The God Catcher

SEVENTEEN

Tennora pressed herself into the shadowy crevice between two crates, hardly daring to breathe as Dareun stormed into the cavern, dragging a small boy. Ferremo and a pair of men she hadn't seen before sauntered in behind him.

She listened as Dareun accosted Nestrix, demanding to know what she'd done with the two guards. All the while she stared in the direction of their bodies hidden behind the crates just beyond her feet. The feeling of her dagger slicing through the first one's trachea-the sound of the blood spraying-turned her stomach. Her hand was resting on the dagger.

What had her mother thought the first time she'd had to kill an attacker? She didn't wonder any longer if she had-even the easy world Tennora had grown accustomed to was rife with dangers. Merely stepping to one side of it had left her with two men's blood on her hands and the intention of adding more. If she didn't die first.

Dareun opened the door of the cage and swung the little boy in. He warned him that Nestrix was a dragon who might eat him. "Don't worry," he whispered. "Even if you leave him be, the blindfin will have him soon enough."

Tennora closed her eyes and fought back the shudder that threatened to rack her at the thought of the blindfin, their sucker-mouths gnawing away at her skin. And poor Veron… Despite their cross-purposes, she did hope he'd made it out. Preferably out to the tunnel that led to the lair, his crossbow intact and ready.

Nestrix squatted down beside the little boy. "You were the boy in the boot shop," she said gently and too softly to be heard much farther than where Tennora sat. "Master Mrays?" He nodded, his eyes still wide. "Is your mother safe?" Nestrix asked.

"I… I think so. Saer." He swallowed as if it hurt him, and added in hardly more than a squeak, "Please don't eat me!"

"I do not eat little boys," Nestrix said. "They taste bad. Especially when they live in cities. Did the man tell you what he means to do?"

"He… he said to the man who took me from my bed that he thinks my mother will give him what he wants."

"And did he say what that was?"

The boy shook his head. "He said… he said she would not want to give it up, but she would have no choice. And the man with the…" He started to cry a little. "The man with the knives said they should get insur-insur-"

"Insurance?" Nestrix said, setting a hand on the boy's shoulder.

He nodded. "Then he took one of his knives and poked me in the armpit and asked if I knew where Mama keeps the staff."

Cold horror flooded Tennora's body. I could unmask a hundred lords tonight, Dareun had said.

"What's the staff?" Nestrix asked.

"It's a secret," the boy said. "It's a special staff. I only saw it once. I wasn't supposed to. The Lord Dagger and the wizard who died gave it to Mama, and she hid it. With magic."

The Open Lord, the Blackstaff, and Goodwoman Mrays. And a staff that had to be hidden. By a lord in a mask. That a dragon dearly wanted.

The lodestone is the first lord's gift.

Blood of Mystra, she thought.

Dareun meant to take the dragonstaff of Ahghairon.

If Dareun got hold of the dragonstaff, the dragonward would be all but meaningless. The wielder of the dragonstaff could allow certain dragons to pass through the city without being harmed by the magic of the ward. In that way the Masked Lords who ruled Waterdeep could allow helpful dragons in and keep the dangerous ones out.

With the dragonstaff in Dareun's hands, he could rescind any and all such allowances and give himself free rein in Waterdeep. All dragons in the Great Game would be blocked by the dragonward from approaching his lair, and Dareun would have his claws in the heart of the city.

Especially if he held hostage the son of a Masked Lord influential enough to have been charged with keeping the dragonstaff.

It was no longer just about helping Nestrix. If Tennora couldn't stop Dareun, the whole city was in danger.

She shifted enough so that she could see Dareun standing with his back to her, leaning heavily on the chair beside him. The gorget was protecting him from the powers of the dragon-ward, but it could not undo the damage the mythal had already wrought, and he looked exhausted. The key to the cage dangled from a ring in his left hand. So close, and yet so far. She might be able to snatch it from him, if she was as quick as she had ever been in her life, but she'd never get it to Nestrix before his lackeys attacked her.

Tennora looked back at Nestrix, and with her hand made the shape of a lock. Nestrix laid a hand on the lockpicks in her pocket. She'd need Dareun to be distracted if she was going to attempt to pick the locks.

Which meant Tennora had to do something profoundly reckless.

Nazra wanted to storm Rhinzen Halnian's tower herself, but she settled for sending Jorik over with a troop of his bodyguards to meet the Watch captain-and for thinking of the things she would do to the man who stole her son. If it was the eladrin's doing, she'd see him hang from the Troll Wall.

"Mistress Mrays," Agnea said calmly, "you'll wear a hole in the floor pacing like that."

"Let it wear," she snapped, and continued pacing.

Agnea spoke again a few moments later. "You know we'll find him."

Nazra didn't answer, didn't even look up at her chamberlain. The anger in her was all that kept her on her feet and alert. To address the idea that there was even another possibility was unthinkable.

It had been four hours since the man in green velvet had vanished from her garden. Since then, Nazra had her servants sweep the house for clues, and sent Agnea out to politely inquire of the party guests as they left whether they had seen a young man in a green velvet suit, as he had left behind his overcloak. No one remembered seeing him until just before he escorted Nazra out into the gardens, and no one had spotted him afterward. It was as if he appeared out of thin air and vanished once more into it.

Moreover, beyond the bodies in the nursery and the blood on the wall, there was no trace that anyone had broken into her home. She had sent for a wizard to feel the wards out-the wards that bastard Halnian had devised-and find how the kidnappers had made their way in, but no one had arrived yet.

"Why is this taking so long?" Nazra said.

"Perhaps Master Halnian put up a fight," Agnea said mildly, a wicked smile on her lips. "I think Jorik would relish the chance to compel Master Halnian, should he prove unwilling, and it might take longer than he intended."

From the entryway came the sounds of Nazra's bodyguards returning. It took every ounce of self-control Nazra had in her to wait for them to come to her. Running through the hallways tearing her hair would not do-later, alone, but not now. Now she needed to seem in complete control.

Jorik strode into the office. "You will never believe this, saer," he said.

Nazra ignored him. "Where's Halnian?"

"Trying to survive the night in a cleric's hospice," Jorik said. "And his circumstance doesn't bode well for him. His tower came down. The Watch was already there, trying to get him out and to safety."

"How does a tower come down on its own?" Agnea said.

"It doesn't," Jorik said. "Two of his apprentices were there. They say he went mad and cast a spell to call down missiles from the sky on them. While he was still in the tower."

"Watching gods," Nazra said. "Are they sure?"

"Um, quite sure, goodwife," a young man's voice came from behind Jorik. Jorik stepped to the side to reveal the two apprentices, a very handsome human boy and an elf girl, standing side by side in the doorway. Both wore the robes of students from the House of Wonder.

"I thought they could check the wards," Jorik explained.

"It was a meteor swarm," the young man said. "And yes, he was most certainly mad by that point. Tennora mentioned some sort of smoke. I expect they will find traces of it on him."

Nazra looked to the young woman. "Smoke?"

She turned red. "Oh no, goodwife. I'm Shava. Tennora ran off. But she did mention some sort of smoke before she left. A… well, a sort of intoxicant, I think she meant."

"Who is Tennora?" Nazra said. "Why did she run off before the Watch arrived?"

"Another student," Shava answered, but she left the other question hanging.

"Tennora Hedare," the young man said. "Also, I'm Cassian Lafornan; it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Yes, of course." Nazra turned to Agnea. "Hedare?"

"A titled family," the chamberlain replied. "Descendants of a far-shipper who did rather well in wool and curios-I believe the present Lord Hedare's grandfather, but I'd have to check. I'd also have to check who Tennora Hedare might be, but she's certainly not the current Lady Hedare if she's one of Rhinzen Halnian's pupils. The current lady is of a certain age."

"Oh no," Cassian chimed in. "Her uncle and aunt are the Lord and Lady Hedare."

"Could they be connected to this?"

Agnea made a face. "I doubt it. The Hedares are the sort of bright-coin nobles who want more establishment, not less."

"But a younger lady is a die not yet thrown." Nazra turned back to the two students. "Why did she run off?" Shava turned a brighter shade of red and clamped her mouth shut.

"To be perfectly frank," Cassian said, "I think she may have gone a little mad herself. She was sneaking around the tower, and I believe she stole some of Master Halnian's priceless artifacts. I saw at least one in her-"

Nazra sprang forward and seized him by the shoulders, all pretense of control shed. "What? What artifact? What did it look like?"

Cassian's eyes widened. "Some piece of armor. With a big moonstone."

"The Songdragon's gorget," Shava piped up. "Master Halnian used to keep it in his offices."

Nazra released the young man, her thoughts racing around each other, trying to trap the puzzle of names and motives together. Tennora Hedare, Rhinzen Halnian, the gorget of the Songdragon and Antoum…

"Think carefully, the both of you. Have you ever seen a man, a man with red hair and possibly a green velvet cape, lots of rings on his fingers, around Master Halnian or young Lady Hedare?" They both shook their heads.

"Although," Cassian amended, "Tennora has taken up with some strange people lately. A half-orc fellow and a very rude Tethyrian woman."

Nazra's heart folded in on itself.

"Tethyrian?" Jorik said. "Is she very tall? Black hair, strange eyes?" "Yes. That sounds right."

The woman in the cobbler's shop. Oh Hells, Hells, she should have seen this coming! She had known down to her bones that something wasn't right.

"This is quite a conspiracy," Jorik murmured.

"But where is he?" Nazra demanded. "Where is my son?" She turned back to Cassian and Shava. "I know you two have had what I dearly hope will prove to have been the worst night of your lives. But I need your help. Where does Tennora live?"

"The God Catcher," Cassian said. "It's not too far from here."

"The fallen statue by the market?" He nodded. "Good, show Jorik and the others there. Stay out of their way, but find her. I need to know what she did with that collar. You, girl." She pointed at Shava. "I want you to check the wards on the doorways until the full wizard shows up."

She looked up at Jorik. He and Agnea were the two people she trusted with all her secrets-and her life besides. They were her eyes and ears, the hands that reached farther than she dared from her perceived position.

"If you see that bastard, don't kill him. Wait until we have Antoum. Promise me."

Jorik nodded. "Absolutely, saer."

"And the girl… you find her, you bring her to me. I don't care what she tells you-I want to hear it from her lips."

Lying behind the crate several miles away and far beneath Nazra Mrays's feet, Tennora felt a calm overtake her as she realized she was very likely about to get herself killed.

Once more she shifted enough to catch sight of Nestrix, watching Dareun and fingering the tools in her pocket. Nestrix looked as if she'd much rather be on Tennora's side of the bars and ready to dispatch Dareun-possibly by clawing his gut open with her fingernails.

After a moment, Nestrix's gaze shifted to the gap between the crates where Tennora hid. By hand gestures and mouthed words, Tennora let Nestrix know she was going to try a spell and that Nestrix should be ready to pick the lock.

Nestrix looked drawn, but she nodded. She leaned over to Antoum and whispered something to him. Tennora said a little prayer to Tymora that Nestrix was right about the memories and not simply mad as Veron had said.

Tennora wrapped her hands around her staff. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her thoughts, to focus only on the shifting remnants of the Weave and how to get bursts of acid out of it.

"Ferremo, go find those two fools," Dareun said. He snorted. "I will show them fear."

Tennora held her hands over her ears, but their voices filtered through.

"Master," Ferremo said, "that seems a reckless step." Dareun turned on the lovac. "What?"

"The goodwoman is likely to send guards searching. The bounty hunter is still in the city, and he knows about us as well. It doesn't bode well."

The silence was taut as a wire. "And how would they find us, Ferremo?" Dareun asked. "Have you been talking to someone?"

Tennora gave a quiet grunt of frustration. She thought of a different spell, one she knew as well as the stairs of the God Catcher. It wouldn't hurt anyone, but it might distract them long enough for Nestrix to escape. The lines of it uncoiled. She focused on the specifics, the sounds and the distance. "Tumtiespurelupwol" The air before her seemed to thicken.

"Not I, master. I merely meant they are not fools. If we have left anything-"

"Have we left anything?" Dareun said. "You seem awfully concerned-"

The sound of a bugle blast rang through the sewers-distant, but not distant enough to stop Dareun from seizing Ferremo by the shirtfront.

"What is that?" he snarled.

"The Watch horns," Ferremo said. "I warned you."

"Turn to, my boys," Tennora said, and a man's voice boomed the same words out of the sewer tunnels. "We have them cornered. Weapons ready! On my word!"

Dareun dropped Ferremo and stormed to the open tunnel, his hands swarming with fluttering shadows. Tennora darted her eyes to Nestrix, who had pulled loose the picks and was furiously working at the lock. The look in her eyes was distant and vaguely pained.

Before the entrance to the tunnel, Dareun raised his hands and cast a stream of dark magic into the passageway with the roar of an enchantment. "Finn, Aenotis-you guard this way. The darkness will slow them down. Take them down as they enter."

The man closest to Tennora started to move, just as she stood, knocking the stack of crates over. He fell back, out of the way of the falling boxes but into the reach of Tennora's ready dagger. She slid the blade up into the man's rib cage, careful to avoid his bones. The dagger slid back out with ease.

She sprang over the minion's body, pulse pounding, senses screaming. Ferremo stepped back, stunned at her sudden appearance. Dareun too looked surprised, but only for a moment before rage overtook his features.

The carvestar flew from Tennora's fingers toward the soft part of his throat; it missed and sank into his shoulder instead. She cursed and took up another, but Dareun had taken up his cane. The circular blade still protruding from his body, he raised up the cane and released a blast of crackling purple fire.

Tennora felt the spell as it began to build and, trusting her instincts, leaped out of the way. The stream of eldritch power coursed past her, through the bars of the cage, and shattered against the wall. Mold sprayed across the room at the impact.

Tennora hardly noticed. She had stepped out of Dareun's spell and into the arms of Ferremo Magli. Whatever surprise she had given him, he had shaken it off and drawn his quick, vicious knives.

"You're supposed to be dead," he said.

"That's what comes of being sloppy," she replied. She twisted around the strike of the first knife, forcing it off her armor.

The second caught her between the harness and the cuirass and slipped through the muscles of her abdomen, piercing her belly. Pain raced across her nerves, and she clutched her belly around the blade.

She looked up into Ferremo's laughing eyes, all too aware that a wound to the gut would fester and rot. She slid off his blade. Blood seeped into the space between her skin and her armor.

I am dead, she thought.

"Little lovac," Dareun chided. He pulled the carvestar from his shoulder and threw it to the ground. "You shouldn't have returned. By the cold and endless void, by the fires unimaginable that pierce it, so shall the powers of Sualocin pierce your eternal soul."

A searing cold gripped Tennora's bones, colder than the water of the harbor, and a unfeeling voice seemed to lick her ears with a whispered, alien tongue whose foul promises sank right into her brain. A pounding like a forgeworks rang in her ears. It took only a moment, but an eternity seemed to wrap itself around her, holding her in place.

The spell that chased Dareun's curse sent waves of blinding white light searing across her skin-not hot, but unspeakably cold. It froze her to the spot, muscles aching, leather stiff-and worst, her lungs were too cold to draw a deep breath.

Ferremo took one of his blades and ran its edge along the stays of her collar, severing them one by one, his eyes dancing with impending violence. She shivered but could not move.

Breathe, hrast it, breathe! she shouted in her mind. You're not dead yet!

"Ziastsuianrap" she wheezed.

A dozen daggers winked into being around Ferremo, swooping in to slice his skin. They would not go deeper, but they harried the assassin and drove him back, scratching out Tennora's fury on his face.

Dareun's body shivered with the makings of a blast similar to the first. The other minion came at her, club in hand. She still couldn't feel her feet, couldn't get them to move. He hefted the club.

"Finn," Dareun ordered, "get out of the way."

The minion swung his weapon, but the interrupting order made him pull back, just enough for Tennora to dodge the heavy weapon. When Dareun released the spell, it burned over both Finn's and Tennora's skin. Finn cried out as he was thrown back toward the cage.

Nestrix caught the weight of his body as she stepped from her prison. Eyes aflame, she took him by the neck and wrenched it hard against the rest of his body. It broke with a snap.

"Come now, wyrmling. Throwing away a piece? That was just foolish."

Nestrix had caught the look in Tennora's eye-a desperate, panicked look. She had heard what the boy said, and something about it frightened her. She wanted Nestrix to try to pick the lock-she would distract Dareun.

Nestrix's stomach clenched. She touched the shape of the picks sitting in her pocket-if she couldn't remember, they were all doomed.

But the look on Tennora's face said she knew that and she would do whatever it was she planned to do anyway. Nestrix nodded. She leaned in close to the boy.

"Little man," she whispered, "I want you to stop your ears and close your eyes. This will be hard, but it will be over in a moment."

"What are you going to do?" he whispered back, tears still rolling down his cheeks.

"Escape," she said.

When the bugle rang out, for a moment she believed the ruse, and hope and fear overran her in equal turn. The susurrus of Tennora's whispers matching the rallying cries shook her from her thoughts, and she withdrew the picks.

"Eyes and ears, little man," she reminded Antoum. Trembling, he did as he was told.

She took up the tools and, one eye on Dareun, slipped them into the keyhole. The boy's body sheltered her from the assassin's view, but he was no fool. If Ferremo looked too closely, he was sure to figure her out.

She gripped the lockpicks hard enough to make her hands ache, as the charge within the lock shoved them away and sent a thrill of electricity through her body. She concentrated on the weight of the tools, the shape of the handles, the feel of the metal.

She remembered shaping her first lockpick, from a scrap of tin and a lava stone, shaving off the metal layer by layer, she holds it up to her eye-blue, no, brown-and studies the curve, smooth shallow Nestrix shook her head and drove the memory away. She concentrated on her hands holding the picks. She tilted the wire up into the tumblers.

She remembered using a plank of wood, wedging the end under a stone, and the little dark-haired girl, push down, Wenda, push down and the stone goes up, rolls a little more Gods hrast it! Who was Wenda? Nestrix glanced up. Dareun had cast a spell into the blackness of the passageway and was ordering his men to watch the entrance.

She remembered creeping along a dark passage, her foot coming down on the wrong tile, lightning blooms out of nothing, out of nowhere, and shakes my bones, burns my skin The crates toppled over, clipping one of the men Dareun had called. The sound drove Nestrix from her thoughts. Tennora stood, her features set in a fierce mask, her blade dancing as if she'd held it all her life. All eyes went to Tennora, Nestrix's included. She turned back to the lock, willing herself not to think about what was going to happen if she didn't break free.

Are you punishing me? Nestrix thought. You want me to die too? Without me you are lost, thief. Gone. Scattered to the four winds. Give me what we both need.

The memories shifted. A child, a girl with black hair and blue eyes, watched the desert as the Spellplague ripped across it. Her hair turns blonde and then black and then she flickers into the shape of a blue wyrmling-Wenda, and that is how she died. Or didn't die, and a hundred years spin by and the mystery remains. She is gone to her grave one way or another, but the mystery haunts the haunting…

Give me what I need and I will find out what happened to her, Nestrix thought. I don't have the time for your nonsense.

Nestrix-Nestrix the woman-with a shard of glass or bruised fists or a broken plank or the storm that rises out of her belly fighting, fighting because she is angry, because she is lonely, because she is lost, and sometimes the blood and the bruises drive the anger and the pain away and sometimes they don't. Sometimes it isn't Nestrix who gets into these fights but a woman with honey blonde hair who strangled to death a long time ago. Neither is sated. Neither knows where she's going. Neither is truly alive. Better to be dead.

You selfish beast, Nestrix thought, struggling with the lock-picks. You miss your child? Well, so do I. So does this boy's mother miss him. It doesn't entitle you to doom us all.

Nestrix taunting Dareun-What do I care? I have nothing left.

She looked up at Tennora, flicking her throwing blades across the room, her face pale.

A bolt of energy seared across the room, nearly catching Nestrix's ear. She threw herself to the side and into the boy as it passed, smacking against the wall beyond. Scraps of mold sprayed outward, as well as shattered rock. A piece the size of the boy's heart tumbled to a stop by her knees. Antoum's eyes went wide.

"Closed," Nestrix reminded him, and she picked up the rock in both hands. If the thiefs memories wouldn't help, she'd do it her way.

The edges of the rock cut her palms as she smashed it against the body of the lock. The metal didn't give as easily as she hoped, and the shock of it trembled up her arm. Again and again she slammed the stone into the lock. The body dented and twisted. She would never be able to pick the lock now.

Tennora cried out. Nestrix looked up and saw she stood close-too close-to Ferremo, clutching her stomach. Nestrix nearly cried out with her.

She slammed the rock down twice more, the shackle stretching and weakening but refusing to break. It had to break.

Dareun's curse raced across the room. Tennora gasped as it seized her. The spell that followed was colder, crueler than what he'd done before, and the power of it drove a scream from Tennora and forced her to her knees.

"No!" Nestrix shouted. She smashed the rock down again, and Here, look here, the old man says, and Nestrix-Lyra looks, and he points to the junction of the body and the shackle opposite the locking mechanism and says, here is the weak spot, this is where the lock is most vulnerable. If you cannot tease it open, break it here.

With all her strength, Nestrix brought the rock down on the corner of the lock. A spatter of electricity burst out, enough to sting the backs of her hands with a dozen tiny burns. Nestrix cast the rock aside and twisted the lock out of its latch. The door opened.

Dareun fired another bolt just as his minion stepped into its path. The man stumbled into her as she surged out the door. Breaking his neck was a matter of instinct, the way she might have snapped a camel or a marlin to stop it from flailing. Her blood pounded like thunder.

Dareun looked up at her, astonished and angry.

"Come now, wyrmling. Throwing away a piece? That was just foolish." She glanced over at Tennora, still on one knee, and at the assassin, who had regained himself and had both knives out and ready. "Ah-ah, lovac," she said in a taunting tone. "Step aside. You don't want to be caught in the middle of this."

"She bluffs," Dareun said.

"Of course not," Nestrix said. "I'm mad, remember? Mad enough to use everything in my power to make you two suffer. And I warned you I don't play xorvintaal."

Dareun stepped back, building up another spell, waiting for her to attack him with the gods only knew what. Nestrix smiled; as she wasn't a taaldarax, she hadn't lost her powers. Ferremo eyed her with a tense curiosity, flipping a knife over and over in his hand.

Tennora sprang up, still clutching her wound with one hand, and slashed Ferremo behind the knee. He shouted as his leg buckled under him and the knife he had been playing with flew loose and clattered to the floor.

Dareun's attention turned to his wounded lovac just long enough for Nestrix to bolt across the room and tackle him, her cape fluttering behind her. Whatever spell he had planned fizzled and vanished, and he fought to force her off him.

But Nestrix was stronger. With her battered fists, she cracked the fallen taaldarax across the jaw, over and over. In a way, she was mad-mad and wild and fighting like a beast and not a dokaal. Gleeful at the chance to harm Dareun, to humiliate him-with his spells and his minions-begging to be released from a weapon as presumably weak as her two fists.

He cried out, and layered beneath the cry was a green dragon's fluty roar. He seized her wrists again and twisted. Nestrix pulled back, and he was suddenly twisting on top of her, slamming her back into the ground. As they fell, she pulled her knee up and punched it into his ribs. He pinned her legs and held them so she could not kick again.

"Ferremo!" he cried. "To me!"

His face contorted with pain. He released Nestrix's left wrist and reached behind himself. With a grunt of pain he pulled a crossbow bolt from his ribs. Nestrix looked over his shoulder.

Mucky and bleeding from a gash to the forehead, the bounty hunter wound the crossbow once more and dropped another bolt into place. "In the name of the crown of Cormyr and the Lords of Waterdeep, lay down your arms." He hesitated for a moment, then added, "Andareunarthex."