She stepped down onto the wet stone ground, scanning the dark passage as Brin fixed the stone back into the fireplace.
“If this were a chapbook,” she said, slipping her glaive and harness back on, “this ends with you being killed by some madman, and me running screaming through a hundred tunnels.”
“Don’t be silly,” Brin said, coming to stand beside her. “You and I could handle some madman.” He took up his pack and strode ahead, toward the greenish light. “This is a secret portal the Harpers have made use of for ages. If there were a madman down here, we’d have heard of it.”
“Oh,” she said, holding tightly to her haversack’s straps. “So before, with the innkeeper, that was all Harper code-talk.”
“Right,” he said. “Don’t repeat any of that, would you? I was just asking if the portal’s behaving and such. Letting him know we’re not running from anyone.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I should have told you what was going on.”
“It’s fine,” she said, even though it wasn’t.
The portal sat in a dead end of the cave, a flickering green pool in the floor. Beside it, a woman waited, the perfect picture of a chapbook witch. Wild eyes flicked over Brin and Havilar through a snarl of steel-gray hair. Purple motes of light swam around her gnarled fingers as she pointed at them. “You got a key?” she demanded.
Brin handed over the tarnished key the innkeeper had given him. She turned it over, sniffed it once, then fixed an eye on Havilar. “What’re you? Some kinda demon?”
Havilar stiffened. “A tiefling.”
“Huh.” The woman spat. “If you say so. Where you going?”
“Noanar’s Hold,” Brin said.
The woman sent the purple motes into the portal with a whispery trail of magic. “You could walk there cheaper, you know?” she said, once the portal glowed bright and ready.
“Next time,” Brin said, clearly unfazed by the portalkeeper. He held out a hand to Havilar. “Ready?”
Havilar stared at his outstretched hand. “If this were a chapbook, this would be the part where the portal eats us, you know.” The woman guffawed, and Havilar scowled at her.
Brin took hold of her hand, smiling again. “Then how would they sell more chapbooks about us?” he said, teasing. She flushed all over again, not sure of what to say, and instead of guessing, Havilar stepped into the pool of green light.
Passing through the portal felt almost like riding through the dark had- lightless, rapid, death defying. There was no wind to blow through her hair as they traveled through the fabric of the planes, and a peculiar scent like wintergreen and old wine filled her nostrils. The air around her-if it was air-was no temperature at all. Not hot, not cold, not even there.
She only felt Brin’s hand, holding tight to hers.
And then suddenly they were stepping out into the world again, through a stone doorway and into a root cellar that made the previous cave look cheery. Havilar stumbled, narrowly avoiding a thick patch of cobwebs, heavy with dead bugs. Brin, still holding her hand, pulled her back on balance.
“Thanks,” she murmured, embarrassed at her clumsiness. That wasn’t going to impress him either. She took her hand back. “How do we get out?”
“Cellar door,” Brin said, pointing to a crack of grayish light off to their left. The portal’s shifting green light flared briefly, painting his face in stark shadows. “Not better than a room at the inn, but much closer. .” He trailed off. “Wait, did you think, back there, that I meant. .”
“I didn’t think anything,” Havilar said.
“Gods, I’m sorry.”
She pressed through the maze of old crates and barrels. “I said it’s fine.”
“Havi. . we should talk. When you’re ready, I mean.”
No, she thought. No, no, no. If they talked now, he’d only tell her what she didn’t want to hear. If they talked now, she wouldn’t even know what to tell him she wanted. I don’t really know me anymore, she realized.
“Later,” she said. “Definitely not down here.” She moved through the darkness toward the angled doors and heaved them open. Outside the sun was just beginning to tint the sky gray and blue. A handful of stone buildings peeked out from the edge of a forest so thick and dark that Havilar wondered if there were any way to walk through it at all. A shattered keep stood behind them, spilling stones down a rise toward the river, while new timber held new masonry in place.
Brin came to stand beside her and pointed over the forest, toward the tips of two mountains peeking over the trees. “There,” he said. “That’s where we’re heading.”
Gray morning light rushed into the cell Dahl spent the night in, wrenching his pupils wide. He flinched as the headache that had been pounding harder and harder since his flask ran dry surged up behind his eyeballs.
“Get up,” a man said. “Oota says she’ll see you now.”
When Dahl didn’t get up fast enough, the man-a big human fellow- hauled him to his feet and out the door. A second man-a half-orc-wrapped a rope around Dahl’s wrists, tying them behind his back.
They didn’t go far-down the road a ways, every step guarded by a third man and a woman sweeping the cross-paths. A door opened, and the men pushed him through it. He blinked as his eyes readjusted to the gloom.
It looked as if the villagers had torn down one of the huts to make a courtyard, and what thatch they could reclaim had been built over the space, sheltering it from the weather. Dahl was dropped in the middle of the muddy space, facing a hut whose front wall was missing and a mountain of a man standing there.
Not a man, he corrected himself. A half-orc. A half-orc woman in men’s clothing, her dark hair cropped short, her bosom crushed into a hide chestplate. She was taller than Dahl by a head and a half and outweighed him, surely, by himself again. One parent’s blood had claimed her brutish features, her massive frame. But the cleverness in the single black eye that watched him struggle to his feet was something a human would gladly claim.
A shiver ran down Dahl’s back: Oota, and she was no one to trifle with, he was certain of that. A gesture and the big man untied Dahl-he knew as well as Oota did that it would be suicide to try anything.
“People tell me,” Oota said, “you’ve been asking how to find me. People tell me,” she continued stepping down from her dais, “you’ve been asking a lot of questions. Stirring people up. Making them worry.” She stopped in front of him. “I don’t like my people to worry.”
“You make it sound as if I were specifically harassing your folk,” Dahl said, “when I was asking everybody I found. Half-orcs, humans, elves. .” His throbbing eyes had settled enough to see that in the dimmer corners where the firelight didn’t touch, there were scores more watching-humans and half-orcs. . and dwarves, and half-elves, a tiefling, a pair of dragonborn. All Oota’s charges. Dahl cursed.
“You rule this place?” Dahl asked, trying again.
“I run it,” Oota said. “The parts that matter. There’s a difference.” She stooped so that their faces were nearly level-still too far for him to reach- and said softly, “One which you should appreciate, whoever you are. If I ruled this place, I’d have executed you already.”
She straightened. “First Tharra tells me she clashed with a man about your height and description, wearing one of the guard’s uniforms. Tells me I need eyes and hands ready, because someone else has a fool idea about serving the wizard and it might cost us in the end.”
“Are you going to wait for my end of it?” Dahl asked.
Oota chuckled. “What is it you think we’re doing here, son?”
Dahl tried to think of an answer. None made any more sense than “a farm for Chosen.” He saw Tharra ease in a side door, Oota’s guardsmen watching. He was caught-another mission falling apart. Time to be honest, he thought, and see what happens.