“So this is the company you keep in your exile,” Durrnak snarled at Vor, jerking his head in Zandar’s direction. Motes of fire still danced across his face and armor. “To what fiend has he sworn his pact?”
Kauth couldn’t hear Vor’s response, if he gave one. One of the other orcs came barreling into him, swinging his axe with clumsy ferocity. Kauth stumbled back before the sheer force of the charge, then found his feet and stepped to the side, wheeling his mace around to smash the orc’s shoulder. They both tottered, off-balance, for a moment in a strange sort of dance, then the orc crashed to the ground. Kauth stepped forward, lifting his weapon, but hesitated too long-the orc rolled away and scrambled to his feet.
“Kauth!” Sevren called. “This isn’t a tournament!”
Kill him, Kauth told himself. What’s wrong with you?
“Kill him!” Kelas yelled. “Cut his ugly throat.”
Haunderk gripped the too-large sword in a shaking hand. He knew the forms, he’d knocked Ledon’s sword away and beaten him to the ground. But he’d never dealt a final blow, never killed before.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kelas’s big hand curled around his, strengthened his grip on the hilt, and drove the blade down. Haunderk watched in terrified fascination as the point dimpled the skin, as blood welled up and the man’s eyes widened. He felt the blade pause at the cartilage in the throat, then pierce that too and press on to the bone.
I am Kauth Dennar, he reminded himself. An ugly man made for ugly work. No fear, no mercy.
He remembered the care he’d put into his eyes-hard as steel, pitiless eyes. He hadn’t seen a mirror, but he had a feeling those eyes had changed.
The orc circled him warily, then lunged in again and landed a solid blow on Kauth’s shoulder. Reflexively, Kauth brought his weapon up to smash the orc’s face and hurl him back.
Pitiless eyes.
The orc faced the final blow without any sign of fear, and Kauth delivered it swiftly. Then a flash of light drew his eye to Durrnak, who was still locked in battle with Vor. The orc leader’s sword glowed with silver-white fire, and it flared to brilliance as it struck another blow on Vor’s upper arm. Vor staggered backward.
Sevren and Zandar were locked in their own battles, Zandar forced to fight with a strange crystal dagger that gleamed purple in the darkness. Kauth drew a steadying breath and circled around Durrnak. Before the orc leader was aware of his presence, Kauth’s mace crashed into his skull.
Durrnak fell to his knees. He shook his head then looked up at Vor.
“I gave my life to Kalok Shash and the Ghaash’kala,” Durrnak said. “You rob them, not me.”
Vor stepped closer. “Forgive me, old friend.”
“No.”
With a mighty swing of Vor’s sword, Durrnak’s head rolled from his shoulders.
“What happened to Dania?” Auftane asked. He could see her, a crumpled heap on the floor.
Janik walked to her body and fell on his knees beside her. He rolled her onto her back. The front of her armor was covered with drying blood. Janik lifted the helmet from her head and smoothed her red hair back from her face.
In a daze, Auftane shuffled to stand behind Janik, blinking his burning eyes. His gaze fell on Dania’s sword, and he bent to lift it from the ground. He saw the magic in it, but what he felt was something entirely different-holy power pulsing through it. He handed it to Janik.
Janik was explaining Dania’s sacrifice, how she had taken the evil that possessed Maija into herself, imprisoned it with the magic of the silver torc she wore, then implored Janik to kill her and so destroy the possessing spirit. Auftane couldn’t wrench his eyes from the torc. It filled him with loathing.
Vor was staring at him, looking puzzled. Kauth remembered his eyes, pitiless eyes, and shot Vor a cruel grin. As if killing Durrnak were a victory.
Damn fool martyrs, he tried to tell himself. They deserve what they get.
CHAPTER 17
No point in trying to sleep any longer,” Sevren said. “Kauth, can you go on? You didn’t get much sleep.” “I’m ready if you are.”
“I’m fine. I thought you looked a little drowsy while we were fighting those orcs.”
Those orcs, Kauth thought. As easy as saying “those bugs” or “that gray render.” As though they were just monsters or vermin.
“I said I’m ready,” Kauth snapped.
Kauth is growing soft, he thought. I need a new face.
Vor led them on as the sky slowly brightened to its unearthly red, and farther on as it grew dark again. The going was hard. The ground in places was littered with rubble they had to scramble over, and in other places it broken by crevices-small ones that would swallow a foot and break an ankle, and large ones that forced them to climb up and around on the canyon walls.
Kauth was glad for the hard terrain. It meant that there was no chance for idle conversation. And it let him try to convince himself that he too was hard-hard as the canyon walls.
But even the canyon walls weren’t indestructible-something had cut through the earth to carve the canyon walls. Kauth had first thought of it as concentrated evil corroding the ground like acid, but for just a moment he imagined the holiness of Kalok Shash burning through the corrupted earth like a purifying fire, forming this barrier between the evil of the Demon Wastes and the rest of Khorvaire.
When they made camp that night, Sevren and Zandar laughed and joked. Their victory against that small party of Ghaash’kala had bolstered their confidence, and their healthy fear of the Demon Wastes had evaporated. Vor sat in silence. That was not too far off from his usual behavior, but Kauth suspected that his final exchange with Durrnak-which the others had not heard-was weighing on his mind.
Kauth lay back on the hard ground beside Vor, trying to lose himself in the churning clouds that still glowed dimly red. The gravel dug into his back-such a strange feeling, heightening his awareness of the body that was not his own. He focused on that feeling, mentally tracing the shape of his body and the lines of his face. Trying to keep his mind from replaying their battle against the Ghaash’kala.
Sevren and Zandar were celebrating, but to Kauth the battle had been a disaster. His hesitation to kill the first orc-which Sevren kindly attributed to drowsiness-galled him. It was one thing to grow attached to his traveling companions and to regret the mission that forced him to lead them into certain death. That was bad enough. But hesitating in battle against an enemy… It went against a lifetime of training and, worse, could well end up as a fatal mistake.
And then Durrnak’s death. Kauth hadn’t hesitated in striking Durrnak to protect Vor, but still it troubled his conscience.
Conscience? he wondered. When did I develop one of those?
Auftane gazed at the silver torc, the shape of a serpent coiled around Dania’s neck. It was the reason he was there, the purpose of his mission. He had lied his way into Janik’s confidence, sailed to Xen’drik and trekked into its depths, fought monsters and demons, and somehow grown to care about his companions-all so he could stand over Dania’s lifeless body, trying to figure out how to remove that torc.
Maija stirred, Janik rushed to her side, and Auftane found his chance. He yanked the torc from Dania’s neck and broke the thin crystal rod that would teleport him back to Fairhaven.
Sitting up, he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a shard of masonry. It had caught his eye when he stood in the ruin of Gaven’s cell in Dreadhold-a piece of Gaven’s wall, where he had written all his ravings about the Prophecy and his dreams. He rubbed his thumb over its rough surface and turned it over in his hand, not quite prepared to look at it.
Instead, he turned his head to look at Vor. The orc was lost in his own reverie, his eyes fixed on the ground.
“Why did you let her go, Vor?” he asked. “The pregnant woman?”