Текст книги "The Howling Delve"

Автор книги: Jaleigh Johnson

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The Howling Delve

A Book in the Dungeon Series

A Forgotten Realms Novel

By Jaleigh Johnson

CHAPTER ONE

Esmeltaran, Amn

12 Eleasias, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

Kall swung the staff high, angling it at his best friend's head. Kall's fourteen-year-old limbs were all bone and wire, but the sapling was light and made a whistling sound as it cut the air above the waters of Lake Esmel.

Aazen ducked, crouched, and sprang to an adjacent rock, losing only briefly the rhythm of the violin he had tucked under his chin. The feint at his head didn't seem to faze the boy or affect his balance in the slightest.

Undeterred, Kall matched his friend's path stone for stone, taking them farther from the shore. The water turned deep blue, marking the shelf where the bottom dropped away.

"Too light," Aazen commented as the music—wire screeching, to Kall's ears—died away. He pointed to the staff. "Needs proper balance."

Kall rattled the makeshift weapon, watching its ends bounce. "It doesn't need a 'proper' anything—it's a stick."

"Heavier would give you more control." Aazen picked up a livelier tune now that he no longer had to fend off attacks.

"If I'd chosen a stouter branch, I might have hurt you," Kall pointed out, snickering. "Or broken that pretty stick of yours."

This time Aazen's music did falter under an inelegant snort. "My thanks, but I'm secure where I am."

"Oh? And you with no more rocks to flit to?" Kall asked innocently.

Still playing, Aazen turned, and Kall swung as he did so, this time aiming for the ankles with a broom-sweep that would send his friend into the water.

The staff whistled through empty air as Aazen jumped, tucked his legs into his stomach, and—damned if he didn't make it look simple—landed gracefully on the same rock he had just been standing on. He flashed a rare grin at Kall and finished the tune with an enthusiastic flourish.

"Well played," Kall was forced to admit. He regarded his friend while the flames of Highsun beat down on their necks. Aazen stared back. Both contemplated another round of the game.

The steady trickle of sweat running down Kall's back decided him. He stripped off his tunic and the padded armor his father insisted he wear outside the Morel estate. The staff he laid carefully across the rock, and saw Aazen doing the same with his instrument as he too stripped down, then they both plunged into the calm waters.

"How much time, do you think?" Aazen asked when he resurfaced.

"Before they miss us?" Kall glanced at the sun. "Enough to get back, I think. If I'm wrong.. ." Concern flooded his smooth features. "Maybe we ought to go. This was my idea. I don't want there to be trouble for you."

The boys exchanged glances. "Trouble" bore a very different meaning for Aazen where their fathers were concerned. Kall could see the scars on his friend's bare back, though neither ever spoke of where they came from.

"You promised me a swim," said Aazen, shrugging off Kall's concern. "That's the only reason I let you drag me out here."

"Hah. I didn't hear you arguing very loud." Kall leaned over to splash his friend and saw movement on the beach.

Kall looked over Aazen's shoulder, squinting. Standing along the shoreline, like dark diamonds against the sun, was a line of men. He recognized them immediately. They were his father's guard, nothing less than his personal retinue. The boys' afternoon of play was over. Guiltily, Kall raised a hand to call them.

A loud whistle cut the air, beating sharply against Kall's eardrums. He never saw the missile's flight, but he heard its impact. The arrowhead and a bit of shaft were just visible through a muscle in Aazen's shoulder.

Dencer's arrow, Kall realized, shocked. He and Aazen had watched and occasionally helped the man fashion the arrowheads into that signature, barbed shape. At the time, Dencer had explained how painful a wound such tips would make, and warned them never to use the weapons for hunting, for it was cruel to cause an animal undue pain.

The cry that burst from Aazen was certainly animal-like, and the impact of the arrow drove him back into Kall's chest.

* * * * *

Footsteps stirred Dhairr Morel from the drawings in front of him.

Three small, open arches behind his desk overlooked the central garden of his Esmeltaran estate. Visitors approaching his private office had to pass through the garden on stone walkways or wade among dense ferns and orange trees. He made sure he could always hear them coming. While dust gathered on a sketch of a peridot and opal ring, Dhairr listened, hearing every subtle alteration in the rhythm of that outside world.

"Balram," he said as the man entered the office without knocking. "Well?"

"The house remains secure, my lord," Balram Kortrun replied.

"I am always assured of that, Captain. Was that the task I set for you?"

"No, my lord."

Dhairr smiled faintly. "Then let us come to the point."

"My sources tell me someone plots your death," said Balram.

Dhairr eased back in his chair at the blunt pronouncement, but he was not, in truth, surprised. The surge in his blood came from excitement, not fear. He had always known they would try again.

His hand strayed involuntarily to his throat, where a cordlike ridge of flesh had healed the slash the assassin had given him. Like the carved ivory reliefs adorning the walls of his office, his body told the story of how close he'd come to death.

He looked his captain in the eyes. "Who?"

That was the question that haunted him. His assailants had been faceless walking shadows. To kill them, he'd been forced to sit patiently, awaiting their next strike. Dhairr had waited almost twelve years for this day, but he had not idled in that time. He was well prepared.

He repeated his question, slow and deliberate. "Who comes for me?"

Balram hesitated. "We do not know, my friend," he said, but hastened to add, "Your men stand with you. They surround the house and await any call for aid. No one who enters this house will escape masked ... or alive."

"They are well trained. I have no doubt. Thank you, Kortrun," Dhairr said. A new thought struck him. "What of Kall?"

Balram shifted, and Dhairr's eyes narrowed. "We believe he and my son are outside the estate, my lord."

Dhairr thrust himself to his feet, his chair scraping stone, but Balram locked a restraining hand on his friend's arm. He ignored the blazing look in the lord's eyes. "Do not. I have sent whatever men could be spared to retrieve them, but if the attack comes soon, the lake and environs are the safest places."

Dhairr jerked his arm free and turned away, a clear sign Balram would win the argument. He seldom lost. "However it ends, you will see to him?" Dhairr asked.

"Yes. As you will see to Aazen, if the reverse is true," said Balram.

Dhairr nodded and sank back into his chair, staring at nothing. "Kall has always been defiant—like his mother. There are days .. . nights more than morns," he said, and paused. Another memory flitted before his eyes, but the scars this time were invisible specters. "I should not have sent her away."

"Alytia was a wizard," Balram said flatly.

Dhairr chuckled. His friend—the whole of Amn—predictably reviled the Art. His mirth quickly died. "You have also raised a motherless child. Was it so simple for you, Captain?"

Balram's lips tightened. "My son has never wanted for anything, my lord, and neither has yours." The remark held an edge of bitterness that Dhairr failed to notice. "By removing your wife, you have taken all magic, and the danger that inherently follows such power, from your house and from your son's eyes. Is that not worth whatever deprivation he may have suffered?"

"Yes," Dhairr said, but the familiar conviction did not come. Perhaps it was because he again faced his own mortality.

When he had first known her, nothing about Alytia seemed to matter—not her magic, her defiance, or even her association with the great meddlers of Faer?n. He'd hardly cared about anything save her beauty, her breath feathering his chest in the night, and the child they conceived after a year of such blissful ignorance.

While his son lay wailing in his crib, assassins laid open Dhairr's throat and left him bleeding on the floor of his bedchamber. He'd survived, but his eyes had been brutally opened.

He never learned the identities of the assassins, never knew for certain whether it was hatred of his wife's magic or her dangerous alliances that drove them, but he had taken no chances.

"Leave one alive," Dhairr said, turning his attention back to Balram, "to question."

"I will tell Meraik—"

"No." Dhairr cut him off. "I'll tell them myself. I'm going down."

"Is that wise?"

The lord of Morel house smiled grimly, but his face possessed a gray tinge, a wasted look enhanced by the scar at his throat. "I tire of waiting."

Balram half-bowed as Dhairr swept from the room. He watched through the windows as his lord crossed the garden, heading for the broad arcade that fringed the outer wall.

Stationed along the courtyard and beyond were the house guards, most handpicked and trained by Balram. They nodded respectfully as their lord passed.

The guard captain raised an open palm, surprised at the sweat he felt beneath his leather glove. The slight tremble to his fingers was even more distressing, but he dismissed it as heightened awareness, anticipation of the battle to come.

"You make for a fascinating study, Kortrun. Were you not, I believe I would have abandoned you and your little project long ago."

Balram did not turn at the voice. Soril Angildaen—Daen to those who knew him as a killer—would remain in his presence as long as Daen saw fit, whether Balram acknowledged the man or not.

"Lord Morel prefers soft wine to stronger drink, as the latter leaves his senses dull," Daen continued, unaffected by his companion's silence. He strolled into the room, his fur-capped boots making no sound as he moved to stand next to Balram. "Chessenta's finest fruit-white, as I recall you saying. I believe he keeps several bottles locked beneath an insultingly simple false bottom in this chest." He tapped the box sitting behind Morel's desk with his heel. "You might have shared a bottle, just now."

"We might have," Balram agreed, "and have, many times in the past."

"A noteworthy indication of friendship from Lord Morel, a man who, for the whole of twelve years, has demanded his food tasted for him, and scouts every door for a dagger point. Yet he drinks, uncaring, with you."

"He trusts me."

"Without question. Enlighten me, then; why is your esteemed lord and friend not dead?"

"He will be, very soon," Balram assured him.

Daen crossed his arms over a barrel stomach. Balram had no idea how the rogue managed to move so silently while lugging such a gut. He wore a yards-long, gray silk vest tucked snugly into a sash of the same color embroidered in silver threads. His shirt lay open at the neck, exposing pale hairs and a square-cut onyx gem clasped in a silver claw. Balram often wondered if the necklace didn't contain some form of magic. Unlike the rest of Amn, the Shadow Thieves were not known to shy from employing wizards.

"You could have slain him painlessly just then—a quick poison, a mark of mercy. Easier still, you could leave him alive—take his men and join us now, your conscience unfettered by the murder of a friend. Yet you plan this assassination in the same bloody manner as almost caused your friend's downfall twelve years ago. I applaud the irony and your enthusiasm, of course, but you risk much."

With much to gain, thought Balram. Like Morel, he had used his years wisely. "The men I have trained, the men who, if this attempt succeeds, will be assets to your organization," he added pointedly, "have not been tested."

"Ah, unfortunate," Daen agreed. "Men loyal to Balram but not yet weaned from Morel's purse. You have no idea if they will actually be able to betray the man who feeds and shelters them. Which brings up a point close to my heart," he added, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, "and those of my colleagues. How will you be able to survive without Morel's considerable income, should you succeed? The gem road connects his doorstep to Keczulla, and his fortunes look only to increase with the growth of that city. Forgive me, but financially, the jewel-lord of Esmeltaran is a more favorable prospect for the Shadow Thieves than the mercenary, Balram Kortrun."

"I have served Morel a decade this winter. I am not without assets."

"Oh, splendid," Daen chortled. "You have been hoarding the pearls, so to speak. No doubt Morel was willing to pay his guard captain a satisfactory price to keep his family and fortune safe from assassins."

A larger price than Daen would ever conceive, Balram agreed silently. Twelve years of looking over his shoulder had wrought more taints in Dhairr than just paranoia, but that condition had helped Balram's cause the most. Morel had been more than willing to offer his captain the coin and latitude to do as he desired.

More than willing to open his home to a coinless mercenary and his starving son.

The trembling sensation returned to his hands. Balram fisted one on the naked blade of his sword until he felt flesh give. Like the severing of a wire, the tension inside him eased.

You have outgrown Lord Morel, he reminded himself. The Shadow Thieves could offer him more than a life of servitude. They would take him and Aazen into their protection, allowing Balram to expand on the foundation he'd built. In quieter days, he would allow himself to regret killing Morel and his son, even to grieve for them—but not now. Now, he could afford no feeling, no compassion, for the Shadow Thieves—despite Daen's jovial bluster—permitted neither.

If the plan failed . . . no, it would not, not as long as secrecy prevailed. He had warned Dhairr to avoid drawing suspicion, but even on his guard, Morel could not stand against so many. His men would use all caution.

From the window, he had a clear view of the west tower of the estate, its aviary alive with the cries of hawks and other raptors. A guard stepped into view at one of the arched openings. Balram raised a hand.

The guard caught the gesture and slipped into the shadows of the tower. A breath passed, and the bird cries intensified. When the guard re-emerged, his sword lay bare in his hand, and his face was covered by a dark hood that obscured all but his eyes. In his other hand, he held a flaming scrap of cloth stuffed into a green glass bottle.

Without hesitating, the guard threw the concoction of fire down into the central courtyard, where it smashed against a lattice of wood and climbing roses.

Shouts and smoke immediately filled the courtyard. Balram stepped away from the window. He slid his uninjured hand inside a carefully sewn pocket at the breast of his tunic. His fingers closed around a hard, circular object that seemed to pulse under leather and flesh.

All caution. He repeated the mantra. And if that wasn't enough, well, Daen wasn't the only one who possessed magic.

CHAPTER TWO

Esmeltaran, Amn

12 Eleasias, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

Kall couldn't think. He looked desperately to the shore, at Dencer nocking another arrow to his longbow. The other figures were on the move, covering their faces with some sort of hood, fading back into the trees in the direction of his father's estate. Kall could see the tips of its two domed towers in the distance.

Morel house was being attacked from within. His mind fumbled over the realization. Did his father know of the treachery? Was he still alive? The last thought sent a tremor through Kall's body. If Aazen hadn't been there to grab him, Kall would have lurched up onto the rock, running right into death to get back to the house.

"Kall," Aazen croaked, snapping the boy's attention back to the shore. Dencer stood, aiming, but something was wrong. He was taking too long, holding the shot. "W-what's he waiting for?"

Aazen's teeth chattered despite the warmth of the day. Kall held him up, treading water for both of them. "I don't know," he said.

Suddenly, the air whistled again. Kall braced, but the expected killing blow never came. Instead, Dencer fell to his knees, cradling his right hip.

A horse thundered up the strand of beach, kicking sand up against black flanks. Its rider tossed aside an empty crossbow and drew a short blade as he came.

Dencer had crawled to his feet by the time the rider reached him. Kall could finally make out the man's face. He was one of Kall's personal guardsmen, assigned by his father. "Haig!" he cried.

The rider ignored Kall's shout and swung down from the still-moving mount, sword leading. Dencer hastily blocked with his bow, the only weapon he could bring to hand in time. The sword bit deeply into the wood, cleaving it nearly in two.

Dencer pushed back and thrust the older man off. Haig's attack came in a bull rush, clumsy and imprecise, as if he hoped to finish his opponent off quickly and move on. Dencer dodged a second thrust, at the same time groping with the bolt that had penetrated his armor. His hand fell slack, and he swooned.

Haig pressed the advantage, driving in close for a quick kill, and played right into Dencer's feint. Dencer dropped heavily to the sand on his good side, swept one leg behind and in front of Haig's knees and twisted. The older man bent sideways and hit the ground. In the same breath Dencer sprang to his feet, running full out for the trees.

Haig cursed loudly but did not follow. He sheathed his sword and ran for the water, picking a path across the rocks.

"Haig," Kall cried again when he reached them. "Morel—the house is—"

"Besieged, aye," the man said curtly, hoisting Aazen up in his arms. "Stay behind me." His eyes were on the tree line as they picked their way back to the shore.

"Where is Father?" His heart pounding, Kall knelt on Aazen's other side as Haig laid him out on the beach. "Does he live?"

"He did, when I left him to come for you." Haig caught Kall by the arm and guided him to the arrow still planted in Aazen's shoulder. The man's hands were square and brown. Traces of gray beard lined his cheeks and chin, yet for his age he was easily twice the width of Kall, with muscle as firm as the gauntlets encasing his wrists. He shrugged off a sand-stained cloak and spread it over Aazen.

"Remove the fletchings," he instructed Kall. "Be quick, but do not aggravate the wound."

Kall did as he was told, snapping the feathery ends off an arrow he might well have helped build. The thought jarred him, and his hands trembled.

Aazen was white to the lips. He hadn't spoken. He would be thinking of his own father, Kall realized. An attack on the house would put Balram in the heart of the battle. "What of Captain Kortrun?" he asked. "Does he—"

"Mind your work!" Haig snapped.

Kall flinched and fell silent. He threw aside the fletchings and waited while Haig helped Aazen to a half-sitting position.

Haig looked the boy in the eyes. "This will hurt."

Aazen nodded, his expression resigned. "Take it—"

Before he'd finished speaking, Haig drove his arm forward. From Kall's angle, it looked as if he were trying to wrench Aazen's arm out of its socket, but the sound was nothing like that.

Cold sweat broke out on Kall's arms. He felt like retching. Aazen's body convulsed, but he stayed eerily silent as Haig tossed the bloody arrow aside, unstoppered a vial of milky liquid, and poured it down the boy's throat. His head lolling, Aazen slid into unconsciousness. A trickle of white slid down his chin.

"He'll live," Haig said grimly, putting the empty vial back in his pouch. "He's endured worse."

"What did you give him?" Kall wanted to know, but Haig had already pulled Kall to his feet, and was dragging him to the black horse.

"A healing potion." He mounted and reached down a hand for Kall.

"We can't leave him!"

Haig made an impatient sound in his throat. He hooked a hand under Kall's armpit and hauled him bodily onto the back of the horse.

"Young Kortrun will be safer than either of us," he said. "Now, if you would care to aid your father and fight for what remains of your house, we will ride swiftly and with no talk at all. If you fall off, I will not stop for you." He looked back at Kall. "Do you understand?"

Wordlessly, Kall nodded. Haig had never reproached him like this before. He'd never spoken to him at this length in all of Kall's life, though the old man had been a permanent fixture in Kall's memories since he could walk. The common jest, whispered among the guards, was that Haig preferred the company of his horse to that of people and needed no woman to warm his bed. But the subdued old man who'd shadowed his steps on the streets of Esmeltaran was not the same person who sat before him now. Where had the strength and the steel in his eyes come from?

Those eyes raked him from head to foot, noting, Kall thought, his lack of armor. He'd left the pads on the rocks of Lake Esmel with Aazen's violin. Haig reached down and freed a curved shield from where he'd hooked it to the saddle horn.

"Here," he said, thrusting the shield at Kall. "Protect yourself when we get close to the grounds." He shook his head as he gazed at Kall. "Tymora's miracle Dencer was confused. In your smallclothes, with your hair wetted down, you both look just alike."

Kall would have asked what he meant, but Haig dug his heels into horseflesh, and they were away.

CHAPTER THREE

Esmeltaran, Amn

12 Eleasias, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

The grounds were deserted. Haig's boots crunched gravel as the big man dismounted in the outer yard. He pushed Kall between himself and the horse. They moved in a line right up to the entry hall. The doors were wide open, and Kall could hear fighting within. Morel's servants—guards who had not turned traitor, even members of the household staff—fought with men in hoods. Kall had counted five such on the beach, including Dencer, and there were more inside without sand on their boots.

"Whatever happens, stay at my shoulder where I can see you." Haig spoke rapidly, reaching for the short sword affixed to his saddle. "I don't know how skilled you are with a blade, but if you get the chance to stick this in something, don't hesitate, do you hear?" When Kall nodded, he went on, "We're badly outnumbered, so remember, this house is no longer your home. It's their ground until we drive them out. Anything is a weapon to that end." He handed Kall the short sword and took a second, broader blade from a sheath. Large emeralds adorned the hilts, marks given to all the blades of Morel, from the lowliest rusted dirk to Balram's elegant long sword—a mark of Morel's success in gems and fine ornaments.

Kall's father scoffed at Amnians who draped their wealth over themselves with no context. Dhairr's gesture to even his lowest-ranking servants had clear meaning: Morel had the means to protect his own.

But he had never planned for an attack from within, an attack that amounted to a betrayal by family. How many of the men in hoods bore emerald weapons? How many would Kall know personally if unmasked?

His chance to find out came when they entered the main hall. Two of the hooded foes darted in from side rooms, as if they'd seen them coming. Haig put himself in front of Kall and ran at both, grabbing up a large Calishite vase from a side table. He smashed the expensive item in the face of the hood to his right while simultaneously batting a raised sword out of his way. Dazed, the attacker fell back, unresisting, allowing Haig to charge forward to engage the foe to his left.

Kall stared at the scene, retaining only the presence of mind to raise his weapon while he watched the old man fight.

Screams filled the air as Gertie, one of the maids, hurtled from the hallway into the crystal display front as if she'd been thrown. Fragile glass panes shattered under her weight. Her hands and arms were bloody when she picked herself up, but she kept running, bolting across the hall. Her usually meticulously combed curls hung loose and wild from her bonnet. A gloved hand snagged her hair, jerking the maid's head back into the doorway to the kitchens.

Kall watched in numb horror as the hand drew a knife in a crooked, horizontal slash across Gertie's throat. For a breath, the young maid's eyes met Kall's across the room. Then she saw the blood pouring down her dress and raised her hands as if she could stop the flow.

Kall charged forward, away from the safety of Haig's back. Instead of engaging the man with the knife, he ran a wide circle. Before the man could realize what he intended, Kall had wedged his sword between the wall and the display front and pulled, levering the heavy glass case away from the wall. Piles of crystal, wood, and glass came down on the hooded man, knocking him back into the kitchen. The last Kall saw of the man was the Morel emerald glinting in his knife, alongside a ruby in a nest of gold loops.

Kall dropped to his knees next to Gertie, but the maid was already dead. Above her ruined throat, her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. Kall felt bile rise in his throat, but a glint of gold in the blood pool caught his eye: Gertie's necklace, a small medallion emblazoned with Lathander's sunrise. The assassin's knife had cut it away. Kall scooped it up.

He caught black movement out of the corner of his eye and spun, sending his sword out in a wide, reckless arc. Another hooded figure danced back, Kall's blade swishing across his opponent's stomach to tear fabric if not flesh.

Blindly, Kall followed with a backslash, cutting up and diagonally from hip to shoulder, driving forward in a rush as he'd seen Haig do.

Kall was not a novice to sword play. When he was younger, his father had decided to personally train Kall to fight. Never had the man paid him so much attention. Kall had reveled in it, learning all he could. His skills steadily grew, but his father's interest in teaching waned over the years in favor of seeing to his business and the security of his house. Kall could feel the burn of disuse in his sword arm.

He risked a glance at the old man. Haig had pulled the hood from the foe harrying him on the left. White-gold hair tumbled down a black cloak—Isslun's. She puckered her lips saucily at Haig even as her hand went for the dagger at her belt.

Haig got there first. He slipped the weapon from its sheath and with a grin shoved her away. Immediately, an identical face from the right met him. Aliyea—twin to Isslun—had recovered from the hit with the vase and removed her hood to fight openly beside her sister.

Kall's sword went skittering across the marble floor. Distracted, he'd let himself be disarmed. "Haig!"

Haig hurled Isslun's dagger. The fang buried itself in the hood of Kall's opponent. Kall looked away, sickened, and saw Haig fighting for better position, backing the twins toward one of the smaller rooms off the main hall. "Follow me!" the old man yelled at him.

Kall hesitated. He still didn't know where his father was. The bulk of the fray seemed to be coming from the central garden; Haig was headed in the opposite direction. With a last look at white-gold hair and whirling steel, Kall retrieved his sword and ran for the sunlight, ignoring Haig's voice calling after him.

In the heart of the garden, Kall found his father. Dhairr was alive and fighting, but he bled from several wounds. He straddled one fallen hood and fought two others who pressed him back against the lip of a fountain. This central point irrigated the entire garden; the water had been left to flow freely, turning the terrain off the raised stone walkways into a muddy jungle.

Kall ran down the flooded path, not allowing himself to think as he stabbed the black-robed figure closest to his father. The foe's back arched, and the dying assassin toppled over the side of the fountain, wrenching Kall's sword from his hands. Kall scrambled to get out of the way.

Dhairr looked up in shock to see his son. His remaining opponent backed away, hoisting up a dead comrade. Dhairr spun to see another hood charging at them through the mud, but instead of engaging, this one too, grabbed a body—that of the foe Kall had killed—and started to spirit it away.

"No!" A scream of pure agony and frustration tore from Dhairr's throat. He charged the escaping assassins, but water and wounds slowed him. He could not make the edge of the fountain before his legs gave out. He still grasped his sword in a white-knuckled fist. Kall dodged it and grabbed his father around the waist, gripping and hoisting him up.

"All back! All back!" Dhairr tried to pull away, but Kall held him tightly. Spittle flew from his mouth, and he trembled wildly, slashing his sword at invisible foes. "Guards, to me! Bring one alive, damn you! Bring one alive!"

Bootfalls pounded from the direction of the main hall. Dhairr made an ugly sound in his throat. Kall turned, expecting another enemy, and saw Haig running out to them.

"Father!" Kall stayed the lord's arm as he swung his gaze and blade to the man. Recognition came slowly into Dhairr's eyes, and he lowered his weapon.

"Haig," he said hoarsely. "What happened?"

Kall spoke first. The words tumbled over each other to get out. "Isslun, Dencer . . ." he named them all, describing Aazen's wound and Haig's rescue.

Dhairr had both hands on Kall's shoulders, but he looked at Haig. "How many in total?"

"I can't be certain, my lord," Haig replied. "As it stands, I would trust none of your guard and appeal to the Esmeltaran militia for help."

Dhairr nodded, taking it all in. "Where is Kortrun?"

Boots scraped on stone, and all three of them looked up. Balram stood at the edge of the garden, near the stairs to Dhairr's office. He was watching them, a speculative look in his eyes as they fell on Haig.

"Captain," Dhairr said, relieved. "We were nearly overrun." He noticed the blood dripping from Balram's hand. "Are you all right?"

"I am," Balram said, walking slowly out to them. His sword trailed unsheathed at his side, its emerald winking in the sunlight. "Thank the gods you're both alive." The words held no inflection.