Jhesrhi brushed a stray strand of blonde hair away from her golden eyes. “I don’t think so. It seems to me that he has a powerful ward in place to keep anyone from using divination against him.” She glanced around at her fellow mages. “Do you agree?”
All speaking more or less at the same time, they indicated that they did.
“So what does that mean?” Gaedynn asked. “The killer is a wizard unknown to us or the authorities? Someone who never had his hands tattooed?”
“Maybe,” said Aoth, “or he could be a practitioner of divine magic.”
“That sounds promising,” Khouryn growled, returning his axe to its harness. “I can just see a bunch of Chessentan mages trying to pin the murders on a Chessentan holy man.”
“There are other possibilities,” Jhesrhi said. “Maybe the killer simply possesses a formidable talisman or receives aid from a supernatural entity. Or is a supernatural entity himself.”
“In other words,” Gaedynn said, “finding out about this defense doesn’t point us at any one suspect or group of suspects. So we still need magic to track the whoreson down. Now that you know about the ward, can you punch through it?”
“I’m game to try,” Medrash said. Gaedynn saw that some of the dragonborn’s wounds looked halfway healed, and the rest had at least stopped bleeding.
Aoth smiled crookedly. “Considering that we damn near killed you, I don’t know whether to praise your courage or doubt your good sense. But I have no idea how to get around that ward. Does anybody else?”
“I wouldn’t want to try to improvise a method,” Oraxes said. “Next time it could be me getting sliced to pieces.”
“But given time and study,” said the elderly witch, “we may well find the key.”
“How much time?” asked Aoth.
She shrugged her bony shoulders. “A couple of tendays. Perhaps a month.”
“I have eight days left. That’s the bargain I made with the war hero.”
“So where does that leave us?” Khouryn asked. “We just keep patrolling and hope to catch the killer at his work?”
“No.” Gaedynn picked at a tacky splotch of blood on his sleeve. Futilely; the garment was rather obviously ruined unless he could persuade Jhesrhi to remove the stains with magic. “That hasn’t worked any better than the ritual. For whatever reason, we aren’t able to stalk or track this particular beast. But there’s another way to hunt. You set out bait and wait for the animal to come to you.”
“Interesting,” said Medrash. “But is it practical in this situation? The Green Hand doesn’t kill any particular sort of person-”
“Rumor has it,” Oraxes said, “that he kills people who have a particularly strong hatred of mages. Unfortunately, Luthcheq possesses those in abundance.”
Medrash gave a quick nod. “Indeed. And given that he prowls the entire city and kills the highborn and the low, the prosperous and the poor alike, how would we go about luring him into a snare?”
Jhesrhi frowned. “There might be a way. Places can have a spirit. An atmosphere. Often it derives from their history. They attract a certain sort of person, and certain events tend to happen there.
“Generally speaking,” she continued, “it’s a very weak effect. So weak we never feel the tug. So weak that if you mean to go one way instead of another, you will. The influence can’t change your mind. But if you kept track, you’d find that over the course of a year, or a hundred years, the groups that took each path differed at least slightly.”
“Maybe I see what you’re getting at,” Khouryn said. “But if the effect is as subtle as all that, how can we count on it solving our problem in the next several days?”
“The effect as it occurs in nature is subtle,” Jhesrhi said. “We wizards should be able to infuse a particular location with a negativity more potent than that found in any of Luthcheq’s dueling grounds, slaughterhouses, torture chambers, or what have you. That will cause the Green Hand to gravitate toward that area when he chooses his next victim. And we’ll be waiting there to catch him.”
“But what about the people who live and work in that area?” Khouryn asked. “If I understand you correctly, the new atmosphere will poison their thoughts. They might end up hurting or even killing one another.”
Oraxes sneered. “To the Towers of Night with them. If somebody doesn’t catch the Green Hand, those bastards will come back here to burn and butcher all of us.”
Medrash gave him a level stare. “It’s unlikely that all the people whose minds you’d corrupt hate mages, or would try to slaughter you in any case. But even if they are your enemies, this is a dishonorable way to strike at them.”
“Oh, sharpen your claws,” said Balasar. Gaedynn had never heard the expression before, but he assumed the smaller dragonborn was telling his clan brother not to be so squeamish. If so, then he thoroughly approved.
“If a person isn’t depraved to begin with,” Jhesrhi said, “the influence won’t make him so in just a few days.”
“What about the man who’s right on the edge?” asked Khouryn.
“And what about angry blows and spiteful words?” Medrash asked. “A person doesn’t have to fall into outright fiendishness to make mistakes that will mar his life forever afterward.”
Aoth frowned. “There’s no point debating the morality of it unless we’re sure it’s even possible. In the time we have left, I mean.”
“I think it is,” the aged sorceress said. “It’s not really that complicated, just funneling the raw essence of malice into a place-and this time there shouldn’t be resistance to overcome. We can probably proceed with a ritual as early as tomorrow night.”
“Then I say we go ahead,” said Aoth. “The Green Hand murders people every tenday. The city’s in a panic. Every wizard’s in danger, and the future of the Brotherhood’s at stake. If we can fix all that, it will more than make up for whatever incidental nastiness we cause along the way.”
Oraxes grinned. “Unless somebody finds out about it. Because what we’re really talking about is laying a curse on a part of Luthcheq and the people who live there. And there’s no way of justifying that to fools who already hate sorcery.”
“Then it’s a good thing we all know how to keep our mouths shut,” said Aoth. “Now, I’ve already committed the Brotherhood to this plan. Do the rest of you agree?”
The Chessentan mages exchanged glances, then murmured or nodded their support.
“I still don’t like it,” Medrash said. “But promise me a place among the hunters, and that you’ll lift the curse as soon as we catch the murderer, and I’m with you.”
“Done,” said Aoth. “Now let’s decide where to center the spell.”
“The ropemakers’ quarter,” Khouryn said. “It’s a poor district, with all the ills that go along with want, and a boy died a bloody, pointless death there just a few days back. If you want a place to stink of misery and anger, your work’s already halfway done.”
Aoth and Jet glided over the rookeries and the narrow streets and alleys snaking between them. Aoth was the only rider in the air. Griffons were magnificent beasts, useful for many purposes, but you couldn’t expect ordinary ones to circle endlessly without screeching to one another.
It likely didn’t matter that no one else was aloft. Clouds shrouded the moon, and few lights burned below. Even a dwarf like Khouryn couldn’t have seen much from such a height.
But with his fire-touched eyes, Aoth could. He could even see the taint he and his fellow mages had cast over a portion of the ropemakers’ precinct. It revealed itself as a slow seething inside the deepest shadows.
He wished they could have confined it to a smaller area. That would have made it easier to spot the Green Hand if the magic actually succeeded in drawing him in. It would also have reduced the number of innocents obliviously immersing themselves in filth.
But Aoth didn’t find it all that hard to disregard their plight. He’d done worse things in war. And as far as he was concerned, he was at war now-a war to save the Brotherhood from ruin.