“He’ll come back,” Olive said again. “He always does.”
The night grew even colder, and eventually, as the combatants on the hill wearied and let their fires and magics die out, it grew darker, too. Olive was a snoring lump in a bundle of furs, Akabar a motionless mannequin in his colored robes and one blanket. Alias shivered in her only cloak, but she could not stay wrapped in her blankets. She spent her watch pacing and staring into the darkness, waiting for Dragonbait to return. She did not bother to wake Olive, but continued to watch past her turn.
But Dragonbait still did not return.
A few pins of light from watchfires in the city pricked at Alias’s eyes. He’s there, was all she could think. He went into the city without me.
Like I planned to do to him, she added. Again she felt the draw of the city, an ache to learn the mystery within.
Her heart prompted her to look in Yulash, but her head insisted she had no proof that he was there. He could be anywhere. He might have been captured by the Keepers or the Red Plumes. That thought made her more anxious. As far as she knew, both Akabar and Olive had been right in their claims of Hillsfar and Zhentil Keep atrocities.
Actually, Alias couldn’t think of any army that would let a creature as blatantly non-human as Dragonbait pass unchallenged. They’d try to capture or kill him immediately. Probably kill, Alias admitted, because he’d put up a fight.
She was ready to wake the mage and bard and set out immediately when another thought made her hesitate. If he’s wandering out on the plains, lost, but finds his way back to an empty camp, he’ll think we’ve been captured. Someone has to stay, she decided. But Akabar looked so concerned by the lizard’s disappearance, Alias knew he would insist on accompanying her, and Olive would not stand for being left behind, believing there was treasure to be had in the city.
She hovered uncertainly over the two sleeping forms for several moments, trying to make up her mind. Going alone would only perpetuate the lizard’s folly, but she could not help herself. She bent down over Akabar’s pack and dug out a stick of charcoal and his map. On the back she wrote: “Looking for D. Wait here.”
She lay the parchment by Akabar’s head. Then, after slipping the finder’s stone in her boot, she picked up her shield and sword and walked away. Her steps drew her toward the great mound city.
Akabar’s eyes snapped open the moment Alias opened his pack.
The mage had cast a magic mouth enchantment on his earring to tell him if Dragonbait returned, and at first he thought that was what had awakened him, but when the piece of jewelry repeated its magical warning, whispering, “Someone’s in your pack,” he realized his mistake.
After the earlier disappearance of his magical tome, back when the halfling had joined his caravan, the mage had decided that it would not be squandering his power to use it to protect his property, even from a fellow traveler. Still, he wondered at Ruskettle’s nerve and dishonor.
He lay perfectly still, focusing on his baggage through the slits of his eyelids, but the figure rooting through his belongings was too big to be Ruskettle. It couldn’t be Dragonbait; his other magic mouth spell would have warned him.
When the figure straightened, Akabar nearly gasped and sat up in surprise. It was Alias. She scrawled something hastily on his map and then took a step toward him.
Akabar closed his eyes. He almost held his breath, but caught himself in time and began feigning the shallow breathing of a sleeper. Through his eyelids, he could sense the stone’s light on his face and then sense it move away. He peeked through one eye. Alias took up her sword and shield and left the camp.
Slowly, Akabar rose and looked out across the plains. He caught a flash of moonlight glinting off of Alias’s polished shoulder-plates. She was headed toward Yulash.
He spied the map. He picked it up and tilted it until the letters could be read by Selûne’s light.
Wait here, indeed! thought the mage, tossing the map onto his sleeping blanket with a deep frown. She lugs us all the way up here and when things get really dangerous, when she could use our help, she abandons us to chase after that lizard—who’s probably reporting us to his hidden masters, setting up a trap for her to walk into.
His first impulse was to chase after the warrior woman and convince her to return, use force if necessary to keep her from marching into Yulash. He would tell her it was smarter to wait for daylight. But he knew in his heart that once the sun had risen, he would only try to convince her that the nightfall might be a better time after all.
She would never hesitate to go searching for the creature she thinks is a friend, while I, Akabar Bel Akash, mage of no small water, cower behind an overturned merchant’s wagon. I am more greengrocer than master mage, the Turmishman thought, ashamed of his fear.
He could wake the halfling, and they could follow Alias together. Olive would have no trouble making up her mind what to do, Akabar realized. You could call her anything except late to looting. Still, taking the halfling did not seem particularly wise. As the old Amnite saying went, when matters are bad, think how much worse they could get if halflings were involved. Akabar didn’t want to put her in any risk of running into the Red Plumes.
Standing with his face toward the waning moon, Akabar began to intone a spell. The deep, rich words rolled off his tongue as his right hand sliced through the air. In it, he held a bit of his own eyelash embedded in a resin of tree gum. At the end of the evocation, his left hand came down hard on the tree gum. The sticky pellet flared a bright blue, consumed by mystical energy.
Akabar held his hands up in the moonlight and watched them go transparent, as though they were sculptures of ice. Then they vanished completely. His vision blurred for a moment, then the world refocused for him. He could see normally, save that when he looked down at himself there was nothing to see but a pair of depressions in the grass.
The parchment map rose from the ground, hovered for a moment, then settled next to the sleeping halfling. What Alias had written could apply to both of them.
Then he used his long legs to stride toward Yulash in the wake of the swordswoman. Nothing but a wave of bent grass blades marked his invisible passing.
18
Yulash
A fog began to roll in across the plains minutes after Alias left the campsite. The swordswoman was uncertain whether she should thank Tymora for the weather or not. On one hand, it would make spotting Dragonbait more difficult, but on the other hand, it would cover her approach to the mound. The soft glow of her tattoo was enough illumination to see the ground beneath her feet.
Their camp had only been a quarter of a mile to the base of the hill, but it was another quarter mile climb up to the wall. Alias avoided the roads into the city; there were plenty of footpaths up the slope, and she knew they’d be less patrolled. Twice she thought she heard someone following her and she waited on the path, hoping maybe it was Dragonbait tracking her scent, but no one appeared. The third time she backtracked quickly, thinking perhaps she was being stalked by a sentry, but still she discovered no one.
Halfway up the hill, Alias emerged from the fog. She turned to survey the plains. There was nothing to see though; all below her was whiteness. Yulash was an island in the clouds. She climbed farther up the slope.