After a moment, Beatrix nodded.
Finally, progress! Matteo sent a triumphant glance toward the king. The expression on Zalathorm's face sent him rocking back onto his heels.
The king stared at his wife, his countenance deadly pale and stamped with horror. He slipped onto his knees and buried his face in the queen's lap. His words were faint and choked with emotion, but Matteo caught something that sounded like, "Gods above, what have I done to you?"
After a moment, Matteo went to the door and tapped softly. The guard let him out, and he stood quietly in the hall until the king rejoined him.
"Sire, disturbing though this interview was, we made progress. We should continue."
Zalathorm shook his head. "You will get nothing more. The moment has passed."
"Before it did, you learned something important."
"Yes." Zalathorm cleared his throat then spun away and stalked toward the tower stairs.
Matteo fell into step and waited, but the king did not elaborate. After several moments, the jordain gave up any pretense of patience. Stepping into the king's path, he rounded to face him and affixed him with a challenging stare.
"With respect, my lord, you command me to defend the queen but tell me nothing that might aid in her defense!"
To Matteo's surprise, the king dropped his gaze first. "Magic is not the solution to every problem. Sometimes it creates as many problems as it solves. I was not aware of one of these problems until just now. There is nothing more to tell you." He held up a hand to forestall Matteo's ready protest. "Nothing, at least that is not held in silence by powerful enchantments and wizard-word oaths."
The jordain stood his ground for a few moments more, then fell back with a sigh. A wizard-word oath was sacred, unbreakable. This was not a matter of choice. As a consequence of swearing "by wind and word," the lips of a Halruaan wizard were magically sealed.
So there it was, then. Matteo's difficult task had taken a downturn into the realms of impossibility! He had twenty days to uncover a secret the king could not speak, a secret a nation of wizard-lords had not uncovered.
Twenty days, and each passing day left Tzigone alone, abandoned in a place of horrors beyond Matteo's imagining.
After a moment, he realized the king was studying him. "You are thinking of your friend," Zalathorm stated gently.
Matteo managed a faint smile. "I did not think any but a magehound could plumb a jordain's heart"
"She is her mother's daughter. Such women are capable of inspiring joy and pain in great and equal measure. I do not know a way to release your friend," he said, shrewdly anticipating Matteo's next question, "but may I make a suggestion?"
"Please!"
"Follow your heart where it takes you. Perhaps the daughter's secrets will shed light upon the mother's."
Matteo seized the king's arm, bringing them both to a stop. "Do you foresee this?" he said eagerly.
The king pulled away and fixed him with a searching gaze. "Can you conceive of any circumstance, jordain, in which you would willingly, even gladly violate an oath? Regardless of the cost to you, or the gain to another?"
Matteo hesitated, then shook his head.
"Then you are the better man. Once before, I paid love's price in honor's coin. I would do so again if I could free Beatrix. Since I cannot help the queen, I will bless the man who can and bear any cost to myself as a bargain."
Before the jordain could respond, Zalathorm simply disappeared.
With a deeply troubled heart, Matteo accepted the truth of his task. Zalathorm was as much a prisoner as either Beatrix or Tzigone, and the jordain's task was to free Halruaa's king.
Even if that meant destroying him.
Chapter Three
Deep, silvery mist-mist so thick it came just short of rain, so pale and chill it resembled shape-shifting ghosts-swirled a slow dance through the dismal landscape. The deep moss shrouding the conical fairy mounds was as sodden as sponge, and moisture dripped from blighted trees in maddening, oddly syncopated rhythms.
A small, battered figure huddled in the dubious shelter of a small stone cave, her thin arms wrapped around her knees. The cave, dank and cold though it was, offered at least the illusion of protection, and as Tzigone was finding out, in this place, illusion was a very powerful thing indeed.
One figment of Tzigone's imagination snuffled at a small, dark carcass. The griffin, though nearly as insubstantial as the mist, had fought at her command, and with beak and talons like those of an enormous eagle it had sent the Unseelie folk into retreat.
Her tormenters had left behind the body of a fallen comrade. Tzigone forced herself to study the torn and broken thing, hoping to find some vulnerability in her strange captors. The dark fairies were so quick that her eyes could not fully perceive them.
The dead fairy was closer to four feet than to Tzigone's five. Though Tzigone's form was waiflike, barely recognizable as female, she felt positively robust next to the delicate creature. Its skin was raven-black, its features even more narrow and angular than an elf's. Small, oddly shaped wings-crumpled but still beautiful-draped from narrow shoulders. They were of a strange, translucent black under which a rainbow of colors seethed and shimmered. The fairy's long, oval head had no hair and needed none. The eerie beauty of the creature discouraged any comparison to humans. The Unseelie were what they were, and they were terrible beyond imagining.
Tzigone allowed her gaze to slide away, hoping the creature nosing at the dark fairy's corpse would be gone by the time she glanced back.
It was not. In this place, nightmares refused banishment.
The monstrous illusion was like no living creature she knew. Matteo had told her when she accidentally conjured it that first time that no one had seen such a beast for nearly three hundred years. The long-extinct griffin had a monstrous draconian body, leathery, scantily feathered wings, and a primitive avian head. A thick mane surrounded its neck, and it crouched on powerful leonine haunches.
The monster plunged its wicked beak into the carcass and shook its head sharply. Flesh came free with a sickening, wet sound, followed by the snap of fragile bone.
Tzigone shoved her fist against her mouth and tried to replace horror with gratitude. After all, the misty griffin had given her a brief respite from the dark fairies and their relentless torment-torment that was mostly illusion but no less painful for that.
Somehow the Unseelie folk managed to get into her mind and heart. They tormented her with all the things they found in the dark corners and all the things her busy imagination could conjure. The monstrous griffin proved that sword could cut two ways.
Her nimble mind danced ahead to thoughts of escape. There had to be a way out of this gray world. She and Matteo had fought the dark fairies before, and it was apparent that Matteo knew little about their foe. That was a bad sign. In Tzigone's opinion, Matteo knew more than the gods had forgotten. If he couldn't deal with the Unseelie folk, what chance had she?
On the other hand, Dhamari Exchelsor had known how to open the veil between the Worlds. Obviously there was a spell, and Matteo would find it.
"Dhamari," she murmured, suddenly remembering that he shared her exile. She rose painfully to her feet, gingerly testing her chilled limbs. After a few tentative steps, she set out to find the treacherous wizard.
She walked for a long time through the swirling mists. Finally, disgusted and weary, she kicked at a giant toadstool and watched the spores rise in an indignant cloud. At this rate, she'd never find Dhamari. If she could conjure illusionary creatures, why not a pack of hunting hounds?
That notion didn't appeal. During her street days, Tzigone had been chased by canine guardians too often to hold much affection for them. Besides, summoned creatures could be dangerous and unpredictable, even in the world she knew. She remembered the owlbear that had savaged her fellow travelers-and she fiercely banished this line of thought. Such memories could be deadly here. Instead she conjured an image of Dhamari's panicked face as she dragged him with her beyond the veil.