“What are you waiting for?” Maellas demanded, his green eyes taking on an amber cast. “Release me!”
Andri wanted to obey-knew he should-but something stopped him.
Why did we put the Bishop in silver manacles?
“Damn you! Do it!”
Andri felt his hand moving of its own volition, sliding the key the rest of the way into the lock, twisting …
“Andri, no!”
He heard a sound like the whistling wind, then a soft thunk, and the Bishop’s silver dagger was protruding from the tree trunk, bare inches above the manacles and his own hands.
Irulan shoved him to the ground and turned the key back the other way before Maellas could escape. The Bishop started to shout something, an arcane word of power, and Irulan punched him full in the face, slamming his head up against the tree. Then she pried the dagger out of the pine and held it up to his mouth, running the tip of the blade along his lips.
“One more word out for you, Your Excellency, and I’ll cut out your Flame-forsaken tongue.”
Maellas’s mouth snapped shut and he glared.
“That’s better.” She grabbed the discarded wad of fabric and forced his mouth open. Not bothering to shake off the dirt and ants, she shoved it in so far that he gagged. “Choke on it, you mooncursed bastard.”
She turned back to Andri. He stared up at her from where he lay on the forest floor, shaking off the last vestiges of Maellas’s charm. Irulan held out a hand to help him up, and he took it, clambering to his feet.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice quavering. If she had arrived even a few moments later … he shuddered to think what Maellas would have done to him. Though he knew it wasn’t possible for the priest to infect him, he had a sudden vision of himself standing over Irulan, as his father had stood over his mother, and bile burned the back of his throat.
Never! He would kill himself first.
He wondered abruptly if Alestair had thought that, too.
“Don’t mention it,” the shifter woman replied. She was staring at him oddly, and he realized he was still holding her hand, rather too tightly. He quickly let go and began brushing the pine needles from his clothes to cover his embarrassment.
“Did you find it?”
“It, and a few other things.” She gestured back over his shoulder, where he saw a black stallion standing at the edge of the clearing, tethered to a tree. Closer to the fire, next to Greddark, was an open saddle bag spilling food out onto the ground and his father’s silver sword, its rubies flashing crimson in the flickering light. “I had a quick look through her saddle bags, just in case she might have left the antidote behind. I found food. And this.” She held out a folded piece of paper to him. “There’s some other interesting stuff in there, too. You might want to take a look yourself, later.”
Andri took the paper and unfolded it.
His letter of credit.
He looked up at Irulan, who smiled wryly. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
As Andri pocketed the letter, Irulan headed back over to the fire. She threw on more wood, then retrieved a pot from her own saddle bags and filled it with water from her canteen. Andri watched as she set it over the newly-fed flames to boil and began preparing the stems from a handful of red flowers. She looked over her shoulder at him.
“This is going to take a while, if it works at all. You might as well eat.” As a weak moan escaped from Greddark’s now-bluish lips, she added, “And pray.”
Andri prayed, ate some bread and cheese from d’Medani’s saddle bag, and prayed some more. Dawn was beginning to filter through the high canopy, and still Irulan fussed with her pot, while Greddark lay as one dead, barely moving or breathing, his once-scorching skin now clammy and pale. After feeding the horses, checking Maellas’s bonds again and wandering aimlessly through their small camp, Andri finally remembered what Irulan had said about the rest of the bounty hunter’s bags.
He crossed over to the black stallion, who whickered uneasily but allowed the paladin to pet his nose. When he was sure he wouldn’t spook the horse and that it wouldn’t bite him, Andri opened the nearest of the three bags and began looking through it.
Clothing, some of it quite fine, and some cheap but still fashionable jewelry. This trip hadn’t been strictly business for her, then. Her identification papers were in the second bag, along with the writ for Greddark’s arrest, including a rather good likeness of the dwarf, though Andri thought he looked a fair bit more sinister in real life. The writ had been signed by King Kaius himself, though the surety for the bond was being put up by someone with the unlikely name of Rango ir’Rangoth and not House Medani. He supposed that made sense. Regardless of Greddark’s crimes, House Medani was unlikely to publicly put a price on the dwarf’s head, for fear of angering House Kundarak. He doubted ir’Rangoth actually existed anywhere but on paper.
There was another piece of paper in the bag, though Andri didn’t notice it at first, as it had been crumpled into a ball. Smoothing it out, he saw that it was a personal letter, addressed to a Julanna d’Medani-the bounty hunter? It was signed only with an “H”-Helanth d’Medani? As he skimmed the body of the letter, he began to understand why the half-elf had been so insistent on bringing Greddark in, even after Andri had paid the bounty.
… avenge the horrible death of my daughter, your cousin, Yaradala-a death for which you are at least partly responsible, since it was your lapse in surveillance that allowed her to contact the dwarf in the first place. Accordingly, his fate will be yours. You are no longer welcome in the Tower of the Twelve, and if you fail in this mission, you will be stripped of your name and expelled from House Medani forever.
Do not fail.
— H
He almost felt sorry for the bounty hunter, but as he looked over to where Irulan was finally feeding spoonfuls of her dweomer root broth to Greddark, pouring small amounts in through his swollen lips and stroking his throat to get him to swallow, any stirrings of sympathy died stillborn in his heart. Excoriate was better than dead.
Andri returned the letter and moved on to the third bag. It held manacles, chains, rope, a vial of a gray, oily liquid that he assumed was the dwarfbane, several unpleasant looking knives, and a scroll case. Andri opened one end of the case and eased the scroll out. He unrolled the parchment only far enough to see the first line.
Think of the place you wish to go. Speak these words, and it shall be so.
A scroll of teleportation? That could come in handy. “Andri!”
He turned, shoving the scroll back in the case and dropping it back in the saddle bag.
“Hurry! I think it’s working.”
It seemed Andri’s prayers had been answered, for within moments, Greddark’s color and breathing had returned to normal and by midmorning he was sitting up, asking for food. As he ate, Andri related what he’d found in the bounty hunter’s bags. By the time Greddark had finished his second helping of eggs, the dwarf was ready to travel. Luckily, thanks to d’Medani, they wouldn’t have to go far.
“You’re sure you can get us inside the gates, without getting us … inside the gates?” the inquisitive asked once Andri had revealed his plan. His concern was understandable, given his own unfortunate experiences with teleporting.
“Do not worry, friend dwarf. I’ve used similar scrolls before, and familiarity with your target destination is not a requirement for their use. But there is likely a weight limit. We must leave the horses behind.”
“Fine by me,” Irulan muttered, but Greddark protested.
“Do you know what that warhorse is worth? We could buy a stable full of horses, and a stable boy to feed them, and still have money left over-and that’s if we got a bad deal. Leave the others if you must, but this one comes with us.”