“I’ll tie him in a sack and let the younglings beat him for a tenday.”
“You will not,” said Gleed. “Whoever this Kaad is, he has my thanks. He saved Hweilan’s life. And you are in my debt. I saved yours.”
Hweilan nodded. “Had Kaad not left the gunhin, I would be dead. As would you. Like it or not, Maaqua, you owe him. You owe him his freedom.”
Maaqua growled and spat into the fire.
“Elret says you were spying on Highwatch,” said Hweilan. “I take it you found something?”
Maaqua glared at her disciple. “Rather free with your tongue, eh?”
Elret blinked. “I-”
“Had she not told Hweilan,” said Gleed, “you’d now be dead. Or worse. You seem to owe a great many debts, Maaqua, and I know how you hate that.”
“Die in a dung heap, old toad!” said Maaqua. But then her eyes half-rolled in her head and she swayed.
Gleed had to catch the queen to keep her from falling into the fire. “I told you not to excite yourself, twisted old weed.”
Maaqua leaned against Gleed, but her eyes opened again. Hweilan saw something there that surprised her. Maaqua was afraid.
“You saw Jagun Ghen, didn’t you?” said Hweilan.
“Do not say his name!” said Maaqua, again sounding like nothing so much as a very tired, very old woman. “Not even here. Do not say it.”
The other hobgoblins, seeing their revered queen so stricken, looked like they might bolt at any moment. Buureg made the sign to ward off evil, and both of Elret’s hands tightened around her staff. The young disciple Kiir closed her eyes and swallowed hard.
“You’ve brought doom to my people, girl,” said Maaqua. “And maybe to the world.”
They sat in silence a moment, the hobgoblins staring into the fire.
“You captured me, as I remember,” said Hweilan. “I didn’t exactly come knocking on your door.”
“Do you know what he is, girl?” said Maaqua. “What he’ll do? You think he’s content just to bring more of his ‘brothers’ into Faerun? They are like worms feeding off the scraps of a dragon. If Ja-if he has his way, he could become a god. Our world is not like the others. His power is growing so fast. He’s gathering what he needs now. Time is running out. And there’s no one to oppose him.”
Hweilan said, “There’s me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Vazhad could not sleep. He knew he should. If he survived until the morning, he planned to make his escape, and he would need all his strength. His master’s baazuled were more active at night, and he did not want to execute his plan in the darkness. Vazhad intended to leave by Highwatch’s upper paths, the way he and Jatara had once gone to try to capture the High Warden’s granddaughter. Had that only been months ago? It seemed a lifetime.
Jatara … dead. Kadrigul … dead. Vazhad was the last of Argalath’s chosen. He had lived long enough to see his master become something unspeakable. And Vazhad had stayed too long, endangering not only his life but his soul. Time to be gone, before it was too late.
Once he got into the mountains, he could turn south and emerge well beyond Nar-sek Qu’istrade into the steppe. He had enough food in his pack to last perhaps three days. In the grasslands, he could seek out other Nar and hope that they didn’t know him from Highwatch. Replenish his supplies, steal a horse, then head east. Vazhad intended to keep going until he saw the next ocean. Perhaps then he would be sufficiently far away from what Argalath had become.
“Enough,” he said to himself. He would leave now. It would take some time to make his way carefully to the upper paths anyway. If anyone stopped him, he would say-truthfully-that dawn was the best time to seek a deer in the lower hills.
Vazhad stuffed a good blanket and empty waterskin on top of the food in his pack. He already had his blades and a small axe strapped to his belt. His sword, a bow, and a quiver full of arrows lay on his pallet. If he were caught on the way out, the bow and arrows he could explain. Going hunting for meat. It was no secret that Highwatch’s larders were almost empty. The knives were for dressing game. The sword he would have a harder time explaining. He reached for it anyway.
Something slammed into his door. Not a knock. Just one strike, hard enough that the door rattled in its frame.
“Who is there?” Vazhad said in Nar.
“Vazhad.” The slow, contemptuous tone of one of the baazuled. Unless they were speaking to Jagun Ghen, every word from their mouths dripped insolence. “You are summoned.”
Vazhad looked down at the weapons on his pallet. “Who summons me?”
“The master wants you.”
His breath caught in his throat, and he could feel his pulse in his temples. Had he waited too long? Vazhad looked out the window. There was not even a hint of light in the eastern sky. He loosened the string on the top of his shirt, reached inside, and pulled out the antler talisman he had hung on a leather cord around his neck. He gripped it and offered a prayer.
The baazuled slammed a fist into the door again.
“I’m coming,” said Vazhad. He hid the talisman inside his left sleeve, threw a blanket over the weapons on his pallet, and went to the door.
The baazuled was one of the Damarans of Highwatch who had survived the massacre only to find a worse fate. Blood, both old and new, covered the entire front of his body, and he reeked worse than a charnel ditch. Only his eyes showed any kind of spirit. They were mostly as black as the sky outside, but a red fire burned deep inside them.
Much to Vazhad’s surprise, the baazuled led him higher into the fortress, rather than into the deep tunnels or the desecrated temple. Vazhad actually allowed himself to hope he might survive the day after all. They went into the upper chambers, many of which had been cut into the mountain itself, and finally emerged onto a large terrace that had been built out of the mountain’s side. Vazhad remembered one of the ladies of Highwatch had once had a garden here. There were no flowers, but it was filled with trees and vines that stayed green even in deepest winter and sometimes even bore tiny red berries.
As Vazhad stepped through the door and into the garden, all hope he’d had of surviving the day disappeared.
A fire burned in an urn by the door, and by its light Vazhad saw that all the trees had been uprooted, the bushes ripped out or burned, and the vines torn from the walls. All that remained was the stone parapet wall and bare soil. More baazuled-inhabiting both living and dead bodies-stood around the yard. In the center of the garden, Jagun Ghen and Kathkur, both bare from the waist up, were making a large pact circle in blood. It was at least a dozen feet across, the interior filled with arcane symbols. The stench wafted over Vazhad. So much blood. From where …?
And then he saw the horse. One of his favorite mares. Her throat had been sliced open, the blood gathered in a wide brass basin. Her magnificent tail that Vazhad had once spent an entire morning twisting in intricate braids had been chopped off, and the two monsters were using it as a brush to paint the pact circle.
Jagun Ghen looked up and saw Vazhad staring at his dead horse.
“Ah, my friend,” he said. “I am so happy you are here. Your time has come, and I thought Windrunner’s blood would be most suited for the occasion.”
Vazhad tore his gaze away from the horse. He tried to speak, but his voice broke. He swallowed hard and tried again. “My … time?”
“You have served me well all these years. Your reward has come at last. Immortality.”
The eladrin stood and smiled lazily at Vazhad. He held a bloody knife in one hand, and Vazhad knew that he had been the one who killed Windrunner. At least he had used the knife and struck true. She hadn’t suffered but a few moments at most.
Then the meaning of Jagun Ghen’s words finally struck. “Immor-?” He couldn’t say the word, because he knew what kind of immortality Jagun Ghen meant. He looked around, blind panic setting in, searching for a way out.