Arnora Raskogr was a haughty bitch, but she paid well, and that was what mattered most to Ranja. So while she might find out the true nature of the secret work going on in the lodge by following the amazing three-symbiont man, she might also miss out on some important development here if she left her observation post. Besides, as a shifter, her senses were keener than a human’s, and symbionts offended her on a primal level. Simply put, the damned things were just wrong, and she couldn’t stand being around them-and that man had three of them fused to his body. How could he even survive with that many symbionts attached to him? No, maybe she’d be better off erring on the side of caution for a change, at least in this particular instance. So Ranja had decided to stay in her tree, sore though her muscles were, and watch a little longer-not that she had all that long to wait until someone else left the lodge.
The first thing Ranja noticed was that the woman also had a symbiont, just one, and hers was different from any the man possessed. The second thing she noticed was that the woman was definitely not in as good a mood as the whistling man had been. She rushed out of the lodge, sword in hand, and swept a fury-filled gaze around the area, obviously searching for something … or someone. The woman-whom Ranja thought of as Curly because of her hair-then shouted, “I know you’re out there! Show yourself!”
Ranja’s stomach muscles clenched, and she thought Curly had somehow detected her presence, maybe because of some power the symbiont had granted her. But then the woman shouted again.
“Elidyr! Where are you? Can you hear me, Uncle?”
Ranja relaxed a bit then. Obviously Curly was addressing the man who’d left the lodge earlier. And, unless Uncle was some kind of nickname, it seemed the two of them were related. This was getting more interesting all the time.
Curly waited for a moment, as if she actually expected Elidyr to answer her. Then she picked a direction, seemingly at random, and ran off in pursuit of the man. Unfortunately for her, the direction she chose wasn’t even close to the one her uncle had selected. She plunged into the forest surrounding the lodge and was quickly lost to sight.
Ranja was puzzled by the woman’s behavior. From the way the woman held her sword and carried herself, she was obviously a trained soldier. But she’d taken no time to determine in which direction Elidyr had gone; instead, she’d just started running. Ranja had heard that bonding with a symbiont adversely affected one’s mind. Perhaps Curly wasn’t thinking straight. Then again, how could anyone think clearly with some unnatural parasite attached to your flesh and feeding on your blood?
A group of soldiers burst out of the lodge’s entrance. An old man wearing armor shouted for the soldiers to find Elidyr and Lirra-no doubt Curly’s real name-and the men and women under his command raced off into the woods, some on foot, some on horseback. The old man didn’t join them, however. He was pale and looked weak, and he went back inside the lodge, leaning on a half-elf woman for support.
Once the area around the lodge was empty again, Ranja grinned. She was glad she’d resisted the urge to go after either Elidyr or Lirra. Now that she’d watched the little drama unfold outside the lodge, she thought she had a basic idea of what had been going on here-and what had gone wrong. It looked like Raskogr’s suspicions about this place and what Bergerron’s people were up to here were correct.
She’d learned enough to return to Raskogr’s keep and make her report to the warlord, but Ranja didn’t depart right away. She’d seen enough to earn her admittedly high fee, but if she could learn even more about what had happened here today, she might be able to squeeze even more silver pieces out of Raskogr. Besides, Ranja’s curiosity was piqued now, and if there was one thing the shifter loved more than silver, it was adventure, and she sensed that a goodly amount might be found in sticking with this job a little longer. So she flipped a mental coin to see which one she would follow-Elidyr or Lirra-and in the end the curly-headed woman won.
Grinning, Ranja slipped down from her tree perch with a silent grace and started running noiselessly through the forest.
Vaddon walked down a long hallway, flanked by a pair of warforged guards wearing long swords belted at their waists. One guard was short and squat, with huge, blocky hands, while the other was tall and lean with long, sturdy legs and metal toes that tapered to needle-sharp spikes. Vaddon tried not to resent the guards’ presence. All Bergerron’s visitors were accompanied by guards within the warlord’s keep, friends and allies included, regardless of rank and standing. The fact that Vaddon had only two guards shepherding him was a testament to how much Bergerron liked and trusted him. Vaddon wondered if the warlord would feel the same after today’s visit.
It was the evening after the failed experiment. Vaddon had left the lodge on horseback and ridden to the town of Geirrid where he’d caught the lightning rail. Though there wasn’t an official stop near Bergerron’s keep, Vaddon’s rank-along with a sizeable gratuity-had convinced the railmaster to drop him off not far from the keep, and the general hiked the rest of the way. He’d made good time, but he was tired physically as well as emotionally, and his nerves were on edge.
The guards led him to a chamber at the end of the hallway and halted before a large black oak door. The lean guard knocked and Bergerron immediately called out for them to enter. The lean warforged opened the door and stepped inside, and then the squat guard executed a half bow and gestured for Vaddon to go in, as if he were a butler ushering a guest into his master’s den. Vaddon entered the room without bothering to acknowledge the guard’s gesture, which may or may not have been a clumsy attempt at humor. It was sometimes hard to tell with warforged, especially given their complete lack of facial expression. Veit Bergerron preferred to employ warforged as his personal guards, for to him they seemed the ultimate soldiers, created for the sole purpose of engaging in battle and possessing no human weaknesses: no need for food, drink, rest, or sleep. Vaddon had fought both alongside and against warforged during the Last War, and on the whole, if he had to work with nonliving beings, he preferred zombies. At least they had been human once. To him, warforged were nothing more than animated weapons, like swords that had magically sprouted arms and legs and which could fight on their own, and they should be treated as such.
Still, Bergerron’s fondness for warforged had made him more amenable to backing the Outguard and the symbiont project, something Vaddon had been grateful for at the time. Now he wished the warlord had withheld his support. If he had, the events of yesterday wouldn’t have occurred. His brother would still be sane, and his daughter would still be uncorrupted.
You can’t blame Bergerron, Vaddon told himself. It was your project. You were in command. Whatever went wrong was your responsibility, no one else’s.
This was Bergerron’s library, and the warlord sat in a luxuriously soft leather chair before a fireplace, an open book resting on his lap, a glass of red wine in one hand. The chair and a small mahogany table next to it were the only furnishings in the room. Shelves filled with books lined every inch of the walls, leaving the doorway as the only open space. This truly was the warlord’s library, not meant for anyone else to use but him.
Bergerron didn’t look up as the lean warforged guard approached with Vaddon in tow. This wasn’t necessarily a bad sign, Vaddon knew. Bergerron had the ability to focus single-mindedly on a task, concentrating so deeply that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings. Vaddon hadn’t seen Bergerron for months, not since the symbiont project began, but the warlord hadn’t changed all that much. He’d put on a few pounds, but given his love of good food and drink, that was hardly a surprise. Despite the extra weight, and the fact that the man was in his mid-sixties, Bergerron still resembled the strong soldier he once was. He was broad-shouldered, strong-jawed, and though his shoulder-length hair was silver, his full beard still held a goodly amount of black. Though Bergerron was a powerful, wealthy man, he dressed simply, as was the fashion for Karrnath’s warlords, who wished to prove that despite their exalted rank, they were still in touch with the common soldiers they had once been.