"Now, Ferret," Bock said, "won't you give up your poor taste in company and come work for me? I can always use a thief of your caliber."
Ferret shook his head. "I'm flattered, Guildmaster Bock, but somebody has to keep on eye on the Harpers."
Bock nodded. "Good lad. Give my greetings to your grandmother. And let me know if she's reconsidered my Proposal." Ferret promised he would, and then the three followed a thief who led them out of the chamber and down a twisting corridor.
“What 'proposal' to your grandmother was Bock talking about?" Man asked Ferret.
"A marriage proposal," he replied. "Bock's been asking her to marry him for the last twenty years."
"But she keeps saying no?" Mari asked.
"No," Ferret said with a sly expression. "She keeps saying maybe."
Bock's servant led them to a door at the end of a narrow corridor. "This is Tembris's room," she said as she opened the door.
They stepped into the small, dim chamber. The room was sparsely yet comfortably furnished. On a pallet in one corner sat a thin spider of a man dressed in a simple black tunic. His skin was wrinkled with age, his long hair iron gray. The old man turned his head when they entered the room. Where his eyes should have been there were only two deep, shadowed pits bordered by loose folds of skin. The old thief was blind.
"Ravendas did this to him," Bock's servant explained. "I'm telling you because he can't. Tembris is also mute. He has been since birth. That was why Ravendas hired him, because he wouldn't be able to talk after the job was done. He stole something for her, and you see how Ravendas rewarded him. She had his eyes cut out."
"But he can hear us?" Caledan asked, and the servant nodded. She left the three in the room with the old thief, shutting the door behind her.
"Greetings, old father," Caledan said, kneeling down to touch the thief s fine, wrinkled hand.
Tembris nodded, smiling placidly.
"We need your help against Lord Cutter," Caledan explained. Tembris clenched his jaw tightly. He was listening.
"Iriaebor is dying under her rule, Tembris. She's draining the life out of it. Even at midday the streets are filled with shadows and ghosts. The people have lost hope. You may be their last chance." Mari gave Caledan a look of surprise, but he concentrated on Tembris. "Will you help us?" The old thief reached out, searching until he found Caledan's hand, gripping it tightly. Tears glimmered beneath his ruined eyes. Tembris nodded.
"We need to know what it was you stole for Cutter," Caledan said gravely. Another nod, but followed by a shrug. Tembris gestured to his mouth. He could not tell them.
Mari knelt down. "Can you write, Tembris?" she asked. The old thief grinned then and gestured with his hand. A little, he indicated.
Mari pulled a blank sheet of parchment and a piece of charcoal from her pocket. She spread the paper before the old thief and placed the charcoal in his fingers. She guided his hand over the parchment. "Write for us, Tembris. Write what it was Lord Cutter had you steal for her."
The old thief nodded, biting his lip in concentration as he slowly moved the charcoal across the parchment. Caledan and Mari exchanged glances. Tembris seemed to grow confused after a minute. He scribbled fiercely at the first lines he had made, marking them out.
"It's all right, Tembris," Mari said, reaching for the charcoal, but the old thief held on to it tightly, shaking his head. He put the charcoal to the paper again and started over. He slowly moved the charcoal over the page, concentrating as he tried to summon the letters. Finally he finished and nodded, setting the charcoal down.
Caledan picked up the parchment. Scrawled across the Page were several letters. They seemed to spell a word, but it was not one he recognized. Malebdala. He showed it to Man and Ferret, but they shook their heads. Still, maybe it was a clue. Caledan carefully folded the parchment and put it in his pocket.
"Thank you, old father," he said, gripping the thief's hand. Tembris gestured to his eyes, to the air above his head, and then made a fist. The message was clear.
"We'll do our best to stop Cutter," Caledan told him. "I promise." The old thief nodded, then lay down on his pallet, weary. Caledan, Mari, and Ferret left the small chamber, shutting the door softly.
"Do you think the word he wrote means anything?" Mari asked the others.
"It has to," Caledan replied grimly. "It has to."
He was having the dream again.
He moaned, a low sound of fear deep in his throat, struggling against the tangled silken sheets of his bed. The chill night air coming in through the chamber's window did little to cool his fevered brow. It was the dream that had set him afire, as it always did. He could not escape it.
He was running through the labyrinth of sewers and drains beneath the city's dungeons, his feet splashing through foul, murky water. He was dripping with sweat, and his breath came in ragged gasps. He could hear the sound of booted feet echoing in the corridors above him, but he knew that the dungeon guards would not catch him. His fate lay deeper down, farther into darkness.
The mouth of the empty drainage pipe loomed before him. Shadow seemed to pour thickly from its lip, as if the pipe carried not water, but darkness itself. He knew what horror awaited him down there, but he could not resist its pull. He began crawling down the dry, dusty pipe. He couldn't breathe in the cramped space and could hear the staccato beat of his own heart bouncing off the crumbling tiles around him. The sound was driving him mad.
Suddenly the floor gave way beneath him. Even though he had known it would, it did not lessen the terror of it. He fell down into endless darkness for what seemed an eternity. Finally a bloody, crimson light sprang to life all around him. He lay on a polished floor of darkest jet in a vast, columned chamber. His body was twisted and broken, and he could see his own hot blood oozing out to pool on the dark floor.
Weakly, in great agony, he lifted his head and gazed up at the massive throne he knew would be there before him. The throne was constructed entirely of dark steel, its edges as sharp as knives. Upon it sat a figure lost entirely in shadow, save for its gleaming crimson eyes. The dreamer moaned. That bloodred gaze filled him with such horror he felt it would rend his mind.
The figure upon the cyclopean throne lifted a hand. Its eyes pulsed in time with the dreamer's fading heartbeat. Then the throned figure spoke.
Be made whole, thief!
The dreamer screamed in agony as searing fire coursed through his body. His back arched off the stone floor, his fingers clawing helplessly at the dark marble.
Then he woke.
The lord steward of Iriaebor, the man named Snake, sat up suddenly in bed, clamping his jaw shut against a scream. For a moment his close-set eyes were wide in utter fear. In them shone a look of purest madness. Then it was as if a veil descended over those eyes, making them once again as hard and dark as polished stones. The madness of the dream slipped away. There was something Snake had to do.
He rose from his bed and, clad in his green silken nightrobe, moved to an ornate wooden cabinet near the window. He could see the city outside far below the tower, dark in this hour of the night. He opened a drawer in the cabinet and took out a small ebony box. Inside was an opaque polished crystal as large as an egg. He spoke a single arcane word, and suddenly the crystal darkened. An image appeared within its heart.
The image showed a moonlit ridgetop above a windswept plain. In the center of the image stood a figure clad in heavy black robes.
"Report," Snake whispered harshly into the crystal.