“Oh, but he did—believe me.” Grince waited until the ensuing uproar had died down; then, in a grim voice, he described how, some ten months ago, a large force made up partly from the Garrison and partly from Nexian conscripts had gone north to attack the new city the Phaerie had built. Parric had denounced the whole affair as pure insanity and refused, at first, to waste the lives of his troops. Eventually, however, in the face of Vannor’s determination, he had been persuaded to lead the Nexian forces—not a single one of whom had returned. It was assumed that he, too, had died there. The Phaerie, however, came back to Nexis with a vengeance, indulging in a frenzy of destruction and causing almost as much devastation as the earthquake that had happened some months before.
“It was a bad time,” Grince told the horrified Mage. “A lot of folk were killed, a great many more were stolen away. The Phaerie took Lord Vannor, too—snatched him right out of his house. I would have said good riddance, but then that evil bastard Lord Pendral took over in his stead!” His voice turned low and hard, and his face contorted with hatred. “Pendral keeps a tight grip on the city now. He has to—folk would see him not only deposed but dead besides, given half a chance.”
The Mage was utterly devastated by his words. This is my fault, she thought.—It was my failure to master the Sword that unleashed the bloody Phaerie in the first place.
“Nonsense!” Shia snorted. “Did you compel that stupid human to make war on the Phaerie? Did you force them to attack the city?”
“You have a point,” Aurian told her. “Nonetheless, I’m not entirely blameless.” She clenched her fists. Maybe Parric was captured, she thought.—He’s a tough old bugger—I refuse to believe he could be dead. Not without some proof. “Listen, Grince,” she added aloud, directing her query toward the thief. “Where exactly is this Phaerie city?”
The thief shrugged. “How in perdition should I know? I’ve never been out of Nexis in my life.”
Forral, who had been very quiet until Grince had mentioned Vannor’s attack on the Phaerie, nudged the Mage. “Isn’t there anyone left in this benighted city that we know and trust? Preferably someone with a small amount of intelligence at least.”
Aurian closed her eyes and thought hard, trying to remember the faces of former friends and companions. So many were dead now, or vanished. Some must even be growing quite old. “I’ve got it!” she all but shouted. “Grince, have you ever heard of an old soldier called Hargorn? I’d guess he must have retired from active service now.”
Grince’s face split in a grin. “Has he ever!” he said. “You’ll never guess wha—”
“Danger!” Shia and Khanu roared the warning almost simultaneously. “Enemies attack!”
Then the air was filled with a fierce, deep-throated baying, and two massive hounds burst into the chamber, followed by a horde of men with swords.—At the first hint of a threat, Forral’s old instincts took over. As his sword left its scabbard, he was faintly surprised to hear the sound of Aurian clearing steel, so quickly that the ring of the two blades being drawn might have come from a single sword. Beyond them, there was a flare of light as Finbarr ignited a searing fireball and held it at the ready. Grince scrambled away behind the Mages and was cowering in the farthest corner of the alcove, a pathetically inadequate knife in one clenched fist, his face contorted with terror. “Don’t let them get me,” he whimpered. “Lady, I beg you—Pendral will cut off my hands.”
Forral felt faintly stung that the thief had turned to Aurian for succor, rather than himself. Who was supposed to be the warrior here, anyway?
“They won’t get you, Grince,” Aurian reassured him. “We won’t let them.”
The guards, expecting to find only one small, fairly defenseless thief, took one look at what appeared to be three armed and angry Mages, and stopped dead—unlike the hounds, who, with their quarry in sight, kept right on charging!
Shia launched herself at the foremost hound, knocking it off its feet with the force of her spring. The two massive creatures rolled right across the chamber, toppling bookcases and scattering volumes in a snarl of claws and fangs and flying fur; then Shia had the dog cornered, darting from side to side to contain the clamoring creature as it tried repeatedly to charge its way past her and make its escape. The other hound, finding itself face-to-face with the snarling Khanu, turned tail and fled, bowling two guards over in the process, and dragging its handler behind it for several yards before the man could manage to get his hand unwrapped from the leash.
The leader of the guards stepped forward, pale and apprehensive. Incredibly, Forral actually recognized him as Rasvald, who had come to the Garrison as a raw green recruit—and had later been thrown out again because, as Parric had so succinctly put it, “that one will never make a soldier as long as he’s got a hole in his arse.” Clearly, Rasvald had finally found a way to prove the Cavalrymaster wrong.
“S-Sirs and Lady,” stammered the quaking commander, “I apologize for trespassing, but our orders come from Pendral himself, High Lord of the City of Nexis.”
Forral was impressed by the way in which the fellow had managed to apologize while putting the blame on someone else at the same time—and then he remembered that Parric had also referred to Rasvald as “that two-faced weaselly little bastard.”
The two-faced weaselly little bastard was still speaking. “Your Honors probably weren’t aware that you’d caught a criminal nosing around in your—er—home, but you don’t need to trouble yourselves, we’ll take care of him. Believe me, once Lord Pendral has finished with the little vermin, he won’t be in any condition to steal again. ...” Catching Aurian’s expression, which had turned at his last words from frosty to positively glacial, Rasvald faltered for a moment, then rallied again. “I beg you, Lady, don’t be angry with us. We’re only following orders—doing our job, as you might say. We’ll leave here and never come back, I swear it. All we want is the thief ...”
“Well, you’re not having him,” said Aurian, very clearly and distinctly, “so I suggest you take your men out of here, before somebody gets hurt.”
“Lady, please—I don’t think you understand,” the commander protested. “If I go back without the thief, Lord Pendral will kill me.”
Aurian didn’t even blink. “Him or me,” she said evenly. Take your pick.”
Rasvald, not the tallest of men, looked up into the face of the Magewoman. Her stony expression was bleak and forbidding, and there was death in the unyielding flint of her cold grey stare. All at once, the prospect of Lord Pendral’s wrath seemed far less terrifying than it had been a short time ago.—Besides, someone must survive to bring back the news that the Mage-folk had returned to Nexis. He only hoped the High Lord would be sufficiently grateful for the warning to spare his Commander’s life.
“Lady, please forgive me,” he found himself saying, almost before he was aware of his own decision. “I must have made a mistake. I see now that your friend couldn’t possibly be the man we’re looking for. By your leave, I’ll take my troops back up above now, so we can get on with searching the city.” From behind him, he was positive he heard a collective sigh of relief from his men.
“Why, of course, Commander—by all means. We won’t detain you.”
Rasvald shivered. Somehow, the Magewoman’s haughty graciousness was even more unnerving than her outright hostility. Afraid to say more, lest he dig himself deeper into trouble, he sketched a bow and ushered his men from the chamber—not, however, without one last, venomous glance for the thief, who paused in the act of putting his knife away to make an obscene gesture at Pendral’s soldiers behind the Mages’ back.
I’ll get you, you cocky little bastard—one way or another, Rasvald thought.—You can’t hide behind your Magefolk friends forever. It’s not over yet.—Shia stepped back to permit the kennelman to leash his savage hound, and the invaders crowded their way out of the chamber with indecorous haste. The Mage was glad to see them go without any further trouble—but her relief was short-lived.