Victor, clutching Thistle about the waist, stood off to one side of the portal. He tore the feather brooch from Thistle’s gown and slid it into a pocket of his robe. Alias stumbled to her feet and moved toward the girl, but she halted when she saw the dagger Victor pointed at Thistle’s throat.
“Where is the treasure?” the croamarkh demanded.
“What difference does it make, Victor?” Alias snapped. “You’re never getting away with it.”
Victor smiled slyly at the swordswoman. “No one knows where I am. No one saw us enter here. In a few hours they’ll have given up the search, and I can leave with Thistle. “You and Dragonbait, though, will have to remain within. Might as well get used to it.”
Alias glared at the nobleman, desiring vengeance more than ever. The man had tried to take her life only hours after proffering his love. If not for Mintassan, she and Dragonbait would both have been dead. Mintassan and Dragonbait had counseled her against killing the noble, and she had agreed to turn Victor over to Durgar. Now, however, seeing him threaten yet one more innocent, Alias wanted to tear the nobleman’s heart out. Yet she realized she had to remain cool.
“Why don’t you let Thistle go?” the swordswoman suggested. “You don’t need a hostage now that you’ve escaped.”
“But I need to keep you and your lizard friend in check,” he argued, pulling the girl closer to him.
Alias noted that at least now there was nothing in Thistle’s eyes but contempt for the nobleman. The girl maintained a dignified silence.
Dragonbait began moving deeper into the planar pocket.
“Where are you going?” Alias asked.
“I sense evil everywhere,” the paladin explained in Saurial, “but there is a stronger mass in this direction.”
“Don’t we want to stay away from anything like that?” Alias demanded.
“There is not much point to that now that we are in this place,” the paladin replied solemnly. He continued onward.
Alias followed after the saurial. Behind her she heard Victor ask again, “Where is the treasure?”
“Maybe there isn’t any, Victor,” Alias taunted. “Perhaps the Thalavar clan frittered it away over the past century.”
“No, Grandmother said no one had ever touched it,” Thistle replied. “It must be here.”
Alias rolled her eyes, wishing the girl had been savvy enough to agree, or at least say nothing. Then the swordswoman halted in her tracks. She had come upon an island in the sea of mists, a great glowing yellow sphere, larger than a man. Just beneath the surface of the sphere, misty shapes writhed and flowed. The swordswoman reached out and touched the sphere’s surface. It was as smooth as glass and warm to the touch.
“It’s a giant pearl,” Thistle whispered.
Dragonbait stepped out from behind the sphere. He spoke to Alias in Saurial. “At its core I sense great greed.”
“The piece of Verovan’s soul?” Alias guessed.
“Probably,” the paladin replied.
“What’s surrounding it?” the swordswoman asked.
Dragonbait pointed to the mist on the floor. “A pearl might actually be a good analogy,” he said. “The soul shard is like a piece of grit in an oyster. These creatures have coalesced around it to soothe the irritation it causes them,” Dragonbait replied.
Alias looked down at the mist. “You mean this mist stuff is living creatures?”
“Unformed manes,” the paladin whispered.
Alias swallowed hard. She would have leaped above the mist if there had been anywhere to leap to. “Manes? Are you sure?” she asked in Common.
Dragonbait gave her an aggrieved look. To remind her that he was an authority on evil would be to state the obvious.
“Manes?” Victor asked. “What’s a mane?”
“They’re what the lord of the Abyss sent to loot Verovan’s treasure,” Thistle explained.
“But what are they?” Victor growled.
“The form the dead take in the Abyss,” Alias explained. “Dragonbait says the mist is unformed manes.”
Victor whirled about, dragging Thistle with him, as if he could shake the mist away. Alias noted there was considerably more of it drifting about the nobleman than around herself.
“Why so uncomfortable, Victor? That’s what you’ll end up as when you die,” Alias declared. Dragonbait made some comments in Saurial, and the swordswoman chuckled. “Pardon me, Victor,” she said. “Dragonbait says you are not chaotic enough to end as a mane in the Abyss. More likely, you will be a lemure in Baator, though it is possible you will become a larva, since your selfishness is so great.”
“Why are the manes unformed?” Thistle asked in an anxious whisper.
Alias listened to Dragonbait’s reply in Saurial, then translated. “They have existed in this place for over a century with nothing but a bit of Verovan’s soul to gnaw on. So they’ve gone misty to conserve their energy. As soon as they sense there’s something here to devour, they’ll begin to take shape.”
“They’ll eat us?” Thistle asked with a whine in her voice, her sophistication finally crumbling beneath the weight of her fear.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Victor snapped. “She is making all this up. Trying to get me to leave so I can be captured. I want to know what’s happened to the treasure,” he demanded.
The saurial tapped his sword on the floor.
“Dragonbait says we’re standing on it,” Alias explained. Curiously, she knelt beside the saurial, where the mists were thinner, and examined the floor. “He’s right,” she replied. With her dagger she pried up a brick of solid gold and held it out for the others to see. “The floor’s paved with these, and there’s another layer beneath this one. I wonder how many layers.”
Victor motioned Alias and Dragonbait to move back. Dragging Thistle down with him, he knelt on the floor and investigated for himself. He pulled up a second brick of gold and stuffed it into a pocket of his robe. He smiled coldly as he stood up. Bits of mane mist clung to his back and swirled now as high as his hips, but the nobleman did not seem to notice.
Alias exchanged a look with the paladin. She was tempted to say nothing, but Thistle was still the nobleman’s hostage, and what endangered him endangered her.
“Victor, are you going to wait for those things to draw first blood before you come to your senses?” the swordswoman asked, pointing to the mists swirling about the nobleman. “Let Thistle open the portal so we can get out of here before we’re eaten alive.”
“I am not some foolish peasant you can deceive with your adventurer faerie tales,” Victor snapped. “It is just mist.” A strand of mist swirled about the nobleman’s head. Victor swatted at it irritably, then tried to back away from it. His eyes widened, and Alias saw fear in them. He seemed to be struggling to move.
It was Thistle who verbalized the problem. “My legs!” she shrieked. “Something’s holding on to my legs!”
Victor let out a scream as though he’d been hurt. He released Thistle and slashed with his dagger at the mists about his legs.
Alias seized the opportunity. She threw herself at Thistle and managed to jerk the girl away from both Victor and whatever was holding her. The swordswoman and noblewoman tumbled backward on the floor. They came to their feet, choking on the mist, but free of Dhostar.
Dragonbait moved forward to help the nobleman, but Victor straightened, thrusting out his dagger to warn him back.
The paladin snarled and stepped back. The mist still seemed to be evading him, so Alias pushed Thistle in his direction. Then she turned to deal with Victor.
The nobleman backed away, apparently having stabbed to death whatever had hindered his movement. There was blood on his hands and dagger, but some of it, Alias suspected, was the nobleman’s own. “Victor, we can’t stay here any longer. Give Thistle the key,” she ordered.