Snarling, Hierem turned, struck the daedra with his hand, and it collapsed. It wasn’t dead, but didn’t seem to be able to move, as if it suddenly weighed a few extra tons.
“Colin!” Letine shouted as something like lightning jagged from her hand and struck Hierem. It shivered about the minister and then seemed to reverse itself, knocking Letine to the floor.
All Colin could hear now was Hierem’s harsh breathing. The minister examined his wound and shrugged.
“So much for assassins,” he muttered. “I should ask why and who sent you, but it doesn’t matter, or won’t soon enough. What concerns me more is where the prince and his companion have got off too.”
“Oblivion take you, and your plans,” Letine gasped, trying to rise.
“Ah!” he sighed. “Arese! I am so disappointed in you-or should I say proud of you? You found out what I was up to, didn’t you? I thought someone had been in my things.”
“It’s the tower,” she said, pushing herself away from him with her hands, trying to get her legs to work. “It’s the key. I didn’t get it until Colin remembered one of the symbols meant ‘echo.’ The White-Gold Tower is an echo of the ur-tower, the first object of our reality the gods created. It’s one of the axes of creation.”
Hierem smiled. “Umbriel thinks it can emancipate him from Clavicus Vile, make him free of the prince forever. Possibly it would if I gave him the chance. But I see you know I’ve found another use for it.”
He reached into a pocket and produced a cylinder about an inch in diameter and six inches long. He gave it a little shake and it telescoped out to about three feet. It seemed to be a dull reddish black with glowing, scarlet daedric script all over it.
Some things matter, Colin told himself. They matter.
Hierem pointed the tube at Letine. Colin felt the moment slow down, understanding that when it was over the woman he’d kissed, touched, made love to, was going to be dead.
He got the knife, raised it to throw.
Hierem must have seen, because he swung the weapon toward him. Colin’s knife went over the minister’s shoulder and spanged into the wall.
“You’ve got more spirit than I imagined,” Hierem said.
Colin tried to keep his face neutral, but he knew the sorcerer must have seen something in his eyes, because he started to turn as the daedra came on him from behind. Hierem screamed then, as the great curved claws butchered him, but he didn’t scream for long.
Feeling a little lighter, Colin slowly came to his feet as the daedra savaged the minister’s body and then vanished. He walked toward Letine, who was coming unsteadily to her feet. He caught her by the shoulder and helped her stand.
“Thanks,” she said. She was shaking.
“What was he talking about?” Colin asked. “I thought you didn’t find out anything about the-”
The knife slipping in under his ribs cut him off. Letine stepped back, leaving him to stare at the hilt protruding from his torso.
“What?” he asked, dropping to his knees.
Her eyes were wide, her mouth formed an O, and she looked stricken. She reached for the hilt of the knife, as if she thought she could somehow undo what she had done.
“Colin…” she said. Then her expression grew harder.
“I’m sorry, Colin,” she said. “Ten years. Ten years!” Fury strained her voice to the breaking point. “I’m owed something. Hierem owes me. And I’m going to collect.” She picked up the rod Hierem had dropped and went through his clothing. Colin didn’t see if she took anything. He kept looking at the knife in him.
She paused at the doorway-he couldn’t tell if she was trying to decide whether to finish him off or wanted to tell him something.
She did neither-she simply left.
He realized he was having a hard time breathing. She had probably hit his lung.
Annaig watched as the poison began to flow from the tree-wine, knowing there was no going back at this point. Whether it worked or not, Umbriel was going to know, and probably sooner than later.
Which meant it was time to leave the kitchens. She picked up her bag and threw it across her shoulders, hoping she hadn’t left anything she needed, but not willing to stop and think about it. She wondered if Attrebus and Sul were on Umbriel yet, but that, too, would wait until she was someplace else.
She wished she knew where Glim had gone.
She was almost to the pantry when she heard the commotion, and when she entered the corridor, she saw Glim in the pantry shaking workers off and trying to reach the corridor, where Yeum and six cooks were lined up, fully armed.
“Xhuth,” she muttered. She fumbled in her bag until she found a glass vial and tossed it to shatter on the floor, just behind Yeum. The chef turned, but the yellow cloud had already engulfed her and the rest. As they collapsed, unconscious, Annaig held her breath and jumped over them.
“Glim,” she said, “what in the world are you doing?”
“You have to stop it, Annaig,” he said. He sounded urgent, but there wasn’t any anger in his voice. “Stop poisoning the trees.”
“Glim-there is no stopping it. It’s done. I’m sorry, I know how you feel-”
“You don’t know anything,” he said. “They just want to go home.”
“This isn’t making any sense to me,” she said. “This is it, Glim. We’re out of time. All we can do now is try to escape.”
“But-”
“We have to get out of here now! If you have something to tell me, tell me while we’re leaving.”
She got onto the lift that brought things to and from the Fringe Gyre and activated it, and they began to rise.
“The trees,” Glim said. “I understand them now. They changed me so I could help them.”
“Help them do what?”
“Go home.”
“And where is that?” she demanded.
“I don’t know-somewhere else. Not Tamriel. Isn’t that what we want?”
“What I want is for all of this to die, Glim.”
“I can feel it, too,” Fhena said. “Don’t you understand? If it kills the trees, it will kill all of us-including Glim.”
The lift reached the top.
“We’d better hide,” Annaig said. “They’ll be after us soon.”
“Aren’t you listening?”
But Annaig’s head was whirling. It was too much, wasn’t it? Could she really be expected to listen to all of this, put up with it?
“Just-one thing at a time,” she said.
Her locket was begging for attention.
In the gray, unnatural mist, Mazgar bent to her oars, feeling the longboat glide through the water. She felt Brenn huddled close behind her, crowded there by the five other soldiers stuffed into the small craft. As unnatural as the concealing mist was the silence. The lack of chatter and even of breathing left her feeling unsettled. Even the water of the great lake bore their passage without so much as a single lap of oar in water.
But that could work both ways. When the arrows started falling, she didn’t hear them either, or the screams of those they hit. Her first clue was when a man in the boat ahead of her clutched at a shaft in the side of his neck; only then did she notice the cloud of fletched death swooping down on them.
Fortunately, Ram and Dextra were ahead of her, hefting their shields to catch most of the darts coming their way.
But while all eyes were turned up, Mazgar felt something seize her oar. She jerked at it, and then the boat heaved up on one side.
The wormies were in the water.
Ahead, the mist was suddenly incandescent with bursts of orange and azure.
So much for surprise, she thought.
The boat started to flip, so she jumped clear into the water. To fight the panic being submerged always brought on, she concentrated instead on finding the bottom with her feet, as all around her the upper bodies of wormies appeared, water draining from the cavities in their faces and chests.