Fortunately, he was too intent on the quarry for anxiety to claim much of a hold on him. He had to redirect Jhesrhi as the murderers veered this way and that. Meanwhile, she had to maintain the pursuit and also pick up their comrades hiding in the shadows of chimneys or in doorways and stairwells at street level.
Even for a mistress of elemental magic, it had to be taxing. But one by one, Khouryn, Balasar, Medrash, and Gaedynn bobbed or whirled up into the sky. Aoth found a bit of amusement in the fact that the dwarf and the smaller dragonborn looked even more uncomfortable than he was. The paladin, though, appeared so intent on righteous vengeance as to barely even notice he was flying, while the auburn-haired archer smirked as usual.
Gradually, they narrowed the killers’ lead. Gaedynn tried a couple of shots, but even he couldn’t hit a moving target in such difficult circumstances. Jhesrhi’s conjured wind was just too strong, as well as unpredictable from one moment to the next.
The murderers leaped onto the roof of a fair-sized but dilapidated box of a house at the edge of the city. They threw open a trapdoor, scurried through, and closed it behind them.
“Half through the top and half through the bottom!” yelled Khouryn.
“I agree!” Aoth replied.
Jhesrhi spoke to the wind. Aoth recognized one of the languages of Chaos, although he wasn’t fluent enough to understand all the words. Fortunately, the wind did. Khouryn and the two dragonborn hurtled toward the ground. Aoth, Jhesrhi, and Gaedynn flew onto the roof, and then the air stopped supporting them or fluttering their clothes.
Jhesrhi panted and swiped back her hair with a shaky hand.
“Are you all right?” asked Aoth.
“Fine,” she said.
“There are only two Green Hands,” said Gaedynn, nocking an arrow, “and six of us. If-”
“I said I’m fine,” she said, gritting her teeth.
“Then let’s get to it,” said Aoth. In theory, with them coming in from the roof and Khouryn and the Tymantherans entering on the ground floor, they had the killers trapped between them. Still, he didn’t want to give the bastards time to do anything clever.
He tried to pull open the trapdoor. The Green Hands had barred it behind them. He jabbed the point of his spear into the wood, spoke a word of command, and released a bit of the power stored in the weapon. The trapdoor exploded into scraps and splinters.
Below the hole was a ladder. Aoth didn’t bother with it. He simply jumped and thumped down on a dusty floor. He pivoted, spear and targe poised for defense.
He was alone in a lightless attic festooned with spiderwebs. It smelled of age and abandonment. A steep staircase descended to the story beneath.
Aoth stepped aside, and Gaedynn jumped down after him. The air moaned and surged, and Jhesrhi floated down, as though to allay her comrades’ concerns that she was too tired to use more magic. She brightened the glow of the runes on her staff to serve for a lantern.
Gaedynn sniffed. “I smell smoke.”
Aoth realized he did too. But they needed to stay focused on catching the murderers. “Keep moving.”
Peering for some sign of the Green Hands, he led his lieutenants down the rickety stairs. The smell of burning grew stronger. From what he could see so far, the building looked like any derelict house. It had probably belonged to some prosperous burgher, with servants and apprentices consigned to the stark little rooms on this floor and the family sleeping in nicer ones below.
The darkness burned white, and something crackled. Aoth shuddered, his muscles locking, and the staircase shattered beneath him. As he and his comrades slammed down amid the wreckage, he realized that someone standing behind the steps, where even spellscarred eyes couldn’t see, had struck them all with a blaze of conjured lightning.
Fortunately, it hadn’t killed him. The protective charms bound into his tattoos and gear, his own innate hardiness, or Tymora’s favor had preserved him, and he prayed the same was true of his friends. Starting to feel the hot pain of his burns, he floundered around to face his attacker.
Then, at the very periphery of his vision, he glimpsed a robed, hooded figure stepping out of a doorway. Liquid sprayed him and his companions, searing them once again.
Aoth’s eyes burned and filled with tears. Something hit his chest-not, he thought, penetrating his mail but slamming the breath out of him. He was too blind to have any idea what it was.
For a long moment it felt to Medrash like he, Balasar, and the dwarf were simply falling. But at what was surely the last possible moment, the wind gusted upward to slow their descent. They still bumped down hard, but without injury.
Balasar drew his sword. “Appearances to the contrary,” he said, “maybe your wizard friend does have a sense of humor.”
Khouryn spun his axe through a casual practice swing. “No, she just set us down the easiest way, without caring whether it would make us think we were about to meet our ancestors.” He strode to the door of the derelict house and broke it open with a kick. The door banged against the interior wall, and the impact echoed throughout the building.
“Subtle,” Balasar said.
“They already know we’re chasing them,” Medrash said. “I doubt it matters.”
It was even darker once they entered the house. Medrash murmured a prayer and infused the blade of his sword with pearly light.
The glow revealed a ground floor that had, in its time, served the purposes of commerce, with empty shelves and counters near the door and worktables farther back. He couldn’t tell what the long-departed shopkeeper had manufactured and sold.
Nor did he care. All that mattered was bringing the Green Hand-or rather Hands-to justice and completing the task the Loyal Fury had entrusted to him. Ridding Luthcheq of a loathsome evil, further cementing the bonds of friendship between Chessenta and Tymanther, and bringing honor to Clan Daardendrien in the process.
A rat scuttled into a hole at the base of a wall. But except for vermin, the ground floor seemed deserted. “Let’s find the stairs,” he said.
Balasar pointed with his sword. “There.”
They started up, the spongy steps bowing under Medrash’s weight. Ruddy light flickered at the top. He wondered if something was on fire, and then two figures, mere shapeless silhouettes against the glow, abruptly stepped into view. Dark vapor streamed down at him.
Medrash’s nose and mouth burned. He doubled over coughing and could tell from the sounds behind him that his companions were similarly afflicted.
They had to exit the poison cloud and come to grips with their attackers. Despite his inability to catch his breath, and the fiery pain crawling down his throat into his lungs, he started running up the last few risers.
Then he faltered and found that he simply couldn’t continue. His attackers were exerting some sort of psychic compulsion to prevent it.
That meant he and his comrades had to escape out the other side of the fumes. “Back!” he croaked.
They turned and staggered downward. Until Khouryn, who was now in the lead, froze. An instant later, the dragonborn did too. Medrash could just distinguish other figures at the foot of the stairs. He had no idea where they’d been hiding when he’d first entered the shop. But somewhere, obviously, and now here they were, exerting the same influence as their accomplices on the floor above. Caging the intruders inside the toxic vapor.
Still coughing uncontrollably, Balasar collapsed.
The lightning, the fall, and the spray of vitriol, all coming within the span of a heartbeat or two, had stunned Gaedynn into a dazed passivity. But a part of him knew it and screamed for him to move.
He glimpsed motion in the direction from which the lightning had come. The possibility of a second such attack broke the impasse inside him. The part that wanted to act became the whole.