The Siege (17 page)

Hadrhune’s amber eyes peered over the edge. “I know where you are, Malik.”

The Shadovar whispered some barely audible shadow spell, then Malik floated up through the hole into the goodshouse that had been serving as Aris’s workshop. The place was crowded with Shadovar warriors but still looked as though a troop of bugbears had crashed through it. Statues lay toppled on their sides, some— mostly half-finished pieces that had little value anyway— shattered or irretrievably broken. The walls were marked with streaks of soot and pocked with hollows the size of a giant’s head, and a broad smear of Aris’s blood ran along the wall, pointing out the huge hole through which Malik had just been retrieved.

After taking all this in, Hadrhune turned to Ruha. “Did I not warn you what would happen if you violated our guest guard?”

Eyes widening, Ruha looked around the workshop and shook her head. “This is not my doing.”

“Do not lie to me, Harper. With my own ears, I heard you give Malik the choice between death and leaving in your custody. That is violation enough.” Hadrhune looked to Malik. “Where is the giant?”

Biting his tongue lest he speak and give himself away, Malik simply turned and looked out the big hole where he had been dangling.

“I see.” Hadrhune flicked a hand in Ruha’s direction, and suddenly she was swaddled in black shadow web. “You will be executed as soon as the Most High pronounces your sentence. What do you wish done with your property?”

“Nothing. I killed no one, and he knows it” Ruha glared at Malik, and in her stare he felt the unspoken threat to reveal Galaeron’s escape plans. “Ask him. He has no choice but to tell the truth.”

Hadrhune considered this for a moment, then nodded. “A reasonable request.” He turned to Malik. “Did she kill Aris?”

“I have no wish to see her executed,” Malik said.

“You don’t?” This from Ruha and Hadrhune both.

“Not at all. It will be enough to banish her from the city.”

Hadrhune frowned. “I didn’t know Cyric-worshipers were so merciful.”

“Oh, we are not,” Malik said, allowing a half-smile to crease his lips, “but I can think of no greater torture for Ruha than to know I am living like a king in Shade Enclave while she is sucking the dew out of sand down in Anauroch.”

“That is not how justice works in Shade Enclave,” Hadrhune said. “Tell me if she killed Aris or not.”

Malik shook his head—truthfully.

“If I banish her, Aris’s life will be your responsibility,” Hadrhune warned. “Tell me now, or the weight of her crime will rest on your head.”

“On my head?”

This was something Malik had not planned on. He glanced at Ruha and found her smirking at his predicament—that he had to either exonerate her or be executed for the crime he had accused her of. He shook his head in despair.

“Let me make certain I understand,” he said. “If she killed the giant, then you will execute her, and I will remain in Shade Enclave living like a king?”

Hadrhune nodded. “Did she kill him?”

Malik raised his hand. “But if she did not, you will banish her and execute me?”

Hadrhune nodded. “Yes. When someone is murdered, someone must pay. That is the law.”

“My miserable life is only one unfair circumstance after another,” Malik complained. He took a deep breath, then said, “I have no wish to die, but the truth is this: No one killed Aris. He and I staged this whole thing so that he and Galaeron could escape into the desert.”

“Malik!” Ruha gasped. “I should have known you would—”

“Silence!” Hadrhune raised his hand toward her. The shadow web rose to cover her mouth. The seneschal glared at Malik for a moment, then said, “As you wish, little man.”

Still pointing at the Harper, Hadrhune swept his hand toward the jagged hole, and Ruha flew from the room and arced down toward the desert. When her black cocoon finally tumbled out of sight, he pointed at Malik and whispered something arcane. Malik found himself swaddled in sticky black shadow.

“Now you will stand before the Most High and answer for the giant’s death,” Hadrhune said. “To think, I nearly believed Galaeron when he said you could not lie.”

16Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic

Escanor’s army cascaded from the Cave Gate in a long river of flapping wings and shadowy pennants that curved down toward the east and vanished into the umbral mists beneath the city. Galaeron waited until the last rank of riders was well past the Livery Most High, then walked his veserab out to join the rear of the great formation. When no one objected—or even seemed to notice—he waved to Aris, who drifted into the Marshaling Court kneeling on a flying disk so overloaded with waterskins that it wobbled under the giant’s slightest gesture.

Aris leaned down toward Galaeron, tilting the dish so precariously that it would have spilled its cargo had he not lowered a massive arm to hold the waterskins in place.

“You’re sure the guards won’t notice?” asked the giant.

“They’ll notice,” Galaeron replied, wincing at the gusty volume of the giant’s whisper, “but we’ve traveled with Escanor before. A pair of gate guards isn’t going to question our presence now.”

“That I know, but this they would question,” Aris said. He pointed at his knees, which were resting on a section of shadow blanket Galaeron had stolen as he left the looms. “You are certain we must take it?”

“I’m certain—very certain,” Galaeron said. “That’s how I repay them.”

“Repay who?” Aris asked.

“All of them,” Galaeron hissed. “Telamont, Escanor, Vala… everyone who’s betrayed me.”

“This is your shadow speaking, Galaeron,” Aris said. “No one has betrayed you—especially Vala.”

“Then where is she?” Galaeron hissed. “Why is she not here to keep her promise?”

“Because not being here is the only hope she sees of not having to keep it,” Aris answered calmly. “You must leave this place before you are lost, and that would be impossible if she deserted Escanor to come with us. I am sure she will track us down later—especially if it proves necessary for her to keep her promise.”

Galaeron shook his head. “You are too trusting, my large friend. Once we’re gone, she will have no way of knowing when it becomes necessary.”

“But she will,” Aris said. “I will tell her.”

They came to the watch balconies, and Aris clamped his mouth shut and stared ahead so rigidly that he looked suspicious even to Galaeron. The guards’ gem-colored eyes fixed on the giant and followed his advance until they had passed under the great portcullis and launched themselves out into the sky,

then they were curving down under the enclave with the rest of Escanor’s army. Once they had passed out of view of the Cave Gate, they began to lag behind the others, and Galaeron used his shadow magic to make them both invisible. He was not really surprised to find the familiar chill of the Shadow Weave quenching a thirst that had lain buried just beneath the surface of his subconscious.

They dropped out of the shadow haze to find themselves over a mazelike warren of deep ravines and sheer pinnacles that marked the transition between the rolling sea of sand dunes over which the city had been drifting for most of the past tenday and the jagged spine of desert mountains toward which it was floating. Escanor’s army was flying more or less in the same direction as the enclave but angling just a little bit south straight into the rising sun. Whistling an elven tune to help Aris keep track of him, Galaeron turned in the opposite direction— west toward Evereska.

“Galaeron?” Aris called.

“Here. Can’t you hear my song?”

“If one can call that lip-trilling music, yes,” Aris replied, “but shouldn’t we have a look down there? It looks like someone might be in trouble.”

Galaeron searched the sands ahead and saw nothing. “Where?”

“South of our bearing,” Aris said. “Lying in the hollow on the crest of that dune, perhaps a mile back.”

Galaeron looked and saw nothing but golden sunlight shining on the eastern faces of an endless chain of sand walls. “Where?”

“Follow me,” Aris said.

The sonorous purr of stone giant humming arose beside Galaeron. He reined his veserab back and fell in behind his invisible companion, then followed the sound

down toward the desert at a gentle angle. After a few moments, he saw the tiny dimple toward which they were descending, a circle the size of his fingertip with a minuscule fleck of darkness in the center. The fleck gradually grew large enough so that Galaeron could see it was indeed wriggling about like a chrysalis struggling to escape its cocoon.

“He lied!” Aris boomed.

“Who lied?” Galaeron called.

“Malik!” the giant exclaimed. “He told me Ruha would come to no harm.”

Galaeron eyed the dark cocoon. It was about as long as his hand, and he could see that it had a vaguely human shape, with a head-shaped lump on one end and a feet-shaped tail at the other.

“How do you know that’s Ruha?” asked the elf.

“How could it not be?” Aris demanded. “How many dark-haired women in veils do you expect to find lying about in this desert?”

“More than you might think,” Galaeron replied. The giant’s description could fit any Bedine woman Galaeron had ever seen, though it would have been an unthinkable coincidence to find one lying about trussed up beneath Shade Enclave’s path. “But if you say it is Ruha, I will trust to your eyesight. It is obviously better than an elf’s.”

“Oh yes, it is definitely the witch,” Aris said. “I recognize her now.”

To Galaeron, she was still an indistinguishable lump of darkness. They descended to the crater in silence, and a minute later, Galaeron recognized Ruha’s dark eyes peering out above her customary purple veil. Judging by the size of the crater in which she lay, she had hit the dune with a fair amount of speed, but she either had magical protections or was exceptionally resilient even

for a Bedine. Swaddled in a cocoon of shadow web that would have dissolved in another hour anyway, she was writhing about, rolling back and forth in an effort to work her hands free so she could dispel the magic that held her bound.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Galaeron called. “We’re here.”

“It is about time!” Ruha rolled onto her back and looked more or less toward Galaeron’s voice. “I was beginning to think you meant to leave me out here to die.”

“Meant to?” Aris said, speaking from the side opposite Galaeron. “We did not mean to do anything. It is a lucky thing we saw you at all. How did you end up here?”

“Do not feign innocence with me, Gray Face. You are not much better at lying than Malik.”

“Lying?” Aris gasped. “He said that you would not be harmed.”

“And so I am not,” Ruha said, “but your plan has miscarried.”

“What plan would that be?” Galaeron dismounted and tried to dispel the shadow web. To his astonishment, the spell failed—and even that felt good. “Who cast this on you? One of the princes?”

“As if you didn’t know!” Ruha scoffed.

Galaeron had a sinking feeling. “I don’t know,” he said. “What do you think our plan was?”

“To make it look like I had violated the Shadovar’s guest guard, of course,” Ruha said.

“Why would we do that?” Galaeron asked.

“To have me exiled, so I would have to serve as your guide.” Ruha was beginning to look less angry and more perplexed. “But Malik could no more keep your secret than he could neglect an untended purse.”

Galaeron glanced eastward and finding Shade Enclave little more than a dark diamond barely visible against the

shadowed slopes of the distant mountains, dispelled his invisibility spells. He found Aris looking more than a little chagrined.

“Aris, what happened?” Galaeron asked. “You were only to create a distraction.”

“We did create a distraction,” the giant said. “We made it look like Ruha had attacked Malik and knocked me out of the enclave.”

“That much worked,” Ruha said, “but Hadrhune isn’t naive. He knew Malik was hiding something, and eventually Malik had to admit that you and Aris had left the city.”

Galaeron and Aris immediately looked toward the city.

“You have a little time,” Ruha said. “Hadrhune didn’t believe him. But sooner or later, they’re going to discover that you’re gone—and when that happens, Malik will be in trouble.”

“As will Vala,” Aris said. “It won’t take them long to realize we were all part of the plan.”

“Unless we return to the city at once,” Ruha said. “Hadrhune still believes that I killed Aris while trying to capture Malik. If we return to the enclave with Aris alive, matters will be confused, but there will be no crime. Things will be as before. You will be able to bide your time and escape when it is safe for Vala.”

Galaeron shook his head. “Except for the shadow blanket.” He pointed at Aris’s bronze flying disk. “Once they realize that is gone, they’re not going to believe anything we say.”

“Shadow blanket?” Ruha asked.

Aris pulled a corner up from behind his waterskins. “Galaeron’s vengeance,” he said. “It will be the undoing of us all.”

Ruha frowned. “What is that?”

Galaeron explained about how the Shadovar were

using the blankets to melt the High Ice and upset the weather all along the Savage Frontier and Sword Coast.

“Once they realize I’ve taken this, I doubt they’re going to trust us much further.”

“I believe that time has come,” Aris said. He pointed toward the floating city, where a single dark line could be seen descending beneath the enclave. “They seem to be turning in our direction.”

“In the name of Kozah!” Ruha cursed. Still encased in her shadow web, she began to roll toward the shadowy side of the dune. “Quick, send your veserab and flying disk into the west. We will hide beneath the sands, then sneak away after they pass by.”

Galaeron nodded and sent his veserab into the sky, then turned and rushed across the crater to where Aris was unloading his waterskins.

“Leave the water. There is no time!” he said, jumping onto the disk. “Get the blanket!”

“The blanket?” Aris gasped.

“The blanket!” Galaeron said, hurling the heavy shroud into the crater. “Water, we can find later.”