Within its modest confines, he paused for a long moment, deep in thought. Then he shook himself and walked over to a hide-covered chest near his cot. He crouched, swept aside the covering, and lifted the ornate lid.
The Book of Dryjhna resided within.
Sha’ik had given it into his keeping.
To safeguard.
He closed the lid and locked it, then picked up the chest and made his way outside. He could hear his warriors breaking camp in the darkness beyond. ‘T’morol.’
‘Warchief.’
‘We ride to join Leoman of the Flails. The remaining clans are to guard Sha’ik, though I am confident she is not at risk-she may have need for them in the morning.’
T’morol’s dark eyes were fixed on Mathok, cold and impervious to surprise. ‘We are to ride from this battle, Warchief?’
‘To preserve the Holy Book, such flight may be a necessity, old friend. Come the dawn, we hover… on the very cusp.’
‘To gauge the wind.’
‘Yes, T’morol, to gauge the wind.’
The bearded warrior nodded. ‘The horses are being saddled. I will hasten the preparations.’
Heboric listened to the silence. Only his bones could feel the tingling hum of a sorcerous web spanning the entire oasis and its ruined city, the taut vibrations rising and falling as disparate forces began to move across it, then, with savage disregard, tore through it.
He stirred from the cot, groaning with the stab of force-healed wounds, and climbed shakily to his feet. The coals had died in their braziers. The gloom felt solid, reluctant to yield as he made his way to the doorway. Heboric bared his teeth. His taloned hands twitched.
Ghosts stalked the dead city. Even the gods felt close, drawn to witness all that was to come. Witness, or to seize the moment and act directly. A nudge here, a tug there, if only to appease their egos… if only to see what happens. These were the games he despised, source of his fiercest defiance all those years ago. The shape of his crime, if crime it was. And so they took my hands. Until another god gave them back.
He was, he realized, indifferent to Treach. A reluctant Destriant to the new god of war, despite the gifts. Nor had his desires changed. Otataral Island, and the giant of jade-that is what awaits me. The returning of power. Even as those last words tracked across his mind, he knew that a deceit rode among them. A secret he knew but to which he would fashion no shape. Not yet, perhaps not until he found himself standing in the wasteland, beneath the shadow of that crooked spire.
But first, I must meet a more immediate challenge-getting out of this camp alive.
He hesitated another moment at the doorway, reaching out into the darkness beyond with all his senses. Finding the path clear-his next twenty strides at least-he darted forward.
Rolling the acorn in his fingers one last time, he tucked it into a fold in his sash and eased snake-like from the crack.
‘Oh, Hood’s heartless hands…’
The song was a distant thunder trembling along his bones, and he didn’t like it. Worse yet, there were powers awakened in the oasis ahead that even he, a non-practitioner of sorcery, could feel like fire in his blood.
Kalam Mekhar checked his long-knives yet again, then resheathed them. The temptation was great to keep the otataral weapon out, and so deny any magic sent his way. But that goes both ways, doesn’t it?
He studied the way ahead. The starlight seemed strangely muted. He drew from memory as best he could, from what he had seen from his hiding place during the day. Palms, their boles spectral as they rose above tumbled mudbricks and cut stone. The remnants of corrals, pens and shepherds’ huts. Stretches of sandy ground littered with brittle fronds and husks. There were no new silhouettes awaiting him.
Kalam set forth.
He could see the angular lines of buildings ahead, all low to the ground, suggesting little more than stretches of mudbrick foundations from which canvas, wicker and rattan walls rose. Occupied residences, then.
Far off to Kalam’s right was the grey smudge of that strange forest of stone trees. He had considered making his approach through it, but there was something uncanny and unwelcoming about that place, and he suspected it was not as empty as it appeared.
Approaching what seemed to be a well-trod avenue between huts, he caught a flash of movement, darting from left to right across the aisle. Kalam dropped lower and froze. A second figure followed, then a third, fourth and fifth.
A hand. Now, who in this camp would organize their assassins into hands? He waited another half-dozen heartbeats, then set off. He came opposite the route the killers had taken and slipped into their wake. The five were moving at seven paces apart, two paces more than would a Claw. Damn, did Cotillion suspect? Is this what he wanted me to confirm?
These are Talons.
Seven or five, it made little difference to Kalam.
He came within sight of the trailing assassin. The figure bore magically invested items, making his form blurry, wavering. He was wearing dark grey, tight-fitting clothes, moccasined, gloved and hooded. Blackened daggers gleamed in his hands.
Not just patrolling, then, but hunting.
Kalam padded to within five paces of the man, then darted forward.
His right hand reached around to clamp hard across the man’s mouth and jaw, his left hand simultaneously closing on the head’s opposite side. A savage twist snapped the killer’s neck.
Vomit spurted against Kalam’s leather-sheathed palm, but he held on to his grip, guiding the corpse to the ground. Straddling the body, he released his grip, wiped his hand dry against the grey shirt, then moved on.
Two hundred heartbeats later and there were but two left. Their route had taken them, via a twisting, roundabout path, towards a district marked by the ruins of what had once been grand temples. They were drawn up at the edge of a broad concourse, awaiting their comrades, no doubt.
Kalam approached them as would the third hunter in the line. Neither was paying attention, their gazes fixed on a building on the other side of the concourse. At the last moment Kalam drew both long-knives and thrust them into the backs of the two assassins.
Soft grunts, and both men sank to the dusty flagstones. The blow to the leader of the Talon’s hand was instantly fatal, but Kalam had twisted the other thrust slightly to one side, and he now crouched down beside the dying man. ‘If your masters are listening,’ he murmured, ‘and they should be. Compliments of the Claw. See you soon…’
He tugged the two knives free, cleaned the blades and sheathed them.
The hunters’ target was, he assumed, within the ruined building that had been the sole focus of their attention. Well enough-Kalam had no friends in this damned camp.
He set out along the edge of the concourse.
At the mouth of another alley he found three corpses, all young girls. The blood and knife-wounds indicated they had put up a fierce fight, and two spattered trails led away, in the direction of the temple.
Kalam tracked them until he was certain that they led through the half-ruined structure’s gaping doorway, then he halted.
The bitter reek of sorcery wafted from the broad entrance. Damn, this place has been newly sanctified.
There was no sound from within. He edged forward until he came to one side of the doorway.
A body lay just inside, grey-swathed, fixed in a contortion of limbs, evincing that he had died beneath a wave of magic. Shadows were flowing in the darkness beyond.
Kalam drew his otataral long-knife, crept in through the doorway.
The shadowy wraiths flinched back.
The floor had collapsed long ago, leaving a vast pit. Five paces ahead, at the base of a rubble-strewn ramp, a young girl sat amidst the blood and entrails of three more corpses. She was streaked with gore, her eyes darkly luminous as she looked up at Kalam. ‘Do you remember the dark?’ she asked.