The Crimson Talisman

1 Horror at the Gates

Through the long slit of the castle window, Vaddi peered out at the gathering gloom. For the last two hours the clouds had been piling together, clashing like huge fleets above the towers of Marazanath Hold, the threat of thunder hanging like doom over the castle and all these remote northern crags. Only the snake-tongue flashes of lightning bathed the surrounding terrain in light, jagged as the rocks that knifed down to the sea two hundred feet below. From out of the north, the icy winds gusted, hurled with a terrible energy.

Vaddi could just make out the combers as they shattered themselves on the shore below, like some mad army determined to dash itself to pieces. The first detonation overhead confirmed that the storm had truly arrived, and Vaddi felt the very walls of the Hold shuddering. There had been storms before. Indeed, they were frequent so far in the north of Khorvaire, along this remote sweep of the Karrn Bay, but somehow he felt that this storm presaged something more ominous, as chough within its cloaking darkness some other force was stirring.

Hidden from his eyes by sheets of driving rain, the inner courtyard at the stronghold gates far below was barely lit by the sputtering torches set under the eaves around it. The night watch, a dozen sleepy guards, huddled under the walls, occasionally casting a look out over the parapet at the winding road.

“Looks like we’ve got company!” called one of the rain-soaked watchers to his companions below, pointing at the churning night.

“You’re imagining it, Garrond! Only a lunatic would be out in this muck.”

“Supplies coming in, by the look of it.”

The watcher shielded his eyes from the blasts of wind and rain. He could see the wide cart as it struggled up the slope toward the castle, its wheels digging into the mud, its sheer weight almost bringing it to a halt. Barrels and crates almost overloaded the vehicle, and two sodden figures hunched over it, urging four huge dray horses forward in defiance of the storm.

“They must’ve started out before this storm broke,” said Amalfax, the other watchman on the wall. “Got so far and thought better of turning back! Hah! Better let them in.”

“It’s gone midnight. You know the rules.”

“Hell’s teeth, Garrond, give the poor devils a break! They’ve half killed themselves getting here. Let them in. That’s our supplies out there!”

Garrond grunted an obscenity and went on muttering about being flogged for improper discharge of duty but nevertheless operated the massive winch that cranked down the drawbridge. It slapped down into the mud across the chasm. The huge cart eased its way onto the bridge, lumbering toward the gates and inner courtyard. As it did so, one of its wheels tilted, thick spokes snapping, and the cart sagged to one side.

Garrond’s shouted obscenities became even more colorful. The two men on the cart were waving frantically. Moments later the night watch scrambled out the gates, all of them setting their shoulders to the lilting cart in an effort to get it upright and into the courtyard. A brief slab of light from one of the guard’s lanterns revealed a sudden tear in the hide covering of the cart’s load. The tear parted, and men squirmed our from beneath it like maggots from a rotten fruit.

Too late Garrond and Amalfax saw steel. The intruders leaped down and rammed their swords into flesh. Four of the night guards were down at a stroke, blood spilling on to the bridge. The cart leaned drunkenly, two huge barrels breaking loose and smashing on to the boards before tumbling into the ravine. A dozen more intruders jumped from the wagon, and within momenta the entire night watch was involved in a furious struggle.

Garrond dragged out his own blade. With a scything chop he ripped open the belly of the nearest intruder. His eyes bulged, for no blood spurted over him—only an explosion of dust. The belly of his assailant opened to reveal rotting clothing and crumbling bone. Its skeletal features were lit by its scarlet eyes, fed by some hellish fires. It grinned at the damage to its gut and attacked anew. The others were akin to this horror, their death-white skin gleaming in the rain, their rusted weapons slashing with terrible efficiency at the guards. They fought in a grim silence, their malign eyes fixed on their victims.

They cut down almost all the defenders and moved into the courtyard. On the bridge, his life seeping out of him from a dozen wounds, Garrond could see other shapes down the road—scores of them. The darkness and the storm had disgorged an entire army, a swarm of invaders, and as they approached, Garrond could see that there were men among them—a ragtag legion of vagabonds and bandits, armed with all manner of weapons.

As he felt life ebbing, Garrond looked up to see one tall figure standing over him like something from a nightmare. Garbed in tight black robes, the being leaned over him, its hideous face gleaming in triumph, its sharp fangs vivid in the brief flicker of lightning-light. Vampire! Garrond realised. This rabble of an army was led by one of the undead!

It was his last thought as the creature lunged.

Vaddi heard a soft tread behind him. He turned away from the storm to meet the cool gaze of his father, Anzar Kemmal Orien, head of the household and one of the lords of House Orien.

“Not asleep? After the rigours of training, I would have thought even this storm would not have woken you.” Anzar smiled.

For all his years, he seemed imbued with an unusual vitality. He wore a shirt of lightweight steel mesh that hung below his waist, and his long arms were muscular from constant practice with the broadsword. In spite of the hour, his eyes were as alert as those of the ravens that made this rugged hold their home.

“It’s an evil night, father. Do you not sense it?”

Anzar studied his son, seeing the young muscles, taut as a spring. Vaddi was barely eighteen, but already the long hours of training had hardened him. No youth from the distant cities would be a match for him, Anzar could see. So different in looks from his three half-brothers, several years his senior, who had years ago become knights in Thrane before returning to serve here. They were the pride of Anzar, but seeing Vaddi, he felt a stab of emotion. In Vaddi’s green eyes there seemed to glow a strange fire, an elemental thing. The youth had jet-black hair that framed narrow features—so like Indreen, Anzar’s second wife. She had been an elf, so Vaddi would never grow to the full stature of his three half-brothers. But there were other powers within the youth, Anzar well knew.

“Such storms are not unknown,” said Anzar, “but they are, after all, merely storms.”

Vaddi’s eyes returned to gazing out the window, where more lightning rent the skies. He straightened, his lips pursing, brows furrowed in the familiar determination.

Anzar grinned, in spite of the circumstances, but a shadow in hit expression made Vaddi stiffen.

“Something is wrong, isn’t it, Father?”

“We live in deeply troubled times, my son. Our lands echo with the dark schemes and treacheries of earthly powers. The Sovereigns know how all of Khorvaire suffers. It is time for you to know certain truths. Your destiny, I believe, lies elsewhere.”

Vaddi tried to smile. “I am eager to serve that call, as you know, Father.”

Anzar looked grave. “The world is at a crossroads. The Last War may have ended, but what is left in its place? A cauldron, stirred by the hand of chaos. A hand that will pluck you and crush you, if it can.”

“Me? Surely I am the least of your sons?”

Anzar came to him and put his hands on the youth’s shoulders, pulling him close. “Never think that, Vaddi. You may not have the physical stature of your half-brothers, but you hold an equal place in my heart. Even more so since your mother died.”

“You said that I have enemies.”

Anzar pulled away. “I have something for you. Something unique. We spoke of destiny. This is yours. You are man enough now to receive it.”

Outside the window, the storm raged on, raising its voice as if in response to Anzar’s strange words. Vaddi felt a pulse of deep unease, as if this revelation stirred great powers beyond his understanding. From beneath his light mesh shirt Anzar pulled an object on a thin chain. It looked pale and featureless in the shifting firelight, but Vaddi could see that it was a horn the length of a dirk, Anzar held it in both hands, turning it slowly, cautiously.

“This is Erethindel,” he said, his voice almost reverent.

In spite of the ordinariness of the horn, Vaddi’s own voice dropped to a whisper. “It seems a plain thing.”

“It is not what it seems, Vaddi. It is said that the elves made it, with the aid of the dragons. It stores great power, but only one person can use it while he is alive. The elves have hidden it for centuries. Indreen, your mother, was the last to keep it, here, far from those who might seek it. Since her death, it has been locked away, but now it is for you to bear.”

Vaddi drew back. “To do what?”

“You must carry the horn. Guard it with your life until it is needed. You will know when that moment comes.”

Very slowly, Vaddi took the horn. He felt heat, as though it were alive. Something in his blood stirred, a response to the horn, as if resonating to a chord of music. Quickly he slipped the silver thong over his head and tucked the horn inside his shirt. He glanced at his hand that had touched it, and to his consternation saw that there was a smear of his blood on it.

If Anzar had seen this, he said nothing, but he nodded, pleased. “You are one with the horn, Vaddi. Powers will seek you because of it. Weigh them with caution. And let no one know what you carry. You were born to serve it and it to serve you. Never forget that.”

Ironically, for such a portentous thing, the horn felt like no more than a common ornament about Vaddi’s neck. Perhaps it was as well. Even to think of being joined with such powers made him uncomfortable.

He was about to say more when a shout from the stairs below the room made both of them turn in alarm, Anzar flung the door open to reveal a blood-spattered soldier, panting with exertion.

“Lord, we are besieged! An army … within the walls!”

“An army?” snarled Anzar. “What are you blathering about?”

“The walls are breached, lord! Everyone is arming.”

Anzar looked at Vaddi then pushed the man before him as they descended the stairs. Vaddi could hear his father shouting for his weapons.

Vaddi ran to the large wardrobe between the everbright lanterns on the far wall and flung open the doors. He donned a steel-mesh shirt and grabbed the long dirk that was always close at hand. He did not understand this. How could an army breach the castle walls? Marazanath was perched on the crags, aloof and dominant. No enemy had ever taken it. Selecting another sword, he fled the room.

Minutes later, Vaddi emerged on battlements above his chambers, ignoring the blasts of wind and the sling of rain. Not far below he could see, to his horror, that the soldier had been right. Not only were there numerous assailants within the castle, but flames were licking up at the bailing skies from several towers. War had indeed come to Marazanath.

The ring of swords and the snarls of combat came to his ears through the storm. Men were cut down and tossed over the walls. House Orien was well fortified here, with several hundred skilled warriors on hand to defend its master, but Vaddi realised that whatever dark force had burst in upon them was no small thing.

He sped down a stairway and came to the edge of the fighting. A wounded soldier, his side leaking blood, held him back. “Not that way, my lord. It’s hopeless.”

“Who are they?”

“Bandits.”

“Bandits are no match for knights!” snapped Vaddi. “How many are there?”

“Someone—” The man grimaced and fell to his knees. He was trembling, and Vaddi could see the blood loss would soon do him in, but the guard gathered his strength and continued. “Someone has pulled them in. By the … hundreds. Every last villain skulking in the Icewood! And … the undead—”

“Undead?” Vaddi could not keep the horror from his voice.

“Scores of them. They are led by a vampire.” The man clutched at Vaddi’s arm. “The Emerald Claw, master! It … must be. Their agents have stirred up this nest of maggots.”

“For what reason?”

But the man had spoken his last. Cursing, Vaddi sped on down the stone corridors. He found blood and death at every turn, where soldiers of the House had been gutted or the invaders had been similarly chopped down. There were indeed undead among the fallen, their twitching, rotting parts still clinging to a semblance of grim life.

“Where is my father?” he shouted at a group of warriors who were barring one of the tall doors to an inner chamber.

“Above us! But have a care, lord. They are like hornets, these invaders. Already we have lost many.”

Vaddi raced up another stairway and came out on a long wall. He could see through the murk of the night a parallel wall across another deep courtyard. On it was a grisly spectacle. Squeezed together in a knot of resistance, Anzar and two of his sons hacked and slashed at the invaders. The defenders of Marazanath fought with extraordinary energy, laying about them with their longswords, sending countless foes over the wall.

Vaddi raced along the parapet, through the rooms of a tower, and over to where his father fought. Using every last bit of skill he had been taught in the long and arduous hours of training, he cut into the enemy. Ignoring the cuts he took and the blows that buffeted him, Vaddi let nothing prevent him from chopping through to his father’s side. But he saw with a stab of pain far deeper than any sword cut that two of his half-brothers, Brohulan and Dannaharn, had already been speared. They had fallen almost at Anzar’s feet, their lives spent.

Anzar and the last of his warriors drove back the enemy, hurling them from the battlements. Gaining a brief respite, Vaddi hugged his father. Howls of anger rose from the enemy below as they gathered themselves for what must be a final assault.

“Where is Ferrumas?” Vaddi asked, naming his third half-brother.

His father shook his head, fighting back a wave of emotion as he dragged ragged breaths into his lungs. “He fought on the western battlements, but we saw a huge wedge of the enemy scaling them on all sides. We are undone, Vaddi. Whoever has engineered this assault has caught us unready.”

“Agents of the Claw?”

“They are behind this for certain. They mean to kill us all, but you must not fall.” He leaned forward. “You must take the charge I gave you and flee. It is vital.”

“You think I would abandon you?”

“There are more important things than me, Vaddi. You must not be taken. You have always fulfilled your duty to House Orien and me. Now you have a greater duly to discharge.”

From among the press of surviving warriors on the battlements, another figure emerged, slowly easing its way towards them. “Cellester must be your guide now.”

Vaddi scowled. He had no love for the cleric, who had attached himself to House Orien when it had first won this hold back from its scavenging tenants even before Vaddi was born. In those days of the War, Marazanath had been the den of all manner of monstrous beasts.

Anzar ignored Vaddi’s distrustful look. “He knows these grim lands well—and the rats that infest them. The cleric’s knowledge is formidable. Never forget that, Vaddi, nor underestimate the power of his knowledge.”

But I don’t trust him, Vaddi wanted to say. Overhead, thunder growled, almost in response to his thoughts.

“He does not serve the Host as other clerics do. That is sometimes the way of it.” Anzar grilled his teeth, controlling a sudden fury with an effort. His voice dropped, his eyes gazing at some distant incident, a dire memory. “And Cellester has no love of the Order of the Emerald Claw.”

Vaddi’s frown deepened. He knew of this dark brotherhood, as elusive and secretive as rats in a sewer. The worst tales spoke of the Blood of Vol, said to make men immortal, but slaves to terrible powers best left alone.

“Marazanath will fall this night,” said Anzar. “Nothing can stop that now, but there are allies beyond the border in Thrane.” Heavy thunder reverberated overhead, rain driving down like hail. “By land you will be cut off, ringed around, the roads held by our enemies.”

“Then what do you advise?”

“Nothing will be easy, but you must not be taken. What I have given you this night—” Anzar’s eyes flashed to the object hidden within Vaddi’s shirt. “Keep it safe. Get to Rookstack, if you can. The fishermen there are redoubtable fighters. I have friends among them.”

“But, Father, to flee, to leave you—”

Anzar faced the storm, shaking his head. When he turned back, his pale features seemed to have aged, the strain etched on his face like pain. “Your hour has come, Vaddi. Everything you have learned, all your skills, must be tested in this. You must seek your destiny alone. You will only endanger others if you take them.”

Vaddi felt the weight of the storm like an enraged beast readying to tear him limb from limb.

“You are afraid?”

He drew in a deep breath. “Of course I am. How could I not be?”

“You underestimate your powers, and the Claw will not expect you to flee alone.”

They looked at each other for a moment, their sorrow like an open wound. Anzar Thought again of Vaddi’s mother, who had died when Vaddi was barely two, victim to a sudden wasting sickness that had leeched the life from hundreds of House Orien’s fold all those years ago. It had been another legacy of the War.

“You’ll not sneak out like a rat in a sewer,” said Anzar.

“My dragonmark.”

“The Mark of Passage. It defines you, my son, and your gifts. They are latent, even now. You have not been schooled in them, because only you can unlock them. Know this, there is no storm on Eberron, natural or demon-conjured, that you could not ride. The time for you to put that to the test is now, this very night. Out there, in that maelstrom below.”

“Sail from Marazanath?”

“In such a storm as this, who would suspect such a thing? Not even the creatures who serve the Emerald Claw.”

“Father,” Vaddi said, shaking his head, “this is insane! I am immodest enough to admit that I am a very good sailor, and it is true that I have bested more thin a few awful storms north of here, but no one would go out in that.” He indicated the furious storm.

“You must. There is a ship waiting.”

“Waiting?” Vaddi said, surprised.

“In the western cave. You must get ready at once. Travel as lightly as you can. I have made preparations.” Anzar smiled. “There is a ship, a small craft, but one that can weather any sea in the right hands. And one occupant. I said you and Cellester should go alone, but you will not be quite alone.”

Vaddi tried to picture the craft, imagining it tossing and bouncing on the swirling whirlpools within the western cave. One crewman? “Who?”

“Who better than Menneath, son of Drudesh? And unless I’m fed false information, your best friend?”

Vaddi blanched at that. Sons of lords were not encouraged to develop close friendships with sons of a lesser class. But Vaddi and Menneath had struck up a deep friendship as soon as they had learned to walk. They could have been brothers.

“I can’t bring him into this, Father. You think these murderers will hesitate to kill a fisherman’s son?”

“Menneath knows these waters better than the fish! He’d swim through that storm and come ashore laughing. The two of you will be a powerful team, Vaddi. Menneath’s father is from a long line of men of the sea. There is a magic in that line, believe me. You may not know it, Menneath may not know it, but he can take care of himself. None better to guide you westward.”

Cellester spoke above the gusting storm and the shouts from below. “My apologies, lord, for this intrusion.” He was partly in shadow, his frame shaped in a thick cloak, the lower part of his head and shoulders muffled by its folds. Vaddi saw little more than the silhouette of his head, the shaped hair cut short.

“What is it?”

“My lord, the boat…” Cellester’s eyes were like steel, never wavering.

Anzar nodded. They could hear the massed ranks of the enemy coming up toward the battlements for a renewed assault.

“We must leave, my lord. Soon it will be too late!”

He spoke to Anzar as though Vaddi was not present and the youth fell his anger flaring. Vaddi pulled his father away and whispered in his ear.

“I don’t trust him, Father.”

Anzar scowled as he deliberated. Vaddi knew what his father was thinking. The truth was that for some reason Vaddi’s powers were subdued. As a dragonmarked son of House Orien, he should have been able to wield a degree of magical skills, yet he could barely teleport. The cleric’s skills were well tested. He was a match for any veteran knight, and he had been loyal to House Orien—more so than he had been to the Sovereign Host. He seemed to put more faith in men than in the holy sovereigns.

Vaddi could contain his anger no longer. “Father, I need no cleric to hold my hand!”

Anzar looked him over, knowing that he did so for the last time. “I know you don’t, my son, but Cellester’s guidance could be the difference between success and disaster. Speed is of the essence, Vaddi. Go below to where the boat awaits. With Cellester.”

“But—”

“No time! Go! Quickly! They are coming. We cannot hold them for long!”

Something in his father’s voice, in his eyes, made Vaddi hesitate. He knew that this was a pivotal moment in his life, but he was being forced away before he could react. Anzar’s plea seemed to have drawn out the last of his strength. He drew himself upright, holding high his sword, and yelled to his knights to ready themselves.

From the darkness the enemy came in fresh waves, demonic faces leering, weapons thrusting forward. Within moments the battle began again with renewed fury. There was no time for further words.

Before Vaddi had time to think, Cellester pulled him away and they were racing toward the narrow stairway in the nearest tower. Vaddi looked back over his shoulder. Father! But his eyes met only the dispassionate face of the cleric, who motioned him through another doorway and out on to a narrow wall.

“We dare not linger, Lord Vaddi.”

Halfway across the battlement, Vaddi turned to see the last stand of his father and his loyal knights. They were clearly limned in the glow of the fires that were eating into the heart of the citadel. Swarms of the enemy attacked them with sword, fang, and claw. Vaddi stood frozen as he saw Anzar face to face with a black-clad creature, tall and bone white. It wielded a blade that seemed to glow with its own hellish light. In a surrounding crescendo of thunder and victory screams, that red blade sank deep into Anzar’s flesh. Vaddi’s own scream was torn away by the victorious darkness.

Across the chasm, the eyes of the killer met Vaddi’s. The swordsman smiled, his gaze a promise of agonies to come, and in that gaze. Vaddi abruptly understood why the creature was here. The rabble army had come for the hold, but this vampire craved only one thing. The horn.

“We must leave!” shouted Cellester, dragging Vaddi away.

Vaddi blinked back a flood of tears, moving almost blindly down into the vitals of the hold. After what seemed an age, he and Cellester came to a tall cave whose curved dome echoed and re-echoed to the pummelling of the wild tide—wave after wave crashing in from the high entrance, swirling waters spilling over the narrow dock. Lamps flickered against the onslaught of the wind as it funnelled into the space, roaring like a pack of demons. Vaddi saw one frail craft, that of Menneath, bobbing up and down like a cork, its lone occupant waving.

Wading through another broken wave, thigh-deep in places, Vaddi and Cellester struggled toward the craft. Menneath was wrestling with the ropes that set the single, curved sail. Its canvas was plain, without the customary unicorn of House Orien emblazoned upon it. Menneath tied off the rope and swung out over the rocking side of the craft, holding out his hand to Vaddi.

“Come aboard!” he yelled above the scream of the winds.

They clawed at Vaddi as he took his friend’s hand, seemingly determined to rip him away and plunge him into the churning seas, but then Vaddi was across the gap and info the craft. Menneath clamped an arm around his shoulders and laughed, mocking the wind.

Both of them turned to the cleric. He was judging his moment to cross, his lips moving as if in a silent prayer. Vaddi remembered that Cellester had powers of his own. There was a lull in the screaming of the wind, a flicker of calmness on the waters. The cleric crossed to the boat, sure-footed as a hill goat, but his face showed no emotion as he took his place down in the stern of the craft.

“Can this tub traverse such a storm?” Vaddi yelled.

Menneath’s face was a mask of amusement. “Of course! Call this a storm? And don’t speak lightly of Marella. She’s sturdy enough!”

“Marella? Sovereigns, you’re not in love again? You named your craft after that skinny creature?”

“Watch what you say! Marella is not in the least bit skinny, you troll! She’s a fine girl—”

Vaddi laughed in spite of the pain that was wrenching at his heart. The craft lurched wildly and he was nearly pitched out, his hands grabbing the lines to steady himself.

“Concentrate!” he yelled. “Time enough to think about your beloved Marella later.”

Menneath cast off the mooring lines and turned the sail. He was several inches taller than Vaddi, more muscular, with a shock of thick black hair that constantly threatened to blind him as it tumbled across his face. Straining at the ropes as he did now, head flung back, neck muscles corded with effort, he looked more like an elemental than a man. But the fishermen of these northern waters were bred from such stock, and the men of Thrane often swore they had saltwater for blood.

As the craft flipped out across the heaving waters, Vaddi felt the cleric observing him. He turned and saw the man seated in the stern, strangely relaxed. He nodded to Vaddi.

He’s using magic, Vaddi thought. Sovereigns know in this storm we’ll need it.

Menneath guided the craft into the raging waters. The Marella plunged, seemingly straight to her doom, but miraculously shot forward. Around his neck Menneath wore a pendant, a blue stone carved with a sigil. He swore it has a chip from a dragonshard, fallen from the Rings of Siberys that surrounded the world. In the hours that followed. Vaddi could have believed it as the Marella ploughed through the raging sea, past the fangs of numerous rocks, underwater reefs, and tall, looming islands.

2 Treachery in Rookstack

The storm showed no sign of abating, but Menneath was able to guide the craft with apparent ease to the east, following the line of islands that clustered about the mainland shores. North of them, on the seaward side, other islands rose up like broken fangs, while overhead clouds tore across the skies like shrouds to cover Marazanath.

Vaddi went back to Menneath, who was looking puzzled over something.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Marella. She’s not responding fully.”

He leaned this way and that, but to Vaddi’s eye, the craft seemed to obey her master.

“If I try to swing out into the main channel, north of east, she’s sluggish.”

“Damaged?” Vaddi asked.

“I don’t think so. I would have felt it.”

Vaddi grimaced. “Will she make it?”

“To Rookstack? I think so.” Menneath spoke the name as though it were a curse. “Ever been there?”

“The freebooter’s den? No. Why?”

“I wouldn’t want to fetch up in that rat-hole. Why are we going there?”

“My—” a sob tried to seize Vaddi’s throat, but he choked it down. “My father said he has contacts there.”

“Your father has contacts all over Khorvaire. Why are we going to thrice-cursed Rookstack?”

Vaddi went back to the Cleric. “Why are we going to Rookstack, cleric?”

Cellester looked uneasy. “Thrane would be safest, true, but our enemies will suspect as much. Their eyes will be turned westward for now.”

Vaddi was about to respond, but something overhead made him lift his head to the skies. There was a momentary break in the clouds, like a long gash of light reaching back westward along the coast toward Marazanath. In the far distance, rising up to the heavens like a black, contorted pillar, smoke rose, boiling and contorting itself, masking the coastline as it billowed outward, the very breath of chaos. He thought of his father, his half-brothers, all dead now, wiped away in that one night of carnage.

You must not be taken, his father had said. Vaddi felt again the horrific gaze of the vampire lord upon him, the look of pure lust in his eyes, and the pain of Vaddi’s loss clashed with the fury of his anger. The break in the clouds closed, and the storm drew a final veil over the smoking pyre that had been Marazanath.

Rookstack was a unique port, its main area hewn out of the living rock of a tall island, like an oversize rabbit warren. Dominating it and the natural curve of harbor, a dozen columns of rock towered up, their bizarre forms eroded by wind and weather, as if some deranged sculptor had been at work on them. Human skulls and bones hung from them—a warning to outsiders that this was no place to linger. Among these leaning towers, clouds of rooks flocked, their croaks and calls echoing from the chiselled rock. The harbor itself, enclosed by two claw-like outcrops of jagged rock, had been chopped out of the base of the central rock by dwarves in centuries gone by, its quayside narrow, its stone constantly buffeted by the waves that churned in from the sea. This was the leeward side of the island, but only the most skilled of sailors could negotiate the entrance to the harbor and ease their craft up to the quayside.

A dozen unkempt onlookers stood on that quay now, eagerly watching Menneath as he guided Marella to a berth. They nodded their reluctant approval as the youth deftly eased the small boat in and flung up a rope. One of them caught it and tied it off. His burly companions, hands on sword hilts, waited for the three intruders to alight.

“Who are you and what business have you got here?” said one of them. A scar down one side of his face danced as he spoke.

“Fleeing from the storm,” said Cellester before Menneath could reply.

“Aye,” nodded the huge seaman who had tied off the craft. “Not been many like it in our time.”

The man with the scar pointed to Menneath. “Yon boy’s a fisherman. One of Drudesh’s whelps, if I know him. Seen him in coastal waters. But you others—you’re not sea folk.”

Vaddi fell anger stirring within him, but Cellester spoke before he could voice it. “You’ll come across more like us in the days that follow. There’s fighting in Marazanath. Some local dispute, I guess. More than a few will have to detour round it. We’re from southern Karrnath. On Church business. I am a cleric and this is my novice. We’ll go back to our lands when chance permits it.”

The men glowered at them for a while longer, then grunted. Few questions were asked in Rookstack, but Cellester knew that they would be watched. House Orien had more than once stated its intent to rid these waters of the freebooters, and the pirates were justifiably not quick to give their trust.

“We need to stay but a night,” Cellester said. “We can pay our way.”

“Glad to hear it!” The huge fellow snorted. “Let ’em pass, Strang. Rookstack’s seen far stranger flotsam and jetsam.”

Cellester led the two youths along the quayside. Behind them they heard crude mutterings about the Church of the Silver Flame and the vermin that ran it.

“There are a number of inns,” Cellester said. “I suggest we get food and rest and then leave at dawn.”

Menneath nodded, but his face was pale. “I can’t say as I’ll be sleeping this night.”

Cellester led them up the narrowest of side streets, its rock-hewn buildings leaning over them, almost smothering them. A number of torches already glowed in cressets overhead. The cleric seemed to know what he was about, for he stopped at the gnarled oak door of a small inn and motioned his companions inside.

There were a few men in here, hunched over steaming plates, others sitting back, swigging at their laniards. They eyed the visitors but kept their focus on their meals. Several sleek-coated hounds stirred beneath tables, uttering low growls, but the men stilled them with a quick dig of their nails or tossed morsels to them.

At the bar, the keeper turned from a conversation with two other men. “If your coin is good, I won’t ask your names or the nature of your business,” he said. “I take it you want food and drink? The ale’s good.”

“I hear it’s the best in Rookstack,” said Cellester.

The innkeeper snorted.

Cellester put some coins down on the scarred wooden bar. “Enough?”

“Generous.”

“To include a room.”

“Now you’re insulting my hospitality.”

Cellester added two more coins.

“Less of an insult.”

“I’d also heard that the innkeepers of Rookstack were the biggest pirates of all. Obviously my informant spoke from experience.”

The innkeeper straightened up, inflating his not inconsiderable chest. A look of annoyance crossed his dark features. Behind Cellester the two youths stiffened. Vaddi felt suddenly naked, surrounded by dangerous strangers. A false move in here would mean a gruesome death. What was Cellester playing at? The freebooters seemed frozen in time for a moment, silence falling as they all eyed the cleric, waiting his next move.

The innkeeper let out his stored breath in a huge guffaw. His immense fist banged down an the bar, making the coins leap into the air. “You’ve spirit, I’ll give ya that! Siddown and I’ll bring you something. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll fill yer belly. And as it happens, I do have a room.”

Cellester smiled, though thinly, and ushered the two youths to a table in a corner, where they could set their hacks to the wall and watch the door. Already the occupants of the inn had gone back to their own meals, ignoring the strangers.

“You’ve been here before?” Menneath asked, leaning over the table like a conspirator at the plotting of a murder.

Cellester shook his head. “He’d have taken all our money if I’d let him. If I hadn’t stood up to him, we’d have been marked.”

Vaddi frowned. “We may be safe enough for the night, but how exactly are we to find our way to Thrane?”

“I’m not so sure we’re safe,” said Menneath. He clutched the pendant that he wore around his neck, fingers pressing it to his chest.

Vaddi looked at Cellester. “What do you say to that?”

“I warned you we would he watched, Karrnath has become a melting pot of strife, deceit, and treachery—especially these northern shores. We’re as safe here as anywhere else, but we remain here at our peril.”

They fell into a brooding silence, each lost in his own thoughts, until three huge bowls of thick soup arrived. Floating in the steaming liquid, chunks of cooked meat vied for space with vegetables, and the three visitors ate hungrily. The innkeeper brought them a tankard of foaming ale each, grinning at the youths but not tarrying to gossip.

As they ate, another figure entered the inn. He was dressed in voluminous clothes—three times as many as any normal man would require—and wore a wide-brimmed hat stuffed with dowdy feathers. Over his shoulder he carried a sack big enough to hide a small wardrobe. He paused in the center of the room, struggling for breath, as if the sack indeed weighed heavily. Bony fingers clawed away the preposterous hat to reveal the face of an aging man, multi-lined and craggy and with a matted beard. Numerous rings gleamed on the man’s fingers, and from his ears hung pendulous rings that even the most bombastic of privateers would have thought extravagant. He gazed about the room like a bird of prey, and to Vaddi he seemed to be looking either for a perch or a victim. The man’s glance took him in for a moment, his hawklike head bobbed, and he dragged his sack across to a nearby table, where he sat down, wheeling until he had got his breath back.

“Business is slack this day,” he said, dropping his hat down on top of the sack and palling if as though it were a pet. He had spoken to no one in particular, but Cellester put down his tankard and eyed the newcomer with evident interest.

“I take it you’re a mendicant,” said the cleric.

The man’s eyes widened. “Indeed I am not, lord! I am Nyam Hordath, reputable trader. In all of Khorvaire, there is none as widely travelled or with access to such varied resources.”

He stopped and looked about. Some of the freebooters were looking at him, grinning as if humoring a simpleton. Clearly some of them knew him. He shuffled his chair closer to Cellester’s and leaned forward, voice dropping.

“I am no beggar, I give a fair price for everything, and I ask a fair price for the things I sell. You have only to look at the treasures that, by sheer good fortune, I have with me in this very bag. In this very bag! Wait only one moment while I—”

“Hold!” Cellester said. “I am sure you are right.”

Vaddi and Menneath exchanged amused glances, trying not to laugh.

“Everyone seeks something, lord,” said the trader. “My purpose in life is to provide it.”

“I doubt you can help us,” Cellester muttered, not amused.

“Surely I can. What is it you desire?”

“That is my business,” said the cleric.

“Of course it is, of course. I meant no offense, but I beg you to reconsider. Nothing is too trivial. Clothes, arms, spells, information—”

“Information?”

“Ah, I have tempted you, lord.”

Before the trader could say more, the innkeeper loomed over him. “Hordath, I told you last time your credit has tun out. If you want food and drink, find another inn. Either put coin in my palm or go and ply your trade elsewhere.”

“Run out? My credit run out? You jest! There is nowhere in all Khorvaire where Nyam Hordath cannot rely—”

“Then use it in Karrnath or Thrane, but if you’ve no coin—and I’ll not take that heap of old rags and corpse-hauled trinkets as coin—then go and annoy other travellers.”

Nyam’s face screwed itself into a mask of utter horror. “Corpse-hauled! By the Rings of Siberys, I have never been so insulted—”

“I’m sure you have, many times,” growled the innkeeper, whose body movements suggested that he was about to turn his verbal objections into physical ones.

Cellester interposed. “This matter can be easily enough resolved.”

Both the trader and the innkeeper favored him with looks of passing amazement .

Cellester held out some coins for the innkeeper. “Will these pay for the trader’s fare this night?”

The innkeeper looked taken aback, but he took the coins and pocketed them. “Very well,” he said. “None of my business, of course, but I know this trader. I check his coins very carefully.” So saying, he muscled his way back to the bar.

“I am in your debt,” said the trader to Cellester, unable fully to hide his surprise.

“You are. I want information and one other thing.”

“Name it.”

“I need to know what is happening on the mainland. You are covered in its mud.” Cellester indicated the smears of loam that coaled Nyam’s lower garments. “I take it you crossed to Rookstack today.”

The trader nodded.

“You must have seen strange things there. The movements of a rabble army … ?”

Nyam leaned very close. “Indeed! Chaos has broken out on the mainland. Every bandit and pirate of sea, land, and sky has banded together. It is the strangest thing, and there is talk that—” he paused, licked his lips and lowered his voice to a whisper— “that the Emerald Claw is behind it. Worse, it is headed for Marazanath.”

“I am a cleric: I have no love of the Emerald Claw.”

Nyam looked around furtively.

“What of the mainland?” said Cellester. “Is it passable? Is there a way south? Or east to the Mror Holds?”

Nyam shook his head. “By sea, the reavers from the Lhazaar Principalities have grown bolder than ever. They trawl these very waters. The mainland is dangerous, but with care you could find a way south to less hostile regions. The Claw’s agents have been concentrating their energies along the coast. A swift run would be your safest bet, but it would be no more than a gamble.”

“Less so with your help,” Cellester said.

Nyam screwed up his face. “I am sadly limited—”

“The other thing I require is a boat.”

Nyam pursed his lips. “In these times?”

Vaddi and Menneath again exchanged glances. There was no more able craft than the Marella. What did Cellester have in mind?

“I am sure, master trader, that you have already planned your own exit from Rookstack, given your dubious credit with its inhabitants. We’ll share it with you.”

“I confess I had planned such an exit, but I find myself short of the necessary stock to barter—”

“You just get the craft,” said Cellester. “I want it ready an hour before dawn, whatever the weather. Is that clear?” He put his hand over the gnarled fingers of the trader. “Your life on it.” His eyes were like steel.

Vaddi repressed a shudder. That coldness in the cleric was one of the reasons he could not bring himself to trust the man.

Nyam attempted to smile. “Of course, of course. No need for threats, lords. This is my trade. I excel at it, but I will need a deposit. A craft will be available, no questions asked, but where will you take it?”

“Is the airship port at Scaacrag still in use?”

“Open to all who need it—at least it was the last time I was there.”

Cellester handed him a fistful of coins. “Then you must get us there. An hour before dawn. Serve us well, trader, and you’ll earn more gold than you can carry in that sack of yours.”

The innkeeper returned with food and drink, but Nyam was already on his feet. “How could I turn down such a generous proposition?” With a final nod of his bird-like head, he grabbed his bag and slipped into the night.

Cellester pushed the inviting bowl of stew over to the two youths. “Eat up. We may not get fare like this again for a long time.”

“So you mean us to board a windgalleon?” said Vaddi. “Bound for where?”

“It may be a way to Thrane.” He spoke quietly. “We won’t know until we get to Scaacrag. But my guess is we’ll be watched. You saw that creature who struck down your father.”

Vaddi nodded, again feeling the anger rising within him.

“A vampire who without doubt serves the Emerald Claw. It will not want survivors from Marazanath who can bear witness to its perfidy there. We will be hunted. They will nor be satisfied with the spoils of their conquest.”

Indeed not, thought Vaddi, glad that the talisman given to him by Anzar was hidden well within the folds of his clothes.

They ate in silence. After a while Menneath leaned closer to Vaddi and spoke in a whisper. “The peddler spoke of reavers from the Lhazaar Principalities. I’m sure there are at least two of them in this very room. I’ve seen their Type before. They don’t come more bloodthirsty and don’t care too much about what they take from whom.”

Cellester had heard the softly spoken words. He, too, leaned forward. “All the more reason for us to quit this place.”

3 Steel under the Moons

“In all the years he has served my family, I have learned almost nothing about him—what he feels, what he is thinking. Even now, I’m not sure I understand his motives, though I am sure he holds no love for the Emerald Claw.”

Vaddi sat on the narrow bed, scowling at the stained wall. He and Menneath had come upstairs to this cramped room, while Cellester had gone out into the port, preparing to organize their flight from Rookstack.

“My father trusted him,” Vaddi added, but the words caught in his throat. At last he was able to let the tears flow, tears that he had held back since the moment he had watched the death of his father.

Menneath overcame his embarrassment at seeing his friend to stricken and put an arm around his shoulders. Vaddi shook for long moments, fists clenching. At length he stiffened, his tear-stained eyes filled with anger and a power that startled his companion.

“I don’t understand any of this, Menneath, but by the blood in my veins. I will avenge my family. I swear it.” He looked, at that moment, slightly crazed, fury burning off him like heat.

“You know that my people and I will stand beside you, although we are few in number.”

Vaddi stood up, pacing the room. “You must go back to your own father and your folk, Menneath. As I said, Cellester is a mystery to me, but if this peddler has a ship, then I must take that. You must sail the Marella back.”

Menneath stood up in protest. “What? Abandon you? I can’t do that!”

“Listen. However we leave this rat’s nest, it must be inconspicuously. The Marella is marked. If those were reavers you saw downstairs, who could say they are not in the pay of my enemies? Two craft would stand out like trees on a reef.”

Menneath looked pained. “What of the cleric? You say you don’t trust him, yet you would put your life in his hands.”

“I’ve been wondering about our coming to Rookstack. My father said he had contacts here, but Cellester knew of this inn. He’s been here before, in spite of anything he says. He meant us to come here. But why won’t he say more? I don’t like such mysteries.”

“Then how can you rely on him?”

“I seem to have little choice for now. Later … well, I’ll see.”

“Vaddi, don’t make me do this—”

Menneath’s words were cut short by the soft tread of footsteps on the stair outside. There was a lap on the door and Cellester rejoined them, dropping a bulky sack. He looked haggard in the dim candle-glow.

“We will have to move more quickly than I thought,” he said to Menneath. “You were right. You did see reavers from the Lhazaar Principalities. I’ve seen through their disguises.”

“Why are they disguised?” said Menneath. “They are usually more brash and vociferous than other seafarer.”

“Quite so. I strongly suspect that they, too, are in the pay of agents of the Claw. The lands here are crawling with spies and turncoats. Kazzerand, a local warlord and bitter rival of your father, has never done much to strengthen the region, save make a show. I suspect that Marazanath’s fall suits his own greed. He’ll send knights to take if back and make it yet another of his own possessions. In the name of King Kaius, of course.”

“My father was abandoned,” said Vaddi coldly. “I spit on this warlord.”

“I have seen the peddler again,” said Cellester. “He has a craft waiting to take us off Rookstack.”

“Menneath will go back to his people,” said Vaddi, turning to his friend with an emphatic look.

Cellester nodded. “It will help us. We need a diversion.”

Vaddi scowled. “I don’t want his life endangered.”

Menneath snorted. “I can handle myself. And if I must abandon you, let me at least do something useful. What do you want from me, cleric?”

“I am certain that the reavers at least will try to follow us. You must sail your craft back to your village. Draw them off. We’ll make our own departure under cover of darkness.”

Vaddi looked horrified. “No! It’s too dangerous!”

Menneath laughed. “The Marella will outstrip any reaver craft in the coastal reefs. I’ve played slip and hold with pirates along this coast before. None of them have netted me yet. Their craft are too cumbersome. All right for deep water, but in the shallows they’ll never catch me.”

Vaddi wanted to protest further, but Menneath had clearly allied himself to Cellester in this. The cleric opened the sack he had brought and took out various nondescript garments.

“Vaddi, you and I will need to change into these. Put what we are wearing now into the sack. Come. There is no time to lose. Menneath, you remain as you are.”

As Vaddi and Cellester changed their clothes, Menneath held open the sack for them, and in a few moments they had effected the change, Vaddi and Cellester now looked completely neutral, their robes shabby, slightly voluminous. They were able to conceal their weapons beneath them. In the darkness, they could be anyone, and they each had a deep cowl to obscure their features.

Cellester turned again to Menneath. “Sail swiftly and deviously back to your people. It’s unlikely that the rabble army will have attacked them. It will only be a matter of time before they tire of the Hold and disperse. Vaddi and I will take advantage of your deception and flee with Nyam Hordath.”

Menneath let out a deep sigh. “Sovereigns of the sea! I see the sense in this, Vaddi, but I fear for your safety.”

Vaddi put his arms around his friend and hugged him. “Menneath, this is a parting that will cut me deep. Now, of all times.”

“It seems that it must be. How else are you to escape?”

Cellester put a finger to his lips and at once they all fell silent. The night closed about them like a fist, but there was an unnatural silence about it.

“What is it?” hissed Vaddi.

“I fear a trap set down below us. More men had come to the inn, which is strange at so late an hour, even for Rookstack. They may not mean to kill us, but no doubt they want to drag us off and present us to whoever hired them. We could fight them, but Lhazaar Principality axemen, fuelled up on rough mead, are something I’d rather avoid.”

Cellester went to the narrow window and opened it with the flat of his hand. It protested, old wood tearing and a hinge ripping loose. Cold air rushed in with the night.

“Follow me,” said the cleric, and within seconds he had clambered cat-like onto the narrow ledge, squeezed through the opening, and swung upward into the darkness.

Both Vaddi and Menneath were used to scaling the rocky cliffs around Marazanath’s coastline, having tested each other’s courage in endless wild games since they were six years old. This climb was meat and drink to them. In no time they had swung out and up over the eaves, kneeling on the cracked tiles of the inn’s roof. Below them, in the room they had so swiftly quitted, they heard its door bang open. Gruff voices clotted the night air.

Cellester was above them, his dark shadow limned against the night sky like a huge, winged predator. The storm had at last abated and through a tear in the clouds a string of Eberron’s smaller moons gleamed like pearls. The cleric pointed back along the roof to where it joined the sheer face of one of the great stacks of the port. No one spoke, but they knew what was needed. Quickly they went to the cliff and peered down into the streets. Cellester led them on a dizzy race across a number of leaning, crumbling rooftops and then indicated that they would have to go down the cliff face to the street below. It yawned like an open grave.

Behind them they could hear shouts and others clambering up to the roof. Vaddi glanced back and saw the large figures of the Lhazaar reavers and bits of moonlight glinting off drawn blades. The reavers were perfectly at home scaling cliffs, their own homeland being reputedly as rocky and treacherous as any such lands in the north. It did not take the five men long to get on to the roof and give chase to the runaways.

Cellester and the two youths swung down the cliff that dropped into the street, fingers digging into the cold rock, finding nooks and crannies, toes getting a hold in the most minute crevices. Like spiders they climbed down into the street. The reavers, though adept at this, were less agile, and the runaways gained vital minutes in their flight.

Cellester led them unerringly through the narrow side-streets, and after a short run to a quayside that ran off the main harbor. Several small craft were jammed together, bobbing up and down on the restless waves. On one of them they could see a huddled form. Cellester urged the youths across the decks of three craft until they landed in the far one. The shape proved to be Nyam. Once they were aboard, they all flattened themselves, heads below the gunwale. Only Nyam remained upright, watching the quayside.

The reavers emerged from the alley, split up, and ran up and down the cobbled quay, axes gleaming in the sputtering glow of the street torches. One of the figures saw Nyam and hailed him.

“Three fugitives!” snarled the reaver, his voice ringing back off the houses. “Yer must have seen them. Which way?”

“Aye,” Nyam hollered back, cupping his mouth. The wind had dropped, but it was still strong. He pointed back toward the main body of the town. “A man and two youths heading into the port.”

“If yer lyin’, I’ll be back for yer head!” called the reaver and ran down the quay.

Watching the receding figures, Nyam slipped the mooring rope he had been holding out of sight and within moments his craft was away from the others, nosing out into the channel that led down to the harbor. Cellester and the youths kept flat to the deck.

When the cleric spoke, his words were almost lost in the wind. “Peddler, ease us into the harbour and alongside their craft. Menneath, when it’s safe, I’ll give you the word. Sail away from Rookstack with all haste. We’ll slide back into the shadows and leave later.”

Vaddi was burning to look out to see what was transpiring, but he thought better of it, his heart racing. Beside him, eyes closed in concentration, Menneath was a coiled spring, ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice.

Nyam manoeuvred his craft, which was slightly larger then the Marella, into the harbor and along the main quayside. He could see the reavers entering and leaving some of the dives there, calling out angrily to each other, shaking their heads. For the time being they had not noticed the craft as she drifted along the main body of moored ships. But a snarl of fury signified that one of the reavers at least was intent on going back to interrogate the one he had challenged earlier. His frustration blinded him to the fact that the very same being was no more than thirty yards away in the harbor.

Nyam brought his craft to the place where the Marella was tied up. She had not been interfered with. Presumably the reavers or their masters had seen no use in it.

“Into your craft,” Cellester told Menneath. “Go right into the bay and make sure they see you.”

Menneath nodded. He gave Vaddi’s hand a last pumping, their eyes locking for a moment. “Until next time.” Menneath grinned and then, sleek as a sea otter, he was over the side of the craft and into the belly of the Marella. He untied her and was about to take her out of the harbor when there was an abrupt movement in her stern. A tarpaulin was flung aside as if by a freak wind and a solitary reaver, blade in hand, leaped forward.

“Thinkin’ of leavin’ us so soon?” he snarled, slicing the air with the vicious weapon.

Menneath almost toppled over but managed to draw his own thin sword. He darted under another swipe of the reaver’s weapon.

Vaddi gasped, instinctively drawing out his long dirk. He hardly noticed Cellester’s restraining arm as he made for the prow of the peddler’s craft. He watched in horror as Menneath ducked and dived in the rocking Marella, the huge pirate slashing this way and that at him. It would only be a matter of time before he cut the youth to ribbons.

“Over here!” bawled the reaver, and there was an answering cry along the quay.

“Quickly, make for the open sea,” Cellester barked at the peddler.

“No!” cried Vaddi. “Go forward! Go forward, damn you, or I’ll swim to him.”

Nonplussed, the peddler sent the prow of his craft toward the Marella, which now bumped up hard against the quayside. It was fortunate that she did, for at that moment the pirate had been about to hack into Menneath. Instead, the jarring of the boat against the quay sent him tumbling over her side. Menneath jabbed with his sword, drawing a shriek from the reaver, who slid into the dark water of the harbor.

Vaddi leaped from the peddler’s craft into the Marella and got Menneath to his feet. He ignored the cleric’s cry behind him, and both youths turned to face the oncoming reavers. They would never get the Marella free of the harbor and away before they were overcome, so they jumped onto the quay and sprinted hard along it. The reavers roared their delight at the chase. For a moment, Cellester and the peddler were forgotten in their craft, unable to do anything about the pursuit.

“Where to?” gasped Menneath as he and Vaddi raced along the quay.

Vaddi looked at the numerous alleyways that led off the harbor. “Try and lose them in there!”

He led them up a constricted passage and then turned left and down another alley that barely permitted one person to shoulder through it. A shape blocked the way ahead, and Vaddi realized it was another of the reavers, though smaller and armed with only a dirk.

Without pausing he thrust his own dirk into the man’s chest. To his horror it burst like a mattress, dust and brittle bone spilling out from it as the reaver fell to his knees, skeletal face screaming. Menneath struck the fleshless head from its shoulders, and the two youths were past and beyond to a wider street, but pursuit was close behind.

They reached a small square, the cramped houses leaning over them, blotting out most of the light. Vaddi cursed. They had trapped themselves. A dozen reavers closed in behind them and on two sides, all exits shut off. Vaddi gripped his long dirk and thought of his father and his half-brothers.

One of the reavers eased forward, an axe slung carelessly over his shoulder. “Come, come, young sirs. No need for bloodshed. All we want is to take you to our master for a little talk.”

They remained frozen for a moment only. The huge reaver, who was clearly flesh and blood, laughed and took another step forward and was about to say something else when a sword tore through his chest, slick in the half-light with his blood. He toppled forward with a strangled cry. Behind him, dragging his weapon free of the corpse, Cellester waved the youths to him. They obeyed, though they had to parry the cut and thrust of steel as the other reavers tried to close the trap.

Sparks flew as blade and axe clashed. Vaddi felt the sweep of a weapon as it tore through the fabric of his cloak, inches from his flesh. But he won through to the cleric’s side. Then he was running once more, down another narrow alley, close on the cleric’s heels. Ahead of them he could barely discern the quayside and the waiting form of the peddler, who held a long blade.

There was a cry behind him and Vaddi turned. Menneath had slowed, clutching at his neck. Vaddi pulled up short only to see his friend crumple to his knees. He had an arrow through his neck, its bloodied point protruding out of his throat.

Vaddi screamed but already he knew it was too late. The first of the reavers towered over his friend. As though watching a slow nightmare, Vaddi saw the axe come down. Something tore at his arm, almost jerking him from his feet as Cellester yanked him away toward the quay.

The reaver shouted as he made his killing blow, but as Menneath toppled, he sprawled in the alley, tangling up the reaver’s feet. The youth’s last act was to thrust up with his blade, deep into the groin of the man who had killed him. The blade tore into flesh and ground on bone. The reaver’s howl of triumph turned to a hideous shriek of agony. He crumpled over the dying Menneath, choking the alley as those behind hacked and thrust at them in an attempt to force their way past.

Vaddi saw everything through a red haze of fury, time ripping past him. The next few moments meant nothing to him as Cellester and Nyam Hordath got him into the peddler’s craft and set out from the quayside, the sail snapping in the swirling night wind like a live thing. The craft swept across the harbour, and when the pursuing reavers finally burst out on to the quayside, the boat was far out in the bay. Menneath’s life had won them that much.

Vaddi sank into the bottom of the craft, his body wracked with sobs, a combination of exhaustion from the flight and overwhelming horror at the death of his friend. That, coupled with the monstrous events at Marazanath, had driven him to a new depth of grief. Shattered, he gave in to it.

Cellester stood silently in the stern of the boat, watching Rookstack as it dwindled behind them. The peddler, too, was silent, though his face was clouded with pity.

An hour later, with dawn breaking, they appeared to have outdistanced any pursuit, though Cellester felt sure this would be no more than a temporary respite.

Nyam sniffed the wind, as if it could impart vital knowledge to him. “We’re heading for the port of Scaacrag on the mainland. You should be able to get an airship there. What about my payment?”

“All in good time.”

“How do you intend to pay me? No tricks, cleric. Not that I don’t trust a man of your position.”

“I serve House Orien. It is a wealthy house and pays its debts. I promised you more gold than you could carry in a sack. You shall have it.”

“In Scaacrag?”

“Just get us there.”

The peddler screwed up his wrinkled face but turned his attention once more to the rough seas ahead, weaving his craft through its countless islets and reefs.

For several days they sailed eastward. Sky and sea alike were calmer than they had been, though there seemed to linger a promise of storm in the air. No ship pursued them—or at least none that they could detect. Nyam had brought enough food for them—dried fish and rough bread, washed down with fresh water. There was little conversation. Vaddi brooded on the horrors he had been through, but he fought back the grief, using anger to stem it. Cellester likewise seemed drawn in on himself, coming out of his reverie only to study the horizons and the numerous rocks, islets and cliff-islands that pocked the seas in this remote region, Nyam hummed tunelessly, affecting the air of a simple man, as he had when he had first met the company in the inn, although Vaddi respected the quick wits that had saved them at Rookstack.

Vaddi reflected, too, on the cleric. What did he really know about him? Cellester was something of a renegade, a servant of the Church of the Silver Flame, but a man who had openly voiced his scepticism not only of the authority of gods over the destiny of men but also of the authority of his church. Yet Vaddi saw within the cleric a shadow, the hand of something outside of himself. Vaddi had only intuition to go on, but in these times intuition could not be ignored. Cellester had been a servant of House Orien since before Vaddi’s birth, in happier times, when his mother had been alive. The cleric had undoubtedly aided in the growth and esteem of the House and had been responsible for much of the training and refining of its soldiery. Anzar had told Vaddi that it had suited the taciturn cleric to live in the remote area of northeastern Khorvaire at Marazanath, as his rejection of the more devout aspects of the faith of the Silver Flame would have made him a marked man in Thrane, where the knights expected the clerics to demonstrate an active zeal. Since serving Anzar, Cellester had evidently had to become more circumspect.

Vaddi’s eyes met those of Cellester as the latter looked up, and for a moment the youth felt himself scrutinized inwardly, as though his mind were being sifted, but the moment passed and Cellester turned away, calling to Nyam.

“How far is Scaacrag?”

“There are freakish winds about this day. I steer a few points south of east, but the wind and the cursed currents drive me a few points north of east. That is not my desired course!”

Vaddi grimaced, thinking of Menneath’s skills.

Cellester said nothing but joined Nyam, now at the prow of the craft. They were both puzzling over something.

“What is it?” said Vaddi.

“This current reeks of sorcery. Mind you, that’s hardly surprising. We’re in the Stammerrak, a narrow gut between a dozen or so islands that bore the brunt of some hellish sorcery gone wrong in the days of the Last War. More than a touch of the Mournland about it.”

Vaddi shuddered at mention of the blasted lands, where nature itself was said to have turned inside out.

Cellester scowled. “Stammerrak! Are you mad, peddler? You should have diverted us around this.”

“Short cut, I’ve been across it before. Doesn’t usually get a hold like this. Not unless it wants something.”

“You idiot!” Cellester snapped. “Get back to the tiller. Did it not occur to you that it probably does want something? Us, you fool. The agents of the Claw would make good use of this demented power. They would have no qualms about dirtying their hands or souls with it. The damned are damned. Just pray to whatever gods you believe in that we aren’t!”

Nyam nodded, going back to the tiller. As he passed Vaddi he grinned. “Fat lot of good that would do. My gods are notably obese and slothful.”

Vaddi smiled thinly, but Cellester’s grim demeanour sobered him. “Is it serious?”

The cleric nodded. “Probably. It may not be the Claw, but we must assume that it will use every device available to snare you.” Again his voice dropped to the merest whisper. “And what you carry.”

Vaddi felt a sudden heat in his chest and his fingers probed his shirt, touching the chain of the object that Anzar had given him. “You know of it?” he said softly.

Cellester drew back, his unease apparent. “My fear is that our enemies know of it. It will draw them like moths to a flame.”

“The sea has power,” Nyam called. “We must free ourselves of the current.”

Vaddi felt a pulse of energy within the horn. He whispered to it, as if coaxing aid from a spirit, though he had no more than his instinct to go on.

“A strong spell works against us!” the peddler called above the wind, which had again freshened, like the voice of the current that had taken a hold of the craft. “The Stammerrak won’t be thwarted, not one bit!”

Vaddi concentrated, as a strong gust from behind them seemed to break in half, like a wave split by a rock. Nyam was trying to ease the craft away from a course that was veering them more and more to the north. Now the contest between the craft and the elements was in full evidence, as though wind and sea were powered by an invisible host, elementals that sought to drag, push and buffet the craft to the dark islands north of them. Nyam’s skill was no mean thing—a fact that Vaddi found intriguing. The man was no ordinary peddler.

The hidden talisman pulsed more hotly, as if it spoke to the soul of the deep oceans, its own puissance able to wrench the prow of the craft away from the sea’s grasp.

A grim struggle ensued, the Stammerrak focusing all its supernatural energies into controlling the craft, but its occupants pouring their own efforts into subverting its purpose.

“We’re passing the worst!” Nyam shouted above the thunder of the seas and the crashing of breakers on nearby rocks. “If we must be tossed ashore, we make for one of the last isles of the chain.”

Gradually the craft edged away from the main islands, ploughing through huge waves toward clearer sea beyond. With a last rush, the craft slid through a narrow rock passage and buried her prow in a wedge of sand on a solitary island beyond.

“You know this place?” Cellester asked the peddler.

Nyam nodded uncertainly. “Right at the very rim of the Stammerrak’s influence. We can freshen up here overnight. Tomorrow we’ll land at Scaacrag. Shall we find a spring? Bound to be one up near the summit of the island.”

Beyond the rim of the cliffs, they found a beaten path that indicated tome sort of habitation or at least recent use of the island. The sun had fallen low into the skies, daubing the landscape in ominous deep red hues, casting long shadows like claws across its upper reaches. The island was little more than two miles across and devoid of trees, its exposed rock blasted by the cold storms from the north, like the bones of a gigantic skeleton that had been weathered away to dust.

Nyam pointed to the crest of the hill. “Standing stones. This place is sacred to somebody. Ideal haven for the night.”

Cellester glared at him as if he had lost his senses. “Haven? What sort of gods do you think would bless this place?”

“My guess would be those worshiped by the freebooters. I have heard of such places. Just as Rookstack has its honor among thieves, so such an island protects the needy traveller.”

As they came closer to the ring of standing stones that circled the level area at the island’s crown, Vaddi could make out numerous other stones down among the bracken and wind-blasted gorse. “Those stones have a familiar look to them,” he said to Cellester.

The cleric drew in a sharp breath. “Indeed. They are tombs. This is a graveyard.”

“Of course!” Nyam beamed. “You’re right. So it is as I said, a haven. We have fetched up on the one place where we are safe from conflict. Listen! Even the wind has died. Come into the standing stones. I’ll get a fire going.” He produced a tinderbox from his voluminous garb.

Vaddi shook his head in wonder, smiling in spite of his unease.

The sun slipped deep into its cloud bed, barely above the horizon; the light dimmed with it.

Cellester grimaced. “Don’t put your dirk away. I don’t share the peddler’s confidence.”

They came before the stone circle—fifteen-foot monoliths that ringed the hill, the space between them beaten flat, free of any growth as though tended regularly. Each monolith had been deeply etched with runes from a language long since lost to the world, as though the stones themselves were from another time, a time that pre-dated the War itself by millennia. But there was an abiding calmness about the place, a unique tranquillity that bathed the travellers in a kind of radiance, almost hypnotic in its quality.

“Be on your guard,” whispered Cellester, as though his voice would snap the fabric of this enchantment.

Nyam busied himself with a fire. He had found enough dry wood and bracken to light it and spent a few moments outside the stone circle gathering armfuls of shrub-like plants to feed it. Vaddi could see nothing more than a curtain of darkness beyond the stones. Their runes danced and wavered in the fire-glow, and the stones appeared to lean inward. Overhead, the night sky was obscured, neither the moons nor a single star visible.

They ate and drank more of Nyam’s frugal fare.

“Who’s first watch?” said the peddler. “I suggest someone other than me. I can hardly stay awake, but I only need an hour or two.”

“I doubt I’ll sleep at all,” said Vaddi. “I’ll do it.”

After a brief inspection of the perimeter of the circle, Cellester nodded and sat at the heart of the circle. Nyam had curled up like a child and was soon snoring, oblivious to the world.

Vaddi paced about like a cat, quietly examining the monoliths, though he could make nothing of their time-lost inscriptions. Even though he was on his feet, he felt his eyes drooping and had to force himself to stay awake.

How long he had been like this—minutes or an hour perhaps—before he heard the sounds from beyond the circle, he could not tell. It was neither wind nor sea that he heard. He went to the edge beside a stone and tried to peer into the pitch night, but it was impenetrable.

There! Soft susurrations. From several directions. Down among the tombs. The low bushes shifted, though they had not been stirred by the wind. Was that a low moan? An animal perhaps? But here, what could it be?

He called to Cellester. The cleric was on his feet instantly, sword catching the firelight, deflecting a brief shaft of it out into the darkness. But in that fleeting beam, a shape gathered itself—hunched, formed from the very dark, as though the earth had breathed out a fetid cloud that coalesced into substance.

4 Isle of the Undead

“Wake the peddler,” said Cellester, something like disgust masking his face.

“What comes?” whispered Vaddi, his voice almost lost.

“The inhabitants of the island. Its black gods alone know how many of them there are. I was a fool to agree to stay here. Wake the peddler!”

Vaddi jumped at the command, which had been almost snarled. His mind was filled with images of the tombs they had seen earlier. Countless scores of them. As he reached down to tug at Nyam’s robe, another thought occurred to him. Perhaps the peddler had deliberately led them here. How were they to know he would not benefit by presenting them to their enemies?

Nyam came awake slowly, yawning and scratching his beard, but when he saw the look on Vaddi’s face, he sprang up lithely, drawing his sword and staring out at the heaving darkness beyond the stones.

Vaddi and Nyam went to Cellester’s side. The cleric held aloft his right arm, and white tight shone from an amulet he held—too brilliant to look at. In his left hand he held his sword.

“Take a section of the circle!” Cellester called. “Slay within the stones, as you value your life and soul!”

They spread out, Vaddi’s heart hammering. He held his dirk before him. He was getting used to its bloody work. Then he saw what it was that closed in on the stone circle and his heart skipped a beat. In the white light that streamed from the cleric’s amulet, faces and hunched shapes thrust out of the night beyond. But such faces! Their skin was cracked and flaked, and their hair was matted and dried like weed. Eyes like huge stones gleamed with the light of madness, inner fires stoked by supernatural agencies. The graves had given up their dead, their undead, who trudged forward until they came to the very line of the stones.

One of them reached forward with rotting limbs, cerements hanging from them in strips, blazing eyes fixed on Vaddi as a snake fixes its victim. Vaddi made a swift pass with the dirk. It had been honed to a perfect sharpness by the Orien smiths in the hold and it went through both wrists of the creature as if passing through fabric. The rotted hands fell and the creature staggered. Vaddi saw with horror the dark, viscous blood dripping from the stumps, the fluid that fuelled these groping nightmares.

Light from Cellester’s amulet scorched all those that it touched and the stench of charred bones filled the night. For a while it kept the horrors at bay, but they gazed in slack-jawed, hungry silence at the trio in the stones like a pack of starving wolves, desperate to feed.

Dredged up from long burial underground on this isle, these were far worse than the undead that had amassed at Marazanath. Something was driving them on. Several scuttled forward, spider-like, only to burst into flames and crumble to ashes as the light from Cellester’s amulet engulfed them.

Behind the wall of undead something else was stirring, scarlet light flooding over the hilltop. It merged with the light from the cleric’s amulet, red seeping into white. As though draining his strength, the red light forced Cellester to lower his arm. He stumbled back, numbed.

Beside the embers of the small fire, in the very center of the stone circle, the three defenders stood back to back. They were completely surrounded, but the undead had, as one, ceased their forward movement. Instead they waited, their manic eyes fixed on their victims, their skeletal fingers flexing and unflexing. In the shadow-light it was impossible to guess how many there were, but Vaddi knew there were scores of them at least. It would be impossible to break through them.

As he glanced at the cleric, seeing the look of deep anguish on Cellester’s face. Vaddi felt something warm within his robes. He had almost forgotten the talisman. His fingers closed on it now, felt it shift against his breast. But before he could do more, the front ranks of the creatures opened and a solitary figure came through.

Vaddi was shocked by its appearance. Tall, dressed in dark leather, studded with silver, it was not like the other creatures but almost appeared to be a living man. His skin was pure white, as if leeched of blood, and in the scarlet eyes burned an intense vitality. His long white hair was swept back from the forehead down over his shoulders and beyond his belt. In his right hand he held a sword whose blade throbbed with scarlet light. When he smiled, his teeth were yellow, sharp as a rat’s.

“Well, such an intriguing combination of sailors,” he said, his voice harsh, his accent suggesting he was from the western lands beyond Thrane.

His sword swung slowly back and forth, marking out the three intruders, as if deciding which to impale first. Only then, with a deep shudder of revulsion and fury, Vaddi realised that this was the vampire who had brought down Marazanath and killed his father.

“Who are you to threaten us?” said Cellester.

The eyes of the swordsman flared. “A protector of the dead, and you are a defiler, treading as you do on this island. But since you are here, you are welcome to join my wards.”

“We have no business with you,” said Cellester.

“Perhaps not,” replied the swordsman, running a black-gloved hand along the blade of his weapon. “You are a cleric, I suspect. There is power in the amulet you wield, but it is no dragonshard. No match for the power in this.”

He pointed the blade at Cellester, who dropped to his knees, racked by sudden waves of pain.

“And you,” said the swordsman, swinging round to face Nyam, releasing Cellester momentarily from his pain. “What are you? A trader?”

“Me, lord? No, I am a simple traveller.”

“A grave-robber to boot, no doubt. Come to filch a few trinkets from this isle to barter back in Rookstack and beyond?”

“Not at all, lord!” said Nyam with well-practiced horror. “I have nothing but respect for the dead.”

“Oh, I am so glad to hear that,” said the swordsman. “You’ll have no regrets about joining them.”

Cellester had eased himself back to his feet, but he kept still, studying the massed dead as if looking for a weakness in their ranks.

The swordsman turned to Vaddi. He held up his blade so that its red light picked out the youth’s features clearly. “And you are … ?”

Vaddi felt those scarlet eyes boring into him, as if behind them was a deeper, more malign force. “Danath, son of Sigbard.”

The swordsman laughed, cutting Vaddi’s words short. “Come, come. Your rough garb is a thin disguise, especially to my eyes! Are you ashamed of your heritage? Have you so soon abandoned your family to their graves? No backward glances to the still-smouldering stones of Marazanath?”

Vaddi felt his anger rising up, his fingers tightening on the dirk. The swordsman glanced at it, but his feral smile widened.

“Ah, but there is spirit in you yet. Speak up! Say your name, your heritage.” He leaned forward, as if taunting Vaddi to attack him. “Orien.”

“My father was Anzar Kemmal Orien, but it seems that you know that already.”

“Indeed. Vaddi d’Orien. Son of Anzar and the elf-bitch, Indreen.”

It took all of Vaddi’s self-restraint not to react.

“Well, Vaddi d’Orien, I am Caerzaal, formerly of the city of Shadukar. I grew bored with court life and went in search of far more challenging things.”

“You drank the Blood of Vol,” said Cellester. “You gave up your humanity to become one of these creatures. You have the disease that corrupts all who taste power. And you serve the Claw.”

Caerzaal glared at him as if he would run him through with his blade, but his lips parted in the rictus of a grin. “The Claw is my ally while it suits me, cleric. I serve myself first.”

“Like all slaves of the Emerald Claw,” Cellester said, “you deceive yourself. When the Claw grips, it does not let go. You are not your own man, though you may think it.”

“We shall see,” said Caerzaal. He turned to Vaddi. “As for the youth who places so little value on himself, well, there are others who would make very good use of him.”

“I serve my House,” said Vaddi, “none other.”

The sword tip swung up under Vaddi’s chin. He could feel its coldness, as if it had been forged from a northern iceberg. “That choice is no longer yours.”

Caerzaal stood very close to him. Vaddi could smell something animal about him, something not human, but there was power there, an almost frightening depth to it, as though he was but a vessel, a lens for something infinitely more puissant and evil.

Caerzaal’s sword point dipped, flicking across Vaddi’s chest. As it moved, Caerzaal’s smile became a smirk of satisfaction. He paused, the tip of his weapon caught in the folds of the robe that covered Vaddi’s gift from his father. Vaddi was still gripping it.

“By the way that you are clutching it. I would say you have something of value in your robe,” Caerzaal breathed, almost a whisper.

Vaddi drew out his hand. “My heart,” he said, “since you would threaten it.”

“Must I cut the robe from you to prove you a liar?”

Vaddi sensed that Caerzaal would as easily kill him as look at him. He had little choice but to draw out the talisman. His fingers found again the slender chain. For the first time since putting it away he touched the object itself. It was warm. As he gripped it, he felt its rough contours and then understood what they were. They were embossed runes. The talisman itself was tapered, like a dagger, though its inside was hollow. A horn, though far longer and narrower than a normal drinking horn. Vaddi’s fingers closed around its outer rim and he drew it slowly from his robe.

“A family gift, no more than that,” he said.

As he brought the horn into the light, Caerzaal stepped back, wary of a trick, his sword held as if to make a sudden strike. He grinned as he saw the horn. “A pretty thing. Exquisite workmanship, but then, the elves are masters of such craft.”

Vaddi could feel the horn’s power, as though it were alive, responding to his life. His blood, pulsing through his veins, was suddenly a strong current. He could feel every vein, every artery in his body. The horn was like a part of that network, as if it, too, had its own veins running through it, interwoven with his. He stared at the horn in shocked fascination. It was no longer white. There was a pink tint to it, which deepened. Blood seeped from his fingers, but instead of dripping down the horn, it was absorbed by it, as though by a sponge.

Caerzaal’s face clouded with horror and he made to strike, aiming to cut Vaddi’s hand off at the wrist. As his blade came down, another met it before it could do its butcher’s work and sparks danced in the night. Nyam had been too quick, his blade countering Caerzaal’s. The latter drew back, hissing like a serpent, his tongue flicking out in anger.

“Cover that!” Caerzaal snarled. “Before I have you and your companions ripped to pieces!”

Cellester stepped between Vaddi and the enraged Caerzaal. “I think not,” he said coolly. He seemed unmoved by the appearance of the horn. “It is you who should withdraw, before you tamper with powers beyond your control.”

Vaddi could feel his blood running into the horn, filling it. It was a strange feeling, a mixture of headiness, as if he had taken very strong wine, and the coming of darkness, for all around him the foul company seemed to be receding, shut out by thickening shadow, like a dissipating dream. He sheathed his dirk and with his free hand forced himself to cover it and thrust it back inside his robe. As soon as he did so, everything came back into focus, but he felt numbed by the experience.

“If you are wise, vampire,” said Cellester, “you will let us go on our way.”

Caerzaal laughed. “You, cleric, will crawl at my feet before we are done here.”

He drew back and barked commands at the undead. They surged forward.

Cellester and Nyam hacked at them. Vaddi unsheathed his dirk and did likewise. They smashed back the oncoming mass, laying about them with energy born of desperation, piling up mangled and broken undead in a heap, but even as they resisted the first onslaught, they knew that they would inevitably be overwhelmed.

“Do not despair!” Cellester shouted to Vaddi. “They want you alive. They will not kill you.”

“Scant consolation to me!” yelled Nyam. He fought now with both his blade and a length of burning wood he had dragged from the fire, fanning it into flame and setting alight those who came near.

Caerzaal had drawn back, absorbed into the mass of writhing undead, and Cellester’s white fire shone anew from his amulet, bathing everything in a garish light. The nearest ranks of undead screamed and drew back, their skin smoking.

The vampire, shunning the light as if it held for him all the burning terrors of daylight, lifted an amulet of his own by the chain about his neck and held it up to ward off the cleric’s power. Vaddi gasped as he saw it, for it was the blue stone of Menneath! His friend’s small talisman, carved with its distinctive sigil. Caerzaal could only have taken it from Menneath’s body.

Madness burst within Vaddi, but before it could hurl him forward in all its fury, light from Cellester’s amulet focused on the blue stone and there was a blinding flash and an explosion of light and sound that blasted outward, powerful as a massive wave of water.

Utter confusion followed. The undead fell like brittle sticks, tangled and smashed. Vaddi’s head rang with the echoes of the blast. For a moment stars whirled before him. He felt someone grab his arm and swing him away from the chaos.

“Follow, quickly now!” came the commanding voice of the cleric.

As some semblance of vision returned to Vaddi, he found himself stumbling with Cellester and Nyam out of the circle of ancient stones and back down the hillside, through the edge of the cemetery beyond to the way they had climbed.

“To the boat!” Nyam shouted, though it was hardly necessary.

Vaddi did not look back, but he could hear the cries and shrieks of the undead.

“Caerzaal will not give up so easily,” said Cellester.

Racing through the scrub and jagged rocks as fast as they dared, they heard the renewed cries of pursuit, but soon the narrow cove and its beach spread out below them, the boat moored where they had left it. As they struggled over the sand to it, a group of shapes tried to head them off, but Cellester swept them aside with a scythe of light from his amulet. Vaddi cut down another two of the undead, his blows fuelled with all the bitterness and anger he felt, as Nyam shoved the craft into the black water.

Moments later they were rowing out into the current, Nyam unfurling the sail with practiced skill. The wind filled it instantly and swept them seaward before any of the pursuing hordes had even reached the beach. Vaddi looked back and saw Caerzaal watching, his eyes blazing with anger. Overhead the clouds parted, revealing the jewelled bands of the Ring of Siberys and a procession of small moons. By their glow, Vaddi studied the sea, but it had grown quiescent at last.

Dawn found them closing on the shore of the mainland. Vaddi had snatched a brief sleep, troubled by grim dreams, seeing again the deaths of his family and of Menneath.

“Scaacrag ahead,” called Nyam, indicating sunlight on the houses of the small town. It was built at the base of a long range of cliffs, with several jetties thrust out into deep water. Behind them a central core of structures rose up the cliffs like huge nests, topped by a huge, temple-like construction. Vaddi took this to be the airship terminus, though there was no sign of aerial activity about it.

“You’ve earned your money,” Cellester said to the peddler.

“Twice over I should say.” Nyam grinned.

“You’ll be paid.”

As the sun rose higher, the craft sailed easily alongside one of the jetties and Nyam tied it off as his passengers climbed the steps.

“Vaddi, you and I will take passage on an airship,” said Cellester. “Come, peddler, we’ll settle up at the terminus. I’d be glad if we all remain as inconspicuous as possible.”

Nyam pulled down his wide hat, which had survived the events of the night. They went into the town, which was already coming to life. Although it was a small port, Vaddi could see that Scaacrag bustled, as the day’s trade was already well underway. If the news of Marazanath’s fall had reached the ears of people here, it had had little or no impact on their activities.

They came to the black steel girders of the ancient wheel-house without incident. Vaddi stared up at the structure, built before the War, rusting and somewhat precarious-looking now, almost neglected. But within its frame the lift rose and fell monotonously, taking handfuls of passengers up the face of the cliffs to the terminus high above.

Cellester dropped a few coins into the palm of the gatekeeper, a wizened old man who nodded sleepily, though his eyes raked the three of them. As the huge wheel at the base of the tower turned, the cogs and ratchets of the ancient machinery ground and creaked, the cage rising up. A dozen other passengers had squeezed in, some coughing nervously, others yawning. No one spoke.

At the top, Cellester disembarked, motioning Vaddi and Nyam to follow him along the wide walkway that clung to the side of the cliff, barely beneath its brow. Several offices and shops had been carved out of the stone. The cleric paused near one of them.

“Wait here.”

Nyam was looking about him with feigned indifference and Vaddi could sense his nervousness. Surely there was no danger here. The people going about their business were fairly nondescript, as though few events troubled this backwater of a town.

Cellester spent some time talking to a clerk at the counter. Vaddi saw him pay over more coins and then sign a number of documents. Eventually he rejoined his companions. He handed Nyam a rolled parchment.

“What’s this?” grunted the peddler.

“I’ve arranged for House Orien to make good payment. That’s your surety.”

“A sheet of paper?”

“You can take it to the clerk immediately if you wish,” said Cellester. “He’ll pay you in gold—either that or take it anywhere that deals with House Orien. I trust you’ll agree it’s a generous amount?”

Nyam’s face split in a huge grin within the tangles of his beard. “Indeed, indeed. Almost worth the extraordinary dangers that have come so close to ending my humble career.”

“So we bid you farewell,” said the cleric. “Come, Vaddi. We must board our craft.”

Vaddi nodded to the peddler, feeling slight remorse at having to quit his company. Nyam was undoubtedly a dubious character, but there was something about him that he had warmed to. “Our thanks,” he said.

Nyam simply bowed, his numerous rings and bracelets gleaming in the sunlight. “Safe journey,” he said, then turned and was almost at once swallowed up in the flow of people.

Vaddi followed the cleric along the walkway to another stairway under the huge canopy of the terminus. “Where are we going?”

“The airships here are infrequent, mostly bound for the west. It would suit us best, I think, to go to Thrane. I have contacts there that will offer us some protection. I have bought us passage. I have the seal of House Orien, which will open doors for us. Keep close to me and remain covered. These places teem with spies of one kind or another.”

Once they entered the vast dome of the terminal, with its glittering glass shell stretched over a webwork of rusting steel, Vaddi gaped at the far side of the building, which was a flat area, falling away to emptiness beyond. There were three docks built under the dome, each with a narrow boarding area, a mass of wiring and pipework knotted along their floor. Two of the docks were empty, but in the third rested an airship. Vaddi had heard of such things and had seen diagrams of them in Marazanath’s library, but this was his introduction to the reality. He marvelled at the construction of the craft.

The ship seemed to be hovering in mid air. A score of wires and tubes hung from its keel, linked to the mechanics of the dock. Long and relatively sleek, she had the lines of a seagoing vessel, though there were no masts. Curved timbers ran along her sides. The deck was narrow and two tiered, but what struck Vaddi most was her means of propulsion. Around the central part of the craft, two arms curved outwards and within these, shimmering like vivid sunlight on a lake, was a brilliant ring of what appeared to be fire. It sizzled, a live thing, humming softly.

“What is that?” Vaddi asked.

“An elemental. The pilot uses it to control the flight. It is bound to him by strong magic. Without such creatures, the ships could not fly.”

They made their way to the narrow gangplank that led up to the stern of the airship, where several uniformed airmen of House Lyrandar were checking the documents of those coming aboard. Cellester handed a seal to one of them and Vaddi noticed that it had been embossed with the unicorn of House Orien. The airman glanced through Cellester’s papers and nodded approval. In a moment, the cleric and Vaddi were onboard.

“We’ll sit in the stern initially,” said Cellester. “I warn to see as many of the other passengers as I can.”

“You expect trouble?”

“Probably not, though it is wise to assume that our enemies are having us watched. An airship is not the best place to begin a skirmish, although it will be a stow journey. This is an old tub. The more modern ones are made from softwood, built for speed.”

Vaddi took one of the seats around the rim of the stern. There were cabins under the main deck and a few of the passengers had evidently gone below. Otherwise there were no more than thirty or so of them and a dozen aircrew, seasoned fliers who were armed but relaxed. Apparently no one was expecting trouble on such a routine flight.

The Cloudclipper, for thus was their airship named, left the terminus soon afterwards, her upper and lower deck having filled with a flurry of passengers. Once away from the port, she rose through layers of cloud into the brilliant blue skies. Vaddi pulled tight his thick cloak and hood, for the air up here was very cold in spite of the vivid sunshine. Arcing over the heavens, a curve of the Rings of Siberys sparkled like some immense architectural marvel, and beyond them several small, white moons formed a backdrop. The scene fascinated Vaddi, so much so that for a moment he was unaware that Cellester was nudging him.

“Stay here but keep one eye on those around us,” said the cleric. “We cannot assume we are not being watched.”

“Where are you going?”

“I would see more of the travellers. No doubt most of them are bound for Thrane on business or local politics. If the Claw has agents aboard, I doubt they’ll risk conflict in the sky, but it would pay to be vigilant. The danger will certainly come when we disembark.”

Vaddi watched the cleric move across the crowded deck. No sooner had Cellester gone than Vaddi’s attention was snared by another movement as one of the passengers also left the deck. Clad in a thick cloak, also wearing a hood, this figure’s leaving could easily have been a coincidence, but Vaddi felt deeply uneasy. Trusting his intuition, he got up up, hugging himself in the cold air, and followed.

At the end of the deck, narrow steps led down on to the main forward deck, where another crowd had gathered, most of the people there chatting or simply enjoying the spectacular view of the skies. Vaddi stood by a rail and could easily follow Cellester’s movements down below. The cloaked figure mirrored those movements. There was no doubt that he was following the cleric.

Vaddi went below, closing in on the figure. Ahead, Cellester had gone to talk to a small group of men—traders by the look of them. The cloaked figure edged closer, unnoticed by the cleric. Vaddi himself was now mere feet away. As the figure stood by the ship’s rail, feigning interest in the skyline, Vaddi took his opportunity to move up directly behind him. He slid his dirk from within his own cloak and, masking his movement, gripped the belt of the stranger’s cloak with one hand, pulling him close and pressing the tip of the dirk into his back.

“You show an undue amount of interest in my companion,” Vaddi breathed, just loud enough for the stranger to hear him.

He felt the man stiffen and tightened his grip.

“Who are you and what is your business?”

“One who would protect you,” came the whispered reply.

“Then show yourself, or would you prefer it if I took you to the airmen?”

The hood turned, enough for Vaddi to see the weather-beaten lines of the face within it and the thick, matted beard.

Vaddi gasped. “Nyam!”

“Softly,” said the peddler.

“What are you playing at?” Vaddi still held the dirk hard against the peddler’s spine.

“You are being watched. I was watching the watchers. Now you’ve exposed my cover.”

“Watched by whom?”

“Agents of the Claw. This ship is crawling with them.”

5 Swords in the Sky

High above the northernmost shores of the vast continent of Xen’drik, where the archipelago of Shargon’s Teeth was washed by the tides of the Thunder Sea, a huge soarwing circled, its rider gazing down on the bleak terrain far below. He could discern a dozen rocky islands, some little more than jagged boulders piercing the topmost waves, their stones crumbling into the fury of the sea. The soarwing swooped down to the ragged clouds about the largest of them.

This was Urgal Shahiz, once the haunt of southern wizards and their hell-spawned sea demons, and as the rider plummeted he could see coiled shapes swimming a round the curdled waters at its base—guardians of the bleak shores, endlessly watchful, ever hungry. The rider evinced no emotions, no fear, no awe, or any true understanding of pain. His face was expressionless, set in stone.

The central pile of Urgal Shahiz was infested with caves, linked by ledges, slick with the droppings of the soarwings, and it was to one such ledge that this solitary creature flew. Its hooked claws retracted as it landed and it drew in its long, serpentine neck. From between its shoulder blades the rider slipped down from the high perch and along the ledge, heedless of the drop and the winds, as though he was himself composed of them. The soarwing ducked under the rock overhang of the cave and went within.

The figure, wrapped in a black cloak, climbed a natural stairway in the rock almost to its pinnacle before entering a tall fissure there. Inside, where the wind could not reach, the figure descended another stair, one that had been hewn here by masons in times forgotten. Down, ever down, into the very gut of the tower the figure went, silent as a ghost. Light filtered from high above, but in this grim place it was almost an alien thing, an unnatural force in a realm where darkness and graveyard gloom were the true order.

In the heart of the tower, giants long ago had cut a circular chamber. Its walls were jagged, though its floor was polished smooth like marble. Around the rim of this echoing chamber a few cressets had been set, and within them burned the low flames of cold fire lamps sufficient to light the lower part of the chamber. It was empty, save for one object—a large throne-like seat, itself chopped out of the native stone. Its workings spoke of Xen’drik’s past, of sorcerer and beast alike, intertwined in a mockery of love or hate, shapes that seemed to twist and turn, alive in the guttering light.

Within the confines of that great seat something coalesced, a knot of shadows. It thickened, shaping itself into a blurred form, night incarnate. Like the being before it, this shape too had features, but they were indistinct, shifting and flickering like the visage of a ghost. Silently the presence studied the figure that seeped like fog into the chamber. He saw the hood slide partially back from the figure’s face, revealing a cold, emotionless expression, the eyes haunted, eyes of a being without a soul. This was one of the undead, a creature living outside the natural laws of man, a being who had once been a warrior, a proud knight. In exchange for dark powers that mocked the grave, this creature had forsworn the ways of men, all normal pleasures of the flesh and soul. He bowed before the stone seat of power to which he was forever bound.

“Your servant, Aarnamor, returns, Zuharrin,” said the undead warrior, his inhuman eyes not meeting the gaze of the incorporeal entity before it.

The necromancer paused only briefly to savor his power over the lesser creature he had raised from death. “From Khorvaire?”

“Yes, lord. I did as you bade me. I was not seen. My shadow was not detected.”

“What of the Orien heir? Indreen’s brat?” The essence of Zuharrin pulsed with something akin to eagerness, the pits of his eyes deepening.

“He has left Marazanath, lord. He has taken a shadow path and slips through the traps set for him by the Emerald Claw.”

“You are sure of this?” A tremor of annoyance stirred within Zuharrin’s mind. The Claw! An invisible spider with a hundred legs, weaving its accursed intrigues across nation after nation. The time would come when he would have to address this infernal secret sect and bring it to heel. “Well?”

“I am, lord. Vaddi d’Orien is protected.”

Zuharrin’s form thickened like the gathering of a storm. “He has it with him then?”

“His father passed it to the youth as foreseen. Already he has used it to defy the Claw. One of their servants, the vampire Caerzaal, sought to snare him.”

“Indeed? That creature will not be easily shrugged off. Caerzaal is dangerous. Watch for him. He is the most ruthless of hunters.”

“My brothers keep watch as we speak, lord.”

“There will be a time to strike. In a lonely place where the son of Anzar will be most vulnerable. Gather your brothers. Choose the moment wisely. The Claw must not best us in this.”

Aarnamor bowed. In a moment the shadows on the throne had gone. The meeting was over. Aarnamor drifted up the steps into the night above, readying for another continent-spanning flight.

Vaddi and Nyam Hordath had returned to the stern of the Cloudclipper. They sat together, and both watched the other passengers about them.

“Why are you following us and why should I believe you are here to protect me?” said Vaddi.

Nyam leaned close, scratching his beard. “No point in keeping the truth from you now, I suppose.”

“How long have you been watching?”

“I waited at Rookstack. I heard that Marazanath was under attack. Your father knew it was always possible. Over the past few months, he believed an attack likely and began to make preparations, but even he was caught by surprise. Our sources said the attack was still some months away. The Emerald Claw’s machinations grow bolder.”

Vaddi felt a stab of unease. “You served my father?”

“Since your mother died. She was from a great elf family, the powerful line of Dendris, once said to have served the dragons themselves.”

Vaddi kept his thoughts to himself, but he knew that there was dragon blood in the line of Dendris and thus in him.

“There has been much inter-breeding between men and elves. I was married to an elf myself. She, too, was from the line of Dendris and a cousin of your mother.”

Still Vaddi did not comment. How much of this could he believe?

“Indreen was worshipped by Anzar and loved by many of the Oriens, but others were suspicious. It’s always the same with these Houses! Power mad, the lot of them. They like pure bloodlines. You must have come across such prejudices.”

Vaddi nodded.

“The line of Dendris has been the protector of a certain object of power for centuries.”

Again Vaddi said nothing, but it was clear what Nyam was referring to. Of course, the peddler had seen it on the island.

Nyam’s voice dropped to a whisper that only Vaddi heard. “It is named Erethindel. Since it was made, the line of Dendris has kept it safe, in the hands of a secret sect called the Keepers of the Horn. Indreen was a Keeper.”

“And you?”

“I serve the Keepers. My ties with the line of Dendris are strong, even though my family was killed in the Last War.” Nyam looked away, seemingly studying the passengers, though Vaddi could sense a shadow within him.

“What is the horn?”

“I believe it is really a horn—a unicorn’s. The totem of your House is a unicorn, is it not?”

“Yes.” Vaddi resisted the urge to reach inside his shirt to touch it. How was he to believe this peddler, who was perhaps not a peddler?

Nyam seemed to read his mind. “Why should you believe me, eh? Try this, Vaddi. The horn has runes. Have you read them?”

Vaddi frowned, shaking his head.

“They are in the elf-speech of Aerenal and say:

When you are alone and can read them, you’ll know the truth of what I say.”

Vaddi wanted to ask him why he had waited until now to reveal himself, but he heard Cellester approaching.

“Say nothing of this to him,” Nyam whispered.

Cellester was pushing his way through a group of passengers and when he saw Nyam, his eyes turned suddenly cold. He sat stiffly beside Vaddi, his manner unruffled.

“I changed my mind.” Nyam grinned. “My business will take me to Thrane, now that I’ve a healthy sum of money to support my ventures. You’ve no objection to my company? I fear you may require it.”

Cellester’s look grew even colder. “You think so?”

“I think that the Claw has not done with you.”

Vaddi saw the cleric tense, as if someone had slipped the point of a dirk under his cloak.

“Their servants are here,” Nyam added, “in numbers.”

Cellester nodded. “There are worse things ahead of us. We should be heading a point or two south of west, but this craft is slowly edging round to the south toward the Talenta Plains. I suspect the pilot is under threat. Several of the Lyrandar airmen are no longer in evidence.”

“You think they have … disembarked prematurely?” In spite of Nyam’s turn of phrase, Vaddi felt only horror at the implication.

“Why should you help us?” Cellester asked Nyam bluntly.

“I have no choice. I fought with you on the island. Now the Claw will have marked me. They will consider me your ally. If I’m under threat, I’d rather have you and your not inconsiderable skills at my side.”

“Just don’t expect to be paid again,” Cellester said.

“My continued existence would be reward enough.”

Vaddi said nothing but wondered why Nyam did not confide in the cleric as he had in himself. Did he not trust him?

“I would feel safer,” said Cellester, “if we spent the rest of the journey in the helmsman’s tower, with the last of the airmen. If we can secure ourselves in there, we can defend it from attack and help the pilot keep the ship on course. Let us make our way there slowly. And be ready to draw your steel.”

One by one, they each wound their way to the small tower under the huge ring of fire that was the elemental powering the ship’s flight. Flames crackled in that perfect circle, writhing and twisting, like no other fire that Vaddi had ever seen—a truly living entity. Outside the pilot’s area, a number of men stood in a knot, arms folded as if casually passing the time. But as the cleric and then Nyam approached, they tensed, their eyes betraying their true intent.

“This area is restricted,” growled one of them above the roar of the flames. They were very evidently not airmen.

“I would have a few words with the pilot,” said Cellester.

The men had formed a barrier across the doorway. Their leader shook his head.

Cellester slipped his sword from its sheath. “Stand aside.”

It was the signal for them all to draw arms. Cellester moved in a blur. His swordpoint tore through the throat of the spokesman and cut into the neck of another in one lightning strike. The first went down and began writhing in a growing pool of his own blood. The other shrieked, clutched at his wound, and backed quickly away.

Others pressed Cellester at once, only to find the blade of Nyam blocking their attack. He cut through the wrist of one of them and wounded another before the group could recover themselves. They shouted, and Vaddi heard a rush behind him. He turned. Two more men were charging them from behind. His own weapon plunged into the chest of the first assailant. Vaddi had no compunction about killing these men if they served the Claw. In his mind he still saw the fall of his father and the death of Menneath.

Nyam hacked down another of the men and Cellester kicked open the door to the pilot’s room, smashing aside a defender as he did so. There were two others in the room, clearly forcing the Lyrandar pilot to steer the Cloudclipper where they willed under threat of steel. They turned to face Cellester as he burst in on them and their swords clashed, sparks flying in the confined space.

Vaddi and Nyam found themselves the subject of an onslaught as a score of swordsmen came at them. Steel sang as they defended themselves. Vaddi ducked under the sword of one assailant and ran home his dirk, but as the man fell, he pulled Vaddi to one side. Nyam tried to step in to defend him, but they had underestimated the opposition. There were far too many. Something cracked up against Vaddi’s temple and he felt the darkness rushing up to meet him like a black wave. His last vision was of Cellester being dragged out of the pilot’s room, swords at his throat.

Intense pain woke Vaddi. He gently fingered his temple and his hand came away bloody. In the dim light he could see a figure slumped beside him.

“How’s your head?” came Nyam’s voice.

“Bursting. Where … ?”

“The cleric fights like a cornered wolf. I took a few out and then they decided that shutting us up below deck was their best bet for a safer voyage. The cleric’s in a smaller hole next door—doubtless knocked senseless, too.”

“They want us alive,” said Vaddi, slowly shaking himself awake.

“Oh, yes. Very much so. You and what you carry. The cleric and me for … well, I suspect Caerzaal will have thought up a suitable ending for us.”

Vaddi’s fingers touched the horn in the darkness, feeling the embossed runes upon it. “It’s still here. Why did they not take it?”

“I doubt these hired thugs could. Its power is attuned to your blood. For another to touch it, he would have to wield great power—certainly more than any of this lot possesses.”

“The Emerald Claw,” Vaddi breathed. “I know so tittle about it. There were muted tales at Marazanath. As children, we thought they were myths.”

Nyam leaned back in the darkness with a snort of disgust. “Yes, the Claw seems insubstantial as mist, but it is very real. It has infiltrated so many places yet is always hard to confront. The religion and philosophy behind its Order is the Blood of Vol. You’ve witnessed its disgusting powers. Its adherents worship an ancient line of undead, believing it to be the true path to divinity. And they use blood in their rituals to sustain their power and immortality.”

“Caerzaal is one such servant?”

“Yes. Blood is power. You carry the Crimson Talisman, which he craves. If its power could be corrupted to serve the Claw, to infuse their undead servants, it would give them unthinkable resources.”

“The Claw’s agents stirred up the rabble army and the undead warriors and took Marazanath, my family, so that Caerzaal could win the talisman?”

“Never underestimate it, Vaddi. The Keepers have kept it safe for centuries. Its true powers are untried. Our view is that they should remain so.”

Vaddi listened to the distant hum of the elemental fire that powered the ship. Could he trust this peddler? How could he know he was not working for his own ends?

“And what of Cellester?” he said at last, lowering his voice. “What do you know of him?”

“A strange one. He, too, has power. He seems like an ally.”

“But you don’t trust him?”

“My life has taught me to be very cautious.”

“My father trusted him. Before I was born, Cellester exchanged his loyalty to his Church for service to House Orien. My father said that Cellester held his Church to be one of falsehoods and treachery, riddled with corruption.”

“He served the Church of the Silver Flame, the church militant, did he not?”

Vaddi was surprised that Nyam knew this but did not comment. “Yes. I know little about it, although it is renowned for its hatred of the Claw.”

“Indeed. But power corrupts all but the most devout. Even in Thrane, where the Church has its seat of power, there are those who put themselves and their own profit ahead of the Church’s cause. The celebrated paladin Kazzerand himself is one such creature. Publicly he is loyal to the Church, but privately he builds his own empire. He was no friend to your father. Don’t be surprised if Marazanath becomes his. The rabble army won’t hold it for long.”

Vaddi was about to press Nyam for more information, but there was a sudden lurch of the ship, as if it had either hit a freak air current or been struck by some other force. There were distant shouts.

“How long was I unconscious?”

“Two days and nights. It’s dawn out there.”

“No wonder I’m so hungry. What’s happening?”

As if in answer, the door to their chamber rattled and shook. They both got to their feet, conscious of the fact that they had been stripped of their weapons. In a moment the door groaned and then three of its panels snapped in half and the door banged in on its hinges. A figure was limned in the pale wash of dawn. It was the cleric.

Nyam chuckled, reaching for his broad hat, which had been thrown into the room with him.

“Cellester!” said Vaddi.

“No time for explanations. Follow me and find yourselves some fresh blades.”

The ship seemed to be wallowing like a sea vessel in heavy waves. Nyam and Vaddi were quick to follow the cleric along the narrow corridor. There was no sign of any guards.

“The ship is under attack,” Cellester said. “Our erstwhile captors are all up on deck, fighting for their lives.”

“Attack?” Nyam gaped. “From whom?”

“We must be well out over the Talenta Plains,” said Cellester, “so my guess is we’ve run into a war party of halflings.”

“Is that good?” said Vaddi.

Nyam grimaced. “Uh, probably not.”

They made their way cautiously to the steps up to the first deck.

“They’ll raid anything and anyone crossing their lands. All craft are fair game to them. They’re their own masters, but they won’t have any sympathies with us. Cellester is right. We’ll need fresh swords!”

A shout of pain from above presaged the appearance of one of their captors, a burly fellow who came tumbling down the wooden steps, his neck and chest riddled with arrows.

“Those are indeed halflings arrows,” said Nyam.

The man crumpled, eyes wide in death, sword clattering beside him.

“I’ll take this one.” Nyam lifted the blade.

Cellester nodded. “Very well. You can lead us up.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer down here, until the dust has settled?”

“Not if the ship plummets to earth.”

Nyam’s grin melted. “Uh, no. The halflings wouldn’t know how to fly it if they did take it over. They’ll just strip it of anything of value and abandon it.”

They went up to the deck to find absolute chaos. A dozen of their captors were dead, riddled with arrows, some with short spears pinning them to the deck. What few other passengers had survived had evidently gone below. Vaddi and Cellester took the nearest fallen swords and turned to look out at the skies around the ship.

Vaddi drew in his breath. There was a swarm of large, bird-like reptiles surrounding the Cloudclipper, and riding them, mostly singly but in some cases in twos and threes, were the ferocious halflings of the Talenta Plains. Whooping and yelling with evident delight, they were unleashing wave after wave of arrows into the defenders of the ship, their extraordinary dexterity in both flying and fighting amazing to behold. Vaddi had to duck quickly to avoid being pinned to the deck.

“Glidewings!” said Nyam.

Vaddi was fascinated by the creatures, which had long, toothy beaks and a head crest, with sharp talons that looked capable of dragging a man off his feet. The halflings sat astride them on exotic saddles, wrought with the most exquisite decoration. But Vaddi had no time to take any more in as a score of the halflings had already leaped aboard and were engaged in a ferocious fight with the warriors. Although they were not much bigger than human children, the halflings tore into their opponents with such abandoned enthusiasm that the warriors struggled to keep them at bay. The entire deck seemed to be covered in clashing combatants.

“Are you sure we wouldn’t have been better off below?” said Nyam.

But there was no time to discuss it. A group of halflings rushed at them, blades swinging. Vaddi met the first of them. This was so very different to the training ground. He was facing a swift death. He knew that. The halflings who cut at him wasted no time in going for a kill, and Vaddi realized there was not a great deal of finesse to his opponent’s method of attack. Vaddi picked his moment, sidestepped, and plunged his own steel into the halfling’s gut. It fell, only to be replaced by another.

The battle raged for long minutes, and although the three of them cut down many halflings, covering their backs as they fought, they knew that a prolonged attack would be impossible to stem.

“Can you see what’s happening in the pilot’s tower?” Cellester shouted during a brief lull.

“Our captors still hold it,” called Nyam. “Locked themselves in, I think.”

“If the halflings kill the pilot and the crew, we’re finished!”

They redoubled their efforts to cut through the halflings, but most who had boarded the craft were more intent on looting than on continuing the fight. Most of the warriors were dead or too badly wounded to fight on. The glidewings still surrounded the craft, but their fliers were no longer raining down arrows.

Cellester led his companions to the pilot’s tower. The door had been ripped aside, leaning at an angle across the deck. Three of their original captors were inside with the pilot. They raised their blades, expecting to be attacked.

The leading warrior spat. “One step more, cleric, and the pilot dies.”

“Then we all die,” said Cellester.

“Yes, we all die.”

Nyam pushed forward. “Somehow I don’t think your paymaster would take much pleasure from that. Were wanted alive.”

“You want to stay alive, you leave the pilot to me.”

Nyam was about to say something more, but Cellester pulled him back. “Leave it. We gain nothing by continuing the fight here.”

Vaddi called to them both. “The halflings! I think they’re going.”

Nyam turned and laughed. “Yes, they’ve done well. Everything that wasn’t bolted down will have been filched. Down!”

This last came just in time, for as the halfling raiders leaped back on to their mounts, their companions unleashed yet another hail of arrows, yelling and howling with glee. They circled the ship twice, then as one, swept up into the blue vault, diving downwards toward the plains in a perfect formation.

Vaddi stood at the rail and watched them go, marvelling at their mastery of flight, for all their barbarism. For the first time, he saw the landscape far below, where grass-covered hills stretched in every direction west and northward, but to the east and curving slightly southward the hills turned to desert. To the east, rising into the clouds, a wall of mountains rose up as the ship flew ever closer to it. He sensed a movement beside him.

“The Endworld Mountains,” said Nyam. “We’ve come a long way south and eastward over the plains. That long stretch of sand at their feet is the Blade Desert.”

“Where do you think they are taking us?”

Nyam shrugged. “There are some inhospitable regions ahead of us, if we cross the Endworld range, we’ll head into Q’barra, land of the lizardfolk. Not a pleasant prospect. To the far south is Valenar, your mother’s homeland, but I cannot believe they will take us there.”

Vaddi turned as Cellester joined them, looking about him at the body-strewn deck. “I doubt if any of the airmen are left alive, and there are no passengers that I can see. These mercenaries planned to crew the ship themselves. They’re pirates, so they’re capable of it. Except that the halflings have wreaked havoc among them.”

“How many are alive?” said Nyam.

“Barely enough.”

“I have no skill in these matters. Have you?”

Cellester shook his head. “The pilot’s powers of telepathy must be thinly stretched. To control the elemental will be very hard.” He looked up at the fiery ring surrounding the centre of the ship. It burned evenly, for the moment apparently unaffected by the conflict.

“I know one thing,” said Nyam, slipping his sword into his belt. “I’ll die of starvation before anything else unless I find something to eat. Let’s hope the halflings have left us a few crumbs.”

He wound his way across the deck and disappeared down below without further ado.

“For a peddler,” said Cellester, “he wields a lively blade.”

“You trust him?”

“No. Nor must you, Vaddi.”

“Who does he serve?”

“I don’t know, but I have my suspicions.” Cellester looked out over the rolling plains, pulling his cloak tighter against the cold air. “We are far from Thrane, but it may be better if we go elsewhere. Kazzerand will be waxing strong now that Anzar is dead. If he has any part in your being hunted, we’d do better to go south. To Valenar, perhaps.”

“My father had no love for Kazzerand. He told me the warlord was a jealous rival.”

“He is not a man to be crossed. Once, as a young man in the Church, I met with his disfavor. I suspected Kazzerand of intrigue and would not follow the path of his ambitions. Anzar, too, spurned his demands. I left Thrane and came to your father’s Hold, setting aside the Church and all the hypocrisy I had found within it.”

Vaddi was surprised by the cleric’s admission, which seemed to have a ring of sincerity about it. “What is it that Kazzerand wants?”

“What do they all want? Power. They go to such lengths. It would not surprise me to learn that Kazzerand has had dealings with the Claw itself. You understand its influence, Vaddi?”

“I saw Marazanath fall.”

“Yes, but you have the talisman safe?” The cleric’s voice had fallen again.

Vaddi nodded. “The vampire lord may desire it, but I saw the dread of it shake him as a dog shakes a rat.”

“He craves it. The Emerald Claw would sacrifice armies to win it, as you have seen.”

“What of this Caerzaal? You have crossed his path before?”

“Yes, though he did not recognize me. Years ago, in Thrane, when I was younger and more naïve, I saw him. He was already a paladin, steeped in power, a worthy crusader in the name of the Silver Flame. Yet you see in him now how absolutely the Blood of Vol corrupts! He has passed over entirely into the service of the Claw, trading his soul for a kind of immortality.”

“You said he will follow us?”

“For certain.”

“Is he, then, an agent of Kazzerand?”

“It is possible, though Caerzaal prefers to think of himself as an independent force,” said the cleric. “It is a weakness in him. To drink the Blood of Vol is to become the slave of the Claw. You have no other choice.”

“Then we should avoid Thrane?”

“For now.” He attempted a smile. “But we may have little say in the matter.”

Further discussion was at an end, for Nyam had again appeared, now carrying over his shoulder a sack. With a triumphant grin he set it down upon the deck in front of them, opened it, and proceeded to take out some flagons, loaves of bread, cheese, and a number of crusty cakes.

“Not a king’s repast, but enough to fill a hungry belly!” He laughed, uncorking a flagon and sniffing at the contents. He grimaced, tossing the flagon over the side of the craft in disgust. “Gone off! Thankfully there is fresh water.”

They ate their fill, Vaddi realising just how ravenous he was. The pain in his head began to abate at last.

“So what’s the plan?” said Nyam, wiping his lips.

Cellester was looking up at the fire ring of the elemental.

“Something wrong?” said Nyam, sensing the cleric’s unease.

“Yes. The elemental. It is restless. See how it shimmers. The patterns are changing.”

“Meaning what?” said Vaddi.

“By the Rings of Siberys,” Nyam gasped. “It looks as if it’s preparing to take flight! It’s abandoning us!”

“If it does,” said Cellester, “the ship will go down like a stone.”

6 The Nightmare City

They inched their way over the body-strewn deck to a point where they could watch the pilot’s tower without being seen. They could hear the raised voices of the remaining four mercenaries arguing. The ship gave a lurch and there were loud curses.

“Turbulence,” said Nyam. “Common, this close to the mountains.”

Vaddi looked to his left and frowned. The huge mass of the Endworld range loomed very near now.

“If they are trying to get the pilot to take the ship into the mountains, they are fools,” said Cellester. “Without a full crew, it’s suicide.”

As if to underline his point, the ship lurched again. Vaddi looked up at the ring of fire. It crackled and fizzed in anger. It knows, he thought.

“We’d do better without these unwanted guests,” said Nyam.

Cellester frowned. “You want to risk an attack?”

“Use the turbulence. Left to himself, the pilot could steer us down on to the desert.”

“Vaddi?”

Vaddi nodded, pulling out his sword. They edged still closer. The mercenaries were concentrating on the way ahead, crowded around the pilot. He brought the ship around in a slow bank, but as he did so, another fierce gust of wind struck it like a heavy wave. In the confined space of the pilot’s room, the men staggered.

Cellester and Nyam braced against the shudders of the craft and moved forward in silence, Vaddi close at their heels. They waiting for another lurch, and when the men inside stumbled. Vaddi and his companions leaped inside. Vaddi chopped two of them aside and drove his dirk into the belly of a third. One of the men made a stab for the pilot, his knife scoring a deep gash in his side before Cellester could plunge his sword down to finish the mercenary.

The last of them scrambled to his feet and drew a knife before Nyam could get to him. He raised it to kill the pilot. Vaddi made to deflect the blow, but another sudden lurch of the ship thwarted him and his dirk clanged harmlessly against the ship. For a moment it seemed that Vaddi himself would perish as the mercenary swung round on him, blade inches from his neck, but Cellester’s sword struck the hand off at the wrist at the same moment that Nyam ran his own weapon through the mercenary’s neck.

Vaddi rolled over and up, shaking his head in relief.

Cellester was beside the pilot, whose face was a mask of agony. “Can you get us down?”

The man’s side pumped blood where the knife had opened him, possibly fatally.

“We’re being drawn into the mountains. Air currents here are dangerous. Like whirlpools. The elemental wants to be free. Too strong for me. My control is weakening. I think they … ring was damaged in the attack. I can feel the elemental struggling to break free.”

The ship was dropping, parallel with the lower slopes of the massive range. The pilot was trying to turn the prow back out toward the desert, though it was a gradual process. Too steep a turn would flip the whole ship over.

“I can’t hold her,” he said, sagging back, eyes closing against the pain.

“She’s turning,” Cellester encouraged him, watching the rocks below coming ever closer. “Just keep to …” But the cleric realized that the man’s life had leaked out of him. Cellester swung round to look up at the ring of fire.

The elemental, freed of the mental link with the pilot that bound it to its task, flared. For a moment a face shaped itself in the flames and gave an exultant roar, then the being tore free of the encircling metal frame and soared away in a shower of sparks. The Cloudclipper was propelled forward like a bolt from a crossbow, bouncing over the airstreams from the mountains.

“The desert—!” cried Nyam.

The words were ripped from him as the ship dropped lower, its prow dipping dangerously. The three men had to scramble back into the central deck and grip its rails for fear of being hurled out into the ether. Above them the metal arms that had banded the elemental pulled loose, snapping with a loud crack. The frame tore backwards behind the ship, lost overboard. Whole sections of the hull rippled and split. The wing-sails to either side of the ship caught the air, but bereft of propulsion they were still falling at an alarming rate.

The prow dipped, pointing itself at a narrow gorge between two towering peaks at the very edge of the mountains. They were close to the ground now but skimming through the air at a dangerous speed.

The ship’s lower keel crashed into the tallest trees and shrubs, funnelled along the gorge, bouncing and bucking, more sections ripped from it, catapulting backwards. Deep into the trench the airship went, the hull completely folding. Clouds of dust shrouded her as she ground to a halt, wedged among boulders and felled trees.

Vaddi and Nyam were flung forward, draped over the last of the pulped spars, coughing as the dust clouds enveloped them, Vaddi lurched to his feet, wiping blood from his nose.

“I feel as though every bone is broken,” he gasped.

Nyam, also thick with dust, rose beside him.

“Sovereigns, Vaddi, are we alive?” he said.

He had retrieved his feathered hat from the wreckage and began dusting himself down with it. They watched in amazed relief as Cellester emerged from another jumble of wood and debris, shaking himself.

“We’d better get off the wreckage,” said Cellester. “It’s about to fall apart completely.”

They clambered through the mangled carcass of the groaning ship, crossing on to the rocks and scree of the mountain foot, watching the ship as she collapsed under her own broken weight. A few bent fingers of superstructure poked up from the remains as silence fell again on the remote gorge.

Cellester indicated a rough passage through the boulders. “That way is south. We can travel until nightfall and then set up a camp. There should be water.”

Nyam reached inside his voluminous robe and tugged out a small sack. “And food. I thought we might need this.”

Vaddi chuckled. “You had more presence of mind than I did.”

“I’ve spent my life scavenging,” Nyam said. He showed his teeth in a vivid smile. “No point surviving a disaster like that and then starving to death.”

“Try and keep undercover or in shadow,” said Cellester. “We have a long journey if we’re to try for Valenar, but there’ll be no allies here. There are worse things than marauding halflings in these mountains.”

They followed the broken course of the gorge out into a wider one, trying to avoid any path that would drive them eastward up into the lower mountain slopes or westward into the desert. Zigzagging through endless boulders and sharp rocks, they made slow progress but for the most part were heading southward. It was exhausting work, made even more so by the oppressive atmosphere, for apart from the occasional muttering of a stream as it chopped down from the heights, swallowed up by the rocks, all was silent. There were no birds, no hint of wildlife.

Eventually, sharing some of Nyam’s food and a brief drink from a stream, Vaddi commented on this. “Is this place cursed? There’s a strangeness to it.”

“I’ve seen regions like this.” Nyam sniffed and tossed aside a well-chewed bone. “Results of the War. There are numerous places where warped magic has wrought its evils, spells that have clashed and released energies that have torn out the heart of the land. This is one such place. It is like a canker. I’ll wager if you tried to grow something here, it would either die or turn into a sick mutation.”

Vaddi shook his head. It was no way to buoy the spirits, though Nyam had spoken honestly enough.

Cellester nodded. “The sooner we cross to healthier regions, the better.”

They moved on as quickly as they could, in shadow now as the sun had dipped low towards the western edge of the plains. There would be no more than an hour of daylight left to them.

Cellester stopped again, squinting up at a low ridge to their left. He studied it for a while. “There may not be any life here now, but it seems that was not always the case.”

Vaddi craned his neck, but all he could make out was a scone landscape, tiers rising up into the higher foothills. “What can you see?”

“The bones of an ancient city, but it must be so old that it has long since passed from the records of man. I know of no city in this wilderness.”

Vaddi turned back to say something to Nyam, but the man had stopped in his tracks, his eyes wide, as though he had seen something his companions had not.

“Nyam, what is it?” Vaddi asked.

“There is one old legend, no more than a fragment,” Nyam muttered, almost to himself. “If there is any truth in it, we must leave here with all haste.” He could not disguise the sudden look of horror on his face.

Cellester came down to him. “Don’t babble in riddles,” he snapped. “What legend?”

“A city built by creatures that were here long before man, from the age of demons. A city called Voorkesh.”

Cellester’s eyes narrowed at the name. He swung round to study the outline he had seen. “Voorkesh does not exist,” he said. “It is a legend, and whatever place that is up there, I sense no life in it.”

They wasted no time in picking their way back down the incline toward the lower slopes of the valley. An eerie silence clung to the terrain.

“What is this legend?” Vaddi said to Nyam.

Without slackening pace, Nyam told him. “I’ve heard of Voorkesh from a number of sources. It was raised by demons that sought human form. They tampered with dangerous sorcery, taking human form and creating monsters to serve them and a legion of blood-hungry warriors, eager to raise up their long banished masters. In Voorkesh they were said to sacrifice their victims. Who knows what tunnels sink down from Voorkesh into the very heart of Khyber itself?”

They came to another stream. Beyond it, cresting a low ridge, several shapes were materialising, vague at first, but gradually forming. They were the color of earth, darkened by the night, hunched like men, their faces no more than smudges, but they had mouths and they gave voice now, speaking barely above a whisper.

“Welcome, strangers. You seem at pains to quit our lands, though you have barely arrived. Yonder, in the city, there is sanctuary, refreshment. Will you not rest with us?”

Already the shapes were coalescing into more tangible form until their transformation was complete. A dozen tall beings, dressed in rich robes, emerged from their shadow cocoons and smiled down at them.

Vaddi was too chilled by their presence to speak, but he sensed instinctively that these creatures were vampires.

“Keep still,” said Cellester. “They’ll not cross the water.”

He was proven right in this, for the shapes came down to the far edge of the stream and halted, their eyes glancing down at it hesitantly, then away. But they smiled, and in their faces was a deceptive warmth, the promise of succor.

To Vaddi’s horror, Cellester held out his hand. “We are pleased to be your guests. Come, cross the stream and take my hand as a token of our friendship.”

The being that had spoken drew back, for to reach out to take the cleric’s hand would have meant stretching across the stream. Instead the unblinking eyes regarded Cellester coolly.

“You do not trust us. We understand. The lands are full of danger.”

“Step across the water.”

“We cannot,” sighed the creature. “It is a sorry tale. We are under an ancient enchantment. We are not allowed to leave the boundary of our city. The springs and rivers close us in. Jealous mages of old trapped us here.”

“What is the name of your city?” said Cellester.

“Voorkesh.”

Cellester had not let his gaze move from the beings across the stream, but he felt Nyam nudge him the ribs. He leaned toward him as the peddler at last found his voice.

“Beyond us, up in the rocks,” he whispered. “More things are stirring. Not everything is on the other side of the stream. This is a trap.”

Cellester bowed politely to the men. “We thank you, but our mission is urgent. We cannot linger. But on our return, perhaps we will visit Voorkesh.”

With that he moved off down the bank, Nyam and Vaddi on his heels. From across the stream there came a hiss, rising shrilly. The vampires were already writhing, shifting, and changing into something not human. But they did not pursue, turning into shadow once more and sinking back into the earth. Cellester urged his companions to hurry.

They rounded a curve in the stream and found themselves at the head of a long, wider valley that fell into deeper darkness below them, where the stream fed a river that cut across part of the valley before plunging over a small fall on its way to the distant plains. Higher up the valley they could see Voorkesh much more clearly. Although night had dropped like a blanket over the mountains and the fields of rock debris, the ruins of the city were lit from below in a hellish green glow.

“We must cross the river,” said Cellester, drawing his blade and uncovering his amulet. “Pray that the water will hold them back.”

Vaddi pulled out his sword, but his free hand closed around the wrappings of the horn. If it had served to ward off Caerzaal and his undead, surely it would work against whatever haunted this realm.

As one the group came to an abrupt halt. Below them in the valley, daubed in a pale wash from the moons, something flowed across the broken terrain, amorphous shapes thickening into greater substance, drawing on the primal energies that throbbed up from the depths of their nightmare home. They slithered down to the broken valley floor and came upward hungrily, silent but redolent with menace. Huge, bloated shapes, writhing with tentacles, dragged themselves forward beside aerial horrors with great bat-like wings, claws unfurling, long tails whipping from side to side, poison dripping from numerous stings. Like a massive wave, this revolting legion rose up, eager to suck up into its embrace the three exposed figures.

“The river!” shouted Nyam, as they closed with its bank. “How do we cross it?”

The three of them stood a few yards from it, staring in horror at the raging torrent, for it was no stream, but a fast flowing, tumbling fury. Its waters churned in a gorge thirty feet below them, smashing into the rocks that poked up from its deep bed, white foam bursting skywards. It promised a quick death.

Cellester was looking downstream. The monstrous pursuit was gathering itself, a huge oncoming wave ready to engulf them. From its seething mass a single creature hovered forward, one solitary, malefic eye glaring at the fugitives, a mouth the size of a house opening to reveal a tunnel of scythe-like teeth. The cleric directed a bolt of white light into it, and as it splashed over the interior of that nightmare gut, the creature’s eye bulged horribly before the whole monstrous shape burst, filling the air with sickly green light.

The wall of horrors paused for only a moment. Twisted limbs and claws groped for their prey, and the wave surged again, about to fall.

“This way!” Vaddi shouted, racing up along the precarious bank of the river. “There’s a bridge!”

They raced for the bridge. It was partly down, but there was enough of a span to risk a crossing. Time had wasted the construction, cracked its arch and removed several of its stones. Vaddi dared not look back. He dashed on to the bridge. Beneath him something groaned and he knew that stone had tumbled into the raging white waters below. Even so he went on to the center of the span. There was a gap at the apex of the bridge, but terror spurred him, and he leaped across. More stonework crumbled and he thought he was doomed to plunge into the river, but he shifted his balance and flung himself forward.

On all fours, he turned. The wall of living nightmare flowed to within mere yards of his companions. The fang-filled mouths of abominations were almost closing over them, while in the maelstrom above them, scores of lunatic faces glared down, eager for the kill, but Nyam and Cellester made it to the bridge. Vaddi backed off, encouraging them to leap. They had no choice. Nyam came over and Vaddi caught his wrist, dragging him to safety as more stonework collapsed.

Cellester jumped, rolling forward, managing to hold his arm and the amulet aloft. The bridge was shaking as if in an earthquake as the monstrous tide surged forward, trying to funnel itself on to the narrow span of the bridge. The noise it made, its scores of mouths screaming, was deafening, the air filled with a thunderous cacophony of noise. Cellester waved the others back and they scrambled like crabs to the far side of the span.

The cleric backed slowly along the bridge, using the light from his talisman to keep the creatures at bay. The huge, amorphous mass hanging fifty feet over him paused, unwilling or unable to approach the holy light. Then the bridge went down, the whole of it collapsing, stone by stone. Cellester scrambled back to its far side, barely ahead of the gaping hole. Vaddi and Nyam reached for him and dragged him to safety. Opposite them, numerous creatures ripped from the writhing mass and wheeled out into emptiness before hitting the racing waters. There they exploded in bloody froth. The press of bodies forced more and more of the horrors over the edge of the bank. They slid and slithered, tumbled and plummeted, their screams and shrieks appalling.

“There’s a narrow path!” said Vaddi, pointing to the ledge that had been hacked out of the gorge’s side. It led up the valley into darkness.

Cellester nodded and the three of them wormed their way along it, while opposite them the shrieking of the monstrous tide showed no sign of diminishing.

Overhead, clouds piled together to shut out light from the moons. All that they had now to guide them was a faint glow from the cleric’s amulet. Behind them they heard a cracking of stone and a sudden rumble. The path had collapsed, like the bridge. The only way now was up the narrowing gorge. A massive wall of rock rose at its head, the foaming waters of the river bursting out of it as if from the mouth of an immense stone structure. The path itself was swallowed by another black opening.

As they came to it, they could see scores of carved faces in the stone, twisted and misshapen, a demonic warning.

“This is the only way forward,” said Cellester.

The others said nothing, swords gripped tightly, and went into the darkness. There was a foulness about the air, a graveyard stench. The tunnel was narrow, twisting, turning, and confusing. They listened all the while for sounds of pursuit, but the horrors behind them did not seem to have crossed the river and ventured into the tunnel. Vaddi felt particularly uneasy. He was certain that the tunnel was gradually veering to the left, which meant it must be curving around toward the city.

After an age, they saw vague, greenish light ahead—an opening back into the open air and night. Cautiously they emerged to find themselves on another ledge with rock-hewn steps leading down to another bridge. It led across to Voorkesh.

Vaddi looked behind them to where the cliff face rose, sheer and glassy, no way up its smooth surface. Something on its ridge swayed and pulsed, some living entity, another foul guardian of this realm.

They saw clearly now the bizarre architecture of the city, its twisted piles. Its towers leaned at angles, linked by bridges that looked more like the frozen webbing of huge spiders. Windows gaped like misshapen, distorted mouths. Sculpted temple blocks suggested remote antiquity, a world before the time of men, where their denizens crawled or hopped but did not walk on two legs. All this was bathed in a green miasma of light that seeped upward from whatever existed below the city.

“At least it seems deserted,” said Vaddi.

Nyam, who had said nothing for a long time, shook his head, his terror clear to see. They went down the dizzy stair to the bridge, and now they could hear something in the tunnel they had left, squeezing its bulk through it, snarling with hungry anticipation.

They crossed the bridge and entered the first street of Voorkesh. Every building was like a mausoleum, towering over them, exuding dark waves of malefic power. They could sense that they were being watched and weighed, but still there was no sign of attack, and the grim beings that had forced them to flee here had not followed.

“We dare not leave the city until dawn,” said Cellester. “The creatures will have gone back to their lairs by then. We must find somewhere to wait. If we can just survive this place until the sun comes up …”

They came to a wide square, beyond which a grotesque structure rose up. Nyam shuddered. “We’ve been herded here for a reason.”

As if in response to his words, a dozen figures appeared on either side of the building, though they seemed substantial. They crossed the square in silence. To Vaddi’s horror they looked like the vampires they had encountered outside the city.

“Welcome, travellers,” said the first of them—a tall, angular being, pale-faced and with remarkably piercing eyes. “In the temple, there is food and drink. You need have no fear here. The night is not a good time to be beyond the walls of Voorkesh.”

The three men kept close to each other, following the figures, knowing that the streets were no longer empty. Other shapes waited there, possibly in significant numbers.

Inside the temple, its main chamber was huge, reeking with age. Colossal statues reared up, depictions of creatures unknown to man, intensely alien, their presence redolent with hostility. They had long, dangling tentacles, lower faces extended into claw-like mandibles. They glowered down at the puny beings that had invaded their chamber with jewelled eyes that flickered with scarlet light, reflected from the heaped braziers around the rim of the vault.

“Refresh yourselves,” said the tall creature. He indicated a circular slab of granite, where food and drink had been spread.

“Touch nothing,” whispered Cellester.

Limned in the flickering glow of the coals, more figures flowed forward from the ring of statues, silent as ghosts. Clad in long robes from head to foot, hairless and white as bleached bones, they were unmistakably undead. As one, they awaited some signal.

Vaddi could hear movement on the steps behind and below him. Very slowly he slipped his fingers inside his robe, brushing the wrappings of the horn. If they were to fight, he would unleash whatever power he could draw from it, no matter what the risks might be.

From somewhere beyond the ring of undead acolytes, a being came forward into the garish light, the sound of its boots echoing from the polished flagstones. The three men could feel its eyes upon them—a steel, cruel gaze. There would be no mercy here. Ancient evils had been stirred up by their coming.

The glow of the fires threw this creature’s face into sharp relief. Each of them gasped. Vaddi drew back, a cold hand closing over his heart, for it was Caerzaal.

The vampire lord made a brief, mocking bow. “We meet once more. Our parting was all too swift.” His feral teeth gleamed.

Beside him stood two other tall men, also dressed in black, long swords strapped to either side of them. By their white skin and scarlet eyes, Vaddi guessed that they, too, were vampires.

Vaddi watched, mesmerised by the tall figure as he strode forward. Like a serpent, the man’s eyes were fixed on him, malignant and scathing.

Caerzaal came to within a few feet of the three travellers. “So little to say?”

Cellester’s sword hovered inches from the vampire lord’s chest. “This abduction will serve you ill,” he said softly.

Caerzaal smiled, his teeth again gleaming, but in that smile there was only the promise of torment and pain. “I do not think so, cleric. I should have recognised you on the island, you who cast aside your faith in the Church. So many have, but why be opposed to this union? The Emerald Claw would embrace you and your companions.”

“We spit upon the Emerald Claw,” said Vaddi, the fury rising in him as he saw again this creature striking down his father, but he felt Nyam’s fingers closing on his arm, restraining him.

Caerzaal laughed, a chilling, mocking sound. “Do you indeed? Not for much longer, son of Orien. Once you have taken the Blood of Vol, you will reconsider. You will give your power freely to us. You will wonder why it has taken you so long to capitulate. You will luxuriate in new powers, new lifetimes.” His eyes dropped to Vaddi’s chest, to where the horn lay hidden. “And you will release the real power inherent in the Crimson Talisman. It will be such a relief to you.”

Vaddi considered drawing out the horn, knowing that Caerzaal, for all his dominance here, was yet afraid of it, but some inner voice warned him against it.

“You will taste its retribution before it ever bends to the Claw’s will,” said Cellester.

Caerzaal turned upon him, eyes flashing with cruelty. “You think so? You, who are but a mock friend to House Orien.”

Cellester’s sword point dipped closer to the vampire, but the two guards beside Caerzaal moved with frightening speed, their own blades crossed protectively in front of their master. Caerzaal stood beside them arrogantly, lips drawn back in scorn.

“Oh yes, Cellester, former servant of the Silver Flame. Beguiled from that service by House Orien, or should I say, its mistress?”

Vaddi could sense the fury within Cellester at those words, the cleric’s whole body tensing, as though he would fly at his hated enemy. He would die instantly on the blades of the guards, Vaddi was sure of that. His life meant nothing to Caerzaal.

“He was a fine servant to your mother, Vaddi d’Orien,” the vampire said, “but I am sure he has neglected to tell you that. Oh, he served your father well enough and won plaudits for his efforts. And Anzar’s trust. But the cleric’s love was reserved for your mother. Why else do you think he hovered about Marazanath?”

Cellester’s face had gone white with repressed fury, but he did not speak.

“My mother was loved by many,” said Vaddi, “and honored by them.”

Caerzaal laughed again. “Of course, I am sure you have faith in this cleric. He has spent a lifetime courting that faith.”

Again Vaddi felt the grip of Nyam’s fingers.

“We are not here to bicker over such trivial things,” Caerzaal said, turning his back on them and walking away. “The powers of Voorkesh are eager to spring the chains that bind them. There is an appointed time. Tonight, with the tenth moon in ascendancy, you will share in these new powers. You shall drink the Blood of Vol.” He looked up into the dark vault overhead. “As that sacred light falls across the stone, we will indulge ourselves in a common destiny.”

“You underestimate the power of the Crimson Talisman,” said Cellester.

Caerzaal turned, lips drawn back in a sneer. “I think not. The boy will fill it with his blood, and we shall drink it. All those here. See! A hundred of them. All to be enriched as the horn fills and fills again. What warriors we shall become! What gods!”

“I will destroy you all first!” said Vaddi.

“No,” said Caerzaal, shaking his head as though party to some deep secret. “No, you’ll do as commanded. The price of refusal will be more than you or your two companions could bear. I promise you.”

Without another word or glance, Caerzaal was gone. Before any of them could react, the two vampire guards used their swords to indicate that they should quit the chamber. In silence they were herded across its floor to another arched doorway, through it and up a spiral stair beyond. They climbed in sullen silence, far up inside the heart of the temple, until they came to a narrow corridor and a room leading off from it. They were thrust into this, the thick wooden door bolted behind them. A single lamp lit the circular room, which was completely devoid of furnishings or windows.

Nyam slumped down, back against the curve of the wall. “The tenth moon,” he murmured. “Sypheros. Not a good omen. Caerzaal will call upon terrible forces.”

Cellester was deep in thought. “It seems the Claw is active everywhere.”

Vaddi sat down. “We have the talisman,” he said hopefully.

“In this place, it would be dangerous to use it,” said Nyam, looking at the cleric, who nodded in resigned agreement.

“What is the tenth moon?” said Vaddi.

Cellester shook his head. “I know very little of the Claw’s methods or of its ceremonies, but they use astrological alignments in them and draw on very ancient powers. The tenth moon, Sypheros, has long been tied to the powers of Shadow. If Caerzaal would draw on the powers of Voorkesh, they will be frightful indeed. It may well be that if you try to use the horn or I my amulet their powers will be warped. You heard Caerzaal refer to the horn as the Crimson Talisman. Instead of countering his dark powers, it will enforce them. Your blood, Vaddi, will be tainted. If you use the horn, you will be playing into his hands.”

“Read its inscription again,” said Nyam.

Vaddi was reluctant to draw out the horn, but he did so cautiously and read the runes that were embossed upon it. He remembered Nyam’s translation:

“The horn dispenses great power for good or for evil,” said Cellester. “Caerzaal’s heart is harsh. If he controlled the horn, he would use it to open gateways that have been locked for eons.”

“Then do we simply submit to this ritual?” snapped Nyam. “Are we to be like goats of sacrifice?”

“Caerzaal spoke of the price of refusal if I do not obey him,” said Vaddi. “What did he mean?”

Cellester shook his head, but Nyam snorted. “He will give you the dubious pleasure of watching the cleric and myself being subjected to the worst of his rituals. Nothing could prepare you for that.”

7 Under Cover of Daylight

High above the Endworld Mountains the soarwing circled in silence, the beat of its wings no heavier than those of a moth, wrapped as they were in sorcery. Below, among the jagged peaks that poked up from pitch darkness into the light of the Eberron’s moons, the massive saurian sensed the comings and goings of many creatures. The eagles that had wheeled here during daylight were in their secluded aeries, heads bowed against the night and the things that shifted in it.

On the back of the soarwing, Aarnamor studied the broken peaks. With a mental command, he brought his reptilian mount around in one last sweep, gliding downward. With uncanny, instinctive skill, the great shape wove its way between peak after peak, barely evading the naked fangs of rock where one touch would have sent the soarwing tumbling to its doom. Aarnamor, like the beast he rode, had sensed life below. For days he had used his supernatural skills to smell out the progress of the three travellers, tracking them to Voorkesh, the dread city that even he was wary of. He could sense the terrors that welled up from those ruins.

The soarwing dropped to the bizarre buildings, gliding to the uppermost tower of a central mausoleum. Weightless as a shadow, talons gripped, wings folded over so that in a moment it had become one with the building, invisible to all but a sorcerer’s eye. Aarnamor whispered something to his mount then slipped from it like a ghost. He paused to listen, as if he could hear the very structure breathing beneath him.

Near the apex of the tower, he found a jagged crack in the ancient stonework and slid into it, lowering himself down, his body shifting like mist. All was darkness, profound and impenetrable, but the undead warrior used other senses developed by his master’s sorcery, magic as old as these mountains. Every sound that came from within the building, deep down to its foundations, Aarnamor heard, analyzed, and considered. It was not long before he had learned what he needed to know.

He passed lower through dingy, curling passages until he came to a dusty landing. There was a light up ahead cast from cold fire. Evidently the servants of this city used this tower He could smell their minions in force farther down below him.

Aarnamor moved down the passage like a stirring of air, one with the shadows. Ahead of him the passage opened. There was a room off it outside of which two guards stood, so motionless they might have been statues, but Aarnamor could sense the half-life within them. Like him, they were undead, but he knew them at once for the mindless reanimates of the Emerald Claw. Beings of a far lower order, they did not have his mental power. He stepped before them.

Zombies though they were, the undead reacted quickly enough, swords cutting the air inches from the intruder, but Aarnamor evaded them with lightning ease. His own blade rang against theirs, sparks hissing in the dim light. The first of the guards was about to cry out, but Aarnamor’s weapon sliced through his windpipe and the creature’s mouth hung slack. There was another clash of blades, but the contest was soon ended. Aarnamor’s speed made him a blur. He decapitated the guards, and though their bodies stumbled about aimlessly, fingers groping at the air, they were useless. He waited, listening to the darkness of the spiral stair that led down from this place, but he heard nothing.

At the door to the room, he paused, slid back the bolts, and pushed the door inward very slowly. He sensed that the three men beyond were coiled like springs, about to launch themselves at him.

Within the room, the three men felt the coming of something inhuman. They heard the clash of blades then utter silence. The bolts slid and the door creaked open slowly. Vaddi drew back, fingers touching the talisman.

“Cellester,” came a soft hiss from the shadows in the doorway.

“Who calls?” replied the cleric.

“The guards are disposed of. Put away your weapons.” His voice was little more than a rasp, the breath of a corpse, but it was rich in power, almost hypnotic in quality.

Vaddi saw a great, bat-like shadow ease into the doorway, the light gleaming on his long blade. His face was wreathed in darkness, cowled, but the eyes were vivid yellow, like those of a predator. Undead! Vaddi knew at once. Was this yet another of Caerzaal’s monsters?

“Aarnamor!” Cellester gasped.

“We have little time.” The undead indicated that they follow him. “You must leave this cell with all haste.”

Vaddi and Nyam exchanged stunned glances. Vaddi’s mind raced. He could make no sense of this. Cellester knew this creature? All Vaddi’s nagging doubts about the cleric returned, but there was no time for deliberation. Cellester urged them forward, clearly seeing an ally in the black-shrouded stranger.

Aarnamor led them down the passage, past the sprawled undead whose bodies still twitched and spasmed. The men paused only to avail themselves of the fallen swords. Beyond the passage was another door, which Aarnamor opened. A passage lay beyond and they traversed it, up more stairs. At the top of these stairs, a thick door barred the way, but Aarnamor unbolted it. Cool air swept down. Beyond was the uppermost circle of the tower.

“Go outside,” Aarnamor said. “Hide there until dawn. Only then will it be safe to quit Voorkesh.”

“What of you?” said Cellester.

“Already I sense pursuit. Caerzaal’s fury rises like a furnace blast. He will know that two of his filthy minions have been cut down, and he will scent me. I will lead him and his rabble through this city and buy you time until dawn. Go! I will bolt the door and set spells to secure it. Later I will come to you.”

Vaddi would have demanded more but had no opportunity to speak. They went out into the cold night and Aarnamor was swallowed by the darkness of the stair. The door shut, its bolts slid from within. There was a faint pulse of light beyond and it shuddered, melding into the stonework.

Vaddi turned to his companions who were looking out over the curved parapet to the city. In the skies overhead, the thin veil of cloud shifted, revealing several moons and the jewelled majesty of the Rings of Siberys. Drawn to this, Vaddi watched as one of the moons freed itself of cloud, a strange light bathing it.

“The Shadow moon,” whispered Nyam beside him. “There is some vile significance to this, as Caerzaal threatened. He would tap these conjunctions and their powers. Do you feel the horn responding?”

Vaddi felt only dread.

“Do not touch it while this moon lasts,” said Nyam. “It will lead Caerzaal to you—and worse, far worse.”

Cellester drew his cloak more tightly about him. The others followed suit. Far below, in the canyons of the city, they heard eerie calls, the slithering movement of large creatures. They did their best to blend with the shadows of the parapet, willing themselves to become invisible.

The hours wore on slowly. Although nothing came to test the door that Aarnamor had closed with his sorcery, the city below was feverish with activity. Shrieks and cries rose up from below, mingling with the roars of creatures prowling the deepest avenues, as if they fought one another. There was a terrible frustration in those dreadful sounds. Overhead, the Shadow moon waxed, spreading its terrible light across the stone tower where the three fugitives squatted, pressed to the stone, their cloaks covering them. They felt exposed, certain to be discovered, and although they heard the constant flapping of wings in the skies and ghoulish cries no more than a few feet above them, they were not touched.

Vaddi yearned to question Cellester. The being called Aarnamor had saved them—there was no question of that—but he was undead. No servant of Caerzaal or the Claw, yet it made Vaddi doubly uneasy.

He gave a sudden jerk and realized that he had been on the edge of sleep. Nyam was gently shaking him.

“Dawn,” whispered the peddler.

Vaddi felt a flood of relief, knowing that daylight would be fatal to the vampire and his nest of servants.

Cellester rose, watching as the sunrise began to pick out the towers and roofs of the city, inching across it like a pale tide. The threatening darkness withdrew, a malignant force draining deeper into the depths of Voorkesh—at least for a time.

“Are we to go back through the temple?” Nyam asked.

“Too dangerous,” said Cellester, studying the outer walls of the tower.

“Then how do you propose we quit this tower?”

“We will climb down,” said Cellester calmly.

“We have no rope and—”

“There is a span crossing to another roof. We will keep to the roofs for as long as we can, until we come to the edge of the city. Then we will go into the mountains and eventually back to the Talenta Plains.”

Nyam’s eyes bulged. “Are you mad?”

“Would you rather wait for another night and risk Caerzaal’s fury when he finds you? Stay here if you wish, but Vaddi and I will climb down.”

Nyam gaped at Vaddi, who could not help but grin. “Lesser of two evils by far,” he said.

Cellester pointed below. “The tower is old and badly weathered. See. There are enough hand and footholds to get us down to that span. We’ll be in open daylight the whole time.”

Nyam grimaced.

“I’ll lead,” said the cleric. “You follow, peddler. Vaddi, bring up the rear.”

Vaddi nodded. The descent held no terrors for him. The sheer walls of the coastal cliffs that he had grown up climbing had been far more dangerous than this. He was more concerned for Nyam, whose terror was evident.

Like three spiders, they went over the parapet and down the tower’s side. Cellester had been right, for the stones were pocked and loose, affording many footholds, though here and there they tore free or crumbled to dust. Nyam slipped at one point, but Cellester held him, swinging him back to the wall, where he clung like a limpet before finding the courage to move down.

For an hour, with the sunlight mercifully strengthening, they picked their way over the roofs, along crumbling stairs and across walls, some of which toppled loudly into the streets below after their passing. They said little to each other, forced to concentrate on the perilous crossing of Voorkesh. All the while they could feel the city’s malice, like the hunger of something animate, as though somewhere in that maze its claws would draw them in.

They could see the city’s boundary. Shadows fell across the last square to a collapsing wall—the way to freedom. They climbed down a final set of stone steps and paused at the edge of the shadows.

“Can you feel anything?” Nyam asked the cleric, who seemed to be the most attuned to the pulse of the city.

“Something is watching us. Draw your blades. Make for that gap in the wall. Fast.”

As one they made a dash across the square, their feet drumming on the stones, the sound echoing around the buildings, like a summons. Behind them they could hear deep croaking noises and something soft and wet slapping the ground in labored pursuit, but then they were through the gap in the wall and out into the rocky terrain beyond without looking back.

They were in a field of massive boulders and jagged scree, fallen from the steeply rising foothills ahead. Over them towered the mountains, the snows of their uppermost crags gleaming in the sunlight. Tired though they were, the three men ran into the rocks almost to the point of exhaustion, pausing at last to gather breath. They looked back in silence, but the terrain was motionless, bleached and dusty. Beyond the edge of mountain rubble, Voorkesh looked no more than a continuation of the desolation.

“We must … keep moving,” Cellester said through ragged breaths. “By nightfall … we have to be … far away from here.”

They followed him as he led the way into the foothills. They paused only to drink from the icy streams that tumbled down periodically from the higher slopes. Nyam shared out more of the food he had brought with him in the small sack, and they ate as they walked.

By midday they had put a significant distance between themselves and Voorkesh, heading south, parallel to the mountains. Far to their right, partially obscured by a heat haze, they could see the edge of the Blade Desert. Ahead was a narrow gorge, cutting more steeply into the mountains’ skirts as its foaming river tumbled below.

“This should be a barrier to any creatures of Voorkesh that pursue us,” said Nyam. “I’ll feel easier once we cross it.”

Cellester nodded. “Then we go south. Our journey to Valenar will be a long one. That desert stretches far to the south.”

“Surely you don’t mean us to traverse it!” said Nyam.

“No, we will need to keep to its edge.”

Nyam was looking up at the mountains. “There is a better way to Valenar. The elves built a watchtower up in the mountains centuries ago. It is named Taeris Mordel, the Eye of the North.”

Cellester frowned.

“We have come far together,” Cellester said, Vaddi could see the tension in the cleric, his whole manner one of unease. “Vaddi and I have been glad of your aid. On the airship, your swordsmanship was worthy of a knight. But I wonder … why are you here?”

Nyam laughed. “Why am I here? You think I chose to fall from the sky in that airship? You think I chose to stumble into Voorkesh?”

“Why were you on the airship?” Cellester snapped. “You had no need. You were paid handsomely for delivering us to Scaacrag.”

“I told you. I heard agents of the Claw plotting against you. I could hardly leave you to their evil ministrations.”

“You’re lying,” said Cellester.

Vaddi knew that Nyam had his own reasons for not revealing his real motives to the cleric. Then again, he could not know for certain that Nyam had told him the truth.

“We have fought together—saved each other’s lives!” exclaimed the peddler.

“Indeed!” Cellester snorted. “You are no common peddler.”

“If I had not perfected a degree of skill with the sword, I would have died long ago. The world is filled with hostility. Trust is a rare commodity.”

Vaddi looked at Cellester. “There is much that needs explaining,” he said. “I have put myself in your hands, Cellester, as my father wished, yet we were taken from Caerzaal’s clutches by that undead … thing. Aarnamor, you named him. And he named you. How is it you traffic with such creatures?”

Cellester’s frown deepened. He was controlling his anger with difficulty, Vaddi could see. “I had hoped not to use him, but our needs were desperate.”

“You summoned him,” Nyam said bluntly.

Cellester nodded. “In my younger days as a servant of the Church, I fell in with other clerics who were tempted by the darker arts. Ultimately it led to my disillusionment and is why I left and found solace with House Orien in Anzar’s service. Aarnamor was a warrior who sought power where he found it. He thought he could control his destiny. We were young and arrogant—and mistaken. Aarnamor’s reward was living death. But he swore never to serve the dark agencies. He detests the Claw and all it represents.” Cellester turned his anger on Nyam. “For which you should be thankful!”

Nyam shrugged. “I am alive.”

Vaddi fell only deeper confusion. Both these men seemed to have his interests at heart, yet both could equally serve their own causes.

“We are agreed on one thing,” said Nyam. “Our best course leads to Valenar, and we will need somewhere safe when night falls. If we go the way you suggest, cleric, we remain exposed.”

“You want to go up into those mountains and search for a myth?” snapped Cellester. “You call that safe?”

“What does Vaddi say?”

Vaddi shook his head. Both choices seemed poor ones. “Maybe we should give the mountains a try, at least for a few days. If we don’t have any luck, we’ll head for the desert’s edge.”

Cellester looked as though he would argue further, but reluctantly he nodded, as if sensing that Vaddi was resolved. “Then let us hurry.”

They threaded their way through the field of broken stones and scree, gradually moving up to a place where a number of fallen boulders had spilled into the river. They crossed it and headed south along the edge of the mountains. With afternoon waning, Nyam pointed.

“An old road,” he said. “It must be the way to the Eye of the North.”

Cellester looked sceptical, studying the ground. It was a path of sorts, but evidently it had not been used for many years.

Vaddi could see that it went into a narrow mountain pass that closed over it like a fist. “You want to go in there?” he asked.

“We need shelter. I’m exhausted.”

“Caerzaal’s servants will be out in force by night,” said Cellester. “We dare not be caught in the open, but there may be other dangers within the pass.”

Nyam drew his sword. “I’d prefer a roof over my head.”

A sound from behind them made them all turn. Somewhere in the folds of the rocks, on the edge of vision, something was stirring. The very rock wall shimmered, as though coming to life. As they watched, a huge chunk seemed to melt and slither down to the edge of the road.

It was enough to decide their next move and they sprinted for the cover of the gorge. Behind them the protoplasmic mass shook and formed itself into a shape some four feet tall and four across, the color of human skin. Vaddi looked back to see that this skin was stretching to reveal scores of eyes and mouths, teeth gleaming. The thing rolled forward like a massive amoeba, spitting gobbets and snarling, forming and re-forming like a living nightmare.

“Another of Voorkesh’s horrors!” cried Nyam.

“I think not,” said Cellester as they went into the shadows of the narrow defile. “It’s a mouther. Let’s just pray that it hunts alone.”

The monstrous creature rolled with surprising speed after its prey, its scores of eyes wide in anticipation of feeding, its many tongues lashing, a spray of poison spittle flying in ail directions. For a moment the narrow mouth of the defile impeded its bulk, but it merely adjusted its shape and came on, shrieking madly, the sound deafening in the confines.

“Can we outrun it?” Vaddi called.

They had come to a slightly wider passage. Far overhead the light was fading quickly and the first of the moons already rode the sky.

Cellester turned to face the mouther as it squeezed itself through the crevice. The cleric pulled back his sleeve and his amulet glowed as he uttered an incantation. Light formed around the amulet and then speared towards the mouther, striking it and exploding in a brilliant yellow wash. Hideous screams rang through the rock corridor from a score of mouths as the shuddering bulk began to shake, the walls of the passage groaning. Rocks and dust showered down from above and the stench of burning flesh hit the three fugitives like a rancid wave.

Gagging, they watched in horror as the mouther bubbled and frothed, its mass running like gelatinous fat. The rocks that fell upon it sank into the flesh, absorbed by it. Slowly the light from Cellester’s bolt died. As it did, the mouther settled, again solidifying, but its eyes glazed, flopping forward on dead stalks, and the mouths hung slack, tongues blackened. The last of the rockfall subsided, leaving the way behind them blocked.

“Excellently done.” Nyam laughed. “No one will follow us that way!”

Cellester shook his head. “Perhaps, but I would rather not have used power. It will draw our enemy to us.” He turned to Vaddi. “Never use the horn, Vaddi. Not here. It served us well on the island, but in this dark region it will act only as a beacon to every horror that dwells here.”

They fell silent again, moving on, winding through the defile, which admitted barely enough moon and starlight for them to see the way ahead. It might once have been a path, but numerous falls of rock had made it a treacherous passage now. In the skies, they could hear the occasional beat of wings and a screech as of something hunting, but they were not attacked.

They were far along the road when Cellester finally agreed to a rest, taking the first watch. Vaddi slept fitfully. He jerked to wakefulness as the first spars of sunlight cut through from above. He turned to find that Cellester had not slept, remaining on guard. Behind him, curled up like a discarded bundle of rags. Nyam snored as sonorously as though he were tucked up in an inn.

Vaddi could not help but laugh. “I wish I had his nerve.”

Cellester grunted and shook the peddler.

Nyam came awake slowly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He gazed up at the two figures standing over him. “Now what?” he grumbled. “I’ve only just got to sleep.”

“You’ve been asleep for hours,” said Vaddi.

Nyam sat up reluctantly. He rummaged in his sack and produced half a loaf and a chunk of cheese. They ate in silence then moved on.

Although they had a constant sense of being studied, as if the rock walls had eyes and ears, they heard nothing all day. The path wound tightly onward, rising up into the mountains. Although Cellester seemed uneasy, he was committed to this journey. They spoke little, pausing only to eat and sip from the occasional fresh spring that welled from the naked stone.

Slowly, every limb aching, they made their way up the mountain. Cut between two peaks, their path seemed more suitable for goats than men. Dust or rock falls choked it in places. It seemed long abandoned, but they remained on their guard.

Just as evening fell once more, Nyam found something on the smooth face of the rock wall ahead. Etched into it were runes—clearly the work of elves, though they seemed as old as the rock itself.

“This is indeed the way to Taeris Mordel. There will be a division in the path. Our way rises steeply.”

“Let us make haste,” said Cellester. “Our enemy has followed us, as I knew he would. We must be utterly silent. This whole region is like a living entity. The sorcery that spawned Voorkesh has seeped out far into the very earth. Our every breath will be reported back to Caerzaal.”

The path divided and they took the fork that became a steeply hewn stairway. It twisted like the burrow of a worm almost perpendicularly at times, until at last they were out on the open mountainside. A fresh breeze gusted. Clouds scudded across the heavens, shutting out the moonlight. Something stirred in them, shapes that flitted to and fro, ever hunting.

“There!” said Nyam, pointing. “Look at the highest point of the range, Taeris Mordel, the Eye of the North.”

Vaddi could see across the void to where a tall finger of rock had been sculpted into what must be the promised watchtower. It stood out from the upper crags around it, black and lifeless as bone.

Nyam grinned, evidently much relieved to see it. “The elves carved it from the peak during the height of the Last War, when they fought bitterly against Karrnath.”

“There are more runes here,” said Vaddi, studying what he had found on another slab of rock. “Elven runes. I can read some of them. They speak of alliances between elves and men.”

“Long ago, many elves fled to Aerenal,” Nyam said. “In the War they founded a separate home in Valenar. Taeris Mordel was their window on the north and on the cursed lands around Voorkesh.”

They spent another hour traversing the path. Rounding a tight bend, they saw below them the path leading to a wide bridge, its sides studded with carvings and statues of giants, heroic figures cast in warrior-like mould, swords and shields clasped, faces fierce, alive almost with the war-cries frozen into the stone.

Nyam pointed to the statues and columns that rose up on the opposite peak. “That is our goal. It is both a temple and watchtower. We should be safe there.”

“It is abandoned?” said Cellester.

“The elves may use it from time to time,” said Nyam, “but I see no watchfires up there.”

As they peered up into the darkness, something flapped by above, its raucous cry making them all duck down. Cellester urged them down the path to the bridge. They scrambled forward, made reckless by their urgency. Smaller night creatures flitted to and fro in the air around them, as though they had disturbed a colony of bats within the rock walls. As they approached the span across the yawning chasm below. Vaddi knew that their enemies were closing fast. Behind them, on the path, they could hear shrill cries and the fall of rocks.

They came to the bridge. It looked solid enough for all its age. Beyond it, Taeris Mordel rose up, its wall like polished marble, its high doors shut, equally as smooth.

Uneasily they began the crossing. As they went over the bridge, Vaddi could see to his right a deep cleft in the mountains that afforded a view over the far Blade Desert, awash now with sudden brilliant moonlight. By day the view from here must be breathtaking. He had little time to appreciate it now, for a murmur of voices behind him made him swing round. At the foot of the path they had just quilted, a rush of movement alerted them. In the glow of the moons a body of undead were coming in pursuit, boots crunching on the stone of the bridge.

Cellester waved his companions forward, but Vaddi felt a stab of despair. How were they to get into the tower? Its tall doors, their huge iron hinges choked with rust, looked as if they had not been opened for a thousand years.

They reached little over the halfway span when the air hummed about them, as if alive with fresh sorcery. Three arrows sliced through the night air and embedded themselves deep in the stone at their feet. Vaddi realized with another surge of horror that they had been fired from the temple above.

Vaddi pulled up sharply. “We are defenseless! That was a warning volley.”

The vibrations of the bridge testified to the pursuit. The undead were closing. They drew up in force no more than a dozen yards away, dead faces expressionless but assured of their triumph. From those ranks a familiar, cold voice shouted its challenge.

“Death awaits you that way. No one has ever entered Taeris Mordel and emerged alive.”

Vaddi turned to see the tall, haughty figure of Caerzaal striding toward them.

“Return to me. I promise you something far more fulfilling.”