The long hall ended in a pair of tall doors as green as the columns. Two orcs stood ready beside the doors. Tzaryan beckoned one forward. “Go to the dungeon,” he told him. “Tell the shifter that Ekhaas is safe and that he is summoned to dinner. Guide him here.” He frowned. “If you see the General, tell him that he is summoned to dinner as well.”
“There’s no need.” Robrand came striding out of one of the corridors that opened onto the hall. Chuut was close behind him. Robrand’s face was set in a stony mask. He marched up to Tzaryan and dropped down on one knee. “Lord Tzaryan, I’ve just come from the dungeon. Ekhaas and the shifter are both gone. He helped her escape.” He glanced sideways at Singe and added, “Whatever trust you had in him, he broke it.”
Singe’s body stiffened as if someone were holding his feet and his neck and stretching them apart. His eyes opened wide, staring at Robrand with an angry intensity. His lip curled. He trembled. “No,” he breathed-then he flung his head back and screamed, “Twelve bloody moons! Geth, you hairy traitor!”
Abruptly, everyone was talking at once. Robrand was on his feet, explaining to Tzaryan how he’d gone down to the dungeon only to find Ekhaas’s cell empty and that a preliminary search of the keep had turned up nothing. “I doubt they’re even here any longer,” he said. “Ekhaas probably used magic to get them past the guards at the gate. I’m organizing patrols now. We’ll find them.”
Singe was ranting, stomping back and forth in the hall, his hand clenched around the hilt of his rapier. “I’ll kill him!” he spat, his voice seething. “This time I will kill him. Devourer take him, I knew I couldn’t trust him.”
Orshok and Natrac leaped forward, trying to calm Singe down and defending Geth. “Why would he do it?” Orshok asked. “If he ran, it was because you drove him away!” shouted Natrac. Nothing they said had any effect beyond, however, making the din in the hall even louder. Singe thrust them aside and stormed up to Robrand and Tzaryan, demanding a place in any hunt. Tetkashtai was still wailing and pleading in Dandra’s head, adding her penetrating voice to the chaos.
Dandra pressed her hands over her ears and clenched her teeth. A hand touched her shoulder. Dandra whirled to find Ashi standing at her side, her pierced lips drawn tight in concern.
“What’s wrong? the hunter asked.
“It’s too much,” Dandra choked. “I can’t think. Tetkashtai’s gone-”
“Enough!” roared Tzaryan. His bellow rolled through the hall, silencing Singe and Robrand, sending Natrac and Orshok flinching back, bringing Chuut to stiff alertness, and tearing a frightened shriek out of one of the orc slaves. Even Tetkashtai seemed shocked into a quiet whimper. Tzaryan’s black-eyed gaze raked them all. His fingers stabbed out, pointing at the orcs. “You,” he said, “leave us.” The orcs fled as if pursued by hounds. Tzaryan turned to Chuut. “You-find a patrol and join it.” The ogre nodded and turned for one of the other side corridors.
Tzaryan looked to Robrand and Singe, standing together with near identical expressions of cold anger on their faces, then to the others. “All of you-” He tugged on his robes, straightening them. “-will join me for dinner.”
“With respect, Lord Tzaryan,” Singe said, “unless you’re serving roast of shifter, I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Silence!” Tzaryan’s hands jerked as he shouted into Singe’s face. The crimson fabric of his robes tore under his grip, leaving everyone staring at wide rips through which blue-green showed like bone through a bloody injury. Tzaryan’s teeth ground down. Slowly and deliberately, he pulled the ruined garment back together. “Dinner,” he said with a horrible calm. “Now.”
He stepped up to one of the doors at the end of the hall and gestured for the General to take the other, then stared at Singe. The wizard drew a harsh breath, then bent his head in grudging submission. Tzaryan glanced at Robrand and the old man nodded obediently. Tzaryan’s grip tightened on the handle-
— just as Tetkashtai’s voice rose in a howl above the silence of the moment. Open yourself, Dandra, you stupid dahr! Think like a kalashtar for once and listen to me! Her light coalesced, then burst across Dandra’s mind like a slap in the face.
Dandra jerked, startled, and for an instant the walls she had erected in her mind to blot out Tetkashtai shivered and thinned-and Dandra felt the questing touch of another presence against her mind. It wasn’t an active, probing touch like that of Medala or a mind flayer, but rather something passive, like the pull of waves on an ocean. She wanted to go to it, to enter the waves even though they could be her doom.
She knew the feel of that presence. She knew what had kept Tetkashtai on edge in Tzaryan Keep. She understood what Tetkashtai had been trying to warn her about-and why Tzaryan was so insistent they accompany him. Dandra gasped and grabbed Ashi’s arm with a desperate strength. “Ashi, run! It’s-”
The warning came too late. The green doors were moving, swinging wide, to reveal a courtyard entirely open along one long side to the fiery sky of evening. In the courtyard sat Dah’mir, the setting sun turning his scales copper and gleaming on the Khyber dragonshard-now restored-that was embedded in the center of his chest. There was nothing of the weakness that Geth had described seeing in Zarash’ak about him. He looked strong and fit. Along the wall of the courtyard, black herons perched like a crowd gathered to watch an execution.
“Finally,” said Dah’mir, “I thought you’d never come.”
Tetkashtai’s wails rose into a piercing scream as the power of the dragon’s presence enveloped them. Dimly Dandra saw Orshok raise his hunda stick, saw Singe rip his rapier from his scabbard. She strained, fighting against the fascination that dug into her mind, straining to find some thought or power that would shield her, but Dah’mir’s presence was overwhelming-
Strong, lean arms wrapped around her, snatching her off the floor, throwing her over a tanned shoulder. Long hair woven with wooden beads whirled around her, and feet pounded the floor in long strides as Ashi seized on her warning and ran.
Dah’mir’s howl of startled rage followed them.
CHAPTER 16
A grunt and rapid footsteps were all the warning that Singe had. Dah’mir’s gaze focused past him and the dragon roared in frustration. Herons rose into the sky in a flurry of black wings. Up so close, the sound was deafening. Singe staggered against it, but managed to twist around in time to see Ashi dart down one of the side corridors that opened off the long hall, carrying Dandra-dazed from even the brief exposure to Dah’mir’s awe-inspiring presence-over her shoulder. The hunter had the right idea. Singe’s rapier felt like a toy in his hand, the most powerful spell at his disposal a candleflame.
“Run!” he shouted at Natrac and Orshok.
But it was already too late for them. Dah’mir’s roar fell silent and even over the ringing in his ears, Singe heard the rasp of the dragon’s inhaled breath. Dread pierced him. Dah’mir’s head whipped forward and his mouth opened. Singe whirled, trying to cover his face as if that would protect him from the dragon’s acid venom. Except that no acid came-instead of searing liquid, Dah’mir’s breath billowed around them, warm and wet. The taste of copper seeped into Singe’s mouth and nostrils and across his tongue. Abruptly the air seemed thick. It dragged on him, impeding his every sluggish move. He turned back, looked up.
Orshok and Natrac had been caught in the dragon’s strange breath as well. They moved with such agonizing slowness that it looked almost as if they were swimming. By comparison, Dah’mir’s movements were fluid and lightning fast. Even his voice crackled in Singe’s ears, bellowing frustration turned sharp and staccato.