Stalking Darkness

26

Vargul Ashnazai looked resignedly around his latest lodging. The deserted house smelled of damp and mice, but the roof was sound and the hearth was usable. He'd lost count of the inns and taverns they'd stayed at since their arrival in Skala three months before. Winter was harsher here than in his native

Benshal, but not so harsh as those they'd endured for three years as he helped Mardus scout the northlands for the Eyes and the Veil.

No, in Skala the necromancer's greatest hardship so far had been boredom. The Oreska's reach was long; no matter if they were in Rhiminee tracking

Urvay's various spies and dupes, or sequestered at a deserted steading such as the one they now occupied, he could not afford to practice his art without first weaving a tight barrier of shielding spells. Such magicks had worked admirably with the avaricious young sorceress Urvay had netted for them. Ylinestra was altogether too sure of her powers; never once had she divined who, or what, Mardus truly was.

Throwing back the warped shutters, Ashnazai blinked out at the cove below the house. Great slabs of sea ice lay piled at the tide line, but beyond the shingle open water rippled grey-green in the morning light.

Yet another impediment nicely cleared away, he thought, smiling to himself. Urvay's actor dupe, Pelion, had leapt with predictable glee at the offer of a series of special engagement performances in the southern city of Iolus. He would have his triumphs there, no doubt, never knowing his life's thread had been measured to its final length, to be cut two weeks hence by an assassin already paid in full. And the beautiful Ylinestra, too, was living on ransomed time, along with all the others.

The months of waiting were nothing now, compared to the coming triumph. Ashnazai's revenge hung before him like a heavy, promise-filled fruit, almost ripe and soon to be within his grasp, a fruit that would ooze with the sweet liquor of blood when pressed.

Two short nights, and all would be in place.

She would be here.

The stars stood out like glittering eyes against the midnight vault of the sky.

Standing beside Mardus on the beach, Ashnazai could hear Tildus' men moving through the trees that fringed the little cove, and the nicker of the horses that were tethered, ready for the night's ride. Other men patrolled the woods beyond the gully where an unlucky peddler lay face down in a brackish pool of water. There would be no witnesses.

They hadn't been waiting long when a black presence suddenly coalesced out of the darkness in front of them.

Ashnazai bowed gravely to the dragorgos.

"We will be with you presently," it announced in its hollow, wind-filled voice.

"All is prepared," Mardus replied. "We await you here."

Soon the light splash of oars came to them from across the water. Tildus and his men tensed, weapons drawn, as the black outline of a longboat came into view. Two sailors pulled the oars, while their two passengers sat motionless in the bow.

Reaching shore, one of the oarsmen jumped out and pulled the prow up onto the beach so that his passengers could disembark dry shod. The first to climb out was the gaunt, grey-beaded necromancer, Harid Yordun.

"Welcome, my brother," Ashnazai said, clasping hands with him, "and to Irtuk Beshar, our most esteemed lady."

Yordun gave a terse nod, then lifted his companion out onto the shore. Silent and invisible behind her thick veils, Irtuk Beshar extended a leathery, blackened hand in benediction.