and his own suspicions of how her father might be involved in the murders… not to mention who else might be stalking Pryce even as he sat there.
“Of course I’m not going to be careful!” he snapped at her. She blinked at his reply, and then he made a motion to shoo her away with his free hand. His other hand lay beneath the warmth of hers… as long as that lasted. “Away with you, woman!”
Her jaw set, her gaze hardened, and she stood up. She stared at him a moment more, her fists clenching and reclenching. Then she turned purposefully away and left the restaurant.
Pryce sat in the gathering darkness of twilight, a nearby pillar casting a shadow across his face. He left his right hand, the one she had clasped, where it lay and watched her proud, erect figure move past the front window toward the hidden circular iron stairway. Only then did he finish his thought in a whisper.
“There’s no need for both of us to be in danger.”
For a short time, Pryce read the wisdom of Priest Sante. Then he ate a leisurely dinner, lovingly served by the attentive Karkober. He studied the schedule of the restaurant’s employees, taking careful note of when the dwarf chef and human dishwasher took their breaks. Then he sat and watched as the citizens of Lallor came and went, all giving him the respect of his privacy, as he was expected to give them theirs. But Schreders’s was a popular place, so it wasn’t long before the tables and bar filled up with the most interesting residents the city had to offer, and the noise and smoke got loud and thick.
Only then did Pryce purposefully rise, carry the book to the bar, and lean over between a sumptuously garbed old half-elf scholar and an elegant middle-aged seamstress. “Azzo!” Covington called above the din, gaining the barkeep’s attention. Schreders came over immediately. It was, after all, Darlington Blade calling him. “Keep this for safekeeping, would you?” Pryce said, handing him the book. “I have a meeting to attend. I’ll be back for it.”
Azzo didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he took the book and nodded reassuringly. Pryce waited until the barkeep had placed the book in a dry spot under the far side of the bar and was again busy with his patrons before moving quietly and purposefully toward the back of the establishment.
He found the kitchen easily. It was the only door along the back wall. He waited until the cook and dishwasher stepped out for a break before he slipped inside the swinging door. He stood in a well-lit and well- furnished kitchen, especially noting the fine cast-iron stoves and marble sinks. A huge wooden table separated the cooking area from the cleaning area. One side was filled with the freshest fruits, vegetables, and meats, and the other with the cleanest of pans, pots, and plates. Pryce’s nostrils filled with the scent of cooking food, still simmering on the fires.
Pryce quickly spotted the back door. That was where deliveries were made, and where Fullmer had set their rendezvous. There was still some time before their meeting, so Covington had a few minutes to carefully search the area.
He opened the back door a crack, looked quickly about, then stepped outside. The night was as pleasant as the day had been. The moon cast a serene silver-blue light over everything, and the elegant foliage seemed to reach up toward the twinkling stars. The air was cool, clean, and filled with the aroma of pollandry blooms.
Pryce surveyed the rendezvous point. It was approximately twenty by thirty feet, surrounded on three sides by a vine-covered stone wall that rose fifty feet up to the roots of the Ambersong residence. To his left, the stone wall was connected to the back wall of the restaurant. But on the right side, there was a long, narrow, twisting alley between the restaurant’s wall and the stone. There delivery people could carry fresh food and drink from their carriages to the back door.
Covington thought he heard a rustle behind him. He spun around, but saw no one. The leaves of the flowering vines rustled in the night wind, but otherwise no person or animal disturbed the calm. Pryce quickly glanced back into the alley. It was the only way Fullmer could arrive. Covington decided to take up a position by the rear door. That way, if Teddington brought “friends,” Pryce could easily slip inside.
He made a quick final survey of the area, running his hands along the stone wall to make sure there wasn’t another hidden spiral staircase. He was pleased to find there wasn’t. Instead, he simply found large, flat, vine- covered stones. Standing with his back to them, he looked at the restaurant’s rear door, feeling safer than he had all evening.
With a decisive, flat-palmed slap to the flat rocks of the wall behind him, he took a step forward.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The flat rock behind him had moved inward.
Goose bumps covered Pryce’s skin in a rolling wave, and the hair on the back of his neck stood straight out as he heard the same rustling as before, only this time coming from above him.
He tried to somersault away, but as he began to dive forward, something hard, heavy, and painful smashed into the back of his head. There was sudden, incredible pressure, and then he felt his brain shift, crashing into the inner side of his forehead.
He felt as if Berridge Lymwich had hit him full with her inquisitrix spell. He was blinded by white. Then the white suddenly swirled with gray. Then black dots emerged from the gathering haze, growing larger and larger until the white was gone and the gray was swallowed up.
Then all was black, and blacker still, until he fell into the blackest pit of all.
Pryce Covington knew he wasn’t dead when his brain started lecturing him.
Apparently it was its way of dealing with the shock of the attack, once it had determined that the assault was not fatal. Seemingly, from what Pryce was distantly hearing, his subconscious was stunned, both physically and mentally, by the blow to the back of his head.
In a land where magic was extolled, the need to strike someone on the back, side, top, or front of the head seemed so unnecessaryeven barbaricthat Pryce’s brain couldn’t decide whether it was more perplexed than hurt.
Later Pryce would call it a draw. Actually, he would have loved to have been more perplexed than hurt, but a blow to the skull in any form had unavoidable consequences of a physical nature. In a word, pain.
As usual, when self-pity wrestled with purpose, the former almost always won out. As soon as he was conscious enough, Pryce found himself thinking, What did I do to deserve this? through a needle-pricking haze. He was so thankful the light seemed to be turned back on again that his relief nearly forced the pain away… but only for a second. Then his mind sent out a series of lightning bolts of renewed pain.
He had once seen a magical crystal ball with a storm inside it. Through its transparent shell, he could see a small cloud from which many dozens of lightning bolts arced out, dancing all over the inside surface of the orb. Now he could well imagine what that ball would have felt like if it had been lined with nerve endings.
He tried opening one eye. The view wasn’t promising. It seemed dark and craggy and hairy. It was also still painful. He squeezed his eye shut again.
Wait a minute, he thought. Hairy? It seemed to be making disconcertingly rabid noises as well.
Pryce’s eyes snapped open. Something was bobbing in his vision. It was black and red and orange and furry. There were two fuzzy half-cones on either side of a hairy half-dome, moving up and down and slavering. Covington dimly remembered seeing that somewhere before..
“Cunningham!” he bellowed. “Get off me, you beast!”
The jackalwere leapt back as Pryce tried to jump up, but the creature knew his surroundings better than the man did. Pryce’s head slammed into a low, rocky ledge that laid him back down hard.
Getting hit on the head was bad enough, but hitting himself on the head was even worse. Pryce felt as if he were sinking into the bay beyond the Lalloreef, but he sensed a jackal turtle waiting for him beneath the surface, its slavering maw opening and closing in eager anticipation. Covington clawed back toward the surface, ignoring the millions of mental lightning bolts that danced around him.
“Cunningham!” he cried. “Don’t you dare gorge on me!” The sharp yellow teeth of the jackalwere filled his vision like a horizon of tombstones. Pryce cried out in spite of himself, making the creature leap back once more into the surrounding gloom. Covington’s cry of surprise turned into a groan of suffering as pain pushed everything else aside. “II don’t feel well,” he managed to understate.
“I have seen you looking better,” Cunningham informed him, “if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Pryce hoped that by concentrating on the jackalwere he could crawl out of the thicket of agony inside his head. “You were going to take a bite out of me, weren’t you?”
