The gladiators rested at the mouth of the gully, scattered in a disarrayed jumble wherever they could find a soft place. A short distance up the draw, the retainers of some noble lay clustered in cordial groups of ten or twelve warriors, many of whom were still conversing in polite tones. Close to them, the dwarves of Kled slept in regimented circles, each dwarf lying flat on his back within an arm’s reach of the next one.
Farthest up the gulch slumbered the templars, their cassocks tightly fastened against the frigid desert night. They had arranged themselves in a pyramid, those most favored lying closest to the leader, and those least favored spread along the bottom edge. Maetan did not understand why the Tyrians had sent along the bureaucrats. With Kalak dead, the templars had no sorcerer-king to grant them spells, and they would be no more useful in battle than average tradesmen.
“It matters little,” the mindbender told himself. “When the time comes, they will die with the rest.”
With that, he gathered a fistful of sand, then held it over the outstreched palm of the other hand. Slowly, Maetan let the grains slip from between his fingers. At the same time, he used the Way to summon a stream of mystic energy from deep within himself, and he gently breathed this life force into the sand as it dropped from one hand to the other.
When he finished, a naked, finger-length figure stood in the palm of his hand. She whipped her barbed tail back and forth, blinking her soft green eyes and giving her tiny wings a languid stretch.
Maetan lifted his hand toward the Tyrian camp. “Go, my darling, and look into their nightmares. Find one who will betray his fellows, one who yearns for wealth beyond his grasp, perhaps, or one who fears his master.”
The homunculus smiled, showing a pair of needlelike fangs, then flapped her wings and rose into the air.
“When you have succeeded,” Maetan said, “return to me and I will make him ours.”
Etched into the cliffside, far above Rikus’s head, was the image of a kes’trekel. The giant raptor’s barbed tongue coiled from its hooked beak, and it held its claws splayed open. The creature’s ragged wings were spread wide to catch the wind, and at the elbows of these wings were small, three-fingered hands. In one hand it held a bone scythe, and in the other it carried a furled whip of bone and cord.
“How’d they get up there to carve that?” Rikus asked, his eyes searching the cliffside.
“Why would they bother?” returned Neeva, looking away from the rock-etching. “Kes’trekels are hardly a subject for art. They’re nothing but overgrown carrion-eaters.”
“Kes’trekels may be death-followers, but they’re also as vicious as halflings, as cunning as elves, and some are as large as half-giants,” Caelum said, still craning his neck to study the depiction. “I’d take this engraving as a warning.”
Along with Styan, who remained stolidly silent, the three stood in a barren canyon flanked by towering cliffs of hard, yellow quartzite. The gorge was so deep and narrow that just a sliver of the olive-tinged sky showed overhead. Only the sweltering heat and a blush of crimson light on the canyon’s rim indicated that the morning sun already hung high in the sky.
Above the kes’trekel, someone had chiseled a huge hollow into the cliffside. A warren of mudbrick compartments had been constructed inside this alcove. From the outside, Rikus could see little of the burrow except a wall several stories high, plastered with lime-paste and speckled with square windows. At the base of this wall, a part of the warren overhung the valley. In the center of this section was a large circular opening.
“I’d say that’s where our warriors disappeared to,” Rikus said, motioning at the overhang.
Neeva looked around the canyon. “I don’t see anywhere else they might have gone,” she agreed. “You think both K’kriq and the scouts you sent after him are up there?”
“That’s my guess,” the mul said.
At dusk the night before, the legion had made camp in a sandy gulch at the mouth of a narrow canyon. Since thri-keen have no need of sleep, Rikus had sent K’kriq ahead to scout the next day’s route. The mantis-warrior had not returned by first light, so the mul had sent five gladiators to look for him. When that group had not come back either, Rikus had entered the canyon to investigate for himself. He had brought Neeva and Caelum along in case he ran into trouble. Surprisingly, Styan had asked to accompany them.
After two miles of slow travel, the cliff-huts were the only unusual thing the group had seen in the valley.
“How will we reach the doorway?” Caelum asked, eyeing the sheer cliff beneath the opening.
“Why would we want to?” Styan demanded, speaking for the first time. He glared openly at Rikus. “It’s enough that you ignore Caelum’s advice and cross these badlands, but to risk our lives for a thri-keen and a few warriors-”
“They’d do it for us,” the mul answered gruffly. “As for crossing the hills, it’s the only way to reach the oasis ahead of Maetan.”
K’kriq had seen Maetan traveling with a large group of Urikite soldiers. They were moving around a tongue of rocky badlands that jutted several miles into the sand wastes. From what the thri-keen had reported, the mindbender’s company was traveling toward a brackish pool of water where a handful of Urik’s infamous halfling rangers had stopped to rest. Determined to reach the oasis ahead of his enemy, Rikus had led his legion into the winding canyons and contorted ridge of the badland foothills.
Before the legion could continue its journey, however, Rikus had to find out what had happened to K’kriq and the other scouts. He dropped a hand to the sword hanging on his new belt. As the mul’s fingers closed around the Scourge’s hilt, a dozen discordant sounds crashed over his mind in a deafening tumult. His ears were filled with the thunder of beating hearts and the roar of the morning breeze. From distant caves came the rumble of chirping crickets, and the piercing drone of his warriors’ impatient conversations echoed up from the canyon mouth.
Rikus felt dizzy and sick from the torrent of noise. He wanted nothing quite so much as to shut it away, but he forced himself to hang onto the sword and search out the sounds coming from the warren. Finally, he managed to distinguished a stream of wispy voices gushing from the hole above. Concentrating on those sounds, the mul asked quietly, “Who are you? What have you done with my scouts?”
Of course, the voices did not answer, but the other sounds faded to the point that he could concentrate on what was being said inside the warren. Rikus quickly discerned that there were well over a dozen men and women watching him from above, most asking concerned questions of someone named Wrog. In the background, he could hear a faint clacking noise that sounded like K’kriq gnashing his mandibles.
Taking his hand from his sword hilt, Rikus called, “Wrog! Return my scouts and live in peace.”
They waited a few moments for a response. When none came, Neeva asked, “Who’s Wrog?”
Rikus shrugged, “A name. I thought-”
A terrified scream interrupted him. He looked up and saw a man, arms flailing wildly, drop from the opening overhead. In anger, Rikus reached for the Scourge of Rkard. Instantly, he heard many voices roaring in laughter.
The falling man plummeted toward the mul for what seemed like an hour. A half-giant’s height from the rocky ground, his terrified scream ended with a pained shout as his descent stopped. For several moments, the man hung motionless and silent in midair. To the amazement of the mul and his companions, there was no sign of a rope, or any other line, between the faller and the hole from which he had come. The unfortunate fellow simply dangled a few yards off the ground with no visible means of support.
Recognizing the gladiator, Rikus exclaimed, “Laban!”
“Are you injured?” asked Neeva.
“I’m more frightened than hurt,” came the shaky reply.