When they broke from the kiss, Zhia kept a tight hold on him as she looked him in the eye, an enigmatic smile on her face. Despite feeling intoxicated by her presence, Doranei was still disconcerted by the sud¬den closeness. The fingers of just one of those hands on his neck could snap it without appreciable effort, and the inner light of those deep blue eyes were like none he'd ever seen. The closest equivalent he knew was the bust of Nartis that stood in the royal baths in Narkang: each eye was a flawless sapphire. It was a blasphemous comparison, he knew, but undeniable. Not even King Emin's cold, glittering eyes shone so brightly.
'Now; as pleasant a diversion as you are, I suspect that was not the only reason for your visit?'
'The king asks for your help.'
'And what do you ask for?' she said unexpectedly. Doranei blinked, distracted by both the question and the sensation of Zhia's finger stroking the line of his spine.
'I- I would like you to help my king.'
'Nothing else?' The stroking stopped as she pushed her sculpted fingernail into his skin, not hard enough to break the skin, but just enough that he could feel the prickle of pain there.
He made a show of thinking for a moment. 'Another kiss would also be nice.'
'Only nice? I must be losing my touch,' Zhia said, brushing his lips with hers before she pushed out of his grip and went to the table. 'Sit, have you eaten?'
He nodded, but still joined her at the table. She plucked a fat olive from one of the bowls and popped it in her mouth. A trail of oil ran down one of her fingers until she caught it with her tongue and meticulously licked it off.
'I thought vampires didn't eat normal food,' he said.
Zhia gave him a derisive look. 'Oh sweetness, and you were doing so well too. Blood gives me something of the person's life essence, that vitality that separates them from rock or water. It is that vitality that I lost all those years ago, but there would be a lot of hollow space inside me if it was merely magic keeping my body together. Far better to just build bones and muscles the same way a normal person does, even if the magic inside then makes them stronger.' She took another olive and sat in one of the white painted chairs there, indicating for Doranei to do the same. 'But I don't think the favour your king is asking for is an essay on the habits and physiology of vampires.'
'It isn't. We know you have had agents watching the theatre-'
'There's not a lot left of it now,' Zhia interrupted, 'and as for the spell carved all around the outer wall, I have only a vague grasp of how it worked. They managed to prevent my agents from discovering too much. Legana tells me it was Lord Isak who burned it down. There is nothing to be learned from the shell that remains.'
'But the players didn't die in the fire,' Doranei said. 'We don't care about the spell cast on this city, only the ones casting it.'
'The minstrel?'
'Amongst others.'
'Are they really so important to you?'
She offered him one of the bowls and instinctively he reached to take what was inside. Once he'd inspected the contents of his hand, Doranei's stomach sank. He couldn't even make a guess as to what it was, but the slimy texture and ridged green skin didn't inspire much confidence. Trying not to think any more about it, Doranei popped the object into his mouth and chewed quickly before swallowing it.
He cleared his palate with a mouthful of wine, then said, 'They are followers of Azaer; it's worth the risk if we can kill even some of them.'
'You fear this happening in Narkang?' Zhia said, offering the same bowl again with the twist of a smile on her face.
'No,' he said as he declined the slimy ridged thing politely, 'but it shows that Azaer is no longer content living in the shadows. How much do you know of it, even now? I doubt you've ever encountered any of its followers in the past. The shadow wouldn't have risked going anywhere near you, considering how powerful you are. Now it appears that has changed, and the shadow's confidence grows. It has made a grand promise of the horror it is capable of bringing; and it has taken great care in the slaughter of priests.' He leaned forward in his seat. 'Azaer wants the Gods themselves to witness what it has done in Scree, he wants them to watch, and to fear for their very existence.'
'You think it so powerful?'
'Powerful?' He shook his head. 'No, not powerful, otherwise it wouldn't have maintained such a low profile. But perhaps that is the danger; if few recognise it, then it can run unchecked for years – like the Malich affair, but on a global scale, and spanning centuries, perhaps even millennia.' Doranei frowned. 'Malich is dead and gone, yet now Lord Isak has learned the man's apprentice is in the city, he will not leave until that necromancer is dead. The echoes of Malich's deeds return to haunt us – and he was just a man from Embere. What if he had been an Immortal, with limitless patience and guile that we cannot even guess at?' He stopped, seeing she was not fully convinced, Have you ever heard of Thistledell?'
His question seemed to catch Zhia off-guard. After a while, she nodded uncertainly. 'In passing – was it something horrible, done the day before Silvernight? I don't believe I have ever heard the full story.'
Doranei shook his head. 'I'm not surprised; you won't find anyone willing to speak of Thistledell these days. This was the coronation festi¬val – always the most popular of our summer festivals because the king is extremely generous. It's almost impossible to believe such a thing could have happened in such a quiet little village, and over the years people have worked hard to forget – there aren't even any signposts pointing to Thistledell now.' Doranei hesitated, disquieted himself. 'I accompanied Ilumene there soon after I joined the Brotherhood, and what I saw scarred my soul. We stood there and watched the men from the neighbouring villages sift the ashes to unearth the bones. I still remember his words: "There are traces of darkness in our every deed. Whatever weakness was inside these people, were they any different to us!
'I low to see the shadow within a shadow?' Zhia said with weary understanding.
I)oranei looked into her eyes and remembered she and her brothers had been touched by a greater horror than he'd ever known.
'Azaer turned them against each other?' she asked.
'We don't know what happened exactly, only that they thought they had been blessed when a talented minstrel arrived for the cel¬ebrations… and then they tore each other apart.'
Zhia nodded slowly. 'And now your minstrel has come to Scree, to spread his traces of darkness here. I will give you one of my agents to guide you; Rojak and his companions have gone to hide in the slums to the south.'
She closed her eyes and took a steadying breath, then began to whisper in some flowing arcane tongue Doranei could not recognise. He sat still until Zhia looked at him again, her earlier joviality gone. With a sigh the vampire pushed herself to her feet.
'My agent is waiting for you downstairs; he will follow your com¬mands without question.' She took Doranei's hand and held his fingers up to her cheek a moment. 'Once you have your revenge, leave this place before it consumes you, or the minstrel will have won after all.'
Zhia gave him a delicate kiss, hardly more than a brush on the lips, for all the tenderness in her eyes. 'Be careful; revenge is a wild beast and more often than not it isn't just the intended who are hurt as it rampages. I wouldn't like to see you hurt, not when you're such a sweet diversion. Tell your king he's lost this round, it's time to salvage what is left and prepare for the next.'
Doranei nodded dumbly and yielded to her gentle urging towards the door, but something stayed his hand as he opened it. Turning, he looked back at Zhia who was standing perfectly still in the centre of the room, her hands clasped together.