Zemella leaned close to Vaddi, clutching his arm. “You know what it will mean if we are trapped?”
He nodded, bemused by the scale of the walls.
“We must die before we let Zuharrin triumph. On its own, Erethindel will not be enough for him. He needs you alive. If there is any danger of his succeeding, you must perish and us with you.”
“I told you,” he said, attempting a grin, “that I would not let you die.”
“You may have to. You may have to strike the killing blow. And I you.”
His eyes widened in horror at the suggestion. “Don’t speak of such things,” he said. “We—”
“We have to agree now. A pact, Vaddi. You and I will strike each other down, if we fail. We must. If we fall into Zuharrin’s hands, a new age of terror will begin. We cannot let it happen.”
She is right, he told himself, but I could never do it.
As though reading his mind, she touched his face lightly with her fingers. “We must do this, Vaddi. We have a duty that goes far beyond our own longings. The dragon blood within us calls us to this.”
He felt his heart racing. Briefly his lips brushed her fingers. She smiled and he nodded. “So be it.”
“They are coming.”
Zuharrin sat back, eyeing the man before him with little trace of emotion on his chiselled features.
Cellester, hollow-eyed and exhausted, stood before his master, though he knew that it was no more than a projected image that he looked upon. “It is as I promised. The Orien boy is bound to the talisman.”
“I will allow them to believe that they have come upon me unawares, and I will open the citadel to them. Already my servants have begun the Great Working. The Horn of Erethindel has been prepared in the Chamber of the Demon Gate. For all your failings, Cellester, you have done well.”
The cleric kept his head bowed, eyes on the stone floor.
“When this is over, I will no longer hold you to my will. You will be free of me, if you choose, but think carefully. Would you rather risk your fate in a world that will change when the new powers arise or be a willing part of the changes? You have served me until now because I have forced you to do so. I would rather have you as a willing servant. You could achieve greatness in what is coming. Think on it. For now, just do as I have bidden at the Working. Betray the Orien youth a final time. Cripple him as you did for so long in Khorvaire.”
Cellester looked up a few moments later but the sorcerer’s image was gone. He knew it was pointless to disobey him. Zuharrin had long gained a terrible hold over him. He sagged down, exhausted, seeing again in his mind that night when he had first been subjected to Zuharrin’s power.
Deep in the northern fortress of Marazanath, in an area where the troops gathered to drink and unwind after the day’s labors, Cellester had revelled with them, easing the strains of another hard session of exercises and mock battles. Anzar d’Orien’s soldiers were kept permanently readied for battle. Indreen, wife of the lord, had died no more than a week since, and Cellester had felt her death like a knife blow to his own vitals. He had sought to submerge his misery in a frenzy of exercise and revelry with the toughest of the soldiers. They welcomed his company, for there was no fitter, more accomplished warrior than he. They trained hard that day and drank harder that night. It was long gone midnight when the cleric lurched into the narrow street, head spinning, mind almost unhinged. Somewhere along the way, he collapsed, unable to drag himself home, but he was found and taken indoors.
Those who took him were, he was later to discover, servants of Zuharrin. They brought him round and filled the room with strange incense, drugs that softened his mind even further, until he became like a child, pliable and pathetic. They used his misery against him, bringing its full force to bear.
“She is dead,” they whispered, like ghouls at a graveside. “Indreen is dead.”
He repeated the words over and over, tears streaking his face.
“Lost to you forever.”
He repeated this, too, his body wracked with sobs.
“What if this is not so? Death can be no more than the leaving of one room and the entering of another. Death is a transient thing. The Deathless know this. The Undying Elves know this. The Emerald Claw knows this. You, too, know this.”
Cellester looked up, mind whirling, confused but trying to make sense out of what they were saying to him.
“She could be yours,” said a seductive voice in the miasma of the room. “Death has freed her from her marriage vows. Raised again, she would be free. Indreen could be yours.”
“For a price,” said another. “Will you pay it?”
It was done in moments. He hardly knew what they were about. They drew his blood in a pact that swore him to the service of Zuharrin. They took it and through their vile workings bent him to their master’s will in exchange for that grim prize. They would, they vowed, raise the fallen Indreen.
In the morning, waking in the street, Cellester realized what he had done, but it could not be undone. His arm bore the long scar where they had opened him. In his rooms, he washed it carefully, but it throbbed. In time to that painful flow, he heard a voice from the night. We will raise her for you, cleric, but if you fail to obey, we will raise her and give her to the Claw. She will become a handmaiden to our queen.
The threat of those words had hung over him for the years that followed. Now, in this dismal chamber in Azzahareb, he heard them again, and he knew, beyond doubting, that Zuharrin had the power to do the dreadful thing he promised. There was nothing else but to obey.
“Either the sorcerer feels very secure in his retreat,” said Fallarond, eyeing the crags that loomed high on either side of them, “or it is a trap, but the scouts discern no movement.”
“How far to the city?” said Nyam. “Have they seen its walls?”
“Aye. It hangs from the cliff like a gigantic bee’s nest, but it is silent, shut in. There are no doors, and the nearest windows are far up. No doubt it is hung with spells.”
“I have seen creatures of the air,” said Nyam. “Soarwings and the like.”
Fallarond nodded.
“Have they seen us?” asked Vaddi.
“Our own cloaking spells deceive their eyes.”
They moved on, dawn yet hours away, climbing the last slopes of the gorge to the very roots of the mountainside from which the city of Azzahareb had been carved. When they came to it, they stood in momentary stupefaction at its scale, for it was truly gargantuan. Gazing up at its shadowed form, the company could see that it was the work of long-dead artisans, giants or demons or some beings long-gone from a time stretching back millennia. If there was a door at the base of those towering cliffs, it fitted so perfectly with the atone that its lines were hidden from the eye. But there was deep sorcery here. Like the humming of the city far below, with its pulsing supernatural energies, this place reeked of power, dark and deadly.
“How do we get in?” whispered Vaddi. “We could traverse this range for a score of miles.”
Fallarond pointed upward. “The windows. Untold centuries ago, the giants of this city must have used them to look out toward the coast. Surely that was the purpose of Azzahareb.”
“You mean to go up there?” said Nyam. “I suspect we will need to elicit the aid of the soarwings.”
Fallarond shook his head. Instead he turned to a group of his bowmen. They stepped well away from the base of the cliff and, as one, released arrows that had web-thin cord tied to them. High up into the shadows those arrows rose, with enough force to bury their steel points into the rock. Like ghosts the bowmen moved up the wall. They reached a precarious ledge and gained enough purchase on it to be able to fire a second wave of arrows upward. When they had finished their work, a ladder woven from the thinnest of cord dangled from the near-invisible heights above.