the inevitable, however, was that one way or another it eventually happened. So it was that Galdar found himself back in Palanthas, with business yet to be concluded before the council. That business Galdar found quite distasteful.

“In short,” Aldric, who it seemed never kept any speech short, was saying, “we need to, all of us,”—and he cast a glance at his audience, seeming in particular to take in Galdar and Gerard—“remain ever cognizant of the duties these conditions obligate us to undertake. It is morally imperative”—ah, Galdar thought, imperative, the emperor’s favorite word—“that we consider not what we as individuals want to see take place, but that we consider first and foremost the greater good of the whole.” He cleared his throat and, with a last glance at Galdar and Gerard, led the council from the room.

Galdar frowned, wondering what the knight had been saying exactly. Then he hurried from the Council Hall as well, for he had an appointment with Aldric in the latter’s personal chambers.

“I, ah, appreciate all you have done to protect Palanthas,” Aldric was saying a few minutes later. Galdar grinned, for he had indeed protected Palanthas from the chaos wretch, only to subject it to a kender. “And I know we made, ah, certain arrangements beforehand regarding a favorable outcome to this venture.”

Suddenly, Aldric’s intentions, there as well as in the Council Hall, became clear. “You’re not prepared to honor those arrangements, are you?” Galdar interrupted.

“Well, you see, the thing is…” Aldric sputtered to a halt. “No,” he said at last, quite simply. “No, I cannot.”

“So my petition on behalf of Baron Samuval will receive no preferential treatment from this body?” Galdar tried to imbue the question with all the scorn the head of the council’s duplicity warranted. Instead, he felt oddly relieved.

“No,” Aldric said, “it will not.”

“And Gerard’s request on behalf of Solace?”

“It will be given, ah, a weight commensurate with your own.”

So Galdar’s and Gerard’s petitions would receive equal consideration after all. In other words, the council was going to equivocate, finally doing nothing about either request.

Which was, Galdar understood, exactly as it should be.

Outside the private chamber, in the outer room, a door opened. “I must see Sir Aldric,” said a familiar voice to the knight on duty at the front desk. “Is he in?”

For a long moment, Galdar fixed Aldric with his gaze. For his part, Aldric’s eyes kept sliding off to the corners of the room. At last, Aldric nodded curtly and rose. Without a word, he headed for a side door.

“Ah, Sir Aldric, there you are,” said the voice from the other room. “Look, I know we had an agreement about the Lock matter, but I’ve reconsid—”

Gerard, halfway through the door, broke off abruptly, his mouth open as he realized he was speaking to Galdar rather than the head of the council. “You! What are you doing here?”

“The same as you, it would seem,” Galdar replied.

Gerard blushed and stammered. “Look, I, ah, don’t know what you and Sir Aldric were talking about—” Again, he broke off. “What were you talking about?” he asked at last, giving Galdar a suspicious stare.

“Come, let us walk together in the fresh air,” Galdar suggested. He scowled over his shoulder at the seat vacated by Aldric. “I would prefer to be in the company of honorable men, even such honest thieves as Poko Rome, rather than with the likes of those in here.”

Gerard looked perplexed but followed him out. Together, they strolled up the hill toward the palace, where they were treated to a panoramic view of the city. Galdar pointed down at the bay. “You see that galley? It’s a minotaur ship. Tomorrow I sail from Palanthas on it, returning for a time to my own kind.” To himself he added, “And good it will feel to be at sea again.”

“You’re leaving even though the matter we represent before the council has yet to be decided?”

Galdar looked Gerard full in the face. “It’s already been decided.”

Gerard’s face took on a suspicious expression. “And the outcome?”

“Neither of us will win,” Galdar said. Then, noting Gerard’s confusion, he added, “And yet, neither of us will lose, so all is well.”

Comprehension dawned on Gerard’s face. “Aldric made a bargain with you too, didn’t he?”

“He’s a sly fox, that one.” Galdar shrugged. “But can you blame him?”

“No,” Gerard said after a moment. “Much as I’d like to, I can’t.”

They were silent for a while, feeling the warm breeze that rippled across the city from the south, a breeze redolent with the scent of ripening grain somewhere beyond the city. The green stalks would already be tall and heavy with their burgeoning yield. Gerard turned to face into the breeze. He jerked his chin to indicate the way forward from where he stood. “There’s a road in that direction that will take me to Solanthus and beyond. It would require more time than the sea route by which I came, but I wouldn’t have to be on a ship for as long.” He studied Galdar then went on. “I’ve a sudden longing to be on that road.”

They each waited for the other to continue before realizing nothing more remained to be said. Finally, Gerard extended his hand—his left hand—toward Galdar. “Next time we meet, it may be on the field of battle,” he said. “But in the meantime, good journeying.”

Galdar studied the proffered hand for long moments then reached out and shook it. “If we meet in battle, know that I will have your head.” His lips pulled back in a grin that made Gerard wince. “Meanwhile, human, good journeying.” Without another word, Galdar turned and headed home.

Behind him, his onetime enemy and more recent companion strode off to do the same.

Gerard and Galdar…

Once dire enemies during the War of Souls, then friends, they find themselves on opposite sides again. This time, it’s before a council of the Knights of Solamnia.

Someone has stolen an ancient heirloom, a jewel chest belonging to one of the wealthiest families in Palanthas. But this chest holds death, not jewels, and Galdar and Gerard must recover it before the forces of darkness are unleashed.