The Wizard's Mask

Chapter Thirteen

Aren't you finished yet?" Tantaerra hissed. "It's cold, sitting here with the wind whistling up my legs."

"The light isn't the best," Tarram told her irritably, "and no, I'm not. Damned thread keeps bunching."

"Next time, steal finer stuff," the halfling hissed back.

"She was going for her bow. I only had time to grab what I could see," he replied. "Are those groundchokes roasted yet?"

The halfling probed into the ashes of the dying fire with her belt knife. "No," she replied disgustedly. "I suppose I'm condemned to wait for everything, tonight!"

"Not your death, Molthuni!" The voice roared at them out of the trees, followed by three arrows.

One tore the underkirtle from Tarram's fingers, needle and all, leaving behind stinging blood. Another sent torn leaves swirling beside his ears, and the third sent embers, ashes, and half-done groundchokes spraying up into Tantaerra's face.

She went over backward, sputtering, as Tarram kicked hard at the ground and curled over into a backward roll in the other direction, clawing out daggers.

"I'm getting more than tired of this," he snarled aloud.

Luraumadar, the mask chirped helpfully.

He ground his teeth in irritation as he arrived behind a tree and found his feet in the same moment, coming up in a sprint. If there were more archers with shafts ready, he and Tantaerra were dead anyway, but if he could get to the bowstrings of those who'd just loosed before they could see someone to take down …

A wild shriek and some crashings of dead leaves and branches off to one side told him Tantaerra was trying to provide him with a noisy diversion.

I'll not waste it, he told himself fiercely, sprinting around tree trunks and ducking under branches-only to plunge right into the heart of the Nirmathi warband.

There were only five-no, six-of them, and one was cursing a snapped bowstring while two others lacked bows and were raising large, rusty old swords to hack at him, faces tightening with the effort. He slammed into one swordsman, not bothering to launch an attack, and used the solid crash of their meeting to deflect himself into the nearest bowman, where a slash of his dagger severed a bowstring while the man was frantically fumbling to defend himself. Tarram spun away from him into a headlong charge at the next bowman-who fell precipitously before he could get there.

He heard rather than saw Tantaerra rolling out from under the falling man's ankles, grinned savagely, and slashed at the face of the next Nirmathi, who ducked away with a yell.

"We make a good team!" he announced cheerfully, spinning and ducking down to batter the head of the fallen man with both dagger-pommels. Then he sprang back up to meet the second swordsman, whose wild swing sliced the bark of a defenseless and innocent tree-before a leaping ball of halfling arrived in the man's face, feet-first. The Nirmathi staggered back, into the man with the snapped bowstring. They both groped for balance, the bowman trying not to put the dagger he'd just drawn into his fellow Nirmathi, so Tarram raced right past them, trying for the last bowman before the man could raise his bow and aim.

He got there as the bow came up, knocking the arrow away and getting his elbow into the man's throat. The man went over with a choking sob, and Tarram rode him to the ground and clubbed him solidly with a dagger-pommel.

Behind Tarram, a man groaned. He spun around again, in time to see a triumphant Tantaerra striking a pose atop two senseless Nirmathi-that second swordsman and the man whose string had parted.

Which left two Nirmathi still on their feet, and no bows intact. The soldiers were now backing uncertainly away through the trees, with two daggers each raised and ready in their hands.

Tarram gave them his coldest smile and stalked toward them, Tantaerra trotting to his side.

He took another menacing step, then spun and fled from them, heading on in the general direction of Hurlandrun-only to stumble and almost fall as Tantaerra sprang and wrapped herself around his right shin, dragging at him.

"Hold, masked man!" she panted. "I want my underkirtle! Where'm I going to find another my size, here in the middle of this oh-so-beautiful wilderness?"

Tarram hopped to an awkward halt, aided by a handy tree he could carom off, and snarled, "All right! But-"

Tantaerra let go, sprang high, caught hold of his belt, and pulled.

She was too small to overbalance him into a face-first fall, but he stumbled, trying to keep his eyes on the two Nirmathi-now mere dark, distant shiftings amid the leaves, slipping away into the trees-and snarled, "All right, I said!"

"Tarram," the halfling said, eyes not leaving his as she let go and fell to land on both feet, "look behind you."

The Masked whirled.

And saw the faintest of glimmers. A fine, sharp wire was stretched across where he'd been about to run, at just the height of his throat.

"There's another one, about three strides on," Tantaerra told him.

The Masked turned and looked at her. "The Nirmathi are getting nasty," he said slowly.

"No. I'm thinking Voyvik is. I'd say he guided that warband to us. I'll have to do a better job, next time I knock him off a cliff. Let's get away from here, before he finds any more soldiers."

"No disagreement from me," The Masked told her. "Find your kirtle and let's be gone."

Luraumadar, the mask purred in the depths of his mind.

"Be silent," he muttered at it, aloud.

The dirty, half-cooked groundchoke Tantaerra presented him with, a short but panting forest trot later, tasted surprisingly good.

∗ ∗ ∗

They blundered across a trail heading roughly in the right direction, and walked along it the rest of the day and all that night, Tantaerra's mood cheerful thanks to her recovery of her kirtle with thread and needle intact, and only a meager spattering of Tarram's blood on it.

"I can pass that off as battle scars," she said brightly.

"Oh? To whom?" he asked pointedly, rousing the merriest laughter he'd heard out of her in quite some time.

Then they sank back into silence, belatedly mindful that not only Voyvik but all armed Nirmathas was out there in the trees on all sides, only too eager to do harm to intruders.

They walked on, listening tensely, hearing rustlings all around them-some distant, but a few close indeed.

Yet no daggers came, and it seemed their apprehension had been misplaced, because they heard nothing but hooting night birds and small rustling things until morning, when they were both staggering along yawningly seeking a place to hide and sleep for the day.

That was when the faint, distant din of a pitched battle came to their ears.

Wearily walking on toward it, they came to a long valley that narrowed to the north. In the distance, they could see a bridge that carried the best road they'd seen thus far in Nirmathas from one bank of a shallow, rock-studded river to the other.

What was left of quite a large Molthuni army was scattered across the valley floor, their numerous dead all around them.

By the looks of things, Nirmathi bowmen had harassed them from the wooded heights on either side of the valley, turning the bridge into a slaughter-chute until the Molthuni had broken ranks and fled down into the valley-whereupon a line of Nirmathi had formed across the valley and sent a withering storm of arrows down Molthuni throats until the soldiers of Molthune had reached them and started hacking.

"Hurlandrun's somewhere the other side of this valley, isn't it?" Tantaerra asked glumly.

"One ridge beyond what we're looking at, if the map can be trusted," Tarram told her. "I keep looking at it so that if we lose it, my mind will still hold what's left of our way to the Shattered Tomb."

"It might happen sooner than you think," she said. "Look."

A little stream ran down the slope next to them. Below, Nirmathi were following it up toward where she and The Masked stood, a few Molthuni soldiers trudging after them.

Sighing, she bent low for a drink. Tarram joined her at the bank, keeping watch over the trees behind them for Voyvik as she drank her fill.

"Next time we have to take down someone trying to murder us, choose the ones with waterskins at their belts, will you?" she asked. "Your turn."

By the time he was finished drinking, some of the foremost climbers had seen them. "Friends!" Tarram called, waving hands empty of weapons.

Some of the Nirmathi faces looked less than convinced, so he and Tantaerra backed well away from the lip of the valley, and stood back-to-back watching the forest around warily for anyone approaching.

"Nirmathas forever!" Tantaerra called, when the first men reached the top.

"A halfling," one of those Nirmathi told another, then peered again and added, "A female halfling!"

Luraumadar, the mask commented airily.

"We were just going to kindle a fire," Tarram called. "Care to join us?"

It was too much to hope these warriors would be carrying food enough to share, but if he and Tantaerra could pass themselves off as Nirmathi displaced from afar in all the fighting …

"And who, before the bleary eyes of Cayden Cailean, are you?" a heavyset, grizzled Nirmathi in rusty chainmail demanded, limping toward them with a notched sword ready in one hand. He had the air of command, and the best armor they'd seen on a Nirmathi since the riverbank.

Which turned out to be a good thing a moment later, when the poisoned dagger that came hurtling through the trees at The Masked missed and glanced off the officer's shoulder with a tling.

Everyone turned. Voyvik was a dark, distant figure hurrying away through the forest, but Tantaerra leaped into the air to draw attention as she shouted, "There he is again! The Molthuni spy who's been trying to kill us!"

A few Nirmathi jogged off into the forest after him, while the rest continued their exhausted limping up the hill. Foremost among the latter camp was the Nirmathi commander, who eyed The Masked and the halfling narrowly, and lurched over to pick up Voyvik's dagger.

"Don't touch it!" Tantaerra warned him quickly. "It's poisoned!"

He halted, giving them an even more suspicious look.

"Narandur!" a Nirmathi called, from the lip of the valley. "The Molthuni are all retreating south along the river. None coming after us, any longer."

"Good," the grizzled commander called back. "Muster to me, here!"

As armed men in motley armor and leathers began to converge, he stumped up to Tarram and the halfling. "You two are coming with us. I need to hear all you've seen of Molthuni these last few days-where, and how many, and what they were doing. Truth, and leave nothing out."

"Gladly," Tarram said quickly, before Tantaerra could say anything sharper. His empty stomach chose that moment to rumble so loudly that Narandur grinned.

"Well, you're no Molthuni, that's for sure." He headed for a stone that looked as if it could serve as a seat. "Never met a hungry one yet."

∗ ∗ ∗

By nightfall, The Masked, Tantaerra, and their Nirmathi hosts-or were they captors? — had moved a long way north along the heights above the narrowing valley, to make camp far from any surviving Molthuni who might think to steal after them.

Their campsite was a hilltop in the forest, and on that wooded height, within the shattered, tumbled, overgrown remains of a long-ruined fortress watchtower.

Luraumadar, the mask told Tarram approvingly, as he looked around at the head-high ring of massive, ivy-cloaked stones, dark tree trunks thrusting up through and around it like pillars.

Sentries had been posted and fires lit. Tarram had offered to take his turn standing sentry, but Narandur curtly refused.

"You stay here by me, the both of you. I've need of your honest tongues."

They sat.

Tantaerra hadn't let her behind touch the ground for an instant before she asked, "Aren't you worried about the fire? It'll be seen for miles, up on this height. Won't it bring Molthuni creeping here, with ready bows and drawn steel?"

Narandur looked across the flames at her, but his wasn't the only cold grin to be seen. All of the Nirmathi sitting or standing within the ring wore the same expression.

"We hope it does," the grizzled commander told her. "Any Molthuni who dares to draw near-and we don't expect many; we've taught them the hard way not to blunder around our forests by night-will walk right into the night blades."

He hesitated for an instant, to see if either of his two guests would betray themselves as liars about their professed Nirmathi heritage by asking what or who "night blades" were, but neither was foolish enough to step into his trap. It took no particular brilliance to figure out that "night blades" would be Nirmathi who'd been sleeping all day and patrolled the dark hours, awaiting Molthuni trying to blunder through the dark forests.

"This is our land," Narandur added quietly, "and we defend it night and day. Nirmathas is our cloak and our armor, and fights with us."

"While I've no desire at all to see us become part of Molthune," Tarram spoke up, following Tantaerra's lead-for the more time Narandur spent answering them, the less time they'd spend scrambling to answer his probing questions-"two things worry me increasingly, as the years pass and this war drags on." He held up one finger. "How long can we last? Or rather, how long before Molthune bleeds us dry, outslaying us until there are no fit warriors still standing to defend Nirmathas?"

He raised a second finger to join the first. "And less talked-of, but as grave: as we fight them, doing what we must to survive, how much are we slowly changed to become what we are fighting against? To become more like Molthuni and less and less like what we're fighting to preserve?"

The old Nirmathi commander leaned forward, eyes kindling with interest. "We don't talk about the first. Despair is easy, and talk of numbers aids the enemy. But the second is something we should speak of. Many of us fight because our homes or kin are attacked, it's true. But this war isn't about revenge. It's about freedom. The freedom to-"

Narandur broke off as sudden tumult arose under the trees. Swords clashed and clanged, someone shouted, someone else danced in agony and then fell with an arrow through him-and suddenly Nirmathi were charging from behind seemingly every tree, blades ready.

Men standing in the ring rushed to kindle torches in the fire, swords rang against swords in deafening earnest, and Tarram and Tantaerra stood up to watch-only to feel Narandur's iron-hard grip above the elbows of their sword-arms, seeking to drag them back down.

Yet already the bladework was slackening, as angry shouts abounded.

"Fools!"

"'Twas all a mistake! A mistake!"

Men were hurrying to Narandur now, to report. It seemed the attackers were Nirmathi, a warband insisting they'd been told Molthuni invaders posing as Nirmathi were to be found encamped here-a force led by two spies sent from Braganza in Molthune, a female halfling shorter than most, and a masked man who was her constant companion.

More than one of the Nirmathi hastening to the fire found themselves looking at Tantaerra and then at Tarram, frowning hard.

"Sit," Narandur commanded curtly, doing so himself and dragging Tarram down with him, "and answer me this: are you two from Molthune?"

Luraumadar, the mask said gleefully, in the back of Tarram's mind.

"No," he said simply, giving the Nirmathi commander a level look. Then he looked across the fire at the growing row of angry Nirmathi faces and asked, "Just who told you all these lies? This is no band of undercloak Molthuni, and we aren't from Molthune. Who told you otherwise?"

Faces turned to look at one of the men, a leader of the attacking warband.

Who gave Tarram a hard glare and said, "Orivin Voyvik. Yes, that Orivin Voyvik. The war hero."

Murmurs arose in the darkness, and a ring of sword points suddenly gleamed all around Tarram and Tantaerra.

"Suppose," Narandur said grimly, squinting up at them from where he sat, his own blade back in his hand, "you both tell us again your names, heritage, and business in Nirmathas-right here and now."

It was not a suggestion.

Luraumadar?

It was the first time the mask had sounded quite that uncertain.

∗ ∗ ∗

Tantaerra lay on her back and looked up at the few stars she could see through the thick leaves overhead. Certain death had been averted yet again, and with surprising ease. This time.

Not that there weren't watchful sentries between her and the open forest-sentries who looked her way from time to time and not just out into the wild night. Yet she and The Masked weren't bound or even disarmed, let alone dying in agony.

Which meant, all in all, it had gone rather well.

They'd given their names and the backstories they'd decided on, and as for right here and now, they'd claimed to be seeking Tantaerra's mother and aunt, who'd fled their homes in Graybanks-a small Nirmathi village not far from the Inkwater that they knew had been utterly destroyed in the war-to resettle in the ancestral family farm, hard by the ruins of Hurlandrun.

"Where the Shattered Tomb stands," one older Nirmathi had said grimly. "That's all monster-prowled country, that is."

"Well, that settles it," another had put in. "No Molthuni spy would be wanting to go thereabouts. Unless they want spend their last handful of days fighting monsters, that is."

"That settles it if that's where they're really headed," a third and younger Nirmathi had pointed out sharply. "We have only their word for that."

"Go with us and guide us," The Masked had snapped back, "and you'll not have to trust our word. You'll know."

That eagerness had decided Narandur, saving their necks. For now.

Three tall, strong young Nirmathi had agreed to guide The Masked and Tantaerra.

She hadn't been pleased at having hale and unfamiliar companions who just might be slayers in league with Voyvik, but saw-still saw-no real alternative but to accept their guidance.

Before lying down on the far side of the dying fire with his drawn sword in his hand, the grizzled old Nirmathi commander had handed them a sack that held a wheel of cheese, two round loaves of hardbread, and the bowl-like half of someone's recently shattered helm that could serve as a water-scoop, and gruffly told them to be on their way to Hurlandrun "by dawn on the morrow." The three guides had settled down just beyond him with their swords drawn, too.

Tantaerra wondered how long it would be before Voyvik's attacks killed one or all of them. Or if they'd join him against The Masked and herself, when the Nirmathi dreamer's next attack came.

She fell asleep wondering about that.

∗ ∗ ∗

Tantaerra winced. Again.

"Urgh!" The Masked snarled, lifting one boot out of muck that bubbled and reached to his boot tops. Its reek was almost visible, and had already set Tantaerra gagging. What sort of foul decay could make such a smell?

The three young Nirmathi were all backing away, yellow-faced and retching.

"This is not," Armistrade told them, "what I meant by 'deeper in Nirmathas,' really it wasn't!"

"Har har," Tantaerra observed, heading away from him as fast as she could.

"Don't come close to me!" the fair-haired guide-Raldon-warned, almost falling in his haste to retreat farther. "That's …that's just evil!"

He thrust his sword into the ground and used that hand to grab for his nose and pinch it shut.

Raldon was so distracted that he never saw the dagger that flashed out of the trees to slice open his throat. It bit deep, and he stumbled two choking steps and fell, his clutching fingers doing little to stop the blood spurting in all directions.

"Down!" the largest guide roared, but rather than heed his own command, he charged into the trees, heading for where the dagger had been hurled from.

"Nesker, come back!" the other guide shouted. "You'll only-"

There was a heavy crash, through a tangle of dead branches, and Nesker came staggering back, his face now more green than yellow. His skin was an ugly purple low on his neck, where blood trickled from an open gash.

"Behind you!" The Masked shouted, throwing one of his own daggers. The figure looming up just behind the wounded guide ducked down and to one side as fast as any darting night bird, and the hurled dagger missed him.

The Masked ran after the assassin. They were all running now, converging …

"Surround him!" Tantaerra cried. "Don't let him get away!"

"He's a …man in a mask," Nesker panted, lumbering along and quickly falling behind. "Just as Voyvik …warned …"

"He is Voyvik," The Masked told him sternly-just as a crash in the distance marked their quarry's heavy fall.

Voyvik came up out of another reeking, sucking bog to whirl and face them, breathing hard, his mask gone and blood on his forehead. He'd obviously stumbled in the muck and slammed into a fallen tree he'd been about to leap over-and, as the four survivors closed in warily around him, he just as obviously had no intention of surrendering. Daggers glinted in both of his hands as he looked swiftly from target to target.

"Out of poisoned daggers yet?" The Masked snapped. "Just how many Nirmathi are going to die for your dream for Nirmathas, Voyvik?"

The only reply he got was a snarl-and a dagger flashing at his face.

The Masked flung himself down and then up again instantly to sprint at Voyvik, bellowing, "Shall I use the mask on you?"

The cornered man flung a frightened look at him, then turned and threw his second dagger into Nesker's face, following right behind and slamming into the other man.

Nesker fell heavily under that trampling, rolled over, and went still. Voyvik ran on into the forest.

The last guide, Farstrel, gave chase for a few panting strides, then gave up and returned to where The Masked and Tantaerra were turning Nesker over.

"You scared Voyvik right proper," she muttered. "Just what can the mask do to him?"

Her masked companion merely shrugged.

The big Nirmathi was already dead, unseeing eyes staring. There was foam around his mouth, and his face had gone all bone-white and purple.

"Poisoned," The Masked told Farstrel grimly. "You'll find Raldon was, too. We should find those daggers and lose them in one of the bogs, before we move on. Voyvik doesn't want anyone but us to reach Hurlandrun, or alive to spread word of our journey to it."

Tantaerra met her masked companion's gaze, and knew he was thinking precisely what she was. That they'd not seen the last of Orivin Voyvik.

He'd be waiting for them in or near the Shattered Tomb. With more poisoned knives, no doubt.

They took the time to find the poisoned daggers and drop them in the bog that The Masked had blundered into. Then they took food, weapons, and belt-lanterns from the sprawled and already fly-surrounded heaps of Raldon and Nesker, and turned away.

"We leave the dead unburied here," Farstrel said bleakly. "It keeps the wolves from coming for the rest of us."

He led them north rather than west.

"Friend," The Masked warned him, "Hurlandrun is west from here. Is it not?"

Farstrel stopped, turned, and looked at them both. "You can trust me," he replied gently. "The question is, can I trust you?"

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and went on. The Masked looked at Tantaerra, then west, then back at her.

She shrugged, then started after the Nirmathi. The Masked followed suit.

Soon they saw scattered bones. Human bones. Then a sprawled body that was more or less intact, if they overlooked the gaping ribcage where prowling beasts had gnawed.

Beyond, the trees were fewer, and they could see what looked like the remnants of a trail. It was only when they spotted a leaning stone wall that they realized they were walking into an overgrown, long-abandoned Nirmathi village.

"That body was recent," The Masked commented, "where this is not."

"The wounded and dying seek home, even if home is no more," the guide replied bleakly. "Beasts dine on what they find, wherever they find it."

"Do wolves and worse lair in the Shattered Tomb?" Tantaerra asked him. "And prowl out from it?"

Farstrel looked at her. "The Tomb is one of too many haunted places in our land that sane Nirmathi shun. Many dweomercats prowl there-and something worse."

"What's a dweomercat?" The Masked asked.

"And what's worse?" Tantaerra added.

"Dweomercats-most dweomercats-are small. Forgive me, lady, but …as you are small. And blue. But fast and sleek. Betimes their pelts glow. Yellow eyes, big fangs, and they swarm. Magic draws them, so they stray not far from the Tomb. They are many."

Farstrel shrugged. "As for what's worse, I know not truth, just wild tales. Many Nirmathi and Molthuni bands have tried to plunder the tomb-it's said to hold mighty battle magic-but all failed. And died. Now, folk foolish enough to try it are few indeed."

He smiled, and looked from one of them to the other. "These last three seasons, just you-and you."

Farstrel had stopped on a mound that had once been a home. Now he held up a spread and open hand, bidding them stop and stay where they were.

And drew his sword and dagger.

Tantaerra tensed, and knew The Masked was doing just what she was. Reaching for daggers to throw.

Then their Nirmathi guide tossed his weapons to the dirt at their feet.

He drew a second, hidden dagger from somewhere down his back, and dropped it to join them.

"The truth, now," he said quietly, eyeing them both as he spread empty hands. "You're after the magics in the Tomb. Are you from Molthune?"

Silence fell.

Tantaerra and The Masked both looked at the man. She tried to show nothing at all on her face. Her partner's mask gave him an advantage in that regard.

Her partner. Well, that's what he was, wasn't it?

"Word came of three sent out from Braganza, who should be helped to reach the Tomb," Farstrel told them carefully. "Telcanor word."

The Masked and Tantaerra looked at each other, then back at the guide-and nodded.

Farstrel relaxed visibly. "This one who tried to slay us, was he the third?"

"He was," The Masked confirmed.

"So now you know. What will you do about that?" Tantaerra asked the guide pointedly. She had quietly gotten out her smallest knife and was holding it ready to throw.

The guide only smiled and began retrieving and sheathing his weapons. "Nothing. I work for the Telcanors. Raldon was a bright, perceptive Nirmathi who was all too suspicious of me. and stuck to me like my own shadow. Now that he's dead, I can go back to trying to carry out my work, here in what was Molthune and will be again."

Abruptly he darted away from them, behind what was left of a wall. From the far side of it, he told them, "Go straight on, the way you're facing now. What's left of Hurlandrun is right over the next hill. May you taste success. My guiding is done, and I must be elsewhere."

A brief scrabbling followed, then the sounds of dislodged stones clacking and rolling …and then silence.

When they went up to peer around the ruined wall, there was no sign of Farstrel.

∗ ∗ ∗

Hurlandrun was right where their vanished guide had promised it would be.

Or at least its ruins were, stretching across the land below them. Fallen roofs, overgrown streets, and tall trees thrusting up through heaved and buckled stones here, there, and everywhere.

A domed building at the heart of it all caught the eye. It was far larger than anything else-almost certainly either a temple, or the Shattered Tomb. Perhaps it had been built as a temple, and later made over into the tomb of Mahalagris.

Its thick dome was cracked right across, with a huge gap between the two halves where they'd sagged apart over the years. It looked as if the walls that held up one half had started to lean, and so torn the dome asunder.

"Behold the Shattered Tomb," the halfling murmured. "Or shattered something, at least."

"Some proud herald you'd make," Tarram told her with a smile, and glanced up at the sun. It was late afternoon, and they had only the small, battered belt-lantern they'd taken from Nesker-a glorified oil lamp with a windshield cage, brim-full. "So, do we go down?"

Tantaerra nodded. "I suspect you've as little taste as I have for camping and awaiting morning. Given whatever beasts may prowl hereabouts-and Voyvik, who's certainly lurking near."

"Probably watching us right now," he agreed.

They headed cautiously down into the ruins, and soon saw bones. Lots of bones, gnawed and strewn widely. Cracked open and yellow-brown with age…and including more human skulls than either of them cared to count.

Then they saw the wolves.

A score or more, streaming down tumbled stones to lope quickly and fearlessly in their direction.

"Oh, dung," the halfling spat. "Too far to run."

"The wall," Tarram replied, scooping her up one-handed with more haste than regard for her dignity. "Perhaps …just perhaps …"

He ran, whooping for breath, the wolves bounding to meet them with jaws swinging wide and eyes gleaming with eager hunger …

Then something huge, green-scaled, and winged surged up from between two roofless houses, for all the world like a shark leaping from the waves of the Inner Sea, and pounced, skidding across the ground in a cloud of churned-up dust, great fanged jaws agape. Startled and yipping wolves tumbled into that dark maw and were torn apart.

The immense beast ripped through the yelping, scattering pack, biting and gulping. Then batlike wings beat once, the forest drake's long serpentine body and tail undulated, and it plunged down a hole behind a tumbled building, into unseen depths below.

Tarram looked at Tantaerra, still cradled in his arms, and said a word much harsher and nastier than "dung."

Then his running feet tripped and stumbled, and he fought wildly for balance as human skulls rolled and crunched underfoot.

The wall he'd been running so desperately for loomed up, ahead, and they could see a trio of human skeletons rising from behind it like warriors staging an ambush, reaching out with rusted blades-

Tarram ran right through one of them, not slowing. Bones clattered and cartwheeled in the air.

He drew what had been Nesker's sword and hacked. Tantaerra, still under his other arm, hammered with her dagger-pommel at reaching, raking skeletal fingers-and then they were past the skeletons, with new skulls rolling on the ground in their wake.

They turned a corner, beyond the wall, to step at last into the streets of abandoned Hurlandrun.

Streets that suddenly filled with a new and larger pack, streaming toward them. Not wolves this time, but tiny blue tigers or panthers, each about a foot long, plus another foot of tail. Scores of gleaming golden eyes, with grinning fangs beneath, and long, swept-back ears. In the distance, prowling unhurriedly to join their smaller brethren, strode a few larger ones. And a handful of much larger ones.

"Hunters of magic," Tarram announced, a little wearily. "Dweomercats."

"Lots of dweomercats," Tantaerra agreed. "Jaws and fangs and no doubt a propensity to regard us as dinner. And keen noses that can sniff out anything magical." She sighed, then pointed at a particular large, low rectangular stone building. It had an impressively ornate arched doorway, but no windows at all-and far more importantly, climbing one outside wall … "Stone stair, still a roof at the top!"

"I'm running," he told her tersely, sprinting for the squat square building she'd pointed out.

Jaws and claws raked at his legs and ankles. Small blue bodies crunched underfoot, only to bounce upright again, seemingly unhurt. What were these things?

Then he was pounding up the stone steps, seeing cracks and green mold all over them, and names, or rather writing he hadn't time to read but that was spaced like names, lone names and paired names, and-

The great stone slab of roof was cracked right across, with smaller cracks radiating star-like out from that main wound as if a giant's fist had come down on the building. Yet right here, where he'd just skidded to a halt, the roof felt solid under his feet.

Which would have to do. He spun around, set Tantaerra down, and slashed with his sword across the top of the stair in perfect time to sweep the first yowling rank of dweomercats off the roof.

The second rank sprang, the blurred and rushing third right behind them. Tarram cursed and hacked at the roof around him like an enraged thresher trying to hammer a rat flat-and then the stair was suddenly empty of leaping blue-furred bodies.

They'd all turned to stream toward something else, down in the street. Something glowing and therefore magical, that the swarming press of their bodies now hid from view.

Something that had been thrown there by a man who was all too familiar-and who was now stalking up the stair.

Orivin Voyvik.

He was wearing a cruel little smile.

"I'd planned to spare you," he told Tantaerra, "but no longer."

He sprang, stabbing at her. The halfling frog-leaped aside, to land facing him in a crouch, her own daggers ready.

"I see you've finally learned to quit throwing away your weapons," she taunted.

Not all of the dweomercats had taken the bait. Across the roof, Tarram smarted under the raking claws and jaws of a dozen-some dweomercats, hacking ineffectually just to stay alive.

Voyvik sprang past Tantaerra, landing in a shoulder roll and coming up to his feet between them. The roof groaned-then suddenly, sickeningly, gave way, plunging Tarram and the vicious blue cats down into darkness below.

Tarram clawed desperately to catch hold of something-anything. At the last moment, his fingers finally found purchase, and he swung and swayed in the darkness, cats gnawing at his legs, the eyes of many more gleaming up at him from the room below.

Voyvik had flung himself at the stair to avoid going down with the roof, and landed on all fours on the stairhead. Now he launched himself at the halfling.

As Tarram struggled to climb back onto what was left of the crumbling roof, Tantaerra and the murderous Nirmathi fought.

Their dance was a flurry of frantic leaping, tumbling, and hacking, daggers against daggers. An agile slayer against a halfling a third his size, the roof cracking and sagging underfoot.

A fight that came to a sudden halt as Voyvik overbalanced in a leaning double-dagger slash. Tantaerra sprang over one of his arms to get inside his guard-and triumphantly stabbed Voyvik in the chest.

Only to have her blade scrape across the armor hidden beneath his shirt.

Voyvik shook his head and gave her a cold smile.

His return thrust was into her chest, right to the crossguards.

With a snarl, he lifted her up on his dagger, then flung her off the blood-drenched blade.

Spewing blood, Tantaerra Loroeva Klazra fell helplessly through the broken roof, into the darkness below.