Ireni Erj-Ackal lived out the last three years of her life in forced retirement in Sea Reach, the capital of Saifhum, watching the minotaurs slowly take over the privateering around the island and hearing about rising stars such as Melas Kar-Thon and his daughter. Her own son watched her die, leaving thirty Ergothian brass coins on the side table where her sword once lay.
Vanderjack had never been back to Saifhum, nor spent another day on a sea nomad ship. The ubiquitous smells of patchai-ellai and curried fish sauces still made him sick to his stomach. He was no son of the sea. But he couldn’t stop gazing at it, and that meant thinking of her.
“Well?”
The sellsword’s thoughts came back to the present. Gredchen was standing there before him, and over her shoulder were the north gates of Pentar.
“Not until dark,” he said.
The baron’s aide exhaled and sat down next to him on the salt-worn rock. “Do you always walk into towns at night? They close the gates, you know.”
Vanderjack scratched his chin. “It’s the best time of the day to show up anywhere,” he said. “And besides, closing the gates in Pentar doesn’t mean anything. We’ll go down along the wharves. You can walk around there”-he pointed at the westernmost end of the fifteen-foot stone wall surrounding the port town-“into the Temple District, where the Seaguard don’t spend a lot of time, and these new priests are eager to be hospitable.”
Gredchen frowned. “Waiting here means Annaud’s men are going to catch up to us. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I certainly hope you do, for the baron’s sake. He’s paying you a lot of steel to sit around and wait until the sun goes down.”
Vanderjack and Gredchen did just that for another hour until the sellsword was sure there wasn’t any more light other than the slivers of the red and silver moons hanging above. Only then did he get up, stretch his legs, pick up his pack, and head toward the waterfront.
Pentar made its living as a trade port. During the war, it had been occupied by the red dragonarmy, liberated by the Whitestone forces from Kalaman, then abandoned to its fate. That suited the Pentari folk just fine. It wasn’t the melting pot that Palanthas or even Kalaman were. It wasn’t a haven for pirates or wealthy merchants either. What it was, and had been for more than a hundred and fifty years, was home to a thriving import business. The red dragonarmy made heavy use of that business, even four years after they had been kicked out.
Such constant trade meant that the town was full of hired help or those who wanted to be hired. If you weren’t a vendor or a sailor or a priest, you were a hireling, and that was exactly what Vanderjack wanted.
Vanderjack and Gredchen picked their way through a thicket of lobster pots and fishing huts before clambering up onto the Temple District wharf. Some of the locals were still perched on the edge of the wharf, muttering invocations to the gods-Habbakuk and Chislev and furious Zeboim. In the new age of godly reverence, the people of Pentar were keen to make as much use of the divine powers as they could to improve their lives … or their fishing.
Pentar had two small harbors, little more than niches in the coastline, which flanked a promontory that thrust out into the Turbidus Ocean between them. Upon that promontory rose the governor’s palace, and between the palace and the town itself was a walled orchard whose redolent smells of citrus wafted across the water to the temple district. Vanderjack considered walking around to the orchard, if only to reacquaint himself with tangerines. Maybe later, he thought. No need to get too close to the governor.
The streets were dark; only the main thoroughfare and the waterfront had lanterns. Gredchen walked close to Vanderjack; too close it seemed to him. Indeed she was always poking her bulbous nose into Vanderjack’s face when talking to him. He wondered absently whether her sheer ugliness made her abandon most people’s concept of personal space for lack of needing to concern herself with proprieties.
“Lots of temples,” he said to break the silence as they walked. “Half of them don’t even look open.”
“Missionaries came here soon after the war,” Gredchen said. “The baron had a priest of Paladine show up in person at his manor to welcome him into the faith if he so chose. He didn’t. A lot of the locals, however, were really pleased with the idea.”
Vanderjack stopped to look at one of the large, chunky idols set in front of a temple. It was a stylized striped and scaled cat of some kind, fashioned from brass and stacked on top of urns or amphorae or some kind of jug. It looked vaguely familiar.
“Isn’t there one of these statues in Glayward’s manor house?” he asked.
Gredchen nodded. “Very similar, yes. A big brass tiger icon given to Lord Gilbert’s grandfather by the natives many years ago. I wasn’t aware it had any religious association.”
Vanderjack indicated the temple’s dedication plaque. “Says this place is dedicated to a god of luck and the disenfranchised.”
“Branchala,” Gredchen said. “Usually a minstrel god, from what I’ve heard. But local religion always puts a new face on the gods. Supernatural mysticism and so on. It’s been common in Nordmaar ever since the land rose out of the sea; the only difference now is that the gods are real.”
Vanderjack snorted. “They’re real, all right. They were behind all of that mess in the war too. I don’t hold much store in that, although this luck god does sound interesting.”
The baron’s aide looked away, skimming the street with her eyes. “Are we done here, then?”
“Yeah, we’re done. Next stop-an inn of some kind. We need sleep. Big day ahead of us, shopping around for henchmen.” He patted the brass tiger statue on the head. “Good kitty.”
As they walked away, Gredchen swore she heard a growl from the direction of the temple. Looking over her shoulder, she saw nothing but the brass tiger totem, grinning back at her. She reminded herself to cover the statue in Lord Gilbert’s manor with a throw rug when she got back.
Rivven Cairn flew northwest with the sunset to her left and the jungle on her right, over the grasslands, toward the sea. Her red dragon, Cear, flew lazily, watching the grasses below for something edible.
“We don’t have the time to hunt,” the highmaster said, leaning a little forward in the ornate saddle so the dragon could hear her above the whipping wind.
“Why not?” replied the dragon. “I can do it easily from the air.”
“Later,” she said. Rivven wanted to be at the baron’s manor before it grew too dark. The half-elf didn’t like showing up when her hosts were sleeping. She preferred them to be awake, especially Lord Gilbert. She had a lot to talk to him about, and humans needed their sleep more than she did.
Above her, positioned between the thin crescents of Lunitari and Solinari, the red and the silver moons, she could see the gibbous black orb of Nuitari shining its dark light upon the world. Nobody but wizards who had turned to black magic and creatures of ineffable evil could see Nuitari’s moon. It was a beacon of wickedness, a constant reminder to her that her choices had opened a window into a sinister world few dared to glimpse.
Ariakas had tested her magical skills several years before, during the war. Curious of her talent, he had constructed a vivid yet entirely illusory proving ground on the borders of dream, a mindscape of meditation he himself used when calling upon the darkest of forces. She’d shown him all she knew, and he’d responded, and she realized how far along the path the emperor of Ansalon had already gone. Despite the fact that he had abandoned the black robes many years earlier in favor of the weapons of war, he had lost none of his arcane edge. Compared to him, she was a novice.
Rivven had used that experience to motivate herself into deeper study. Rather than embrace necromancy or the shadowy magic of guile and betrayal, as other evil wizards had, Rivven focused on fire. The constant flames of the outer dark flickered within her, just as they did within red dragons and fiery fiends and elementals. Her soul was a black candle, eternally lit. It drew her closer to Cear, who recognized within her a kindred spirit, and it fueled her magic as Ariakas’s path of conquest fueled his.
In their last exchange, a week before the Whitestone Armies broke the defenses of Neraka and the Temple of Darkness was destroyed, Ariakas had asked Rivven of her progress in the magical arts. He said, “Have you found the thorn?” and she had understood what he meant. Ariakas did not draw upon Nuitari’s power. He had found another path, under the guidance of his Dark Queen, a barb that bit deep within and pierced the heart of
