bitter amusement. Harp handed the parchment to Boult, who unrolled it.
With an uneasy chuckle, Harp began packing up the maps. But Boult crumbled the parchment violently in his fist and glared at Harp with a deadly look in his eyes. Harp had seen that look on Boult’s face a few times, but it had never been directed at him. At people trying to kill them, yes, but never at him.
“Easy, Boult,” Harp said, puzzled by the intensity and anger coming from his friend. “What’s wrong?”
“What in the Nine Hells is this?” Boult said, throwing the ball of paper at Harp.
“What do you mean?”
“Those are orders from Cardew,” Boult said, answering his own question.
“He must have hired Bootman and told him where to find us,” Harp agreed.
“It’s from Cardew,” Boult repeated again.
“Yes,” Harp replied slowly, resisting the urge to make a jest. Harp wasn’t the best at social interactions, but even he could tell that making light of the situation might be dangerous to his health.
“When you said that Avalor wanted us to come to Chult, I assumed it was to find Liel and her husband, Cardew,” Boult said with barely contained fury. “If Cardew is lost in the jungle with Liel, how is he sending mercenaries to kill us?”
“Because he isn’t lost in the jungle.” “Well, where is the bastard?”
“The Hero Cardew is alive and well,” Harp continued. “He showed up at the Court of the Crimson Leafthe only survivor of an unnatural attack in Chult, at least so he says. And that’s when Avalor contacted me.”
“Custard-swilling, dog-kissing, demon-loving, boil-on-a-halfling’s ass,” Boult muttered.
“I’m going to assume that’s directed at the illustrious Hero of the Realm and not me,” Harp said when Boult had finished his tirade. He considered Boult. “This isn’t about my… relationship with Cardew, is it?”
Boult snorted. “Relationship? Like you two strolled through a field of violets holding hands?”
“You know what Cardew did to me,” Harp said. “And while it makes my heart feel all tingly that his name brings out such violence in you”
“It isn’t about you!”
“Gee, Boult, even with the intellectual capacity of a loaf of bread, I managed to work that out,” Harp said pointedly. “Normally I’d have no interest in prying in your past. But it seems like I’m not the only one in the room keeping secrets, and at the heart of the matter is a man named Cardew. You’re right. I owe you an explanation. But I think you owe me one too.”
“You should be put in a catapult and launched over a cliff,” Boult told him.
“It’s your turn to confess, Boult,” Harp said quietly.
“I hate the day you came caterwauling into the world.”
“Yes, yes, you despise me,” Harp said. “Now talk.”
“I was happier when I thought that son of a barghest was probably dead,” Boult said. He sat down on the edge of the cot and glared at the crumpled missive on the floor. “Have you ever heard of Amhar, Scourge of Tethyr?”
“Of course. Who hasn’t?”
“Who hasn’t?” he repeated sadly. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER FOUR
30 Hammer, Year of Splendors Burning (1469 DR) The Road to Windhollow
Amhar and the soldiers left the grounds of the Winter Palace and headed north up the dirt road. Each man carried a hooded lantern to ward off the gloom. During daylight hours, the pleasant track wound through the woods until it reached the foothills and climbed into the mountains beyond Windhollow. Queen Anais would have taken that road, had she not got stuck in Celleu due to the fog.
Fog wasn’t a proper name for the weather, Amhar thought. Thick, fuggy, foulit was as if gauze had enveloped the soldiers. Amhar’s breath clogged his nostrils and throat, and the fog pressed on his ears, smothering sounds. Darkness he could have handledhis eyes were made for the gloom of deep tunnelsbut the fog obscured everything past the end of his axe.
He tried to recall the name of the soldier trudging up the road beside him, but he couldn’t remember. Or maybe he’d never known in the first place. None of the men on the road with him were in his regiment or stationed with him in Darromar.
Thinking of Darromarright, ordered, well-built Darromar Amhar wished he hadn’t been sent to the Winter Palace. It was an honor, to be sure, to be entrusted with the safety of the realm’s finest and the children of Anais and Evonne, the Heirs of Tethyr, besides.
But that night, in the presence of the abnormal weather, fear had wormed its way into his chest.
The groundskeeper vanished looking for the cook who disappeared with dinner unfinished. And why was that load of wood delivered in this weather? And then there were the guests themselves. They had managed to arrive before the fog settled, yet they were so fatigued they’d all begged off to their rooms to rest before dinner, without the usual preening and gossiping these sorts of events were full of.
Nothing made sense.
Preferring to be angry rather than afraid, Amhar focused his mind on Cardew, the idiot who was ignoring warning signs that were as plain as the nose on his face. Fussing about his dinner with an unnatural fog rising up and swallowing servants. And the children in the palace in that buffoon’s care!
If anything happened, Amhar knew he’d blame Cardew’s stubborn posturing for the rest of his days.
They reached the crest of the hill where they were supposed to rendevous with the man who had sent for reinforcements. The fog pressed in on them, smothering the light of their lanterns and deadening the sounds of their footfalls.
“Where did the scout go?” the man beside him asked, shivering in his uniform.
“He may be up the next rise,” Amhar said. “Too foggy to see where you’re at in this.”
Suddenly a noise like a door being ripped off its hinges broke through the fog and made the soldiers startle and yank out their weapons. They moved into a tight circle with their backs to each other, tensely waiting for something to materialize out of the fog. Soon, they heard skittering noises coming from beyond the light of their lanterns. Amhar felt oddly claustrophobic, as if he were in a tiny room. The skittering noises faded away, but the soldiers held their defensive position until the silence seemed secure.
“The wildlife,” Amhar said, his words sounding false even to his own ears. “They’re probably as disoriented as we are.”
Continuing their cautious walk up the road, they came to the foot of a steep rise where the ruts from cart wheels dug deep into the road’s surface. There was still no sign of the scout, but the fog was a little thinner, and they could see the diffuse light of the moon through the clouds overhead.
“Ugh,” a soldier said. “How come it got muddy all of a sudden?”
Amhar tried to lift a boot and found it stuck in wet earth where just a few moments before the ground had been bone dry. A dark liquid ran down the cart ruts, soaking the dirt. Amhar lowered his lantern and saw that the wetness wasn’t water at all. Blood. He raised his eyes to the dark shape of the cart looming on the crest of the hill above him.
He motioned to the men to be quiet, although their lanterns would have given them away from a distance. They moved up the side of the road. The first corpse tripped the soldier beside Amhar.
The body of a man lay half on the road and half in the watery ditch that ran along it. Below the waist his body was a meaty mess, and his unblinking eyes were open to the night sky.
“Beshaba!” the soldier cried, scrambling back from the corpse.
“Swords up!” another whispered. “We’ve found our trouble.”
The dark shape on the crest of the hill was a cart run off the road with a dead horse still harnessed to it. Amhar thought there were three more corpses beside the cart, but as he drew closer, he saw it was just one corpse hacked into three pieces. When the dwarf turned slightly to whisper to the soldier beside him, he saw horror on the man’s face.
Something moved behind them. Amhar dropped and rolled to the ditch as three dark-clothed figures darted
