“I’ll think about it.” She stood as if to go.
“What’s there to think about?” Sairche said. “The sorts of devils that want a Kakistos heir include the peers of archdevils.” She stood too, and looked down her nose at Farideh. “Unless … you have other reasons for staying.”
Farideh shook her head, her expression distant. Perhaps Sairche had read her wrong. “It simply isn’t the sort of thing I intend to jump into again. Good day.”
Sairche hooked her arm into Farideh’s before the girl could stop her. “I’ll see you home. We can talk on the way, as you must have a hundred questions for me. You’re staying in that old temple that Rohini’s holed up in, correct?”
“How did you-”
“The best thing about temples,” Sairche said, her voice low and gossipy, “is that the scrying glass my brother’s so fond of doesn’t work so well through the blessings. You’ll be safe inside.”
“I’m …” She looked down at Sairche’s arm. “I have some errands to run before I return there.”
If she thought to flee with such a pitiful excuse, she was mistaken. Sairche had only a short time before Lorcan found a way to Neverwinter, and she’d better have his warlock set on leaving before then. Sairche squeezed Farideh’s arm more tightly. “Then I’ll come along with you.”
“Just a little farther,” Yvon called back to the orc, who’d told him rather brusquely he was called Goruc. He looked up at the sky, gauging the passage of time: they would be early. He smiled to himself and wondered if Goruc would take that as a comfort or a threat. The path widened into a little grove, and Yvon gestured broadly at the empty space. “And here we are.”
The “grove” Yvon brought Goruc to was no such thing: it was a single pine tree. In the center, the oldest trunk rose up, so thick three men together could not stretch their arms around it. From that trunk, snaking branches, warped by spellplague and themselves as thick as birch trunks, had become roots, plunging back down into the needle-strewn ground, and giving birth to new trunks that sent out new root-branches.
Yvon found himself a seat on one of the low-slung trunks and watched as Goruc spent several moments winding his way around the spellscarred pine, his eyes tracing connections between branch and trunk as complex as any cavern map.
He came around the main trunk and his gaze dropped to the level of his face. Yvon smirked to himself. There was a symbol burned into the tree, overlapped by fresh branches. Goruc reached out and pushed aside enough of them to show … three triangles arranged to form a larger triangle. He frowned and ran a finger over the charred wood.
There was a rustling from the other side of the grove. Yvon kept watching the orc.
Goruc went completely still. He gripped the axe in both hands and edged his way around the thick trunk, scanning the shadowy wood. “What was that?”
Yvon shrugged. “A squirrel? How is it you know the tieflings?”
Goruc’s eyes kept moving over the trees and the shadows created by the low sun. “Got a mutual acquaintance.”
A branch moved behind him.
Goruc spun. Yvon kept watching him.
“Your friends coming soon?” the orc asked.
“Soon,” Yvon said. “What sort of mutual acquaintance?”
“A patron,” Goruc said. He whipped his head around at another rustle of movement. “If you’re trying to trick me with all this, I’ll make certain you regret it.”
A flash of red between those two trunks. Like a bit of cloth waving behind a person as they ducked behind a larger tree. Goruc bared his teeth and leaped toward it.
He bared his teeth. “Show yourself!” Goruc bellowed. “Come out or I’ll kill the shopkeeper.”
Nothing.
“You’re awfully stirred up,” Yvon said. “I thought you wanted our help.”
Four figures, draped in bloodred robes, stepped from the shadows. Loose hoods obscured their faces, and each one wore a sash emblazoned with the same sign: three triangles forming a larger one, surrounded by a figure with nine sides.
“These are your friends?” Goruc demanded, still holding his axe high.
“Yes,” Yvon said, standing and finding his place in the circle. “Mine and the tiefling’s you seek.” He shook his head sadly. “But I don’t think they’re yours.”
“That’s a very nice axe,” the figure standing on his left said. “Wherever did you get it?”
“A gift,” Goruc said. “What are you playing at?”
“Really?” the largest figure-unmistakeably Creed-said. “A very generous gift. One might even say it was quite the steal.”
“Where are the tieflings?” Goruc shouted.
“Yes, that,” Yvon said. “With a bare axe in your hand and, pardon the expression, that beastly demeanor of yours, I don’t think we’ll be pointing you in her direction. Your patron shouldn’t be toying with the disciples of the Raging Fiend.”
Goruc chopped wildly at the robed figures. But they all stayed precisely out of reach, still watching him from the shadows of their hoods.
“Stay back!” he yelped. “You come any closer and-”
“In due time,” Yvon said. “Who sent you to find the warlock?”
“I have a right no matter what he says,” he said. “She killed me twice.”
The fourth figure chuckled. “Well,” a female voice-Sekata-said, “obviously she needs some practice. A fortunate thing we’ve had plenty of that.”
Goruc started to reply, but behind him, Yvon was quicker. The garrote twisted around the orc’s throat. Yvon smiled as Goruc clutched at the garrote, but he still would not drop the axe. He struggled and gasped, and tried to swing the axe over his head. Yvon released the garrote and jumped out of the way.
Imarella’s whip lashed around Goruc’s right wrist, and yanked that arm backward and the axe away from Yvon. In front of the orc, a robed figure stepped forward and raised a hand.
“Adaestuo,” Lector said. The crackling blast of magic caught Goruc in the center of his chest, knocking him off-balance. Creed stepped forward and cracked a club against the back of Goruc’s knees and he crashed to the ground, flat on his back and staring up at the cold stars through the contorted limbs of the plaguechanged tree.
Goruc started to roll to his feet. Lector slapped an amulet against his cheek. “Maollis.”
The orc convulsed once and his arms and legs went limp and stopped obeying him, long enough, at least for the Ashmadai to hold him down.
Sekata’s stake pierced the wrist of the hand that held the axe so quickly his scream came after the crack of dividing bones. Yvon took one of the iron staples from Creed and helped pin down the orc’s ankles, as Sekata drove another stake through the orc’s off-hand.
“Why?” Goruc screamed. “Why?”
“We protect our own,” Yvon said, his voice still gentle.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Neverwinter 13 Kythorn, the Year of the Dark Circle (1478 DR)
Havilar edged down the hallway, her right foot leading, her glaive held low. She scooped the edge upward, guiding it with her left hand and driving it forward with the thrust of her hip. Angle down to slice across her imaginary foe’s throat. Sweep across his shins. Then lift, plant the right foot on his knee, and drive the blade home.
There was hardly room inside the temple for her to practice-every room had beds or tables or piles of books in it, and nearly every room had a scowling priest or acolyte giving her disapproving glares for bringing her glaive through the door. Even the library in the basement, where nobody went, still had that horrid little librarian who’d shrieked at her, called her a barbarian, and chased her out.
She thought of his face as she jabbed forward again. Barbarian, indeed. If she didn’t practice, her muscles would go soft, and forget how to control the long, heavy glaive she’d spent so long practicing to wield. If those priests were clever enough to be healing people and archiving books, they should be clever enough to know that much.