Yes, easy and suicidal. With an effort, he averted his gaze.
After their meal, the demons and devils dispersed, most returning to their duties, the rest wandering off in search of rest or amusement. Tsagoth prowled the chambers and corridors of the castle and tried to formulate a strategy that would carry him to his goal.
The dark powers knew, he needed a clever idea, because Aznar Thrul's palace had proved to be full of secrets, hidden passages, magical wards, and servants who neither knew nor desired to know anything of the zulkir's business except as it pertained to their own circumscribed responsibilities. How, then, was Tsagoth to ferret out the one particular secret that would allow him to satisfy his geas?
Somebody could tell him, of that he had no doubt, but he didn't dare just go around questioning lackeys at random. His hypnotic powers, though formidable, occasionally met their match in a will of exceptional strength, and if he interrogated enough people, it was all but inevitable that someone would recall the experience afterward.
Thus, he at least needed to concentrate his efforts on those most likely to know, but what group was that exactly? It was hard to be certain when the intricacies of life in the palace were so strange to him. He'd rarely visited the mortal plane before, and even in his own domain, he was a solitary haunter of the wastelands, not a creature of castles and communities.
Perhaps because he'd just come from his own meager and unsatisfying repast, it occurred to him that he did comprehend one thing: Everyone, demon or human, required nourishment.
Accordingly, Tsagoth made his way to the kitchen, or complex of kitchens, an extensive open area warm with the heat of its enormous ovens and brick hearths. There sweating cooks peeled onions and chopped up chickens with cleavers. Bakers rolled out dough. Pigs roasted on spits, pots steamed and bubbled, and scullions scrubbed trays.
Tsagoth had an immediate sense that the activity in this precinct of the palace never stopped. It faltered, though, when a woman noticed him peering through the doorway. She squawked, jumped, and dropped a saucepan, which fell to the floor with a clank. Her coworkers turned to see what had startled her, and they blanched too.
The blood fiend realized he could scarcely question one of them with the others looking on. He stalked off but didn't go far. Just a few paces away was a cold, drafty pantry with a marble counter and shelves climbing the walls. He slipped inside, deepened the ambient shadows to help conceal himself, and squatted down to wait.
Soon enough, a lone cook with a stained white apron and a dusting of flour on her face and hands scurried past, plainly in a hurry to accomplish some errand or other. It was the work of an instant to lunge out after her, clap one of his hands over her mouth and immobilize her with the other three, and haul her into the cupboard.
He stared into her wide, rolling eyes and stabbed with his will. She stopped struggling.
"I'm your master, and you'll do as I command." He uncovered her mouth. "Tell me you understand."
"I understand." She didn't display a dazed, somnolent demeanor like that of the Red Wizard of Conjuration he'd controlled. Rather, she was alert and composed, as if performing a routine part of her duties for a superior who had no reason to feel displeased with her.
Tsagoth set her on the floor and let go of her. "Tell me how to find Mari Agneh."
In her time, Mari Agneh had been tharchion of Priador, until Aznar Thrul decided to depose her and take the office for himself. Mari desperately wanted to retain her authority, and that, coupled with the fact that it was an unprecedented breach of custom for any one individual to be zulkir and tharchion both, impelled her to a profoundly reckless act: She'd appealed to Szass Tam and his allies among the mage-lords to help her keep her position.
But the lich saw no advantage to be gained by involving himself in her struggle, or perhaps he found it outrageous that any tharchion should seek to defy the will of any zulkir, even his principal rival. Either way, he declined to help her, and when Thrul learned of her petition, he was no longer content merely to usurp her office. He made her disappear.
Rumor had it that he'd taken her prisoner to abuse as his slave and sexual plaything, that she was still alive somewhere within the walls of this very citadel. Tsagoth fervently hoped that it was so. Otherwise, it would be impossible for him to fulfill his instructions, which meant he'd be trapped here forever.
The cook spread her hands. "I'm sorry, Master. I've heard the stories. Everyone has, but I don't know anything."
"If she's here," Tsagoth said, "she has to eat. Someone in the kitchen has to prepare her meals, and someone has to carry them to her."
The cook frowned thoughtfully. "I suppose that's true, but we fix so much food and send it all over the palace, day and night-"
"This is one meal," Tsagoth said. "It's prepared on a regular basis, and it goes somewhere no other meal goes. It's likely the man who prepares it has never been told who ultimately receives it. If he does know, he hasn't shared the secret with anyone else in the kitchen. Does that suggest anything to you?"
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Master, no."
Frustrated, he felt a sudden wayward urge to grab her again and yank the head off her shoulders, but tame demon that he supposedly was, he couldn't just slaughter whomever he wanted and leave the corpses lying around. Besides, she might still be useful.
"It's all right," he said, "but now that you know what to look for, you'll watch. You won't realize you're watching or remember talking to me, but you'll spy anyway, and if you discover anything, you'll find me and tell me."
"Yes, Master, anything you say."
He sent her on her way, then crouched down and waited for the next lone kitchen worker to bustle by.
Aoth swung himself down off Brightwing and took a final glance around, making sure there were no horses in the immediate vicinity.
Divining his concern, the griffon snorted. "I can control myself."
"Maybe, but the horses don't know that." He ruffled the feathers on her neck then tramped toward the big tent at the center of the camp. Cast in the stylized shape of a griffon, his shiny new gold medallion gleamed as it caught the light of the cook fires. The badge proclaimed him a newly minted officer, promoted for surviving the fall of Thazar Keep and carrying word of the disaster to his superiors.
The same accomplishment, if one was generous enough to call it that, made him the man of choice to scout the enemy's movements, and he'd spent some time doing precisely that. Now it was time to report to the tharchion. Aware of his business, the sentry standing watch in front of the tent admitted him without a challenge.
Currently clad in the sort of quilted tunic warriors employed to keep their own metal armor from bruising their limbs, Nymia Focar, governor of Pyarados, was a handsome woman with a wide, sensuous mouth, several silver rings in each ear, and a stud in the left side of her nose. As he saluted, she said, "Griffon rider! After your errand, you must be hungry, or thirsty at the least. Please, refresh yourself." She waved her hand at a folding camp table laden with bottles of wine, a loaf of bread, green grapes, white and yellow cheeses, and ham.
Her cordiality didn't surprise him. She was often friendly and informal with her underlings, even to the point of taking them into her bed, though Aoth had never received such a summons. Perhaps his blunt features and short, thick frame were to blame. In any case, he was just as happy to be excused. Nymia had a way of turning into a ferocious disciplinarian when she encountered a setback, sometimes even flogging soldiers who'd played no part in whatever had gone amiss. He'd noticed that in such instances, it was often her former lovers who wound up tied to the whipping post.