After a moment’s hesitation, he turned right and headed for the Temple of Ela, on the far side of Alber. Haltengabben hid her illegal activities behind the temple’s facade of respectability. It was an open secret, of course, but she kept up pretenses, nonetheless.
He crossed into the old section of the city. Here the stone houses stood shoulder to shoulder, leaning far over the crazy, unplanned hodgepodge of blind alleys and switchback streets. As always, Old Town bustled with life. Dogs barked and chickens scratched in the street; women headed to the market or swept the cobblestones clean in front of their houses; a few old sailors sat on stools in the shade, sipping ale and trading lies; a ragtag mob of children ran past, screaming and laughing, caught up in some game.
A couple of the old sailors stopped their yams to call greetings to Bowspear. His presence seemed to be causing something of a stir, he reflected. With forced cheerfulness, he waved to the sailors. Few enough high-placed people came to Old Town, and then usually in secrecy and darkness, to visit the Night Walkers.
Now, as more and more faces peered at him from curtained windows, as people on the street turned to stare, he quickened his step. He’d been here too often, he thought, and they had no doubt spent many long hours speculating on his visits to see Haltengabben.
At last he reached the imposing Temple of Ela, a huge stone building set well back from the street. It took up half of a block all by itself, with tall narrow windows set high up on its walls and equally impressive oak double doors. Allowing himself not a second’s hesitation, Bowspear strode up the broad steps and into the entry hall.
Two smoking braziers stood to either side of the doorway, and incense spiced the air. Somewhere ahead, deeper in the temple, he heard the ching-ching-ching of small cymbals and the frantic strumming of an eight-stringed lute. He paused a second, listening and peering around in the dimness. Someone had met him here every other time he’d come, but today he found himself alone.
He moved forward slowly, rounding the large marble statue of a beautiful woman—the goddess Ela—with her arms outstretched as if in supplication. She was the patron goddess of thieves and prostitutes and those who worked the darker professions; like his men, Bowspear preferred Sera, the goddess of the sea.
The music grew louder as he stepped through the doorway to the temple’s main hall. Bowspear drew up short, staring.
Half a dozen men and women dressed in loose black clothing danced with wild abandon around the altar stone. He felt the hair on the back of his neck beginning to prickle in fear. The dancers’ arms rose and fell as they gyrated; their heads whipped around; their hair lashed. Still the cymbals ching-chinged and the lute played, the melody pulsing like a heartbeat.
On the altar, movement caught his eye. A huge serpent lounged there. It had to be forty feet long. Languidly it raised its head, tasting the air with its forked tongue, and when it turned toward him, its eyes began to glow with ruby light.
Bowspear found himself transfixed by its gaze. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He heard blood thundering in his ears. Then slowly, like a flower unfurling its petals one by one, a coldness began to bloom in his chest.
He found himself floating away from his body, and his consciousness took in the whole of the room. He noticed, in every corner, huge brass braziers filled with burning coal. From them rose a dense black smoke that writhed in time to the movements of the dancers. It seemed to him, then, that the snake and the smoke and the dancers were all a single part of some larger being.
Abruptly the snake lowered its head and hissed at him, and suddenly he found he could move again. He stumbled backward, making a quick sign to avert evil, then turned and fled.
What in Sera’s name had he seen inside? Some dark, unholy magic, an inner voice said. Something he didn’t want to see again.
Reaching the street, he ran. From somewhere behind him he heard a wild cackle of laughter, but he couldn’t tell whether it came from Haltengabben, one of her subjects, or something not quite of this world.
Haltengabben finished the Harvest Ritual, then passed around a bowl of ceremonial white wine. The dancers, drenched with sweat, panting for breath, paused to sip long and hard.
“Dismissed,” she said, waving them away.
Rising, they trotted into the back of the temple. They would bathe, change into fresh clothing, and retire until the early evening. Then their work would begin. Bowspear had brought in a new shipload of loot, and she would take the temple’s share that very night, under the cover of darkness.
She sighed as she thought of the ruined ceremony. Bowspear’s gesture of aversion—done so quickly and thoughtlessly—had set the spells off track. Nevertheless, she placed no blame on him.
The real fault had been hers: she never should have sent for him until after the Harvest Ritual had reached its conclusion. She hadn’t expected him back from his meeting with Harlmut so soon.
Rising, she trailed the serpent into the back part of the temple. She found the creature coiled in her office, before her desk. It held its head level with her own. Its ruby eyes glinted as it stared at her, and slowly it began to sway back and forth, making a low crooning sound deep in its throat.
“None of those tricks,” she said sharply. “Ela protects me from such charms.”
The serpent hissed sharply: a laugh. Then, with the Hag’s voice, it said, “So true, my pretty. At least so far.”
“What do you want?” She moved a pile of scrolls from her chair onto her equally cluttered desk. The serpent had appeared in the middle of the Harvest Ritual, but had made no interruptions until it finished.
“A ship has come, and on that ship there rode a man in green. I want him dead.”
Haltengabben blinked once. Other than that, she showed no sign of surprise. The Hag had hired her people several times over the years to provide various and usually highly secretive services. Never, though, had the Hag asked her to kill.
“It will cost a lot,” she said. “Assassins are few and expensive in Grabentod. I assume you want the best.”
The serpent hissed, eyes glowing, and drew back its head as if to strike. A negotiating plot, of course, Haltengabben thought.
She didn’t have time for such games today. Stepping forward, she slid a long curved blade from inside her sleeve, then pricked the serpent under its chin. A single drop of oily black blood appeared.
The serpent hissed, but faintly this time, and slowly those glowing red eyes turned dark again.
“No tricks, Hag,” she said. Haltengabben hid her distaste behind a smile. “If you don’t like the price, you can find someone else. We have no need of your patronage here.”
“Sssssso,” it hissed. “A pound of gold for his death, Haltengabben. No more.”
“Agreed.” She returned the blade to its arm-sheath, crossed to her desk, and sat.
The serpent had already begun to fade. The Hag’s sendings were getting stronger, she thought uneasily. Whatever powers the abomination controlled, she certainly used them to good effect.
Haltengabben chewed her lip thoughtfully. This stranger … she’d heard something of him already from her spies on the docks. What had they said? A man in his early thirties, wearing green robes, with a long black beard … a man who made friends quickly with Bowspear. An ally in his grab for the throne? Perhaps … or perhaps something else. Might he somehow pose a threat to the Hag?
She considered that possibility for a moment. The Hag controlled a barren, unpopulated area of the Drachenaur Mountains to the east. That land offered little of importance, and it had no great natural resources to speak of. Only the Hag and her minions … and the Hag’s reputed treasure.
In the decades since the Hag had assumed her powers, quite a few adventurers had set out to rid Cerilia of her. Few of them had come back. The Hag, rumor said, had accumulated vast stores of weapons, armor, and gold taken from these foolhardy adventurers.