“You think a single one of these people are going to cross paths with a godsdamned Shadovar?” Tharra said. “They don’t come out here. They send the grays-they want us to stay scared. You get in as a servant-if they’ll take you-and you have a guard on you every single heartbeat. Think, would you? I know you’re cleverer than this,” she said it gently, but Dahl bristled all the same.
“So what’s your plan?” Dahl asked.
Tharra stared up at the fortress. “Stay alive.”
“You can cling to every soul you find, but what’s it matter if the wizard just kills them?”
“He doesn’t kill them,” Tharra started. Then her eyes fell on something behind Dahl and she cursed. Dahl looked back over his shoulder. A shadarkai guard was heading up the alleyway, shouting at them in Netherese.
“Run,” Tharra murmured. “Get back to Oota. Tell her they’re sweeping-”
A second guard stepped around a hut, blocking their escape. “Let’s go,” he said, herding them both down to the wider road where a score of other villagers gathered. Dahl wished for his sword as the half-dozen guards drove them like wayward sheep toward the fortress.
Patience, he told himself. Even if he’d had his sword, striking in the dense crowd would have been too dangerous. He kept his eyes on Tharra instead- watching as she took careful stock of the faces around them.
Twelve at a time, they were herded through a narrow stone passage, jammed cheek by jowl together, before shuffling out into the open. Into a wide courtyard with a smooth, black stone floor. High walls. A platform above-high over his head-on which stood several more of the shadar-kai guards, looking down at the villagers as they filtered in, and a wizard in dark robes, talking to a pair of robed novices and a woman in dark leathers.
“But, saer-” one began.
“You will wait,” the wizard interrupted, “until I am present. How many left?” he shouted down to the guard in the pit.
Dahl felt his lungs freeze: the wizard was Adolican Rhand.
“Two, master,” the guard called back.
Dahl ducked behind Speck, Oota’s big half-orc guard, hoping the wizard hadn’t seen him-Rhand might remember him and he might not, but now was not the time to find out. Hrast. Hrast. How in all the Hells could Farideh be helping him?
She wouldn’t, he realized, sure as he’d ever been. She couldn’t. Which meant she was in trouble, that Dahl shouldn’t have run. Which might mean she was dead-
Then he realized that the woman standing behind the novices was Farideh.
And she was staring straight at Dahl.
She’d traded whatever homespun clothes the Harpers had given her for snug black leathers and pinned her hair up between her horns with a jeweled comb. Gone was the grief-drawn young woman who’d haunted the Harper hall for the last half tenday-she looked like nothing so much as Rhand’s pet, the shadar-kai’s deadly ally.
Except she was staring at him.
He still wasn’t sure he could read her expression-not with those focusless eyes-but there was no triumph in that stare, no anger, not anything he could place on an enemy.
“Well?” Rhand asked her.
Farideh shifted away from him as she turned to survey the crowd. Her gaze swept over them, her mouth tight, until she was looking at Dahl again.
Rhand reached over and set a hand on the small of her back. Farideh did not flinch, but a certain rigidness overtook her frame. The gesture might look comforting but it would also take the merest effort to shove her right over the edge. “What do you see?”
Farideh kept staring at Dahl. She bit her lip. “The short man with the green tunic. The halfling woman in the apron near the front. The moon elf at the back. The big fellow. . the half-orc with the tattoos.” As Farideh identified the prisoners, the guards in the pit came forward and took hold of them-gently but with horrible smiles. They led them out the smaller door, one by one, ending with Oota’s struggling guard. Dahl took a step to the right, into the thick of the crowd.
Beside Dahl, Tharra cursed quietly.
Farideh hesitated, half a breath in her mouth, as if she were about to speak. “That’s it,” she finally said, turning back to Rhand. When she spoke next, her voice shifted, sharp and dissatisfied. “Now, I need rest. There’s nothing in our agreement about being made to stand in the cold for hours.”
Rhand gave her a slippery smile and reached his other arm around to guide her away from the edge. “Of course. Just once more.”
Before Dahl could so much as consider what to do, a guard shoved him toward the larger gate, along with the rest of the villagers. They were crowded in so close, he felt like a beast headed into a slaughterhouse. And then abruptly the bodies in front of him broke free into the open, and the guards were laughing as their captives scattered back into the strange village.
“Piss andhrast!” Dahl cursed. He had to go back. Whatever was happening, Farideh was not on Rhand’s side, he would drink a bucket of the wizard’s finest to prove that. He had to get her out-where Rhand wouldn’t be a factor.
But getting into the fortress would be nigh impossible, as Tharra said.
He spotted Tharra, hurrying south, away from the fortress and toward Oota’s makeshift stronghold. Dahl sprinted after her.
“He has Speck?” Oota said as Dahl came in.
“More than Speck,” Tharra said. “That witch picked perfectly. I don’t know how she spotted those four. Speck came to me complaining of a headache yesterday, and Perdaena and Laencom have had their powers for months-too quiet for the grays to spot.” She sighed, and spotting Dahl, beckoned him in. “The elf was a surprise, but even if she’s not what’s he’s looking for, that’s no better news. If Rhand’s witch can hunt the Chosen among us without even coming near them, nothing we’ve managed so far will matter. You need to get people down into the buried rooms, before that witch-”
“She’s not his witch,” Dahl snapped. Tharra frowned at him. “Why did nobody tell me the wizard was Adolican Rhand?”
“Doubt anyone thought it would matter,” Tharra said. “You know him?”
“After a fashion. He slipped my grasp before. Twice.”
“And her?” Oota asked.
“She brought him in here,” Tharra supplied. “Apparently not because he was pursuing her. Bit of the visions maybe we ought to reconsider.”
Dahl scowled at the other Harper. “She wouldn’t work with him, not willingly.”
“Nobody was making her pick those people out of the crowd.” Tharra shook her head. “She’s seemed right at home in her fancy jewels these past few days.”
Dahl dragged a hand through his hair. This was too many pieces all at once: Chosen and gods affecting the wars. And what was Adolican Rhand doing with those he gathered? What could Shade possibly do with a boy who trailed flowers? Tharra and Oota and the plain fact that whatever plans they had wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference without a means of escape. And Farideh, wearing shadar-kai armor and standing beside Rhand. For all you know, he thought, she has dressed that way every day of the last seven and a half years.
But never at Adolican Rhand’s side. If he could count on nothing else about Farideh, he could count on that.
Oota eyed him, patient as a hunting cat. “It sounds like we have a disagreement,” she said. “How are we going to settle it?”
“I have to get in there,” he said.
“You head in there,” Tharra said, “and the grays will kill you and never care why you were there or how well you might know Rhand’s pet tiefling.”
“And it’s no skin off your back if they do,” he said. He turned to Oota. “You want a better idea of what’s happening in that fortress? You’re not going to know what she’s doing or why unless someone she trusts asks her. Help me find a way in, and I’ll get your answer. Maybe some weapons, too.”
Oota cocked her head. “Can’t do that, son.” She smiled, and beside her Tharra folded her arms over her chest. “But I may know someone who can.”