Oskin Yahlei frowned. “It is said that those worthy enough to take power are worthy enough to hold power. One holds power as one desires; this is a tenet of the - brotherhood.”
I leaned back and crossed my legs. He’d gone for it, at least I thought he had. “Yet do you know who you have aggrieved by the taking of this temple? Power is held by worth, yes indeed, but also by the sufferance of one’s peers. It is never good to seek their wrath.”
“… Whose temple?” Oskin Yahlei said. “And whose wrath?”
“The temple and the wrath are one and the same. And the bodies in the convenient storage area next door, the cemetery of the temple, that you are even now hoping to use to further your pitiful plans - they are the same as well. They belong to this same someone. They are a reserve of material for such as you, for such as you but not for you, yourself. You are,” I said, now really warming to my role, “you are a clever upstart, clever but not wise, not wise with the cunning of years and the knowledge of your place.” I tried to put a boom and the roll of dark thunder into my own voice. “You wish to know whose ground this is? Then know you for a certainty that this ground is mine.”
His jaw dropped, it actually dropped. “But you - but this -”
“Mine. And you use it by my sufferance, a commodity now growing increasingly scarce.” I shot a stare at him. Out of the corner of my vision something else caught my attention - the gold ring on the middle finger of his left hand. The black aura that clung to his form like a faint mist still seemed tied to the ring: in fact, now that I looked, Oskin Yahlei seemed to be wearing the aura in the same way he was wearing the ring. Wearing it, not generating it himself. The ring glinted in the firelight as I started to shift my gaze back away from it. Glinted - wait a minute. That wasn’t all. The ring was moving. The ring was twisting on Oskin Yahlei’s finger, by itself, turning slowly one way, then the other, trying to gradually slide its way up the finger toward its first joint, screwing itself deliberately off his hand.
Oskin Yahlei reached across with his other hand and absent-mindedly pushed the ring back down his finger. I raised an eyebrow, and then he suddenly realized where I’d been looking. He closed his good eye, the skin of his face wrinkling around it in a grimace of pain. “The ring,” he said.
“Yes, the ring,” I said. “Indeed, yes, the ring. Tell me now tales of this ring.”
“Why do you toy with me?” Oskin Yahlei said, his eye still closed. “Issue your judgment and let us be done with it.”
“I toy with you as is my pleasure. Tell me of this ring.”
He wet his lips. If he was operating out of his depth, like I’d figured, then by pretending to be one of the big boys I’d suspected I might be able to intimidate him into going belly-up. By now I was pretty sure he wasn’t really a god, he was just an imposture. He wasn’t a god, he was a necromancer, a human necromancer, how competent I didn’t know, but he sure wasn’t fast enough on his feet to be too hot an operator; he hadn’t run his game well enough before, and he was folding too easily now. He’d gotten by so far through bluster and flinging his power around when he knew there wasn’t anybody else there who could fight him, and by cowing people into doing his work for him. Well, now I’d managed to intimidate him. I’d badgered him onto the defensive, and as long as he stayed there it looked like I might get out of this thing in one piece. I might be okay, that is, as long as he didn’t force me to prove I was who I said I was.
“This ring,” Oskin Yahlei said slowly, “is mine.”
“You may wear the ring, but that does not make it yours. And do not tell me it was a birthday present, either; I have heard that one before.”
He paused again, thinking. I was thinking too, or I’d have kept the pressure on him. If he wasn’t a god, the big question at the moment was where he’d gotten the power of a god. It looked to me like the ring was the key. If somebody’s power was in their aura, and the black aura that seemed to be the manifestation of Oskin Yahlei’s godlike abilities was tied to the ring, then it was only logical to conclude the ring was the source of that power. The problem was, I didn’t know anything about the abilities of the ring itself, and only a little about the capabilities of Oskin Yahlei wearing it. Eventually I was going to have to try to take Oskin Yahlei out, me with only Gashanatantra’s crotchety sword and my own wits to fall back on, and I wanted to have a better idea of what I’d have to face.
“The ring passed to me only recently,” Oskin Yahlei said reluctantly. “It was part of a deal, and now it is mine. The ring fits only one wearer, its first wearer, and its power becomes the power of the owner. The power of the ring is now my power. I am the one to be reckoned with.”
“You are not the one to decide that,” I said. “You would match my power, my power, against the power of a ring? Not enough to be a fool, you must have lost your reason as well.”
“I meant no provocation. I seek your pardon.”
“We will see about that, too, when I have heard the truth. You mention a deal. There is more to this deal than you wish me to suspect. Such a ring is a greater reward than your cunning would deserve. It must have been intended for another, yes?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” At least I hoped he did; I still wasn’t sure I did. I was still pushing the hunch and the bluff, but as I did, something was starting to click. And then I thought I had it.
Oskin Yahlei mumbled something to himself. Then he said, “I cannot speak of it.”
“You mean you do not wish to speak of it. You do not wish to speak, because to speak you would have to tell of your treason, your double-cross against the one whose creature you are.”
He looked at me, wheels turning in his brain, and then suddenly his face went even whiter and his eye snapped open in shock and sweat burst out on his skin. “You,” he said. “It was you all along. You were the one I never saw.”
“The ring is not yours,” I said in my tone of ruin.
“The ring is mine. This is why I know you. That is why I have been here in Roosing Oolvaya, watching you, seeing your plans, learning your failures, assembling your doom.” Inside I’d gone cold. I was reacting to him, making things up as I went along, following his hints and his lead, but what I’d stumbled onto had the taste of truth. Even if it wasn’t true, at the moment it was enough that Oskin Yahlei believed it. This thing with the ring had been a real god’s plot in the first place, and Oskin Yahlei the necromancer had been working for him. He’d been working for him, but he hadn’t known the identity of his boss. Whatever the plan had been, the ring was the thing the god was supposed to get out of it, to help him increase his own power no doubt, except Oskin Yahlei had pulled a fast one and kept the ring for himself. That much I felt pretty sure of now. The leap I’d made was in saying that the god Yahlei had been working for was really Gashanatantra.
But it made sense. Yahlei had double-crossed Gash, and now Gash was using me as his surrogate to track down Yahlei. I was supposed to dispose of Oskin Yahlei, and then Gash would show up and pocket the ring, only I didn’t think it would be quite that simple. I couldn’t see someone like Gash giving up the chance for a real meaty revenge against an upstart menial like Yahlei. And I didn’t think the real Gash was going to be too pleased if he found out I’d gone impostor myself, and that I’d confounded the insult by figuring out what was going on.