"He will," Hadrhune insisted. "He wanted to explain himself why the city was moving. That's why I didn't tell you."
"Sure it is." Despite his words, Galaeron took no steps toward the gate. "Tomorrow?"
Hadrhune nodded. "He would like to break fast with you. All will be explained." Galaeron turned to Vala.
"One more day?" She looked around the villa and shrugged. "What could it hurt?"
The humans were at it again, clambering around on Malygris's mountain, kneeling and standing and kneeling again outside his cave, chanting, singing, groveling, begging his favor. That was a snort. He had told Namirrha he didn't want the cult members dallying about outside his lair, but did the mammal listen? What Malygris ought to do was clatter up there and bolt the whole lot, but then he would have to go out and devour something, and he just didn't feel like eating. Dracoliches needed food only to recharge their breath weapons, and Malygris hadn't discharged his (hadn't even left his lair) in over a year-or so Namirrha had told him the last time the necromancer deigned to visit.
Something alive-something human-appeared in the shadows over by his number three platinum heap. A bitter sense of outrage rising to fill his empty ribcage, Malygris swung his big horned skull toward the intrusion. Could the warmbloods leave him not even his seclusion? A pair of dark silhouettes rose out of the darkness, not emerging from the darkness so much as peeling themselves out of it, and turned in his direction.
How the mammals had bypassed his teleport traps, Malygris did not know, or how they had avoided activating his alarm magic. What he did know was that he could bear only so much and that this entering of his lair was the final insult. He opened his jaws and loosed a mouthful of lightning. In the crackling flash that filled the cavern, he glimpsed a pair of swarthy humans in dark robes cartwheeling across his hoard and smashing headlong into his wall. They collapsed among his diamonds and lay there scorched, smoking, and-amazingly- more or less alive.
Malygris continued to look in their direction. When Namirrha had made him a dracolich, he had grown acutely aware of everything alive within a wingspread of himself, and he knew the two humans were badly injured. Mammals were fragile, so they seemed likely to die within a few hours anyway, and he was not about to waste another breath attack on them. If he conserved, he still had two good lightning blasts left before he would have to leave his lair and eat.
But the pair did not expire. Instead, over the next hour, they grew steadily stronger, first crawling behind a pile of gold coins fused into a solid lump by the heat of his lightning, then hiding there and recovering by the minute, speaking to each other in some ancient human tongue even Malygris had never before heard. It was the ultimate warmblood insult-not being frightened enough to flee or at least to cower in silence. Malygris would have torn them limb from limb, save that over the last year, his hideless skeleton had sunken to his spine in his nest of sapphires, and he simply did not want to abandon such a comfortable bed.
A voice, deep and booming, at least by human standards, called out in Common, "Most Mighty Malygris, there is no need to attack. We come in peace."
Malygris considered this, then said, "If you come in peace, why do you cower behind my hoard piles like dragon hunters and treasure thieves?"
A soft clinking echoed of the walls as the pair rose from their hiding places. They stepped into view, revealing themselves to be a warrior and a priest, both dressed in the melted remains of some glassy, gleaming black armor. Malygris blasted them again.
This time, his electric fury pinned them to the wall and held them there, stiff-limbed and smoking, the warrior's steel-colored eyes and the priest's bronze-colored glowing like mage-light. Their glossy armor ran off their bodies in runnels and gathered at their feet in black puddles. Their swarthy flesh melted and burned away from their chests, revealing the black organs and dusky bones beneath. Their heels and fists hammered themselves into pulp against the stone wall.
Still they were alive when Malygris ran out of breath-limp as scarecrows and reeking of charred flesh and in places naked to the bone, but alive. They dropped to the floor and lay there groaning for half an hour, then finally grew strong enough to pull themselves behind treasure piles as they had before. Interesting.
It was the first thing that had interested Malygris since Namirrha had gotten his mate, Verianthraxa, killed in the senseless attack upon the keepists-an assault forced upon them by Namirrha's profane magic. Malygris searched out his legs beneath his nest of sapphires and bade them serve. He lifted himself out of the gems and clacked his fleshless bones across the cavern to where the two humans lay cowering. No, not cowering.
The two were sitting, propped against the wall, staring up at him with their little molten eyes, not even trembling. The charred chest bones that had been exposed just moments before were already covered with dark flesh, and the scars were vanishing from even that. Malygris snatched up one in each claw, then watched in amazement as their shattered hands and feet returned to their normal shape.
"What manner of human are you that heal like trolls?" he demanded.
"We are princes of Shade Enclave," said the bronze-eyed one. "I am Clariburnus. My brother is Brennus."
"Do you think your names matter to me? Your arrogance is insufferable!" Malygris squeezed the one that had called itself Clariburnus and was pleased to hear the crackle of breaking bones. He felt the body go limp in his hand, but that was the only way he knew the mammal was in pain. He swung his bony muzzle toward the one with the eyes of steel. "I asked what you are, not who."
"We call ourselves Shadovar," this one said. "In our tongue it means 'of the shade.' "
"Ah, then you are shades." Malygris said. Shades were two-legged mammals that traded their souls for shadow essence. In the light of day, they seemed normal men, but as the light grew dim, they grew strong. "I understand now. I have met a few shades in my centuries."
Curiosity satisfied, he tightened his grasp to crush them-and felt his claws close on air. He sensed them emerging behind him and whirled around to find the steel-eyed one stepping from the shadows in front of his nest. The other, the one with the crushed body, lay in a hollow on top. They were between him and his phylactery.
"Clariburnus and I are shades," the one with steel eyes said. "But not all Shadovar are shades, and not all shades are Shadovar. A Shadovar is a citizen of Shade Enclave."
"I see your game." Malygris started forward, his great tail launching whole mountains of coins into the dark air as it flailed back and forth. "Try, then. One way or the other, I will take pleasure in the end."
The steel-eyed one-Brennus-raised his hand and said, "Stop. We're not here to attack you, but you are done attacking us."
Malygris stopped, not because the human commanded it-he hadn't-but because he found himself snorting in laughter. "You threaten me?" Tiny forks of lightning began to dance around his nasal cavities. "Truly?"
"We are not threatening." This from the crushed one, who had already healed enough to sit upright. "We came to talk."
'Talk?" Malygris settled onto his haunches and waved a claw at the floor before him. "Very well, you may present your gifts."
The two humans-Shadovar-glanced at each other, then Brennus said, "We bring you no gifts."
"No gifts?" Malygris gasped. Even more interesting- insulting, but interesting. "How can you beg without gifts? How can you grovel with nothing to offer?"
"We're not here to beg," Clariburnus said. He stood- so soon after being crushed-and limped down to stand beside his companion. "But Shade Enclave does have something offer."
Malygris sensed Namirrha's arrival within the lair and whirled toward the entrance. The necromancer, a balding and wrinkled figure even by mammal standards, was already well inside, striding down the golden aisle between Malygris's carefully stacked chalices.