Nowhere pointed at the corpse of the hobgoblin who had carried the letter. “I thought he made that pretty clear. If they were drawing members from the Dragondown Coast, it’s obviously not a local problem. But what is the Elemental Eye?”
Sherinna’s eyes were unfocused—an expression she adopted when deep in thought. It always gave Nowhere the impression that she was staring into a space between worlds, somehow, or perhaps peering into her home in the Feywild. When she didn’t answer, Brendis shrugged.
“I’m not exactly sure,” the paladin said. “It’s some kind of primordial force. I think some of the more malign primordials are said to work with it or maybe even for it—including Imix, the Fire Lord these scum were so excited about.” Brendis’s eyes strayed to the idol the cultists had erected here in their makeshift temple, a vaguely humanoid shape roughly formed from clay. Nowhere guessed that the crude protrusions along the figure’s shoulders and the top of its head were supposed to indicate that the figure was burning, or perhaps made of fire.
What the cultists lacked in artistic skill, Nowhere thought, they made up for in fanatic devotion. They were ready enough to die for their cause.
Nowhere scratched his bony chin. “The letter suggests they’re trying to bring their master—the Elemental Eye, I presume—into the world. Terror and destruction follow in his wake, of course,” he said. “It sounds like the same diresounding rhetoric these fire cultists were spewing. So why do you two look so worried?”
Brendis sighed and got to his feet, turning away from the others. “I was so sure that we were just facing a local cult of troublemakers expressing their discontent with the Empire’s firm and steady hand by claiming the Fire Lord as their patron. I miscalculated and led us into conflict with a much larger threat.”
“You don’t like being wrong,” Nowhere said. He’d known that about Brendis for years.
The paladin turned back to face him, his face grim. “Especially not when lives are at stake.”
“We need to find whoever sent this letter,” Sherinna said, emerging from her musing. “This ‘Dreaming Prophet,’ as he calls himself.”
“Tomorrow,” Nowhere said. “After we sell the brass candlesticks and the ruby on that one’s finger, and celebrate our victory over the cult of the Fire Lord … Right?” He looked to Brendis for support, even though the paladin wasn’t much for the kind of celebration Nowhere enjoyed. Brendis’s eyes were fixed on the wizard.
“Now,” Sherinna said, and there was an urgency in her voice that squelched the argument in Nowhere’s throat.
A second city, with its own wards and laws and commerce, thrived in the storm sewers and ancient tunnels beneath Nerath’s grand capital. Nowhere was as comfortable in the maze of its chambers and passages as he was in the equally labyrinthine streets on the surface—he’d spent most of his life moving between the surface world and the undercity. Brendis and Serinna were not so comfortable in the world of torchlight and refuse, but their long hunt for the arsonists and murderers that made up the Fire Lord’s cult had forced even the two of them to learn the undercity’s ways. Nowhere had made sure of that—he couldn’t have them relying on him to guide them.
So even though he saw the trepidation in their eyes when he suggested that they split up, he knew they could handle themselves. Either of the two informants that had pointed them to the Fire Lord’s temple might be able to lead them to the Dreaming Prophet. If the matter was as urgent as Sherinna suggested, it would be best to speak to both informants at the same time. Brendis and Sherinna would talk to the tavernkeeper who had observed some of the cult members’ clandestine meetings, and Nowhere would pay a visit to the other.
The night hag.
Tavet the Heartless lived in a sprawling network of natural caverns in the deeper reaches of the undercity known, prosaically enough, as the Caves. Her fame as an information broker was exceeded only by her infamous cruelty. It was said that she stole secrets from the prominent figures of the undercity and even the city above by infiltrating their dreams. Nowhere approached her cavern home with every sense alert for danger in the deep shadows that surrounded him.
He stopped just outside the entrance to her cave and opened the sack he carried. The smell of blood assaulted his nostrils as he drew out the bundle he’d purchased from a butcher in the nearby Gloomside district. “Blood and flesh for Tavet the Heartless,” he called. He opened the package, took the blood-drenched cow’s heart in one hand and held it forward. He imagined he could feel a hint of resistance in the air as his hand crossed the threshold of her lair, but the blood parted the barrier. Suddenly the cavern beyond didn’t seem quite so dark, and he saw the misshapen shadow of the night hag’s body shambling toward him.
“Drop it.” Her voice was the croak of a bullfrog and the howl of a wolf, all the unnerving sounds of night wrapped around two small words.
Nowhere let the heart fall on the ground and turned his back. He heard the hag shuffle forward and tried to stop listening, but he couldn’t block the sounds of her bloody feast.
“Enter,” she said when she was done.
Nowhere turned back to the cave mouth, and the night hag was lost in the darkness again. Steeling his nerves, he stepped across the threshold.
“You come alone this time?”
“I did not wish to try your patience again,” Nowhere said. Tavet and Brendis had not gotten along well on their previous visit.
“Or perhaps you seek a bargain your friend would not condone.” Her voice came from all around him and echoed in the small cave.
Nowhere peered into the shadows, trying to find a hint of the night hag’s outline. Although he saw far more than Brendis’s human eyes could have, he could not find a trace of her. “I need more information,” he said.
“You found the head of your little fire cult and discovered that it was just the hand of a much larger cult. Now you seek another head.”
“That’s right,” Nowhere said. She’d made a logical deduction based on the information they sought last time and what she knew about the situation, nothing more. And whether she meant to or not, she’d revealed that she had the information he wanted.
“When will it stop?” the night hag asked. “When you find out that the next head is just another hand, will you seek the next head? And the next?”
“My companions believe that the Fire Lord’s cult was part of a larger cult serving something called the Elder Elemental Eye, and that cult seeks to unleash its master on the world.”
“What do you believe?”
“I pulled a ruby ring off one of those cultists that could ransom the emperor’s third son. As long as they want to keep hunting heads, I’ll come along for the ride.”
“And are you willing to continue paying the price I ask?”
“If you keep providing information we can use, I’ll continue paying for it. We’re looking for someone called the Dreaming Prophet. You’re an expert on dreams, I’ve heard. So do you know where we can find this person?”
“I want Sherinna.”
“What?” Nowhere’s voice cracked around a lump that formed suddenly in his throat.
The night hag laughed, a barking croak that filled the cavern. “Not this time, tiefling. But eventually. No meat is as sweet to me as the flesh of a fair fey princess.”
“No. I won’t hand her over to you.”
“We shall see. In the meantime, I can tell you where to find the Dreaming Prophet for a very reasonable price. But when you find this head and start looking for the next, and the next after that, consider carefully how much you are willing to pay.”
“Flee. Now.”
Albric awoke from his dream and leapt from the filthy pile of straw and fur he used as a bed. He started to gather his belongings, but as soon as his fingers touched the golden symbol of the Elder Elemental Eye, the voice from his dream resounded in his mind again: “Now!” He seized the medallion and bolted from the filth and squalor that had been his home and his temple for the past three years, into the stench and decay of the city sewers. Without a backward glance, he hurried away at the Dark God’s bidding, intent on the task before him.