Sandstorm

Chapter Five

At dawn, Cephas stood on the driver’s board of a wagon, watching Corvus and a heavyset woman called Wagonmistress Melda scratch converging lines in the dirt with silver rods. Mattias waited next to the ringmaster’s wagon and explained the ritual.

“See how the road they draw recedes into the distance where all the lines come together? That’s a draftsman’s trick, and the wise know there’s as much magic in it as in any of Corvus’s toys and chants.”

Cephas nodded. Jazeerijah possessed little in the way of art, beyond the decorative flourishes worked into the deadlier armaments and most effective pieces of armor. He glanced down at the satchels stowed below the driver’s board, gifts from Tobin. They held the flail and piecemeal scale he’d brought with him out of captivity.

“Now Melda is pouring trails of residuum from their sketched road on the ground before her team. They always take the lead.” The woman retreated from the network of lines Corvus muttered over, walking backward and letting a stream of glittering dust flow from a leather pouch in her hands. When she reached a pair of oxen, placidly chewing their cud in the traces of a wagon plainer than most of the others, she straightened and pulled the drawstring of the pouch tight.

“What she’s got in her pouch there might be worth as much as what you’re so anxious to keep hidden away beneath Corvus’s bench,” said Mattias. He no longer watched the ritual, looking at Cephas. “Nobody here is going to take those pretties from you, Cephas.”

Cephas, flustered, focused on Corvus. At first, nothing happened as the kenku finished whatever magic he was working. But then the weeds in front of Melda’s team of oxen flattened. More than that, twin paths spread out before the imperturbable beasts, parallel to each other and just broad enough for the oxen to easily walk along. Boulders shifted and frost-heaved ground smoothed itself, as a new road led away from the more mundane track they camped beside.

The trade road led north and south. The ritual-wrought trail led west, away from the sunrise across a highland plain still cloaked in night.

The wagon train moved slowly, even with the benefit of the trail magically breaking before them. Corvus explained, “It just smoothes out the rough bits so we’re less likely to break a wheel or, worse, lose one of the oxen or horses to a broken leg. I don’t know the trick of grading real roads with spellwork.”

“It seems a great work to me,” Cephas said.

Corvus laughed. “Not so great. And temporary. This path closes behind us just as it opens before us. In fact, whoever is in the last wagon might be bushwhacking if they’ve fallen behind.”

Cephas thought that unlikely. The atmosphere among the members of the circus was as far removed from the grimness of Shaneerah’s training grounds as he could imagine, but the troop was no less disciplined. Corvus, though he never touched the reins, kept his wagon a uniform distance from the one in front of them, and when the trail swept around a hill or copse more easily avoided than navigated, Cephas could see that the same precision held true all up and down the line. The wagon train moved like a highly skilled team of gladiators tasked to fight a common foe.

The common foe, in this case, was the long distance that lay between them and a place called Argentor, and Corvus’s desire that they make the journey with as much haste and as much secrecy as two such conflicting demands allowed.

The second requirement, secrecy, kept Trill in her wagon. Mattias Farseer’s companion had her own place in the train, a wagon pulled by a double pair of oxen that wore feedbags over their noses stuffed with sweet-smelling herbs, and had blinders on their eyes. Cephas was surprised that the ranger would agree to have the wyvern confined in the wheeled cage he drove, but it soon became apparent that the bars of the wagon were not what they seemed. More than once, when he stood up on the seat of Corvus’s wagon to get a better view of the plain around him, Cephas spotted Trill’s wings spreading out through the bars or, with her tail twitching back and forth behind, extending out from the solid rear wall of the wagon, causing some small amount of trouble for the driver of the team behind.

“It’s illusory,” Corvus said, “and a constant source of grief. You’re right that Mattias wouldn’t allow her to be caged, even if she would consent to it. But there aren’t many people in this wide world who would permit us to transport an unbound wyvern through their lands. Not even the elves back where Mattias and Trill came from.”

“Elves,” said Cephas, thinking of Grinta, his only previous source of information about the lands and peoples of Faerun. “According to Grinta the orc, they are the apostate get of the Demon Lord Corellon and the Mother of All Squirrels. They cower behind trees and shoot arrows. Swing at their knees.”

Corvus made a choking noise. “That’s … one point of view, to be sure,” he said. “I wish I’d known that the Calishites had such a sage of the free peoples as your Grinta secreted away in that canyon. I would have brought her out along with you.”

The thought of Grinta left behind on Jazeerijah stung. Cephas had noticed that Corvus managed to find a way to deflect the question every time he’d asked so far, but he tried again. “Why did you bring me out?”

And as he had every time before, Corvus found a way to lead Cephas to another subject. “And yet this Grinta never told you about you, about the genasi and all their secrets of earth and fire and water. Yours is a strange race, Cephas, and there are few who could tell their tale with authority. Perhaps none with as much authority as the people we go to perform for next.”

Cephas seized on this new information. “The people in Argentor know about genasi?” he asked.

Corvus said, “My friend, the people in Argentor are genasi. Earthsouled, all of them. A whole village of people just like you.”

Their second night on the plain, Cephas sat atop the wagon, watching the circus pitch camp.

“I should help,” he told Corvus, who puttered back in the recesses of the wagon. “I’ve listened to the earth for days now. I can keep from getting lost in it, I’m sure.”

Corvus stuck his long beak through the beaded curtain that concealed his wagon’s interior. “We’ll make Argentor in three more nights, Cephas. The people there will be able to tell you how to control what you hear. And other things. Things you can do.”

“I understand,” said Cephas. “But look at Tobin and Whitey setting up that cursed stage for me to rest on like the pasha of Manshaka. I do not want to … stand out.”

Corvus came outside. He waved away Cephas’s concerns. “ ‘The pasha of Manshaka,’ you said.” The kenku’s voice was subdued. “What do you know of that place?”

Cephas shook his head. “It is just a place in the stories, some of them. The man who ruled there was as fat as a gelded boar and went about the city on a litter carried by four just men. One of the bearers fell in love with the pasha’s daughter, and she disguised herself as a courtesan so she could smuggle a dagger of stone into the slave pens. He used this to free all the righteous among the gladiators of the Arenas of Blood.”

“The righteous among them,” Corvus said. “What about the unrighteous?”

Cephas shrugged. “They were left in the pens, I suppose-if there were any still alive at the end of that day’s games. It is the righteous who prevail.”

Corvus took a long look at Cephas, then called out into the hum of the camp. “Tobin!” he said. “Find Shan and have her bring me the copy of the Book of Founding Stories she and her sister bought in Innarlith.”

The goliath, who had taken to wearing a silk shirt died yellow and red and festooned with dozens of bright flowers, smiled and waved. “The Book of Founding Stories,” he said. “Yes, Corvus.”

“Tobin,” called Corvus, interrupting the goliath’s long strides across the camp. “The copy they bought at Innarlith. Make sure you tell Shan that in particular.”

“Innarlith, right!” the goliath replied.

A moment later, Shan slid onto the bench between Corvus and Cephas, dropping down from the roof of the wagon behind them. She handed a worn leather-bound book to the kenku and waited, obviously curious.

“You’ve seen one much like this, Cephas?” asked Corvus.

The sight of the volume overwhelmed Cephas with memories of Jazeerijah; of Azad’s telling him he would never see the book again, never hear another of its stories. He spoke in a hushed tone. “This book was made on the order of Kamar yn Saban el Djenispool, the great human leader of all Calimshan in the … old days. It has the whole of the world in it.”

Cephas reached his hand out and Corvus let him take the volume. He studied the cover, tooled with a single character, tracing its slashes and curves with the tip of one finger. “But this is supposed to be silver, with a blue stone set in this place here.”

Corvus held out his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, Cephas returned the book.

“Yes, well, Azad yi Calimport read from a different copy of the same book,” Corvus explained. “He was right that his book, like Shan’s and Cynda’s, was made by the scribes and binders of the Djenispool dynasty. That’s the mark there, which lost its silver foil long before it made its way to the Innarlith bookstalls, or our friends would have paid quite a bit more for it than they did. The books were made a long time ago, as humans count things.”

Corvus opened the book and turned the heavy parchment leaves. He stopped at a page that did not bear the lines of flowing script that covered most of the others, instead featuring a colorful drawing of a bold warrior brandishing a tulwar. The man stood with his back to the viewer in an endless landscape of red dunes, facing a giant with black horns and eyes of fire.

“See the red ink the engravers used for the sand? How bright it is? The Calimien print shops didn’t learn that trick of the Shou until well after the start of the Ninth Imperial Age. And in fact, these books weren’t made until the Year of the Broken Blade, about, oh, two hundred and twenty years ago. Kamar yn Saban commissioned their printing in celebration of his twenty-fifth year on the Caleph’s throne. I’ve seen the pasha’s written order, actually, though the precious-minded antiquarian who owned it at the time wouldn’t let me touch it. The order called for one copy for every household in Calimshan. An impossible task, because in those days, the cities of the Shining Sea held millions of people. Still, the effort they made was enormous. There are almost no other books left from that time because almost none were printed-the Caleph’s book used all the ink and parchment available between Baldur’s Gate and the Shaar.

“It is a complicated thing, Cephas. The Caleph said he wanted every child in Calimshan to know the truth of the past. But when he said ‘every child,’ he meant one in perhaps twenty, because then, as now, most of the people in Calimshan were slaves. And then, as now, slaves weren’t counted. Especially not their children. As for what he meant by ‘truth,’ well, what do any of us mean by that?

“But tens of thousands of these books were made, and distributed without expectation of payment in every city of what we now call the Skyfire Emirates. I think it was the finest single act any leader of those tortured lands has ever undertaken.”

Cephas was studying the illustration; Shan took the book from Corvus and held it where he could see it more clearly. Cephas asked, “This is meant to be Daud yn Daud? Facing the Cinderlord?”

Shan nodded, and Cephas said, “Only a fool would use a sword like that. It’s no wonder he lost.” Shan nodded again.

Cephas indicated that she should close the book. “And this mark here means Djenispool?”

Corvus said, “It is one way of writing a D, which is the first letter in the word ‘Djenispool.’ ”

“There is more than one mark for the same letter?”

“There are a thousand kinds of beings who use writing on this world and those that border it, and they’re divided into untold nations and tribes. They use dozens of scripts to render hundreds of languages. Different marks for D and S, for all the sounds.”

Cephas stared at Corvus, feeling as much tension as he ever did in combat. He said, “Show me.”

And over the next days, rolling across the Tethyrian highlands, Corvus began to do just that.

The Omlarandin Mountains disappeared over the eastern horizon, and the world emptied of any features but grass, thistle, and the occasional lone tree. A day after the circus crossed the gravel track of the Pass Ride, Corvus sent scouts out from the wagon train.

Shan and Cynda disappeared into the prairie, while Mattias and Trill disappeared into the sky.

Cephas asked Tobin about the twins, and the big man told him not to worry. “Those women, they come and go, Shan more than Cynda. They are like you-they learned to make an act of what they knew already. They do Corvus’s special work most times.”

For his part, Cephas kept a heavy schedule, being tutored by Corvus with his books as they traveled and by Tobin in the strongman’s art while they camped at night. Mattias and Corvus still worried that he was too careless about taking short trips across the bare ground, but the heavy rope-soled sandals Cynda found for him muted the siren call of the plain.

That evening beside the bonfire at the center of camp, Cephas found himself struggling to remember what it had been like to inhabit his cramped cell every day. He had no problem recalling the arena. He returned to attempting to make his arms and shoulders tremble while lifting a feather-light load.

Mattias sat on his haunches nearby, Trill’s dozing head at one hand and a wooden bucket of water at the other. He dipped a stiff-bristled brush in the bucket, then pulled the wyvern’s upper lip back with his other hand. Trill had made short work of the half-dozen tom turkeys the wagon train scared up during the day. Feathers and gore were stuck between her long, sharp teeth. She let out an occasional low rumble as Mattias scrubbed away at the deadly set of fangs, but never stirred enough to open an eyelid.

“We’ll see the Spires first thing tomorrow,” Mattias said.

The ranger peered into his bucket and stirred it a bit before deciding it was still clean enough for another tooth or two.

“I haven’t traveled the Suretmarch in thirty years,” he said. “But the situation has not changed in all that time. For someone who says the best chance of heaven is a life lived beneath the notice of the gods, Corvus, you’ve managed to steer a narrow course between people who will take stern exception to that view should we fall into their hands.”

Corvus stood and picked up Mattias’s pail, walked to the edge of the firelight, and poured it out. The ranger gathered his canes and started to rise to refill it, but Corvus motioned him down. Whitey came and took the bucket and disappeared in the direction of the casks that held the communal water supply.

“A course between these godly people, though,” Corvus said, sitting back down. “As was my intention. Other than crossing two roads and seeing a single barley field gone fallow for three or four years, we haven’t seen a single sign of intelligent life in days.”

“That’s because you spend all day with Cephas!” said Tobin. The goliath punctuated this by drawing a tin bugle from the pocket of his voluminous polka-dotted pants and sounding a long, discordant note.

Trill perked up, ready for fight or flight, but when she saw that Mattias was laughing, she settled back down.

“Funny,” Cephas said. He wasn’t offended. Tobin needed to practice making jokes so he could get better at it.

“This course wasn’t a hard one,” said Melda. “But the brothers at Barakmordin are close.”

“And the queens of Tethyr has pointed those holy fools down Ithal Pass at the Banites like a spear for a hundred years,” said Mattias. “Knights of the Platinum Dragon, Tormite soldier priests, and the Crying God’s martyrs, all vying to outdo one another in zealotry and mounting three sorties of heavy cavalry down the Pass Ride every single day. How we managed to cross at a time they wouldn’t spot us is beyond me.”

“Time and place,” said Melda.

“As it happens,” said Corvus, “the records I examined in Saradush make me believe that the earthsouled we’re visiting in the Spires are themselves a holy order of sorts. Or they were the last time anyone bothered to record them in the annals of the Shining Helm Herald.”

The Calishites of Jazeerijah had kept no cults-Corvus claimed this was a product of their enslaved backgrounds, though he did not explain why so few in the circus were worshipful sorts. But the only reading primer to be found among the haphazard collection of volumes the troop carried with them was a slim child’s book of the gods that Mattias had produced without explanation.

In his slow journey through the book so far, Cephas had learned who Bane and Bahamut the Platinum Dragon were, and if Torm and Ilmater were allied, that gave him a general sense of what their followers must be like. He hoped the earthsouled leaned more toward the teachings of the folk Mattias termed “zealots” than they did the faith of the Black God.

“They don’t worship a god, precisely,” Corvus said. “Grumbar the Earthlord is my guess. Or, if these folks are of a poetic turn of mind, the King of the Land Below the Roots. He’s an elemental lord, which is supposed to be something different than a god. Don’t ask me to explain the difference, though, because I’ve never found a satisfactory explanation, and not for want of trying.”

Tobin stood, and Cephas wondered what sort of apprentice humor they would be subjected to next.

“He watches and guards,” said Tobin, and the whole company quieted and turned to look at the goliath. Even Trill opened her eyes and raised her great head, cocking it sideways as if she heard a faraway call for help from a companion long lost.

“He keeps the treasures of the earth’s crust secret and holds them in trust for the landwalkers. He bears burdens and does not complain. He pronounces and is not questioned. Air blows away, water flows away, fire burns away, Earth stays. He abides. He endures.”

Tobin leaned down and took up a handful of dust, then let it fall through his blunt, inelegant fingers. Cephas became conscious that he was hearing quiet. The ground beneath him had ceased its ceaseless song.

The goliath finished awkwardly. “I–I swear this on stone,” he said, and darted back among the wagons.

Whitey the Clown was standing on the other side of the fire, Mattias’s pail of fresh water between his arms. His mouth opened wide as he watched his apprentice go.

He peered at Corvus. “Was that a prayer?”

Corvus still gazed off toward the wagons but shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “More like a hymn.”

Mattias reached out and scratched beneath Trill’s chin. “Something memorized by someone born into a faith that preached unquestionable stability,” he said, “and unending resistance to change. Imagine growing up in a faith like that when the center of your art, when what’s in your heart, is improvisation.”

Cephas listened for the song of the earth.

The djinni Shahrokh had no need for the pillows and cushions scattered about his inner sanctum, of course, any more than he had any need for a title. But the windsouled genasi, whom Shahrokh and the other djinn of Calimport viewed as something like children, had built their society in mimicry of the human culture they had replaced. Since that human society was an echo-however imperfect-of the glorious culture of the Noble Djinni Calim and his followers, Shahrokh permitted the slaves of the windsouled to appoint his apartments with supposed luxuries such as pillows, and permitted the windsouled themselves to call him the vizar of vizars, adviser and factor to Pasha Marod el Arhapan, the genasi who held sway at the head of the city’s fractious leading council.

The only time he even noticed the numberless pillows was on occasions such as these, when he let the currents of air that formed the bottom half of his body flow at their full strength in a cyclone of elemental power. This meant cushions flew everywhere.

It also meant Vizar Shahrokh was angry.

Slaves of a dozen races, their windsouled masters, a few genasi expressing less politically sound elements, and even a few lesser djinn, rushed out of the vizar’s path as he flew through the arched hallways of the el Arhapan manor.

The palace was a marvel in a city full of architectural marvels. It was not the only castle that floated high above the ruins that made up much of the old human city, but it was the only one that moved according to its master’s will instead of remaining fixed at whatever point its builders had chosen when the final enchantments were laid like cornerstones.

The palace could not go anywhere-even in a city as chaotic and ever-changing as Calimport that would be too much. Still, the power and influence of the el Arhapans was sufficient to allow them to fly their home endlessly back and forth between the two terrestrial structures that had sparked their ascendancy among the windsouled in the first place-the Djen Arenas.

Shahrokh had known the current pasha of games all the brief fifty years of the genasi noble’s life, and he firmly believed that Marod would never have directed his floating home anywhere besides the arenas, even if he had the power. Yes, the windsouled were something like children in the eyes of the djinn, and children needed their toys.

Sweeping into the great central courtyard, Shahrokh spared a glance downward. The flagstones that made up the courtyard’s surface were clearer than any glass the craftsmen of this wretched world could dream of producing. Like much of the material that went into building Calimport-Upper Calimport, the Calimport that mattered-these blocks of crystalline air were brought from the djinn’s home in the Elemental Chaos. The stones were quarried from the cliffs of Khamsin and transported to the mortal world under the very noses of the cursed efreet and their firesouled vassals, during the glorious days of Calim’s Second Reign earlier in the century.

The thought of his lost lord renewed Shahrokh’s ire. Too much was at stake to permit Marod’s meddling. His view through the courtyard floor told the djinni that the sultan had moved the palace to its westerly moorage, above the Arena Sabam where the chariot races were held. This meant he would find the windsouled noble in the stables.

With their lesser powers, the genasi had developed an elaborate protocol for flying between buildings of the upper city, and for their rare trips to the earthbound realm of the slaves below. Had he been in less of a rage, Shahrokh might have taken the time to travel along those Saban pathways, marked in the air by floating coils of golden rope. As it was, he simply flew up and over the tiled roofs and doors of the palace, then dived into the crowded tumult of mud-brick stables that ringed the Arena Sabam.

Any beast that Marod’s saddlers could fit with a harness might be found in this warren between the savage races they were forced to run, pulling war chariots manned by slave gladiators of the appropriate size.

In a stable filled with elephants, Shahrokh found the master of games deep in conversation with a dull-eyed ogre gladiator. An especially foolish observer might have pointed out that the incongruous pair each resembled Shahrokh in a different way. The djinni had no legs but went about on an ever-present, ever-circling column of air. But if he had been born with such useless limbs, Shahrokh’s would have needed to be as long and heavily muscled as the ogre’s to explain his great height, and to match the obvious strength in his bare torso and arms. But where the ogre’s skin was a pallid green, Shahrokh’s was the same silver tone as the windsouled slavelord’s. Pasha and vizar also shared the same smooth scalp, shaved except for long black queues gathered in sapphire clasps. The windsouled also aped the djinni manner of dress. Except for its size, Marod’s intricately patterned crimson vest was a close match to the one Shahrokh wore.

If the pasha sensed the vizar’s mood, then he ignored it. He greeted the djinni with a smile. “Shahrokh!” he said. “Have you met this ogre? Calls itself Cruddup or something like that-it’s the best beast handler among the slaves we bought over the winter-”

The djinni waved a contemptuous hand. The air in the huge ogre’s lungs rushed out, the atmosphere around the creature’s head flowing away. The giant charioteer collapsed and died in the span of three heartbeats.

Pasha Marod took a single step backward to avoid the ogre’s flailing limbs. There was a look of mild distaste on his handsome features. “You owe me fifteen bicentas,” he said.

With another wave of his hand, Shahrokh caused a rain of gold coins to fall into the filthy straw of the pen next to them. “Dig it out of the dung, then. It will give you something to do while I shovel the pile you’ve heaped on our efforts.”

A look of understanding crossed the pasha’s face. “You’ve heard that the WeavePasha has my son!” he said. “Exciting, isn’t it? I’d almost forgotten about the boy.”

“The message you intercepted,” said Shahrokh, “was from an agent who is far from trustworthy. That the spy says he’s located your lost heir is too little to act on, especially since we are at such a crucial juncture.”

The pasha shrugged. “Too little for you to act on, perhaps.”

A faint sound of thunder rolled through the stable, quieting the elephants.

“Marod,” said the djinni, leaning down to look the windsouled in the eye, “what have you done?”

The master of games turned on his heel. “Nothing to jostle the strands in your delicate web, Shahrokh. The boy’s not even in Almraiven yet. Nowhere close, in fact. Our spy is taking him to a village of earthsouled in the Spires of Mir first, though I cannot for the life of me understand why. But it’s far outside the Almraivenar’s sphere of influence and he’ll have no reason to suspect my hand in anything. I sent El Pajabbar-they were supposed to be the personal guard of the pasha’s eldest son under the human caliphs, anyway. See? Symmetry. Like their horns.”

Shahrokh settled down, closer to the ground, directing the currents of his lower body to flow so that he studied the pasha’s face eye to eye, from an even height. The windsouled did not flinch from his gaze, even when the djinni held the stare far longer than most genasi could have withstood.

At last, the djinni nodded. “I concede that I am impressed, Pasha. The idea is brutal, but not immediately dangerous to our goals.”

It might even work, Shahrokh thought.

Long leagues south and east of the circus’s camp, other bonfires lit the cloudless night. In a shallow dell outside the fortified abbey and village of Akkabal, a ring of fires burned in stone bowls, spitting and popping when the acolytes tending them threw in handfuls of foul-smelling herbs.

One side of the dell was a natural wall of the local bedrock, an outcropping of which had been crudely hacked into a throne bearing the semblance of a huge hand. A thin man, hooded and masked, occupied the throne, flanked by a pair of underpriests.

The three priests of Bane watched the large circle of glyphs that covered most of the floor in the natural amphitheater. Three dozen crossbowmen were positioned on the lip of the dell, evenly interspersed among the acolytes at the watchfires.

One of the underpriests, a woman born in the Ithal Pass and a student of the night sky, took another look up through the flickering red light and black smoke of the fires.

“Late!” she said.

Her colleague, standing on the other side of their superior, spat. “If they were late the last time you checked the stars, Sister Arrovar, further observation will not find the circumstances changed.”

He spoke in the barbarous accents of the cold North, and this only heightened his pretension in being the only one of the three Dreadmasters to trek out from the abbey dressed in full ceremonial garb.

Motionless on the rocky throne, the Vigilant Talon Arianus idly watched the bickering of his two underlings. He encouraged their rivalry as a way of keeping their daggers from his own back, and as a distraction from the daily banalities involved in maintaining the detente between his master’s armed manor and the forces arrayed against them across the contested border in Tethyr. Any distraction from reading another chiding diplomatic communique from the Duke of Suretmarch was welcome, even one as mysterious as this unprecedented use of the abbey’s largest teleportation circle by allies unaffiliated with the Church of Bane. But his instructions from his superiors in Mintar were clear.

More sensitive to the arcane energies involved in teleportation than either of the underpriests, Arianus sensed eldritch keys seeking the locks of the symbols of the circle, even while the two of them continued to hiss and curse each other. The magic held an elemental tang, quite unlike the unholy energies that usually activated the gate. He wistfully imagined a life that would allow him the time to study such phenomena-and a surge of anger boiled out of his black heart. The pair of idiots flanking him distracted him from even a cursory examination with their pointless games. He cleared his throat.

The underpriests quieted. The woman’s breath grew shallow, and the man actually staggered in fear.

Somewhat gratified by the reaction, Arianus directed their attention to the center of the circle, where a hazy image appeared. Even though the nature of the ritual bent any light streaming through the portal in odd ways that washed out colors and softened details, it was clear that the circle at the other side of the magical connection was drawn in a far more richly appointed space than this stark dell.

The Vigilant Talon remembered the words that appeared in his mind the previous night, the message laced with just enough pain that he would know how important his master deemed it. “An old debt comes due. The djinnspawn holding Calim’s marker sends those of the horns through Foxx’s gate at tomorrow’s ninth bell. A scroll follows.”

That scroll, delivered at highsun by a messenger who had ridden two horses to death in his haste to deliver it, rested in the Talon’s sleeve. He knew who El Pajabbar were by reputation, but was grateful nonetheless for the carefully worded warnings the message contained. Until the last few moments, he had considered sharing those warnings with his underpriests.

The first heavily armored figures began leaping through the portal. An unnecessary flourish, as the linked gates allowed those one hundred and thirty leagues to be crossed with a simple step. But the Calimien were nothing if not excessive.

The Dark Brother at his left hand sputtered. “We allow prancing beasts to profane our Black Lord’s holy ground now, Talon?”

More and more bullheaded warriors came through the gate, bellowing and brandishing their halberds, singing some brutish marching song and lining up under the direction of the largest minotaur of all, a female whose horns were ground to razor points and whose flaring nostrils were pierced with heavy gold rings.

Arianus decided then that of the two, he disliked Sister Arrovar marginally less. “It does seem a bit excessive,” he said to the Dark Brother. “That woman there must be their sergeant-their musar-why don’t you go ask her to be more respectful?”

The underpriest bowed to Arianus, spared a sneer for his rival, and marched stiffly across the dell. As he approached the minotaurs, the last of their number emerged through the portal, and Arianus felt the odd magics that held it open at its other end die away.

The musar caught sight of the underpriest and strode forward as if to greet him. But the woman lowered her head and charged when the man raised his hand, calling, “See here!” With a roar, she pressed her gauntleted fists into the rocky soil, and, using the coiled strength of all four of her limbs, she sprang at the dark priest.

The man’s black lacquered ring mail was heavy and costly, but there was more of the ornamentor’s art in its making than the armorer’s. The minotaur’s horn slid through the expensive lacquer and cheap steel, and on farther, piercing padded undershirt, then fat and muscle and bone, then steel and lacquer again, as she drove her horn completely through the priest of Bane.

The musar rose to her full height, roaring, with the lifeless corpse swinging from her gilded rack and blood streaming down her face. With a contemptuous toss of her enormous head, she threw the priest’s body across the dell, where it landed with a crunch.

Arianus watched the display impassively. At his side, he could feel Sister Arrovar gathering her divine powers, mustering defenses that were formidable, but which he knew would be inadequate if he let things progress any further.

“El Pajabbar,” he said, putting out a hand to halt her preparations. “The horned ones. Enforcers of the Caleph’s Court, and as deadly a group of fighters as ever stalked the South.”

Sister Arrovar ceased her gathering of magic, but did not release the energies she had already brought to the surface of her mind. She said, “It is said they treat every ground as a battleground and will not march across it without first spilling blood,” she said.

“Yes,” said the Vigilant Talon. “I read that somewhere just recently.”

Whatever words passed between the surviving Banite priests and the monstrous leader of the minotaurs were impossible to hear from the lip of the dell. The only other sounds that remained were the crackling watchfires in their stone bowls and the occasional creak of leather against steel when one of the temple guards shifted his weight. Even the sounds of the few night-thriving insects active this early in the year died away with the waves of sorcery that rolled out of the natural depression.

The minotaur bellowed at her troops, and they gathered in a semblance of order. She did not pause for parting words with the Banites, instead trotting away from the priests, past her followers, and up the shallow western slope of the dell. The other two dozen minotaurs fell in behind their leader, disappearing into the night.

The robed acolytes doused the watchfires, clearing the space, and the remaining priests made no delay in leaving. The tentative song of the insects in the tall grasses above the dell returned. On the westward slope of the dell, where the grass was trampled by the departed minotaurs, there was movement.

A screen woven of weeds and dusted with soil slowly pulled back. First Shan, then Cynda, took long, careful looks at their surroundings.

Cynda’s face bore a grimace, and her sister saw that her left arm hung at a painful angle. In the moonless night, the subtleties of their fingertalk would be unreadable, but it was clear that one of the five-hundred-pound brutes had trod on Cynda’s shoulder as it jogged out of the dell. Shan moved to put her hands against her sister’s shoulder so she could wrench the arm back into place, but Cynda stopped her, pressing a finger to her lips.

It would have to wait. They could not risk the sound of the shoulder popping back into its socket.

There would have been no accompanying gasp of pain to guard against. Even if she’d had a voice to cry out with, Cynda’s discipline was better than that.

Shan placed four fingers on the back of her sister’s bare hand and drummed, creating the familiar beat of a horse at full gallop. They would need to find fast mounts to get ahead of the minotaurs, and use all their trailcraft to find the swiftest route. No road led into the Spires of Mir from the Banite holdings, so the halflings and the minotaurs would be racing across unbroken ground.

Cynda made a careful sweep of their impromptu blind. They would leave no sign they had been there. She moved as quickly as she dared, because the only advantage they possessed was that they, unlike the minotaurs, knew that a race was being run. They knew they must be the first to reach Argentor, the only place the minotaurs could be bound.