Vaddi watched the cleric move across the crowded deck. No sooner had Cellester gone than Vaddi’s attention was snared by another movement as one of the passengers also left the deck. Clad in a thick cloak, also wearing a hood, this figure’s leaving could easily have been a coincidence, but Vaddi felt deeply uneasy. Trusting his intuition, he got up up, hugging himself in the cold air, and followed.
At the end of the deck, narrow steps led down on to the main forward deck, where another crowd had gathered, most of the people there chatting or simply enjoying the spectacular view of the skies. Vaddi stood by a rail and could easily follow Cellester’s movements down below. The cloaked figure mirrored those movements. There was no doubt that he was following the cleric.
Vaddi went below, closing in on the figure. Ahead, Cellester had gone to talk to a small group of men—traders by the look of them. The cloaked figure edged closer, unnoticed by the cleric. Vaddi himself was now mere feet away. As the figure stood by the ship’s rail, feigning interest in the skyline, Vaddi took his opportunity to move up directly behind him. He slid his dirk from within his own cloak and, masking his movement, gripped the belt of the stranger’s cloak with one hand, pulling him close and pressing the tip of the dirk into his back.
“You show an undue amount of interest in my companion,” Vaddi breathed, just loud enough for the stranger to hear him.
He felt the man stiffen and tightened his grip.
“Who are you and what is your business?”
“One who would protect you,” came the whispered reply.
“Then show yourself, or would you prefer it if I took you to the airmen?”
The hood turned, enough for Vaddi to see the weather-beaten lines of the face within it and the thick, matted beard.
Vaddi gasped. “Nyam!”
“Softly,” said the peddler.
“What are you playing at?” Vaddi still held the dirk hard against the peddler’s spine.
“You are being watched. I was watching the watchers. Now you’ve exposed my cover.”
“Watched by whom?”
“Agents of the Claw. This ship is crawling with them.”
5
Swords in the Sky
High above the northernmost shores of the vast continent of Xen’drik, where the archipelago of Shargon’s Teeth was washed by the tides of the Thunder Sea, a huge soarwing circled, its rider gazing down on the bleak terrain far below. He could discern a dozen rocky islands, some little more than jagged boulders piercing the topmost waves, their stones crumbling into the fury of the sea. The soarwing swooped down to the ragged clouds about the largest of them.
This was Urgal Shahiz, once the haunt of southern wizards and their hell-spawned sea demons, and as the rider plummeted he could see coiled shapes swimming a round the curdled waters at its base—guardians of the bleak shores, endlessly watchful, ever hungry. The rider evinced no emotions, no fear, no awe, or any true understanding of pain. His face was expressionless, set in stone.
The central pile of Urgal Shahiz was infested with caves, linked by ledges, slick with the droppings of the soarwings, and it was to one such ledge that this solitary creature flew. Its hooked claws retracted as it landed and it drew in its long, serpentine neck. From between its shoulder blades the rider slipped down from the high perch and along the ledge, heedless of the drop and the winds, as though he was himself composed of them. The soarwing ducked under the rock overhang of the cave and went within.
The figure, wrapped in a black cloak, climbed a natural stairway in the rock almost to its pinnacle before entering a tall fissure there. Inside, where the wind could not reach, the figure descended another stair, one that had been hewn here by masons in times forgotten. Down, ever down, into the very gut of the tower the figure went, silent as a ghost. Light filtered from high above, but in this grim place it was almost an alien thing, an unnatural force in a realm where darkness and graveyard gloom were the true order.
In the heart of the tower, giants long ago had cut a circular chamber. Its walls were jagged, though its floor was polished smooth like marble. Around the rim of this echoing chamber a few cressets had been set, and within them burned the low flames of cold fire lamps sufficient to light the lower part of the chamber. It was empty, save for one object—a large throne-like seat, itself chopped out of the native stone. Its workings spoke of Xen’drik’s past, of sorcerer and beast alike, intertwined in a mockery of love or hate, shapes that seemed to twist and turn, alive in the guttering light.
Within the confines of that great seat something coalesced, a knot of shadows. It thickened, shaping itself into a blurred form, night incarnate. Like the being before it, this shape too had features, but they were indistinct, shifting and flickering like the visage of a ghost. Silently the presence studied the figure that seeped like fog into the chamber. He saw the hood slide partially back from the figure’s face, revealing a cold, emotionless expression, the eyes haunted, eyes of a being without a soul. This was one of the undead, a creature living outside the natural laws of man, a being who had once been a warrior, a proud knight. In exchange for dark powers that mocked the grave, this creature had forsworn the ways of men, all normal pleasures of the flesh and soul. He bowed before the stone seat of power to which he was forever bound.
“Your servant, Aarnamor, returns, Zuharrin,” said the undead warrior, his inhuman eyes not meeting the gaze of the incorporeal entity before it.
The necromancer paused only briefly to savor his power over the lesser creature he had raised from death. “From Khorvaire?”
“Yes, lord. I did as you bade me. I was not seen. My shadow was not detected.”
“What of the Orien heir? Indreen’s brat?” The essence of Zuharrin pulsed with something akin to eagerness, the pits of his eyes deepening.
“He has left Marazanath, lord. He has taken a shadow path and slips through the traps set for him by the Emerald Claw.”
“You are sure of this?” A tremor of annoyance stirred within Zuharrin’s mind. The Claw! An invisible spider with a hundred legs, weaving its accursed intrigues across nation after nation. The time would come when he would have to address this infernal secret sect and bring it to heel. “Well?”
“I am, lord. Vaddi d’Orien is protected.”
Zuharrin’s form thickened like the gathering of a storm. “He has it with him then?”
“His father passed it to the youth as foreseen. Already he has used it to defy the Claw. One of their servants, the vampire Caerzaal, sought to snare him.”
“Indeed? That creature will not be easily shrugged off. Caerzaal is dangerous. Watch for him. He is the most ruthless of hunters.”
“My brothers keep watch as we speak, lord.”
“There will be a time to strike. In a lonely place where the son of Anzar will be most vulnerable. Gather your brothers. Choose the moment wisely. The Claw must not best us in this.”
Aarnamor bowed. In a moment the shadows on the throne had gone. The meeting was over. Aarnamor drifted up the steps into the night above, readying for another continent-spanning flight.
Vaddi and Nyam Hordath had returned to the stern of the Cloudclipper. They sat together, and both watched the other passengers about them.
“Why are you following us and why should I believe you are here to protect me?” said Vaddi.
Nyam leaned close, scratching his beard. “No point in keeping the truth from you now, I suppose.”
“How long have you been watching?”
“I waited at Rookstack. I heard that Marazanath was under attack. Your father knew it was always possible. Over the past few months, he believed an attack likely and began to make preparations, but even he was caught by surprise. Our sources said the attack was still some months away. The Emerald Claw’s machinations grow bolder.”