For a moment, Darvin just stood there, trembling in rage. He needed to hit something. The assassin drew several long, deep breaths, calming himself. Damn him, he thought. I should have pushed him.
"Answer me, or I'll spit you!" the soldier shouted, taking a single wary step toward the intruder.
"I've come to speak with Captain Havalla," Darvin replied. "Tell him that Junce Roundface is here."
"Tell him yourself," came another voice, older and gruffer than the soldier's. It was the captain, striding through camp with a cluster of aides gathered around him. "What in the Nine Hells are you doing here? I've got a war to fight."
"That's what I've come to talk to you about," Darvin replied, stepping over to fall in with the man. "A few adjustments need to be made."
Beltrim Havalla swore. "I knew it," he muttered as they reached his command tent and ducked inside together. "It never fails. I don't care how much gold you promise, I always end up regretting fighting for you city folk and your wars. What is it this time?"
Darvin made a point of peering around the inside of the tent, examining the various tapestries that had been hung up for decoration, in order to hide his grimace at the captain's words. He turned back and pointed at a map on the table in the center of the tent. "Captain Havalla, it's imperative that you take your mercenaries to Reth and establish martial law there. No, wait," he said, correcting himself. "Surround it and establish a quarantine."
Beltrim eyed Darvin suspiciously. "What for?" he asked. "I thought Reth was your own city. Why do you want me to lay siege to it?"
Darvin sighed. "I can't explain it right now, but please do this now, tonight. I'll give you half again as much gold as we've already agreed upon if you can have the city surrounded and sealed off by sunrise."
Beltrim swore again, but that time, Darvin knew it was greed that overwhelmed him. "You make an offer I shouldn't refuse," he said at last, "but I've already got half my army in the field, keeping the druids at bay while the Rethite regulars hit the Hlathians. Something stirred up the Enclave but good, and they're fighting mad. Just keeping them out of the way of the main battle is going to be a trick, and I can't easily extract my forces without winding up in a nasty pinch when the Enclave counterattacks-and they most certainly will try."
Darvin threw up his hands in exasperation. "There's nothing you can do? What about reserves? Two days ago, you had nothing but time on your hands and lots of antsy troops being held in reserve."
"Aye, I did," Captain Havalla admitted. "And I still have a reserve force, but those men are tired after chasing down your Crescents and hauling them off to Reth. Besides, I need them to plug gaps in my lines for this fight."
"I think," Darvin said with an edge to his voice, "you could push them a little harder than usual in exchange for the additional gold I mentioned. It really is necessary."
"If it's so necessary, why don't you tell me what it's all about?"
Darvin grimaced again, not caring if the captain saw him or not. "There's a problem," he began. He then explained that the plague had erupted in Reth and had to be contained, lest the disease spread beyond the city's walls and into the countryside-into the midst of the various armies on the field of battle. When he was finished, he eyed Beltrim Havalla, wondering if the man would be willing to put his forces at risk by getting so near to the disease-ridden city.
After a long and rather uncomfortable silence, Havalla asked, "Do I have permission to cut down any man, woman, or child trying to leave the city?"
Darvin nodded without hesitation.
"What about the Reach? How are you going to keep ship traffic from coming and going?"
Darvin had considered that already. "I know someone who has enough ships at his disposal to keep them hemmed in," he said. He made a note to talk to Falagh about that as soon as he returned to Arrabar. "So what do you say?"
"I say, it doesn't look like we have much of a choice, do we?" Havalla answered. "If we don't hold it back, it'll chew right through my armies, and everyone else's. It'll be the Battle of Nun all over again."
"It really is necessary," Darvin said again, rising. "Remember, by sunrise, if at all possible."
Beltrim sighed. "I'll have to march them all night, and they will be in fine humor by morning, but I think we can do it."
"Excellent," Darvin said. "I'll make sure the gold is on its way immediately."
As he began to put his magical boots to use once more, Darvin heard Beltrim say, "You do that." Then he was gone, teleporting back to the Generon.
Everything was nothingness around Emriana.
The girl feared that she was becoming nothingness, too. Only her thoughts seemed to hover there, letting her cling to the notion that she still existed. She had to concentrate to keep everything else.
The sensation of being totally blind, of not having her eyes adjust to even the tiniest bit of light, had at some point begun to terrify the girl. And though she could feel her own body, could touch naked skin in that nothingness, it was horrific not to be able to see her fingers wiggling in front of her face. She had to fight to convince herself that not being able to see them did not make them any less real.
Emriana was neither cold nor hungry, nor could she feel any air move when she breathed. Her buttocks never became numb or sore from sitting. Time did not seem to pass for her, except for her thoughts. Something told her that she could remain like that forever, just thinking. And the longer her thinking went on, the less substantial the rest of her might become. She might altogether cease to exist physically, just floating in the black void, a consciousness trapped.
Emriana fought against that image. She needed to remind her senses to work, needed to keep moving, functioning. She had tried singing-when? how long ago? — thinking that hearing herself would help, but she was unnerved by the way her voice sounded in that place. Instead she reached out around herself.
The walls imprisoning the girl were certainly real enough. She could feel them when she pushed out with her hands. Beyond that sensation, though, they had no substance, no qualities. They were neither hot nor cold, smooth nor rough. They simply held her in the midst of the nothingness. She could follow the surface with her hands, rising to her knees and finding eight corners. She could not quite stand, for the ceiling was too low. And she could not quite lie down, either. It was a box just big enough for her to sit, to draw her knees up to herself protectively, to waste away.
Junce Roundface had not been lying when he had told her she would spend a long, long time in there. That thought nearly made her start screaming again.
"Please," the girl pleaded, her voice resounding in her skull but nowhere else. "I want to get out." She waited, listening, but there was nothing. No sounds, not even the roaring in her ears. "Please!" she screamed.
Nothing.
Emriana curled up into a ball and lay on her side. She would have liked to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. She was simply left with her thoughts.
Later-an hour? a year? — Emriana became aware of something. It was not clear what she had noticed, but just the fact that she was noticing anything at all snapped her out of a sort of stupor. She rose up onto her knees, turned her head, tried to determine which sense had detected something.
It was light.
Very faint, above her, a pinprick of light had appeared. The light grew, became a window, grew still more, dazzlingly bright, making the girl cringe. It became one whole side of her prison. It burned her eyes with its brightness, but she was oh, so thankful just to feel pain in her eyes.
Emriana blinked repeatedly and managed to focus on the scene beyond her prison, through that window.