The Captive Flame

THREE

30 CHES-6 TARSAKH THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

The rain pattered down from a gray sky. It made the task of picking up bodies and tossing them onto carts even more cheerless, if that was possible.

Since she was an officer, Jhesrhi didn’t have to dirty her hands with such labor. Since she didn’t have any men under her direct command, she didn’t even have to supervise it. But she watched it for a time, then stalked back to her billet and stuffed her grimoires and spare clothing into her saddlebags.

Then she hauled them and her tack to the overhang at the side of the house. So named for the long, livid ridge that marked his flank from feathers to fur, Scar spotted the gear and knew they were going to fly. He gave an eager rasp and leaped to his feet.

And Jhesrhi faltered. Because while the griffon was hers in one sense, in another he belonged to the Brotherhood. Did she have the right to take him away with her, particularly when, in the wake of the Thayan campaign, the pride was so diminished?

She scowled and set her burdens down while she weighed the question. Scar padded over and nuzzled her, almost hard enough to knock her off balance. He was expressing affection, but also urging her to get moving.

As she should have. For a moment later, someone whistled a jaunty tune, a song whose lyrics she considered particularly tasteless and offensive. Looking like he’d enjoyed a full night’s sleep and like the rain had no power to plaster down his feathered copper hair or otherwise mar his debonair appearance, Gaedynn sauntered toward her from the street.

He glanced at the little pile of her possessions. “Ready for a change of scene?”

“War is one thing, but I don’t have the stomach for this.”

“Just because we killed civilians? At least they were Chessentan civilians. And I was under the impression that you detest this place.”

“I do. But…”

He arched a trimmed eyebrow. “But…?”

“If I’d handled myself better when those meddlers accosted my prisoners and me, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Yes, I agree with you there.”

She blinked. “What?”

He shrugged. “Admittedly, some might compare last night’s unpleasantness to an avalanche. Given your intimacy with the ruling spirits of earth and stone, you no doubt understand better than I how at the start of such an event, one rock bumps another, and that one jostles a third, until an entire mountainside is falling. Here in Luthcheq, the various pebbles were the Green Hand murders, the news of pillage and piracy, the resulting disruption of commerce, the bad blood between dragonborn and genasi-and what have you-all knocking into one another to create a surge of violence that inevitably targeted the outcasts Chessenta loves to hate.

“In this analogy,” he continued, “your little confrontation in the street was only one pebble among many. Still, it was your duty to pluck it from the air before it could do any harm, and you failed.”

She sighed. “I know what you’re doing. You want me to say that if that particular pebble hadn’t triggered the avalanche, another one would have. But I don’t know that for certain. What I do know is that someone else-someone like you-could have sent those louts on their way with cogent words and a jest.”

“Oh, undoubtedly. After all, I am exceptionally charming, and clever too. But Aoth didn’t hire you for your ability to placate the dull and ignorant. As I recall, it has more to do with your gift for knocking down walls and setting enemy troops on fire.”

“No matter why he hired me, I’m a liability in this place.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s Aoth who’s the liability to you and me.”

“What?”

“He was a great war leader once, but his time has passed. Look at the state the Brotherhood is in, torn to shreds and reduced to doing this dreary job.”

“You know the mission we undertook in Thay was absolutely necessary, and that no one else in the East could have done it as well.”

“What about Impiltur?”

“Impiltur was just bad luck.”

Gaedynn grinned. “And when a sellsword leader’s luck sours, nothing else matters. His lieutenants have no choice but to desert him before he leads them to their deaths. Or before their collaboration in his debacles so tarnishes their own reputations that, like him, they ultimately become unemployable.”

“You’ve threatened to leave before. You never do.”

“Which is not to say I never will. Last night’s fight upset me as it did you, albeit for a more sensible reason. We were in far more danger than was necessary, because Aoth refused to let us fight to best effect.”

“You know the reason why.”

“Yes. But I consider it insufficient. And why shouldn’t I leave if I see fit? I don’t owe Aoth anything.”

“Well, I…” She took a breath. “Once again, you’re trying to maneuver me into saying what you want me to say.”

“To the contrary. I’m agreeing with you. Telling you that if you desert, I’m inclined to go with you.”

It felt like something twisted in her chest. “We both know that wouldn’t work.”

“But if you go alone, won’t you be alone? It’s always appeared to me that the Brotherhood is your only home, and as you demonstrated last night, you don’t have much of a knack for making new friends.”

She lashed a hand like she was batting away a gnat. “All right! I’ll stay! Just stop prattling at me!”

“Whatever you say. I respect your judgment, of course.”

Her fingers tightened on her staff. “Gaedynn…”

To her surprise, his face became more open, his smile less superior and teasing. “Lady, for what it’s worth, I truly do think the company will climb out of this cesspit it’s in eventually, just as I know Aoth needs you to make that happen.” His smile crooked into a smirk. “Instead of leaving, you should hold his nose in the hive for a bigger share of the spoils.”

Pacing through the tall doorway at Nicos’s side, Aoth didn’t see any dragonborn, genasi, or other nonhumans standing amid the bronze and marble martial sculptures. Still, Shala Karanok’s hall was more crowded than on his previous visit, and none of the occupants looked happy to see him.

When Aoth and Nicos reached the proper spot, they halted and bowed. “My lord,” the war hero said. “Captain.” Her voice was ice.

“Majesty,” replied Aoth and Nicos in unison.

“Seventy-eight of my people are dead,” said the woman on the throne.

“Don’t take that for the final tally,” said Aoth. “A couple more corpses will turn up someplace, and a few more of the wounded will die of their hurts.”

Shala scowled, and Nicos shot him a warning glance. But he intended to be businesslike and unapologetic. He had a hunch it would be a bad idea to accept any blame or show any hint of weakness.

“Are you proud of your score?” demanded a familiar masculine voice. Aoth looked around and saw Daelric in his jeweled yellow robes. The stout high priest of Amaunator stood at the forefront of what appeared to be a group of the city’s ranking clerics, clad for the most part in regalia as costly as his own.

“I’m proud,” said Aoth, “that my men did their job efficiently and with a considerable degree of self-control. I assure you, our ‘score’ could have been much higher.”

“The fact remains,” the sunlord replied, “you slaughtered dozens of good men who only wanted to purge the city of evil.”

Nicos snorted. “That’s a pretty epitaph for a pack of mad dogs.”

Aoth returned his gaze to Shala. “Majesty, you and Lord Nicos both told me my job is to maintain order with a special eye to protecting the residents of the wizards’ precinct. I did it. What’s the problem?”

Shala’s eyes narrowed. Aoth braced himself for an outburst. But in the end, the war hero chose to overlook his bluntness-his insolence, some would say-and simply answer his question.

“In my mind, your task was to prevent a riot from starting in the first place. Perhaps that was unrealistic. But in the aftermath, I find I’m the ruler who set vicious sellswords under the command of an evil war-mage and a witch on her own subjects. And why? To protect other devil-worshiping wizards. To shield the Green Hand murderer himself.”

“Majesty,” Nicos said, “I’m sure most people understand that your agents did only what was necessary. Had they done less, all Luthcheq might have burned.”

“Some people understand that,” Shala said, “but as we speak, there are hundreds of Tchazzar cultists marching in the streets. Now, don’t mistake me. I revere the Red Dragon as much as anyone. But it’s bad to have the common people praying for the return of a long-lost savior because they think their current lords are hopelessly incompetent and corrupt. It’s bad for every one of us assembled in this hall.”

Luthen stepped forth from between a pair of his fellow courtiers. “Indeed it is, Majesty. Fortunately, I believe we can fix the problem.”

“How?” Shala asked.

“For starters, get rid of the sellswords. We’ve already discussed some of the reasons why allowing any noble to maintain such a force in the capital is a poor idea. Now we see that the Thayans’ swaggering, bullying presence enflames the populace like that of an army of occupation.”

Aoth took a deep breath. “My lord, any fair-minded person would agree that some bad luck and unavoidable friction notwithstanding, my troops have acquitted themselves admirably in Luthcheq. But we’d be happy to go to the border or the coast and help Chessenta fight its enemies.”

Luthen gave his head a little shake. “I’m not talking about reassigning you, Captain. I’m talking about discharging you and throwing you out of the realm. That’s the least it will take to satisfy those whose kin your griffons tore apart. And Chessenta doesn’t need mages and ruffians to stand tall against its foes.”

“Indeed,” the sunlord said.

Aoth could joyfully have tossed a thunderbolt or a barrage of ice at both of them. If the Brotherhood had to move on under these circumstances, it would drain their coffers and further blemish their reputation. And without another offer of employment, where could they even go? Nowhere the local authorities wouldn’t view them as a threat-glorified marauders hoping to live by banditry and extortion.

“Majesty-,” he began.

Shala ignored him. “What else do you recommend?” she said to Luthen.

“Arrest, try, and execute the residents of the wizards’ quarter,” the noble said. “If not all, at least some.”

“For what?” Nicos asked.

“Who cares?” Luthen answered. “They’re mages, so we know that each and every one of them has done evil deeds. And it will give the common people what they want. You never know, we might even get lucky and burn the Green Hand killer.”

Nicos looked to Shala. “Majesty, you directed me to bring Captain Fezim to the capital because ‘even wizards deserve justice.’ ”

“And it was a sentiment worthy of a war hero,” Luthen said. “But the situation has worsened since then, and Your Majesty must weigh the interests of a few”-he waved a meaty hand as though trying to pluck the proper term from the air-“deviants against the welfare of the realm as a whole.”

“All right,” Nicos rapped, “let’s do that. Let’s keep our eyes on what’s happening throughout Chessenta, and not just here in the city. The Great Bone Wyrm and the Imaskari are pressing us hard, and contrary to Lord Luthen’s assertion, we need wizards to help stem the tide. The same wizards he wants to condemn and kill!”

Luthen made a spitting sound. “So you’d strengthen our armies by bringing the depraved and degenerate into the ranks.”

“Yes,” Nicos said, “if you insist on putting it that way. Our armies have always used sorcery when necessary. With proper supervision, of course. Just look at our history!”

“Magic gives an army a big edge,” said Aoth. “Too big to ignore if you can get it. You Chessentans pride yourself on being a race of soldiers, but if you don’t even understand that, you don’t know anything about war.”

“We have magic,” the sunlord said. “The untainted blessings of the gods.”

“And that’s something,” said Aoth. “I fought alongside the Burning Braziers and saw what they can do. But show me the priest versatile enough to conjure darkness one moment, a cloud of poisonous smoke the next, and rust the enemy’s armor an instant after that.”

Luthen turned back to Shala. “Majesty, surely you recognize this talk for the self-serving rubbish it is. For after all, you won your own extraordinary victories without stooping to wizardry.”

Nicos, the sunlord, and a druidess of the Great Mother clad in a green gown and a holly wreath all tried to talk at once. Shala raised her hand, and everyone fell silent. The war hero then sat for a while, glowering at nothing-or everything-and fingering the scar on her chin.

“Lord Nicos,” she said at length.

“Yes, Majesty?”

“I don’t want you to think that my decision means you’ve lost my ear or my trust. It’s just that-”

It was obvious what was coming. “Majesty!” said Aoth.

Shala scowled. “Captain, I’d already noticed that you lack the aptitude for courtly speech. But I’m still, let us say, impressed that you would interrupt a monarch pronouncing judgment from her throne.”

Aoth inclined his head. “Majesty, I’m sorry. But I have one more thing to say before you make up your mind.”

“What’s that?”

“You want Luthcheq peaceful. You brought the Brotherhood here to make it that way, and you’re thinking of sending us away for the same reason. But in the short term, there’s only one thing that will truly calm the people down. Someone has to catch the Green Hand killer, and if you let me stay, I’ll do it for you.”

“I’ve been laboring under a misapprehension,” Luthen drawled. “I imagined you were trying to do that all along.”

“Of course,” said Aoth. “But I had to gather intelligence before I could make a plan that goes farther than the obvious tactics.”

“What plan?” the nobleman asked.

“If I told, you all might decide that you don’t need me.”

“Captain,” Shala said, “when you suggest such a thing, you implicitly impugn my honor.”

“Then I’m sorry again,” said Aoth. “But I am just a sellsword. I don’t claim to understand honor like barons and royalty do. And I’ve heard a few things said today that make me wonder if you and your advisors truly would deem it all that ignoble an act to cheat a despicable war-mage. Now, I’m asking you for a tenday. If I trap the murderer, then give me your trust. Send the Brotherhood to war. If I fail, then send us down the trail.”

“A tenday,” Shala said, “and if you fail, you’ll also pay wergild for the folk who died last night. To keep the people from feeling that I allowed you to commit outrages and then escape unpunished.”

Aoth swallowed. “Agreed.”

After they left the hall, Nicos whispered, “What is this brilliant scheme?”

Aoth chuckled with only a grim approximation of mirth. “I’ll let you know when I think of it.”

Aoth had packed every citizen of Luthcheq possessed of genuine arcane power into the shabby candlelit common room, and Gaedynn surveyed the collection with interest. Their demeanor was noticeably different from that of most of the wizards and warlocks he’d known, a self-assured if not arrogant lot on the whole. These men and women had a morose, guarded air.

Gaedynn supposed it was understandable, given the life they led, and wondered why they hadn’t all fled Chessenta long ago. He supposed it was because it was the only home they knew, and because the fires of hatred didn’t always burn so hot. In better times, people paid these folk for the services only a mage could provide, and mostly left them alone if they conducted themselves with circumspection.

Aoth waited for everyone to help himself to beer or wine, then claim a chair, flop down on the floor, or find a spot to stand or lean. Then he said, “Thank you for coming.”

Clad in a dark leather jerkin and breeches with a dagger in each boot, greasy black hair hanging over his eyes, a sharp-featured adolescent slouched in the corner. If not for the tattooed symbols on his hands, Gaedynn might have mistaken him for an apprentice thief. The youth made a derisive crowing sound. “As if your ruffians gave us a choice!”

Aoth cocked his head. “Did they truly have to force you? In your place, I would have been eager to join in.”

Thin as a straw with lank gray hair, a wrinkled old woman quavered, “It’s against the law for so many of us to meet indoors, Captain.” She cackled. “It forms a coven, don’t you know? So by gathering us, you officers of the watch have given yourselves all the justification you need to whisk us away to Shala Karanok’s dungeons.”

“Well,” said Aoth, “that’s not why you’re here, and if it makes you feel any safer, the war hero has given me a special dispensation to hold this meeting.”

That, Gaedynn knew, was an exaggeration. Shala Karanok had simply given Aoth permission to put some sort of plan into effect. He hadn’t told her the details, and probably that was all to the good.

“So we can help catch the Green Hand murderer,” said the knavish-looking youth.

“Yes,” said Aoth, “and thus persuade the town that it doesn’t need to rise up and slaughter you.”

“But haven’t you heard?” the adolescent replied. “One of us is the Green Hand. And the fiend will surely sabotage any attempt to unmask him.”

Perched on a narrow windowsill with hardly an inch of clearance on either side, his stumpy legs dangling, Khouryn wiped foam from his moustache. “We doubt that the killer’s truly a mage and fool enough to proclaim it to the world. It’s more likely he’s not, but wants to divert suspicion in your direction. To help cover his tracks-or because he hates you and wants to make trouble for you.”

“But he could be a wizard who hates Luthcheq for the way it treats us,” said the adolescent. “He could feel a need to declare that hatred. A compulsion so intense that he has to leave the prints, even though they somewhat increase the risk to himself.”

Gaedynn grinned. “Conceivably. But if he’s here among us, he’ll have to subvert the ritual without any of us or his fellow mages noticing. I’m no wizard, but I suspect that would be difficult. So, with a little luck, we catch him either way.”

The youth sneered. “You’re right, archer. You’re no wizard. If you were, maybe you would have studied the Five Blank Scrolls of Mythrellan, and then you’d understand-”

“Hush,” the old woman said.

To Gaedynn’s surprise, the adolescent immediately fell silent.

“Oraxes is a good boy at heart,” the sorceress continued, now addressing the officers of the Brotherhood, “but he’s contrary and loves to argue. I think your idea is a good one, and obviously we have ample reason to help. So why don’t you tell us exactly what you intend?”

“I practice a specialized form of magic,” said Aoth. “So I’ll defer to my lieutenant Jhesrhi Coldcreek.”

Jhesrhi was standing against the wall next to Khouryn. Her frown was even more forbidding than usual, a sign that she was uncomfortable. Perhaps because she never liked being the center of attention, or perhaps simply because there were too many people stuffed into the room.

“I’m no expert diviner either,” she said, “but I propose we pool our strength to create Saldashune’s Mirror.”

Oraxes snorted. “We’d need a vessel.”

“We have one.” Jhesrhi waved to the pair of dragonborn filling up a bench. “It isn’t generally known, but Daardendrien Medrash there is the one living person ever to catch a glimpse of the Green Hand.”

And, Gaedynn understood, the russet-scaled dragonborn had been hunting him ever since, out of some lofty paladin sense of obligation. That was why he’d been wandering the wizards’ quarter on the night of the riot. But if he still suspected the killer was a mage, no one could have told it from the courteous way he rose and bowed to the specimens who were peering at him curiously.

“Unfortunately,” Jhesrhi continued, “he only saw the killer in the dark, at a distance, and for an instant. But that’s the sort of problem Saldashune invented her ritual to solve. I’ve made the necessary preparations in the conjuration chamber in the cellar.”

The stairs creaking and bowing beneath their weight, they all trooped down to the space in question. By the standards of anyone who’d grown up in Aglarond with its rich tradition of sorcery, it was a miserable excuse for a mage’s sanctum-just a squared-off hole that smelled of dirt like anybody’s cellar.

But Jhesrhi had made the place seem considerably more magical. Floating orbs the size of fists shed a golden glow, while a complex geometric figure made of lines and arcs of blue phosphorescence covered most of the floor. Luminous green handprints spotted the design.

With no role to play in the conjuration, Gaedynn and Khouryn sat down on a couple of the bottommost steps. Balasar, the smaller dragonborn with the red eyes and yellow-brown scales, clasped Medrash’s shoulder, then came to stand with his fellow spectators.

“Where do you want me?” Medrash asked.

“Here.” Jhesrhi escorted him to a circle at the center of the figure.

“Now what?”

“Just stand and remember the moment when you saw the murderer. If your thoughts wander, that’s all right. Simply bring them back to where we want them.”

Jhesrhi then took a position two paces to his right, and-after some discussion and a little squabbling-Aoth and the Chessentan mages chose stations for themselves. Jhesrhi looked around like a conductor making sure all her musicians had their instruments ready. Then she spun her staff through a flourish and started chanting.

Brandishing their own rods, wands, or orbs, her fellow mages joined in, one or two at a time. Remarkably, given that they hadn’t practiced together, the wizards managed to speak exactly in unison. And when the incantation became a responsory, they seemed to know instinctively who should perform the verse and who the refrain.

Gaedynn suspected that the magic, in some sense willing its own creation, was guiding them. For certainly it was present almost from the moment Jhesrhi started speaking. It made his joints ache and filled the air with a smell like rotting lilies.

Medrash had his eyes closed and his steel medallion clasped in one hand. He was whispering too, perhaps a prayer or meditation to aid his concentration. Gaedynn assumed it wouldn’t interfere with the ritual, or Jhesrhi would have stopped him.

A disk of silvery luminescence appeared near Medrash. At first it was so faint that Gaedynn wasn’t sure he was actually seeing it. But the mages chanted louder, more insistently-and it clotted somehow, becoming more definite if no more solid.

The disk darkened, as though reflecting a place more dimly lit than the cellar. Stars glittered in a stripe down its center. The borders were the facades of buildings rising toward the sky.

A shadow leaped, or conceivably flew, across the open space between them.

After a few heartbeats it sprang again, exactly as before. Then a third time and a fourth. But it was so tiny and fleeting that even repeated viewings didn’t enable Gaedynn to determine anything more about it.

Then, however, by almost infinitesimal degrees, it started slowing down. At the same time, and just as gradually, it grew larger. Closer. Before, the magic had in effect put Gaedynn on the street, where Medrash had stood in actuality. Now it was like he was rising into the air.

“They’re doing it,” Khouryn whispered.

Then Medrash grunted and lurched like someone had struck him a blow. A white crack zigzagged through the mirror’s darkness.

After a moment the jagged line disappeared, like the wizards’ chant had repaired the damage. But now the shadow wasn’t drawing any closer, or making its jump any more slowly either. And Medrash was shaking.

“I don’t like this,” Balasar said.

More cracks stabbed across the mirror. The wizards chanted louder still and spun their instruments through circular figures. The wands and other talismans left trails of sparks and shimmers in the air.

The cracks kept disappearing. But they lasted longer than they had before. Then a gash split the scaly hide on Medrash’s forearm. Blood welled forth. An expanding stain on the front of his tunic revealed that something had slashed his chest as well.

“Stop!” Balasar shouted.

The mages kept on reciting. A forked cut burst open among the white studs on Medrash’s face.

“I’ve seen this before,” said Gaedynn, springing to his feet. “The wizards can’t stop. They’re in a trance. But if we get Medrash out of the pentagram, that should halt the ritual.”

“Then come on,” Balasar said.

The three observers strode in among the wizards. If any of the mages even noticed, Gaedynn couldn’t tell it.

But Medrash did. He turned his reptilian head so the yellow eyes under the protruding brow could regard them. Praise be to the Great Archer for that, anyway.

“Go to the stairs,” said Balasar, raising his voice to make himself heard above the chanting.

“No,” Medrash said. “I can do this, and it’s my duty.”

“You can’t and it isn’t.” Balasar turned to Gaedynn and Khouryn. “We’ll have to move him.”

“Fine,” said the dwarf. He grabbed Medrash’s forearm. Gaedynn and Balasar took hold of him as well, and they started to manhandle him away from the spot where Jhesrhi had put him.

Medrash resisted, but more feebly than Gaedynn expected of such a hulking warrior. It was like he was partly entranced himself, or dividing his attention between struggling with his would-be rescuers and reliving the instant when he’d glimpsed the murderer.

Unfortunately, the magic resisted on his behalf. The air seemed to thicken around them until it was like they were trying to walk while submerged in mud. Even Khouryn, the strongest soldier in the Brotherhood, had trouble making headway. Meanwhile, Medrash’s hide split and split again, up and down the length of his body, until it seemed likely he’d bleed to death before they hauled him to safety.

As he shoved and dragged, Gaedynn caught glimpses of Jhesrhi and Aoth, oblivious to the struggle, prisoners of their own conjuration. For an instant it reminded him of the day his father’s warriors came to deliver him to the elves. He’d promised himself he’d be brave, but he was only seven. When the time arrived, he begged to be spared, but his parents and everyone else he loved and trusted simply stood and stared.

Khouryn let go of Medrash and, his hands red with the Tymantheran’s blood, snatched the urgrosh from his back. He chopped at one of the glowing blue lines composing the figure. The edge sheared deep into the earthen floor beneath. But when he yanked the weapon free, Gaedynn saw that enchanted though it was, it had failed to cleave something made of intangible light.

Balasar spewed frost at the same patch of floor. Dragon breath was inherently magical, so Gaedynn supposed dragonborn breath must be also, but it too failed to mar the pattern.

Still, he thought Khouryn’s idea was a good one. Spoil the figure involved in raising a supernatural effect and you generally ended said effect, even if the tactic had failed dismally in Thay.

Even indoors, even in relaxed circumstances, Gaedynn usually carried a few arrows riding in a slim doeskin quiver on his belt. He felt incomplete without them. And by good fortune, he currently had one of the special shafts Jhesrhi had enchanted for him. He snatched it out and stabbed the head into one of the luminous green handprints.

The charge of countermagic in the narrow arrowhead sent nullification surging outward in all directions, an expanding ring that wiped the figure of light away. The floating mirror vanished too, and Medrash’s skin stopped splitting. The wizards’ chant stumbled to a halt. The cellar seemed profoundly silent without it.

Until Medrash drew a deep breath. “I don’t know whether to thank you or rebuke you.”

“Thank them,” said Aoth. He let his spear drop to hang casually in his grasp. A blue-green glow faded from the head. “That was completely out of control.”

“And heal yourself,” said Balasar. “You’re bleeding all over everything.”

“What just happened?” Gaedynn asked. “Is the murderer in the room? Did he subvert the magic?”

Jhesrhi brushed a stray strand of blonde hair away from her golden eyes. “I don’t think so. It seems to me that he has a powerful ward in place to keep anyone from using divination against him.” She glanced around at her fellow mages. “Do you agree?”

All speaking more or less at the same time, they indicated that they did.

“So what does that mean?” Gaedynn asked. “The killer is a wizard unknown to us or the authorities? Someone who never had his hands tattooed?”

“Maybe,” said Aoth, “or he could be a practitioner of divine magic.”

“That sounds promising,” Khouryn growled, returning his axe to its harness. “I can just see a bunch of Chessentan mages trying to pin the murders on a Chessentan holy man.”

“There are other possibilities,” Jhesrhi said. “Maybe the killer simply possesses a formidable talisman or receives aid from a supernatural entity. Or is a supernatural entity himself.”

“In other words,” Gaedynn said, “finding out about this defense doesn’t point us at any one suspect or group of suspects. So we still need magic to track the whoreson down. Now that you know about the ward, can you punch through it?”

“I’m game to try,” Medrash said. Gaedynn saw that some of the dragonborn’s wounds looked halfway healed, and the rest had at least stopped bleeding.

Aoth smiled crookedly. “Considering that we damn near killed you, I don’t know whether to praise your courage or doubt your good sense. But I have no idea how to get around that ward. Does anybody else?”

“I wouldn’t want to try to improvise a method,” Oraxes said. “Next time it could be me getting sliced to pieces.”

“But given time and study,” said the elderly witch, “we may well find the key.”

“How much time?” asked Aoth.

She shrugged her bony shoulders. “A couple of tendays. Perhaps a month.”

“I have eight days left. That’s the bargain I made with the war hero.”

“So where does that leave us?” Khouryn asked. “We just keep patrolling and hope to catch the killer at his work?”

“No.” Gaedynn picked at a tacky splotch of blood on his sleeve. Futilely; the garment was rather obviously ruined unless he could persuade Jhesrhi to remove the stains with magic. “That hasn’t worked any better than the ritual. For whatever reason, we aren’t able to stalk or track this particular beast. But there’s another way to hunt. You set out bait and wait for the animal to come to you.”

“Interesting,” said Medrash. “But is it practical in this situation? The Green Hand doesn’t kill any particular sort of person-”

“Rumor has it,” Oraxes said, “that he kills people who have a particularly strong hatred of mages. Unfortunately, Luthcheq possesses those in abundance.”

Medrash gave a quick nod. “Indeed. And given that he prowls the entire city and kills the highborn and the low, the prosperous and the poor alike, how would we go about luring him into a snare?”

Jhesrhi frowned. “There might be a way. Places can have a spirit. An atmosphere. Often it derives from their history. They attract a certain sort of person, and certain events tend to happen there.

“Generally speaking,” she continued, “it’s a very weak effect. So weak we never feel the tug. So weak that if you mean to go one way instead of another, you will. The influence can’t change your mind. But if you kept track, you’d find that over the course of a year, or a hundred years, the groups that took each path differed at least slightly.”

“Maybe I see what you’re getting at,” Khouryn said. “But if the effect is as subtle as all that, how can we count on it solving our problem in the next several days?”

“The effect as it occurs in nature is subtle,” Jhesrhi said. “We wizards should be able to infuse a particular location with a negativity more potent than that found in any of Luthcheq’s dueling grounds, slaughterhouses, torture chambers, or what have you. That will cause the Green Hand to gravitate toward that area when he chooses his next victim. And we’ll be waiting there to catch him.”

“But what about the people who live and work in that area?” Khouryn asked. “If I understand you correctly, the new atmosphere will poison their thoughts. They might end up hurting or even killing one another.”

Oraxes sneered. “To the Towers of Night with them. If somebody doesn’t catch the Green Hand, those bastards will come back here to burn and butcher all of us.”

Medrash gave him a level stare. “It’s unlikely that all the people whose minds you’d corrupt hate mages, or would try to slaughter you in any case. But even if they are your enemies, this is a dishonorable way to strike at them.”

“Oh, sharpen your claws,” said Balasar. Gaedynn had never heard the expression before, but he assumed the smaller dragonborn was telling his clan brother not to be so squeamish. If so, then he thoroughly approved.

“If a person isn’t depraved to begin with,” Jhesrhi said, “the influence won’t make him so in just a few days.”

“What about the man who’s right on the edge?” asked Khouryn.

“And what about angry blows and spiteful words?” Medrash asked. “A person doesn’t have to fall into outright fiendishness to make mistakes that will mar his life forever afterward.”

Aoth frowned. “There’s no point debating the morality of it unless we’re sure it’s even possible. In the time we have left, I mean.”

“I think it is,” the aged sorceress said. “It’s not really that complicated, just funneling the raw essence of malice into a place-and this time there shouldn’t be resistance to overcome. We can probably proceed with a ritual as early as tomorrow night.”

“Then I say we go ahead,” said Aoth. “The Green Hand murders people every tenday. The city’s in a panic. Every wizard’s in danger, and the future of the Brotherhood’s at stake. If we can fix all that, it will more than make up for whatever incidental nastiness we cause along the way.”

Oraxes grinned. “Unless somebody finds out about it. Because what we’re really talking about is laying a curse on a part of Luthcheq and the people who live there. And there’s no way of justifying that to fools who already hate sorcery.”

“Then it’s a good thing we all know how to keep our mouths shut,” said Aoth. “Now, I’ve already committed the Brotherhood to this plan. Do the rest of you agree?”

The Chessentan mages exchanged glances, then murmured or nodded their support.

“I still don’t like it,” Medrash said. “But promise me a place among the hunters, and that you’ll lift the curse as soon as we catch the murderer, and I’m with you.”

“Done,” said Aoth. “Now let’s decide where to center the spell.”

“The ropemakers’ quarter,” Khouryn said. “It’s a poor district, with all the ills that go along with want, and a boy died a bloody, pointless death there just a few days back. If you want a place to stink of misery and anger, your work’s already halfway done.”

Aoth and Jet glided over the rookeries and the narrow streets and alleys snaking between them. Aoth was the only rider in the air. Griffons were magnificent beasts, useful for many purposes, but you couldn’t expect ordinary ones to circle endlessly without screeching to one another.

It likely didn’t matter that no one else was aloft. Clouds shrouded the moon, and few lights burned below. Even a dwarf like Khouryn couldn’t have seen much from such a height.

But with his fire-touched eyes, Aoth could. He could even see the taint he and his fellow mages had cast over a portion of the ropemakers’ precinct. It revealed itself as a slow seething inside the deepest shadows.

He wished they could have confined it to a smaller area. That would have made it easier to spot the Green Hand if the magic actually succeeded in drawing him in. It would also have reduced the number of innocents obliviously immersing themselves in filth.

But Aoth didn’t find it all that hard to disregard their plight. He’d done worse things in war. And as far as he was concerned, he was at war now-a war to save the Brotherhood from ruin.

A dark form skulked across a canted tenement rooftop. “There!” said Aoth.

“Where?” Aoth felt his psychic connection to Jet deepen as the familiar availed himself of vision even keener than his own. “Oh, right, I see him. But is that the Green Hand?”

“I don’t know. Fly lower.”

Crouched, clad in a voluminous robe and a hood that covered his entire head, the man below certainly looked like anyone’s notion of a fiend. But like most slums, the ropemakers’ precinct harbored a diversity of outlaws, and a masked man could lurk on a roof for a number of reasons. Aoth didn’t want to reveal his presence until he was sure he’d found his quarry.

The hooded man stalked to the edge of the roof and then crawled over it, clinging to the wall head down like an insect or lizard. He scuttled along the top tier of shuttered windows, seemingly peering through the cracks.

Aoth’s doubts fell away. A thief who could climb like that, whether by dint of skill or magic, would steal from wealthier folk than paupers in a tenement. The man below was here to kill. Come to think of it, it was in just such a setting that he’d committed the first murders in his string.

Jet perceived his master’s certainty. “I can peel him right off that wall.”

Aoth snorted. His steed could perform amazing maneuvers in flight, but the prospect of plunging into the narrow space between buildings, mere inches away from one of them, was enough to give any rider pause. “Just swoop low enough to give me a shot.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” But Jet did as he’d been instructed.

The hooded man dug his fingertips between the laths of a shutter like he meant to rip the barrier off its hinges. Aoth aimed his spear and considered whether to hurl frost or darts of light.

Then Jet went rigid and plummeted toward the street. His spread wings caught just enough air to keep Aoth from breaking bones when they crashed down. It was only then that Aoth spotted the arrow buried deep in the feathered part of the griffon’s flank, just behind the foreleg.

Aoth looked up just in time to see a second hooded figure, this one armed with a bow, step back from the edge of a roof and out of sight. The man on the wall was gone.

At that moment, Aoth hated himself for failing to spot the archer, even though no one had ever even speculated that the Green Hand might have an accomplice. “How bad is it?” He started to swing himself out of the saddle to take a better look.

“Stay where you are!” said Jet.

“You need-”

“Stay where you are!” The griffon ran and leaped. His wings lashing, he rose into the air.

Just high enough to thump down on a rooftop, where Aoth felt his exhaustion and fatigue almost as if they were his own. “Now you can see which way they went,” said Jet.

He was right. The Green Hand and his lookout were fleeing to the north, bounding like grasshoppers from building to building. “Will you be all right here?” asked Aoth.

“I won’t die on you. Get them!”

Aoth dismounted, yanked his bugle from the saddle, and blew it. Then he waited for what seemed forever, although he knew that in reality it only took a few heartbeats for Jhesrhi to answer his call.

She arrived flying on the wind, garments flapping, hair whirling around her, the gold runes on her black staff pulsing. When she spied Jet and the blood dripping down the shingles beneath him, her eyes widened in dismay.

“It’s nothing,” snarled the griffon. “Why does everyone think I’m so delicate?”

Aoth pointed with his spear. “There are two Green Hand killers, and they fled that way.”

Jhesrhi squinted. “I can’t see them.”

“Luckily, I still can. Just. We need to get after them.”

Jhesrhi lifted her staff in both hands and rattled off words of command. The wind howled and lifted Aoth in its embrace, and he and his lieutenant soared together.

It didn’t take him long to realize he didn’t like it. He loved flying on griffonback, but then he was in control and had something solid under his arse. Here, the unreasoning, instinctual part of his mind kept insisting he was going to fall. Of course even if he had, the magic bound in one of his tattoos would have enabled him to float down to a soft landing, but remembering that only helped a little.

Fortunately, he was too intent on the quarry for anxiety to claim much of a hold on him. He had to redirect Jhesrhi as the murderers veered this way and that. Meanwhile, she had to maintain the pursuit and also pick up their comrades hiding in the shadows of chimneys or in doorways and stairwells at street level.

Even for a mistress of elemental magic, it had to be taxing. But one by one, Khouryn, Balasar, Medrash, and Gaedynn bobbed or whirled up into the sky. Aoth found a bit of amusement in the fact that the dwarf and the smaller dragonborn looked even more uncomfortable than he was. The paladin, though, appeared so intent on righteous vengeance as to barely even notice he was flying, while the auburn-haired archer smirked as usual.

Gradually, they narrowed the killers’ lead. Gaedynn tried a couple of shots, but even he couldn’t hit a moving target in such difficult circumstances. Jhesrhi’s conjured wind was just too strong, as well as unpredictable from one moment to the next.

The murderers leaped onto the roof of a fair-sized but dilapidated box of a house at the edge of the city. They threw open a trapdoor, scurried through, and closed it behind them.

“Half through the top and half through the bottom!” yelled Khouryn.

“I agree!” Aoth replied.

Jhesrhi spoke to the wind. Aoth recognized one of the languages of Chaos, although he wasn’t fluent enough to understand all the words. Fortunately, the wind did. Khouryn and the two dragonborn hurtled toward the ground. Aoth, Jhesrhi, and Gaedynn flew onto the roof, and then the air stopped supporting them or fluttering their clothes.

Jhesrhi panted and swiped back her hair with a shaky hand.

“Are you all right?” asked Aoth.

“Fine,” she said.

“There are only two Green Hands,” said Gaedynn, nocking an arrow, “and six of us. If-”

“I said I’m fine,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“Then let’s get to it,” said Aoth. In theory, with them coming in from the roof and Khouryn and the Tymantherans entering on the ground floor, they had the killers trapped between them. Still, he didn’t want to give the bastards time to do anything clever.

He tried to pull open the trapdoor. The Green Hands had barred it behind them. He jabbed the point of his spear into the wood, spoke a word of command, and released a bit of the power stored in the weapon. The trapdoor exploded into scraps and splinters.

Below the hole was a ladder. Aoth didn’t bother with it. He simply jumped and thumped down on a dusty floor. He pivoted, spear and targe poised for defense.

He was alone in a lightless attic festooned with spiderwebs. It smelled of age and abandonment. A steep staircase descended to the story beneath.

Aoth stepped aside, and Gaedynn jumped down after him. The air moaned and surged, and Jhesrhi floated down, as though to allay her comrades’ concerns that she was too tired to use more magic. She brightened the glow of the runes on her staff to serve for a lantern.

Gaedynn sniffed. “I smell smoke.”

Aoth realized he did too. But they needed to stay focused on catching the murderers. “Keep moving.”

Peering for some sign of the Green Hands, he led his lieutenants down the rickety stairs. The smell of burning grew stronger. From what he could see so far, the building looked like any derelict house. It had probably belonged to some prosperous burgher, with servants and apprentices consigned to the stark little rooms on this floor and the family sleeping in nicer ones below.

The darkness burned white, and something crackled. Aoth shuddered, his muscles locking, and the staircase shattered beneath him. As he and his comrades slammed down amid the wreckage, he realized that someone standing behind the steps, where even spellscarred eyes couldn’t see, had struck them all with a blaze of conjured lightning.

Fortunately, it hadn’t killed him. The protective charms bound into his tattoos and gear, his own innate hardiness, or Tymora’s favor had preserved him, and he prayed the same was true of his friends. Starting to feel the hot pain of his burns, he floundered around to face his attacker.

Then, at the very periphery of his vision, he glimpsed a robed, hooded figure stepping out of a doorway. Liquid sprayed him and his companions, searing them once again.

Aoth’s eyes burned and filled with tears. Something hit his chest-not, he thought, penetrating his mail but slamming the breath out of him. He was too blind to have any idea what it was.

For a long moment it felt to Medrash like he, Balasar, and the dwarf were simply falling. But at what was surely the last possible moment, the wind gusted upward to slow their descent. They still bumped down hard, but without injury.

Balasar drew his sword. “Appearances to the contrary,” he said, “maybe your wizard friend does have a sense of humor.”

Khouryn spun his axe through a casual practice swing. “No, she just set us down the easiest way, without caring whether it would make us think we were about to meet our ancestors.” He strode to the door of the derelict house and broke it open with a kick. The door banged against the interior wall, and the impact echoed throughout the building.

“Subtle,” Balasar said.

“They already know we’re chasing them,” Medrash said. “I doubt it matters.”

It was even darker once they entered the house. Medrash murmured a prayer and infused the blade of his sword with pearly light.

The glow revealed a ground floor that had, in its time, served the purposes of commerce, with empty shelves and counters near the door and worktables farther back. He couldn’t tell what the long-departed shopkeeper had manufactured and sold.

Nor did he care. All that mattered was bringing the Green Hand-or rather Hands-to justice and completing the task the Loyal Fury had entrusted to him. Ridding Luthcheq of a loathsome evil, further cementing the bonds of friendship between Chessenta and Tymanther, and bringing honor to Clan Daardendrien in the process.

A rat scuttled into a hole at the base of a wall. But except for vermin, the ground floor seemed deserted. “Let’s find the stairs,” he said.

Balasar pointed with his sword. “There.”

They started up, the spongy steps bowing under Medrash’s weight. Ruddy light flickered at the top. He wondered if something was on fire, and then two figures, mere shapeless silhouettes against the glow, abruptly stepped into view. Dark vapor streamed down at him.

Medrash’s nose and mouth burned. He doubled over coughing and could tell from the sounds behind him that his companions were similarly afflicted.

They had to exit the poison cloud and come to grips with their attackers. Despite his inability to catch his breath, and the fiery pain crawling down his throat into his lungs, he started running up the last few risers.

Then he faltered and found that he simply couldn’t continue. His attackers were exerting some sort of psychic compulsion to prevent it.

That meant he and his comrades had to escape out the other side of the fumes. “Back!” he croaked.

They turned and staggered downward. Until Khouryn, who was now in the lead, froze. An instant later, the dragonborn did too. Medrash could just distinguish other figures at the foot of the stairs. He had no idea where they’d been hiding when he’d first entered the shop. But somewhere, obviously, and now here they were, exerting the same influence as their accomplices on the floor above. Caging the intruders inside the toxic vapor.

Still coughing uncontrollably, Balasar collapsed.

The lightning, the fall, and the spray of vitriol, all coming within the span of a heartbeat or two, had stunned Gaedynn into a dazed passivity. But a part of him knew it and screamed for him to move.

He glimpsed motion in the direction from which the lightning had come. The possibility of a second such attack broke the impasse inside him. The part that wanted to act became the whole.

He rolled to one knee. Thanks be to old Keen-Eye, his enchanted bow was still intact despite the abuse it had just sustained. In fact, it seemed to have come through better than he had, considering the ugly chars and blisters on his skin.

But he didn’t yet feel the pain, not really, and praise the Great Archer for that too. He couldn’t afford to feel it.

His teary eyes could just make out a robed figure. He drew back an arrow and let it fly. The shaft buried itself in the robed man’s torso, and he toppled backward.

But at the same instant, Gaedynn heard rushing footsteps. He jerked around. All he could discern were vague flickers of motion, and this time, his smarting, watery eyes weren’t the problem. The oncoming foes were invisible, at least most of the time.

And they were already too close for any more archery. He leaped to his feet, crossed his arms, and snatched out the two short swords he’d brought along for backup weapons.

Unable to see his foes except for a moment now and then, hoping sheer ferocity would daunt them, he slashed madly. Once, he felt his left-hand blade slice something solid. Another time, he parried a stroke by pure instinct. Twice, an attack thumped him but failed to penetrate his brigandine.

He knew his luck couldn’t hold, but he was less afraid than outraged by the sheer unfairness of his situation. He and his companions had ventured forth to catch one murderer. Then they’d learned to Jet’s cost that the one was really two. Now it appeared two had multiplied into a whole houseful, and they could throw lightning and acid around and turn invisible.

The invisibility at least should have posed no problem for Aoth, and the war-mage had in fact regained his feet. But, eyes compressed to streaming slits in his blistered, mottled face, the man who could famously see everything didn’t seem to be doing any more damage with his jabbing spear than Gaedynn was with his swords. Apparently the acid spray had had an even more deleterious effect on his sight.

He and Gaedynn fought side by side, in the hallway where the staircase had come down, to prevent any of their unseen foes from slipping around behind them. Aoth growled a word of power, and frost leaped from the head of his spear. It painted the entire space before them white, and the hooded men as well.

Since he didn’t instantly follow up, it seemed that he still couldn’t see their foes, or at least not clearly. But Gaedynn could. He sprang, beat a short blade like his own out of line, and drove the point of his right-hand sword into an opponent’s guts.

He jerked the weapon free, and the Green Hands disappeared. “Again!” he shouted to Aoth.

But no more frost came. Gaedynn glanced around and saw that Aoth’s helmet was dented and askew, and, though he kept the spear shifting and thrusting in one of the basic defensive patterns, he looked unsteady on his feet.

And because of Gaedynn’s aggression, the two of them weren’t even in line anymore. Cutting and stabbing, he tried to retreat.

Then, behind him, Jhesrhi croaked words of command. Water splashed down over his head and everything else in the hallway like hundreds of buckets had overturned at once.

It washed the stinging acidic residue from his skin. It evidently washed it out of Aoth’s eyes too, and roused him from the daze induced by the knock he’d taken on the head. His eyes snapped open wide enough to reveal their blue fire. He stepped, stabbed, and the power in his spear blasted to pieces the man he’d just impaled.

Aoth then turned and hurled darts of green light in Gaedynn’s direction. They stopped short of him, vanishing as they pierced the two invisible foes between the sellswords. Who became visible as they crumpled to the floor.

Aoth pivoted again and hurled three lightningbolts down the hall in quick succession. The flashes dazzled Gaedynn, and the booms hurt his ears.

Afterward, Aoth lowered his spear and turned away from the steaming, twisted corpses he’d just created and the several small fires he’d started. Evidently this particular fight was over.

Gaedynn wiped the blades of his swords, returned them to their scabbards, and retrieved his bow. “That was quite… enthusiastic, there at the end.”

Aoth grunted. “After the Spellplague touched me, I was blind for a while. I suppose it’s the kind of experience that leaves a mark. Is everyone all right?”

“Not too bad,” Jhesrhi said. “I have an elixir to numb the pain and keep us on our feet.” She took a little pewter vial from her belt pouch, unscrewed the stopper, and took the first swallow herself. Gaedynn knew why. She would have found it difficult to drink from the container after someone else put his mouth on it.

As she handed the vial to Gaedynn, Aoth stooped over one of the Green Hands, then cursed. Gaedynn peered at the corpse and felt like doing the same.

Aoth possessed inhumanly keen sight, but even so, this was the first clear, close, unhurried look that he or his comrades had had at one of the killers. And now the unexpected shape of the hood was apparent. Or rather, the shape of the head inside it.

Aoth ripped the cowl away.

“We have to get to Khouryn,” Jhesrhi said.

Medrash’s helpless coughing made it impossible to recite any of his prayers. The pain burning throughout his respiratory system, and the knowledge that he could easily die breathing the poisonous vapor, further impaired his ability to focus his will.

But he would focus it. He had to help his comrades-and besides, the body and its distress were not the ultimate reality. Torm and his glory were.

He reached out to the god, and power like frigid spring water poured into him. He infused it with righteous fury, shaping it into a weapon, then brandished his sword. Flares of white light leaped from the blade to stab at the figures at the bottom of the stairs.

The attack rocked the Green Hands backward. Nearly tripping, Medrash staggered over the fallen Balasar, tried to slip past Khouryn, and again discovered he couldn’t advance any farther. He’d hurt the Green Hands, but not enough to make them lose control of the psychic wall they’d created.

He channeled more power, though it was even harder this time. He fixed his gaze on one of the killers and willed him to climb the stairs and come within reach of his sword.

The Green Hand took one lurching step. Another. Then, however, he gave a harsh, wordless cry, stopped, and retreated to his original position.

Blackness swam at the edges of Medrash’s vision. His legs started to give way, and he had to drop his sword and clutch the banister to keep from falling.

Torm’s glory was limitless, but a mortal’s capacity to draw from it was not. Medrash judged that at best, he could channel power one more time before he collapsed. He groped beyond himself, beyond the physical world into a brighter, purer realm, and the god granted a final gift of strength.

But how to use it, when his previous expenditures of power had accomplished nothing? He gripped Khouryn’s massive shoulder, which jumped repeatedly as the dwarf coughed, and employed the energy to bless him. To strengthen his body and mind alike.

Khouryn stumbled down one riser, almost losing his balance in the process. Then he hefted his axe and charged.

Unfortunately, his lungs were still full of poison, and his continued coughing slowed him and made him clumsy. Though caught by surprise, the Green Hands managed to recoil from his first strikes and ready their short swords.

But they evidently couldn’t do that and maintain the psychic pressure too. For when Medrash, still gripping the handrail, tried to head down the steps, he found that now he could.

He reeled toward one of the Green Hands to keep them both from attacking Khouryn. The murderer turned and lunged. The move was all-out aggression. Because after all, why worry about defense when his target was unarmed and all but spastic with pain and weakness? When the coughing would prevent him from even using his breath weapon?

But at least Medrash wasn’t breathing poison anymore, and he’d spent his whole life training for combat-first with the masters of arms of Clan Daardendrien, then with his paladin mentors. Feeble and awkward though he was, he found the right instant to slip the swordsman’s initial thrust, step beside him, and claw away the side of his throat. Blood sprayed from the severed arteries.

Medrash turned just in time to see Khouryn chop the remaining Green Hand’s leg out from under him, then cleave his ribs before he hit the floor. Clearly he too could hold his own even in adverse circumstances.

The dwarf nodded to Medrash, and he returned the gesture. Then a clatter of hurrying feet on the staircase reminded them the fight wasn’t over. Their other enemies were coming down. Evidently the lingering vapor wasn’t toxic to them.

Worse, after stepping over Balasar, they stopped partway down the steps. Medrash realized that however they’d created the smoke before, they meant to make some more. And he had no idea how he and Khouryn could contend with another dose.

But Balasar, who’d appeared unconscious-or as good as-raised the sword in his shaking hand and sliced the back of a killer’s leg. The murderer dropped, and his companion turned to look at him in surprise. Balasar thrust the sword up at him. The Green Hand flinched back from it, but in so doing lost his balance and tumbled down the steps.

With what was surely the last of his strength, Balasar repeatedly stabbed the man he’d hamstrung. Khouryn sucked in a deep breath, made a hiccupping sound as he kept himself from coughing it right out again, and charged back into the fumes-where he smashed the skull of the remaining Green Hand.

Medrash hoped that by now perhaps he’d taken enough breaths of relatively clean air to do something comparable. He’d better have, for he was sure Balasar couldn’t wait. He ran up the stairs, grabbed his clan brother’s arm-he hadn’t yet regained sufficient strength to lift him-and dragged him down and out of the cloud.

Then they all flopped down on the floor, coughed, and watched for other threats, although at first it was questionable whether they could do much about any that might appear. Gradually, though, the ache in Medrash’s chest subsided, and his strength started trickling back.

“You banged my head on every one of those steps,” Balasar wheezed.

“Sorry,” Medrash said. “Next time I’ll leave you swimming in poison.”

Three thunderclaps, or something that sounded like them, boomed somewhere overhead.

“I know that sound,” Khouryn said. “Aoth or Jhesrhi conjured lightning.”

Medrash looked at the staircase. The cloud was dissipating. “We should find out why. And I think I can cast a blessing to strengthen us so we’re fit to help them if they need it.”

“Good,” said Khouryn. “Do that. But before we move on…” He rose, reached for the hood on one of the corpses, and hesitated. Medrash peered at the body and realized what about it had surprised him.

Khouryn pulled off the hood to reveal the dragonborn head underneath. “By the Watchful Eye!” he growled, astonished. He unmasked another Green Hand. That one was a dragonborn as well.

The dwarf turned to his companions. “What does this mean?”

Medrash shook his head. “We have no idea. Let’s worry about it after we find our comrades.” He gripped his amulet and recited a prayer.

An exhilarating coolness tingled through his body and soothed the hot rawness in his throat and chest. He lifted the medallion and it shed a soft white light over his companions. A tautness went out of their faces as the healing eased them too.

“Thanks,” Khouryn said. “Now let’s go.”

Medrash retrieved his sword as they prowled up the staircase. At the top was the communal room that likely took up most of the second floor of the human habitation. And it was on fire, albeit burning in the leisurely way of damp, rotten wood. Flames licked across a portion of the floor and up one wall, devouring the designs and symbols painted there. Papers charred in the hearth. Smoke drifted through the hot air, irritating Medrash’s nose and almost making him cough again.

Aoth, Gaedynn, and Jhesrhi came through a doorway. Each had suffered what looked like blisters and burns, and for some reason each was dripping wet. But none looked seriously hurt.

Medrash was glad to see them. But the feeling turned to dismay when the humans aimed their weapons and spread out to flank their allies.

“Move away from them, Khouryn!” rapped Aoth. The head of his spear glowed crimson.

“It’s all right,” said the dwarf. “We know-the Green Hands are dragonborn. But these two dragonborn aren’t Green Hands. They fought the ones we met downstairs.”

“You’re sure?” The point of the spear shone brighter, and Medrash could have sworn that the strange blue light in Aoth’s eyes did the same. “It couldn’t have been some sort of trick?”

“No,” Khouryn said. “They saved my life and came close to dying themselves.”

Aoth mulled that over for a heartbeat, then gave a nod. “All right. Medrash, Balasar, my apologies. Jhesrhi, can you put out these fires?”

“Yes.” Her voice rising and falling, the wizard chanted. The quick, soft words resembled the whisper of dancing flames. As she recited the last one, the fires guttered out.

Arrow still resting on his bow, Gaedynn turned and peered around. “We seem to have cleared the house.”

“Yes,” Khouryn said. He turned to Aoth. “Dragon, dragonborn… Now we understand your vision.”

“I suppose,” said Aoth. “Unfortunately, we understand too late to give our friends from Clan Daardendrien advance warning of what’s to come.”