“A misunderstanding,” said Ostra. “Nothing more. All is well. The furless and Bennin’s heir have my blessing. They are not to be harmed.”
There was low murmuring and grumbling that Andri could not decipher. Finally, someone said, with obvious reluctance, “As you wish, Father.”
“He’s coming back,” Greddark said. “The shifters are dispersing.”
“Not all of them,” came Irulan’s reply.
Andri turned to find her yanking another female shifter by the braid into the sitting area. The shifter was no warrior. Her long skirts and apron made that clear, as did the heavy pan Irulan carried in her own hand now in place of her sword.
“I found her trying to sneak in through the back. It’s Leata, Ostra’s first wife.”
“Leata!” Ostra exclaimed as he entered the tent. The shifter woman twisted violently in Irulan’s grasp and Irulan released her with a curse. Leata ran into her husband’s arms.
After a moment, she pulled back from his embrace to look him over. “Did they hurt you? I’ll have Thorn hunt them down and kill them!”
At the name of his nephew, Ostra let out a long sigh and pulled his wife close again, burying his face in her thick braid.
“Thorn is dead, my love. Killed by foul undead while carrying out a special task for me. Irulan and her friends brought me word of his fate.”
“D-dead?” came Leata’s muffled response. “Oh, Ostra! Half the Circle, and now Thorn? Why is the Host punishing us so?”
Ostra shushed her and there was nothing but the sound of her quiet weeping for long moments.
Andri looked away, uncomfortable with the show of grief, and the part he had played in causing it. If only he’d been willing to pursue the idea of a lycanthrope earlier, Thorn’s grisly fate might have been avoided. But, no-he would still have come to question the shifter leader, and Ostra would still have sent him southward, only this time with a tale of a lycanthrope lairing among the graves instead of an outcast from the tribe. Thorn’s death was Ostra’s fault, not his. But somehow, knowing that didn’t make him feel any less guilty.
As the shifter woman sobbed and Ostra murmured quiet words of comfort in her ear, Greddark kept watch out the tent flap. Irulan looked embarrassed and studiously avoided staring at the couple, casting her gaze about the tent and finally settling for contemplating the claws on her feet.
At last, Leata pulled away from her husband, wiping the tears away with the corner of her apron. She turned to Andri and Irulan, not leaving the protective circle of her husband’s embrace.
“Thank you for bringing us word of Thorn’s passing. Did he die bravely?” Her voice nearly broke on the last word.
Andri exchanged a quick glance with Ostra. He had no idea how the shifter had died the first time, and he didn’t think Leata would want to know the circumstances of his second passing.
“He fought well,” he said, hoping it would be enough.
Leata nodded, seemingly satisfied.
“They’re going after Quillion now,” Ostra said, holding her tightly to him as her eyes widened in shock.
“No!”
“It’s the only way, Leata. He’ll never come out for us, but for … them, he might.” It was a brief pause, almost imperceptible, but Andri caught it. The shifter had been about to say something else, but substituted “them” at the last second.
What had he meant to say? Andri wondered, guessing it was important, but having no way to ferret the knowledge out. Not for the first time, he wished his abilities allowed him to detect actual thoughts, not just honesty and intent.
Ostra looked back up at Andri.
“Promise me, if you find him, and he’s guilty, you won’t let them torture him again.”
They hadn’t discussed going after the old werewolf, but of course that was the next logical step in their investigation. It should have been the first, that accusing voice in the back of his mind whispered, but he ignored it.
Andri had heard tales from his father about what the Church had done to lycanthropes during the Purge. Barbaric tortures-skinning them alive with silver blades, sprinkling belladonna over their open wounds, or binding them in close-fitting suits of silver while in their humanoid forms and then forcing them to change, their bodies trying painfully to shift into a shape the holy metal would not allow. He could understand why the shifters would want to protect the werewolf from that doom, especially here in Thrane, where he’d be found guilty regardless of whether he’d committed the murders or not. Andri wouldn’t wish such a fate on anyone-except perhaps his father.
“I promise,” he said.
They emptied the contents of Andri’s trunk into sacks and traded the intricately carved chest to a shifter merchant for supplies and two more horses. If the others were surprised by the silver manacles, various extractions of belladonna, and other accoutrements of a lycanthrope hunter that Andri transferred from the trunk, they didn’t say anything, though Greddark looked at him speculatively. He wondered how much more curious the dwarf would be if he knew Andri never went anywhere without them-though he’d never had cause to use them and prayed fervently that he never would.
Irulan was more concerned with trying to calm the nervous nag they’d purchased for her. She was not happy about having to ride her own mount, but Shadukar was over two hundred fifty miles away following the Orien trade route-trying to ride double on his warhorse would have stretched a trip that was already going to take nearly a week into two, and that was time none of them had to waste.
Ostra had offered the services of his best trackers, but Andri had politely declined, while Irulan opined that they’d had more than enough “help” from the shifter leader and his people. Instead, they had quizzed the trackers on likely lairing spots within the ruins of Shadukar. Armed with that knowledge and several detailed maps of the city as it had been before it was razed, they set off for what had once been known as the Jewel of the Sound.
Leaving the shifter encampment just after noon, they pushed the horses and got in a full day’s ride by evening, but were still only halfway to Angwar Keep, their first stop on the way to Shadukar. The outpost had been hit hard and often during the Last War, located as it was just across the river from Cyre-or what had once been Cyre. Now the only enemy facing the keep was the dead gray mist of the Mournland, ever-present and oppressive, reaching up into the sky like a wall of stone that kept the residents of the fort from ever witnessing a true dawn. Of course, since most of the inhabitants were warforged, they probably didn’t care.
They pitched camp several hundred feet to the west of the road, wanting to put as much distance as possible between them and the mist that lingered just beyond the river’s opposite bank. Andri and Greddark tended to the mounts while a surly Irulan complained about saddle sores and prepared dinner. Over a mixture of fried eggs, salted pork, and tubers that the shifter had spiced liberally with thrakel, the trio compared notes.
The dwarf was intrigued by the tuft of fur Irulan had found and asked to examine it, though his perusal yielded nothing new. When Andri had finished the tale of his and Irulan’s investigation, Greddark shared what he and Zoden had learned. As he did so, Andri found himself nodding at several points, and shaking his head in confusion at others. Why had Greddark’s contact included the scrap of paper with the list of spell components on it? There was nothing linking it to the murders, save proximity to Desekane’s body, which had been found in one of the dirtiest parts of the city. Desekane had not been a spellcaster-did the dwarf’s contact think the killer was?
And what was the significance of the smudges of silvery dust? It sounded like silverburn, but that was so commonplace as to be useless as a clue to the killer’s identity-Andri carried a small container of it himself, for use in his private prayers.