After cups of tea and inane pleasantries, Ellonlef had put the question to her. Hya’s answer was to smile darkly and declare, “I’m not leaving the Chalice. I am needed here far more than I am needed in either Rida or the rest of Aradan. I made that choice when your mother was yet on the teat, and Mother Eulari herself was no older than you are now. If Eulari does not like it, then she can command me to forsake our order, and I will-but here I will remain.”
In the end, Mother Eulari had granted Hya her wish, and as far as Ellonlef knew, the old woman was still serving the Najihar Order, if by her own rules.
After finding an area reasonably free of splinters, Ellonlef knocked on the door. When that drew no response, she pounded until she heard a steady grumbling from within. A bolt rattled and the door creaked open, revealing a milky eye shining in the pale yellow light of a firemoss lamp. That squinting orb glared for a moment above a wizened gray face, then flared wider.
“You,” Hya said, her voice raspy with age. She opened the door farther, allowing the pungent scent of sulfur to assail Ellonlef’s nostrils. “Well, child, what do you want? Come to drag me off to some backwater kingdom, have you?”
“No,” Ellonlef answered. The last few years had bent Hya greatly, and whatever womanly shape she might retain was lost under layers of bulky brown robes.
“Well,” Hya grumped, “if you have come to beg scraps, I’ve none to give. Taken to eating rats, myself. Tasty, they are, with the right spices-though, of late, even salt is hard to come by.”
Ellonlef was not sure how to ask what needed asking, so she kept it simple. “Hya, my companions and I need your help.”
“Companions, you say … Sisters escaped from Rida, perhaps?”
Ellonlef shook her head. “Three Izutarians.” Then, registering what the old woman had said, added, “What do you mean, escaped?”
Instead of answering, Hya pushed Ellonlef aside and leaned out the doorway. “Best hide those horses,” she advised, “lest some starving wretch hereabouts sees them. Braised horsemeat, is tastier than rats toasted on sticks, I assure you.”
“Hya,” Ellonlef urged, trying to ignore the cold fist clenched in her belly, “what happened that our sisters should flee Rida?”
Once more, Hya behaved as she had not heard the question, and shambled outside to motion to Kian and the others with her lamp. The trio dismounted and led their horses down the alley, curiosity and a measure of mistrust written plain on their northern faces. Hya shuffled deeper into the alley, her lamp swinging from its hemp handle. “It’s not a barn, but there’s room enough for your horses, and enough oats to feed them, a day or two.”
As Kian passed Ellonlef, he whispered, “Can we trust her?”
She wanted to reassure him, but in truth she simply did not know. Time and circumstances changed everyone. “I think, yes, but we should take no chances.”
Kian accepted this as he seemed to accept all threats, with a grim expression and searching eyes.
Hya stopped and held up her lamp before a slanting wooden door set in the wall. Eyes filmed or no, she knew what she wanted when she saw it. After passing over Azuri, pausing on Kian, her gaze lit on Hazad. “You there, open this door. Mind, the hinges are near rusted through, so don’t jerk it about.”
Hazad grinned at her, but Hya’s intense stare ended that. Hazad grasped the door’s large wooden handle and lifted until the lower edge came out of the dirt. Straining, he carefully backed up, pulling the door open as he went, the hinges screeching loud enough to make everyone cringe.
“That’s a good lad,” Hya said. She showed a handful of slanted yellow teeth a twisted grin. “Big and dumb and quick to obey-best qualities for any man,” she cackled.
Azuri burst out laughing, and only quieted when Hazad turned an ugly glare on him. At Hya’s gesture, Kian led two horses into the enclosure, followed by a still sniggering Azuri leading the other horses. While Hya held the lamp, the three Izutarians made quick work of unsaddling the mounts. Kian fetched the oats from a near-empty sack.
“Are you sure you would rather not keep this for yourself?” Kian asked.
Hya’s face knotted into a frightful collection of folds and wrinkles. “Never liked oats. Consistency’s too much like throw up. Now, come along,” she urged, turning and leading them into her shop.
Ellonlef followed close on the old woman’s heels through a doorway and into narrow aisle that ran from the back of the shop to the street beyond. On either wall, hundreds of small nooks and cubbyholes reached to the ceiling, filled with all manner of books, scrolls, vials, and substances folded into oiled parchment.
“You spoke of help,” Hya said, turning through yet another doorway that led into a larger, drafty room with boarded windows. The scent of soot and sulfur was strong. Ellonlef realized they were standing in what used to be the main shop. A brazier sat in one corner, but the room was barely warmer than it was outside. “My guess is that you are not interested in elements used to create fire?”
“Not yet, at least,” Kian said contemplatively.
Hya bobbed her head and hung the lamp from a peg on the wall, then moved about the room lighting candles, though not in any way Ellonlef had ever seen. First she sprinkled something from a small vial around the wicks, then spat on the substance. With a hissing crackle, dark purple flames shot up from each candle. After a moment, cheery yellow flames replaced the purple.
Hya noticed the curious looks, and held up a clear glass vial filled with dark red grains. Each crystalline speck caught the light, taking that light within itself, making it glow softly. “The Blood of Attandaeus, the Nectar of Judgment.”
Hazad’s eyes widened. “You are mad.”
Hya chortled and pinched his belly, causing him stumble backwards. “Mad, am I? Perhaps. But that changes not the name nor the potency of what is in this vial. When I could yet see clearly, and still had steady fingers, only I, a mere Sister of Najihar, among scores of pyromancers throughout Aradan and Tureece, dared labor on such a creation. And only I have succeeded in giving life to a substance that defies the properties of common fire. By blood or by water, by oil or by wine, all liquids set it alight. In quantity, it burns through flesh or iron, and nothing will smother the flames before the grains are spent.”
“Such as that could bring you great wealth,” Azuri observed.
“Indeed,” Hya said. “Yet, imagine if you will, an ambitious and cruel man gaining this knowledge and using it for war. There would be no stopping him. ‘Tis better the secret of its making dies with me, than to sell it and swim in gold tainted by the blood of innocents-or ashes, as it were.”
“What if there was a brutally ruthless man with even greater strengths at his disposal?” Ellonlef asked quietly. “A man with abilities born not of potions and powders … but of the powers of gods.”
Hya showed her few teeth in a slanting smile, and her misty eyes sharpened. “Then, Sister, I would seek out one such as myself.”
“And what advice would you offer?” Kian asked, seemingly concerned that the woman had guessed more than she was letting on. Ellonlef knew that Hya saw much, because they had both been trained to observe and deduce. Such was the reason she had brought them to Hya in the first place.
“I would suggest, Izutarian, that a man such as the one of which you speak should not be allowed to walk the face of the world. I would find those who could destroy such a man, and point them in the direction of those who could get the assassins close enough to make their attempt.”
“Would you aid these assassins, even if that meant murdering a highborn?”
“Highborn,” Hya whispered, clucking her tongue. “I would … even if that highborn were a king, I would.”