Urtho flung a plate across the room; it shattered against the wall but did nothing to help relieve his feelings. “Gods!” he cried. The cadre of hertasi and human messengers ignored him. There were no messenger-birds in camp anymore; Urtho had not wanted to leave these smallest and most helpless of his creatures behind even by accident. They had been the first through the Gate, to go with k’Leshya and the gryphons.
Urtho paced the side of the map table, issuing orders as fast as hertasi and humans could take them, doing his best not to seize handfuls of hair and start yanking them out by the roots. What in the name of all the gods had happened? How had Ma’ar’s men gotten past the defensive line? Why hadn’t anyone noticed until they’d already taken the Pass of Korbast and had set up a Gate to bring more troops in?
Never mind, it’s happened, now deal with it! This was his worst nightmare come true; the Tower still full of things he hadn’t gotten out yet, the traps not yet set, and the enemy pouring down into the plain, behind his own lines. Already the Sixth and the Third had been cut off from the rest and from retreat; they would have to fend for themselves. Judeth was bringing the Fifth in, but no one knew for certain about the rest. They have mages, they can Gate here. They can even Gate straight to their evacuation sites. They’ll be all right. I have to believe that.
He sent the last of his messengers off on their errands with orders to send the Healers and other support personnel to their Gates, and forced himself to stop pacing. He clutched the edge of the table and stared down at it, as if staring at it fiercely enough would make the situation reverse itself.
“Sir!” A hertasi scrambled in the door, all out of breath. “The mage Conn Levas is here from the Sixth!”
He started and turned toward the door, just as Conn Levas pushed his way past the lizard. He looked as if he had personally fought his way through all of Ma’ar’s troopers to reach the Tower; his robes were filthy, torn, and bloodstained, his hair matted down to his head with sweat.
“Go.” Urtho told the breathless hertasi. “Find me Skan and bring him here. I’ll need him in a moment.”
The hertasi let the door swing shut behind Conn Levas as Urtho took three steps toward the mercenary mage. “What happened?” he cried, eager only to hear what had gone wrong.
Too late, he saw Conn’s hand move, saw an empty bag in it, and felt the stinging of a hundred thousand tiny needles in his face and hands, in every bit of flesh left exposed by his clothing. He brushed at his face frantically, while Conn Levas laughed.
“That won’t help,” the mercenary said very softly as Urtho tried to cry out for help and realized that he couldn’t do more than whisper. “Miranda thorns, Urtho. Very potent. Quite impossible to magic away. A little invention of my new employer; I believe you might have seen their effects, once or twice. Mages never do consider that someone might attack them physically.”
Urtho’s knees crumpled beneath him; he managed to stagger back enough that he landed in the chair behind him before his legs gave out altogether. His entire body tingled, burned, twitched uncontrollably. His lips moved, but nothing emerged. Strange swirls of light and color invaded his vision; the furniture stretched and warped. Conn’s head floated about a foot above his body as the mercenary mage approached, and the head looked down at him malevolently.
“It’s a poison, of course,” the head said, each word emerging from his mouth in flowing script, and encapsulated inside a brightly-colored bubble. “You should enjoy the effects. I knew that all the defenses of the Tower are keyed to you, of course, as well as the node beneath it, and I knew that if I slew you outright, I would die before I had a chance to escape. I expect Shaiknam knew that, too, and was counting on not needing to fulfill his part of the bargain. But you’ll live long enough for me to get clear, and he’ll just have to keep his word, hmm?”
Urtho’s chest nearly burst with the need to howl in anguish, but all that he could manage was a pathetic whimper. Conn Levas’ head floated around the room for a moment, then suddenly produced a new body as the old one faded away. A large, furry body, of an eye-searing pink. Urtho shuddered as the fur turned into spines, like those of a hedgehog. Then Conn shook his body, and all those spines shot forward, piercing Urtho’s limbs with excruciating pain. The furniture grew tentacles, and the walls opened up into pulsing starscapes.
“I see you can’t answer,” the mercenary said silkily. “No matter.”
He turned to go-that is, his head turned. His body remained the way it had been, and began walking backward toward the door. With every step he took, bleeding wounds appeared in the floor, and it felt to Urtho as if the wounds were to his flesh. He whimpered again, and Conn’s head turned back.
“Oh, one more thing,” the mage said casually. “In case you might have worried about that little misborn gryphon you named so charmingly. Kechara. I offered her a nice bit of rabbit and she followed me out to the Emperor’s new lines. I decided to make certain that Shaiknam would keep his word, by ensuring that the Emperor knows my name, and what he owes to me. She’s my gift to Ma’ar to pave the way for my new rank and position. I expect to be a Duke at the very least.”
Kechara! Oh, GODS! His anguish translated into more whimpers, and streams of blood began to flow from his open hands. Conn laughed and turned to open the door, which warped and deformed as he touched it, becoming a blood clot lodged in an open wound. The walls throbbed in time with Conn’s laughter.
But the door opened before Conn, and there was someone out there-
Skan hurried after the frantic hertasi, talons clicking on the stone of the floor. “Aubri missing, the Sixth gone silent, why did you leave that lying bastard alone with Urtho?” Vikteren scolded the little lizard, as they ran toward the Strategy Room.
“He told me to get you!” the hertasi wailed, caught in a dilemma between what he had been ordered to do and what Vikteren thought he should have done. “I couldn’t get you and stay there at the same time!”
“Leave it, Vikteren,” Skan snapped. “It’s done-let’s just hope that-“
The young mage sprinted for the door and shoved it open in the surprised face of Conn Levas. The mercenary mage recovered quickly from his surprise, and backed up a pace when Skan loomed up behind Vikteren.
From his greater height, Skan could see right past Conn, and spotted Urtho, clearly in terrible pain, collapsed into a chair in the corner. Conn followed his glance, paled, and began babbling.
“Urtho-“ he said. “He said he wasn’t feeling well. The strain-“
But Skan’s hearing was better than a human’s, and the word Urtho was forcing through spittle-frothed lips was “-poison-“
Skan’s vision clouded with the red of rage; he saw Conn’s hands move, and he didn’t hesitate. The Black Gryphon lashed out with an open talon, and caught the mage across the throat, tearing it out in a spray of blood. His second blow, the backhanded return of the talon-strike, flung the mercenary’s body across the room to slam against the table with the wet crack of a snapping spine.
There the body of Conn Levas lay atop the tiny space of land that was still theirs, blood pumping down onto the map, flooding the representation of the Tower and the plain around it with sticky scarlet.
Vikteren had headed straight for Urtho, as Skan stalked in through the doorway with every feather and hair erect in battle-anger. “Poison,” the young mage said shortly, his face flushed and his voice tight with grief. “Miranda-thorns, very rare, no antidote. The bastard probably had enough in his pockets to hit us both, too; that’s what he was reaching for when you got him.”