“I told you, Farideh thinks there’s a way. Maybe she’s wrong, but there’s plenty of sense in preparing for either possibility.”
“And so I come back to this,” Tharra said, “how in the Hells are you so sure she’s not going to turn on us? You don’t have an answer for that.”
Someone banged on the door of the little hut. The three Harpers scrambled to hide the weapons, but the door swung open before anyone could stop it. Dahl grabbed a dagger and got to his feet.
Oota’s big human guard, Hamdir, leaned in and nodded to Tharra. “You’d better come. We’ve got a problem.” He noticed the weapons spread across the table and raised his eyebrows. “Nice.”
Tharra gave Armas a worried look, before hurrying out the door after Hamdir.
“Probably nothing.” Armas sighed. “Oota likes making her jump, and what should she do? Complain she’s being included?”
“You think Tharra’s right?”
Armas shrugged. “They’re both stuck in their ways, if you ask me. Tharra’s right-we’re not ready for a fight.” He turned over a dagger. “But maybe we need to be.” He peered out the window. “I need to go get the kids out of the underground rooms. Let them have some sunshine.”
Dahl considered Tharra’s hardly begun maps. It was clear she wasn’t interested in helping him. Or admitting she wouldn’t help him. He sighed-more politics, more Harpers giving each other sidelong looks. “What about the elves?”
“What about them?”
“You carry them messages from Oota and Tharra, right? What is it they want? A battle? A long wait?”
Armas gave a short laugh. “The opposite of whatever Oota’s offering, usually.” He set his hands on the table, the finger cages clacking against the wood. Armas sighed. “Cereon-that’s their Oota-wants out, that’s for sure. His advisors feel the same. This place. . it’s not somewhere you settle down. The waters, the cold, the mountain itself. You know if the elves don’t want to be somewhere, there’s a damned good reason.”
Dahl considered the array of weapons a moment. “But they don’t want to fight the wizard.”
“Oh they’d love to-who wouldn’t? But”-he held up one caged hand-“the ones in charge are in the same straits. No gestures, no spells. I almost wish you’d smuggled out a good heavy hammer. At this point I’d let you try.”
The cages weren’t too large, Dahl thought. Smaller than a cup altogether. . or a carvestar.
Small enough for Farideh’s spell to destroy.
“If I found a way around the cages,” he said, “do you think they’d throw in?”
“If you ask them right.”
“So I’ll ask them.”
Armas snorted, but then realized Dahl meant what he’d said. “Oh. Take me along. Trust me. Cereon’s. . well, you know what people think of the eladrin? Make it a little haughtier. He won’t talk to you. He doesn’t even like speaking Common-they don’t send me because I’ve got Dead Leira’s touch. Do you even speak Elvish?”
Dahl scowled at the half-elf. “Orth Quessin, arluth.”
Armas made a face. “Don’t do that around Cereon. Flaunting your Dalespidgin is exactly the kind of thing that will just kick his kettle. I’ll bring it up. Trust me.”
“It has to be now,” Dahl said. He pulled Farideh’s ritual book and the mix of stolen components out of the pack. Armas’s brows rose.
“Gods. Where’d you get that?”
“The same place I’m going to get the magic to break your cages,” Dahl said. “Go see if Hamdir will watch the little ones for a bit, while I figure out how to speak enough Elvish.”
“Evereskan dialect,” Armas said, his eyes still on the book. “That’s more important than you think.”
“Write a line before you go. We’ll take the elves some daggers to sweeten the pot, and be back before Tharra and Oota are through.”
“You’re not going to tell them where we’re going?”
“And let them argue over it?” Dahl said, plucking a tiny bottle of ink laced with potent magical salts from the jumble of components. “Let’s be sure before we start anything.”
The amulet hung around Mehen’s neck, solid as an iron anchor. All too often, as the strange party tramped through the High Forest-Zahnya in her palanquin, her undead breaking brush ahead of them-Mehen found himself holding the onyx pendant in the flat of his palm. It didn’t take the weight from his neck, though, and it tended to draw the boneclaw’s soulless gaze.
Mehen smirked and held the pendant up, dangling it like a lure at the creature. The boneclaw rubbed its fingers together in response-skritch, skritch.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Daranna pointed out as she passed Mehen by. None of the Harpers had been eager to take Zahnya’s amulet. Daranna, in particular.
“A calculated risk,” Vescaras had called it, after Mehen had allowed the Red Wizard to stand.
“There is no ‘risk’ when allying with Thayans,” Daranna had said. “There is certainty. We’ll regret this.”
“Eventually,” Vescaras said. “But not immediately. At the moment, they make fair allies.” Zahnya had, in fact, healed the scout who’d fallen from the tree, keeping the ghoul’s terrible poison from felling her-and all before she raised her own dead. The fallen apprentices made for poor palanquin bearers and poorer ghoul controllers. But they would make more fighters to stand against the wizard and his forces, should it come to that.
“Surely you want the Shadovar fortress gone from these woods,” Khochen said. “She promises that much.”
“We’re wasting time,” Mehen had snapped, and undead or no undead, he had followed after Zahnya and her palanquin. A sad army, he thought, infiltrators and restless corpses. But if Zahnya had the means to stop the wizard and destroy the fortress, he would follow her. Albeit with a watchful eye.
He strode up to walk beside the palanquin and yanked at the curtains. Zahnya opened them a finger’s length. “Yes.”
“How much longer?”
“Two days? Perhaps more. My creations don’t need to rest,” she added. “I didn’t plan to either. I need to be at the fortress at the appointed time, so-”
Mehen narrowed his eyes. “What happens at the appointed time?”
Zahnya shrugged. “My ritual works. If you want your fellows out of range, well, then I hope you can keep up.” She twitched the curtains shut once more.
“She’s hiding something,” Khochen said, when Mehen walked alone again. “Do you notice, she never throws those curtains open enough for anyone to see in? There’s something in there, I’ll wager.”
“You ought to stop wagering,” Mehen said. “She says it will take us another two days or more. That she’ll go on without us if need be.”
“Well,” Khochen said. “Then we’ll simply make certain there is no need.” She dropped her voice. “Daranna carries a special waybread to keep us running. But let her be furious at the rest of us another day. She’ll be likelier to share then.”
Mehen grunted. He hoped so-broken planes he hoped so. As he walked he couldn’t help imagining the fortress and camp. A sprawling keep? A fortified tower? Barracks? Tents? How many soldiers? He imagined Farideh-thrown in a dungeon, tied to a stake, locked in a tower, dead-and shuddered. For all he tried to keep his mind focused on what he might do to get to her, what he might have to plan around, his thoughts kept drifting there.
And Havilar. .
Brin will keep her safe, he told himself. Or I will knock him senseless.
“Shall we resume then?” Khochen asked. “There’s little else to do.”
“Resume what?”
“Our discussion. About your latest friend.”
“What is there to discuss? I want nothing to do with Bahamut’s orphans.”
Khochen regarded him mildly. “Goodman, I said you made an excellent guess. I didn’t say you were right.” Mehen stared her down, but Khochen didn’t so much as blink.
“Will you stop with these games, little verlym?” Mehen spat. “Congratulations-you’re very clever. Someone is after me, then name them. I’m not going to dance for you.”