“Don’t waste your effort,” Dhojakt snarled, turning his head so that his mandibles could pierce her throat. “Your spells won’t hurt me.”
“This one will!”
Sadira pulled the crystal from her satchel and thrust it deep into one of Dhojakt’s nostrils. As she spoke her incantation, a cloud of brown vapor billowed from his nose. The prince screamed in agony, then flung the sorceress away.
Sadira slammed into the back wall of the slave pen so hard that it felt as though she would knock it over. Pain raged over her body, and she barely kept her head from slamming into the bricks. Still, she felt as if she were going to fall unconscious. Her vision narrowed to a dark tunnel, and Dhojakt’s agonized howls began to grow distant.
The sorceress shook her head and fought to keep her eyes open. If she allowed herself to fall unconscious, she would awake in the custody of Nibenese templars-if she awoke at all. Sadira focused all her thoughts on the throbbing agony in her skull, clinging to the pain like a falling man to a rope.
Finally, Dhojakt’s cries began to grow more distinct. Farther away, the sorceress could hear the sporadic explosions and hisses of magical combat. She clung to these sounds, using them to guide her back to reality.
Sadira’s vision slowly returned to normal, then the sorceress struggled to her feet. The leg that the cilops had savaged had exploded into numb, fiery pain. A wave of nausea rolled through Sadira’s stomach, her joints began to ache, and she broke into a cold sweat. The cilops poison, she knew, was taking effect.
Across the aisle, Dhojakt lay crumpled on the floor, his many legs twitching in agony and his torso writhing about madly. He held his hands over his face and howled for help in a pained, inhuman voice.
Sadira could hardly believe he was still alive. The spell she had used had been the most powerful she knew, capable of killing an entire company of soldiers in a single instant. That the prince had survived seemed totally inconceivable, for instead of spreading the acid fog over several acres, she had concentrated it inside his breathing passages. By now, there should have been nothing left of his head except a puddle of brown ooze.
Sadira briefly considered trying to kill him again, but could not think how to do it. Even if she had possessed a weapon, Dhojakt was as invulnerable to blades as he was to magic. As for another spell, if the death fog had not destroyed him, she did not know what could. The sorceress decided that her wisest course of action was to leave before someone came to help the prince.
As Sadira turned toward the back of the aisle, she saw a stocky figure standing there, surveying the scene. Since his face was concealed by a white scarf, the sorceress felt safe in assuming that he was a member of the Veiled Alliance.
“You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you,” she said, limping toward him. Instead of moving to help her, the man fled around the corner.
“Come back!” Sadira yelled, following the veiled figure.
By the time she stepped around the end pillar, the man was nowhere in sight. However, Magnus stood only a short distance up the debris-covered aisle. The windsinger was picking his way through a pile of guards that he had, apparently, finished killing just a few moments earlier. Across his shoulders lay Faenaeyon, staring blankly at the floor.
“Magnus, wait!” Sadira yelled, almost stumbling as a wave of dizziness overcame her. “I need your art!”
The windsinger paused long enough to twist around and glance at her. “Hurry.” He turned forward again and stumbled down the rubble-strewn aisle at his best pace. “I’ll meet you by the door.”
The sorceress took a small length of twine and formed a miniature leash, then raised it in Magnus’s direction and cast another spell. The windsinger stopped in midstride, one three-toed foot hovering several inches off the floor.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Sadira growled. “I said wait!”
THIRTEEN
THE DEAD GROVE
Sadira limped past a pyre of blazing tree trunks and entered the shade of the covered alley, coughing violently from the fumes of burning agafari wood. It was a hot, windless morning, and the smoke of the fires hugged the ground like a cloud of dust sinking to earth. The haze in the plaza hung so thick it was impossible to breathe without choking on mordant-tasting ash, and anyone standing more than a few feet away seemed no more than a ghostly silhouette.
In spite of the flames, Nibenese slaves labored throughout Sage’s Square, felling withered trees and throwing the blackened trunks onto mountainous fires. Somewhere in the smoke, an ensemble of the city’s finest ryl pipers filled the air with sorrowful notes, accompanying a morose singer lamenting the loss of the ancient grove.
“Did you find our guide?” asked Magnus.
“No,” Sadira answered. Already, it was well past dawn and they had seen no sign of Raka, or anyone else sent by the Veiled Alliance. “You’re certain you saw the boy escape the emporium?”
“Yes,” the windsinger answered. “A pair of slaves freed him from the rubble as I carried Faenaeyon down the aisle. He went with them, staggering, but under his own power. After that, I don’t know what happened. I was attacked by the Shom guards, and I lost sight of him.”
Through the smoke filling the alley, Sadira could just make out the cape the windsinger had used to bandage his wounds. Behind him loomed Faenaeyon, stooped over to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling. The elven chief still seemed groggy and unsteady, but had emerged from his stupor enough to walk on his own. After escaping the emporium, one of the first things the sorceress had done was pour half the antidote down her father’s throat. Then Sadira had asked Magnus to use his magic to heal her. Fortunately, the windsinger had been able to neutralize the venom of the cilops and stop the bleeding, but the sorceress’s leg remained sore enough that she found walking both difficult and painful.
Next to Faenaeyon stood Huyar, dutifully lending an arm of support to his father and chief. Rhayn was the only one absent from the group. She had gone to fetch Sadira’s kank, so that the sorceress could keep up once the company left the city.
After a moment, Huyar said to Sadira, “Perhaps your friend betrayed you. It would be the wise thing, after all.”
“Don’t make the mistake of judging the Veiled Alliance by your own standards,” Sadira replied, upset by the elf’s gloating tone.
“Whether the guide betrayed you or not makes no difference,” said Faenaeyon. His words came slowly and with a thick slur, for it was the first time he had spoken since emerging from his stupor. “It seems we must find our way out of the city.”
“That won’t be easy,” Sadira said. “I almost killed the sorcerer-king’s son yesterday. I doubt the gate guards will just let us leave.
“Even the walls of Nibenay have their cracks.” Faenaeyon said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Sneaking you out of the city shall be my repayment for rescuing me.”
“Thanks, but I’ve already negotiated my fee for that,” she said, casting a meaningful glance at Huyar.
“She has?” the chief asked, looking to his son. “What?”
Huyar gulped. “I’d said we’d take her to the Pristine Tower.”
Faenaeyon glared at him. “Then perhaps you shall be the one who takes her there.”
“But I don’t know where-”
“Go to Cleft Rock and follow the sunrise until you see the tower!” the chief growled. He grabbed Huyar by the neck and pulled him close. “How could you endanger the tribe by offering such a thing?”
“It was only way she’d ask her friends to find you,” Huyar said. “Besides, we don’t have to keep the promise-”
“Is Faenaeyon’s life worth so little to you?” demanded Sadira.
“My chief’s life is as dear to me as my own,” replied the elf. “But so was Gaefal’s-and I won’t let his death go unpunished.”
“Then find out who killed your brother and avenge yourself,” Sadira snapped. “But if you value Faenaeyon’s life, you’ll keep your promise to me.”