never obtain the man’s permission to continue commanding the Outguard. And that meant, for the first time in his career, Vaddon would have to lie to a superior.
He didn’t hesitate. “Agreed.”
“Excellent. Now for the second condition.” He raised his voice. “Shatterfist, Longstrider, come in, please.”
The library door opened and the two warforged guards entered and crossed the room to stand before their master.
Begerron looked at Vaddon. “These are two of my best warforged. As of this moment they are assigned to the Outguard under your command, Vaddon, but while they shall take orders from you, ultimately, they will answer to me.” A slow smile spread across the warlord’s face. “If Lirra and Elidyr have truly become as dangerous as you say, I figure you could use the extra muscle. Agreed?”
Vaddon knew he had been outmaneuvered. Bergerron had guessed that he’d had no intention of delivering Lirra and Elidyr to him, and so he’d decided to send along his pet warforged to make certain Vaddon did as he wanted. Though Vaddon raged inwardly at this development, on one level he couldn’t help admiring the warlord’s keen grasp of strategy.
“Agreed,” he said through clenched teeth.
At least for the time being, he thought darkly, giving the two warforged a narrow-eyed glance.
The artificial constructs gazed back at him with their armorlike faces, and whatever thoughts they might’ve had about their new assignment they kept to themselves.
CHAPTER TEN
Lirra had no memory of the sun setting. It seemed that one moment it was day, the next it was night. She had no clear idea where she was either. She was walking across a grassy field that she took to be pastureland for cows, based on the occasional pile of dung she passed, though she’d seen no actual cattle so far. There were no farms of any sort in the vicinity of the lodge. The closest she knew about lay outside the town of Geirrid, but it wasn’t possible that she had traveled that far since leaving the lodge … was it?
She remembered leaving the lodge in search of Elidyr, remembered making her way through forestland, hiding when necessary to avoid Outguard patrols her father had sent out to search for her. While her symbiont granted her no special abilities when it came to concealment, it did possess a certain animal cunning that she was able to draw on, and combined with her battle experience, it allowed her to evade detection and capture. She’d been surprised and, though she was reluctant to admit it to herself, pleased to discover that her symbiont was proving to be an even more useful tool than she’d originally thought.
Too bad it hadn’t sharpened her sense of time. Hours had to have passed since she left the lodge, but though she searched her memory, she couldn’t account for them all. Her hours traveling through the forest were a blur of trees and fields seen through a white-hot rage that only seemed to intensify as the time passed. She was furious at Elidyr for having bungled the experiment so badly-and for having the idiocy to conceive of the symbiont project in the first place. She was furious at her father for not understanding why she needed to find and stop Elidyr and sending forth the Outguard to get in her way. She was furious at Rhedyn for standing stupidly by and watching as the tentacle whip attached itself to her and for not finding the stones to act against Elidyr until it was too late to make a difference. And to make matters worse, she was hungry, thirsty, and her feet ached from all the walking she’d done this day.
The night sky was overcast, as it often was this time of year, and the cloud cover blocked the moons. Though Karrns preferred straightforward battle-which normally meant fighting by daylight-Lirra was no stranger to making her way across country in the dark, and it seemed that her night vision had grown a bit sharper, no doubt another benefit granted by her symbiont. But even so, she was having trouble navigating through the shadows that surrounded her. Her mind felt sluggish, almost feverish, and she was having trouble making sense of the things she saw and heard. It was almost like the confusion that came with being drunk, except without the accompanying pleasant numbness. Most likely she was still adjusting to having joined with a symbiont. Hopefully her mind would clear eventually. In the meantime, she had to find Elidyr, and when she did …
She heard a sound off to her right, a snuffling as if something large was breathing close by. Without thinking she spun and flung her left arm in its direction. Her tentacle whip unfurled, and as the barbed tip flew through the air, wild elation filled her, and she couldn’t tell whether it originated from the symbiont or her. She saw the shape standing before her, a dark outline framed against the night, and for an instant she allowed herself to believe she had caught up with her uncle at last. But she quickly realized the shape was the wrong size-too long and low to the ground-and whatever it was, it possessed four legs instead of two. Elidyr might’ve fused with a trio of symbionts, but when he’d departed the lodge, he’d done so on a single pair of legs.
She felt more than saw the barbed tip sink into flesh, sensed poison being injected into whatever creature the whip had struck. Lirra yanked the whip away from its victim, but it was too late. The poison had been delivered, and the creature swayed and collapsed heavily on its side without making a sound. For all Lirra knew, the creature could’ve been some dangerous wild animal, and while the symbiont’s poison had brought it down, that didn’t mean the creature was dead yet. But she was too horrified at the ease with which she’d lost control of the whip, how she’d lashed out without thinking, and she walked over to the downed beast and kneeled beside it, the tentacle whip undulating in the air over the creature, almost quivering in its excitement to strike again. Lirra ignored it and placed her hand on the beast’s side. She felt short-haired hide over solid muscle, and she knew what she had brought down before she heard the animal’s soft, pained exhalation of breath. The whip had poisoned a cow.
The animal began to pant, sides bellowing in and out as she struggled to draw air into her rapidly failing body. It didn’t take long for the symbiont’s poison to do its work. Several moments later the cow’s breathing slowed, she shuddered once, and then lay still. But though the animal was dead, Lirra slowly stroked the cow’s side.
An accident, she thought. Nothing more. And it wasn’t as if she’d killed a human. She had nothing to feel guilty about. So why were trails of hot tears streaming down her face?
You’re overtired and dehydrated, she told herself. That’s all.
Thoughts whispered in her mind, then-but though she heard them spoken in her own voice, she knew they weren’t hers.
The tentacle whip swayed lazily in the air before her eyes, almost as if mocking her.
Lirra had struggled to maintain control ever since leaving the lodge, but all at once her fragile hold on her emotions slipped. She released a cry of rage and leaped to her feet. She struck out with the tentacle whip, slashing the cow’s body with the symbiont, the barbed tip scoring the animal’s flesh and spraying the air with blood. How long she stood there ravaging the cow’s dead body, she didn’t know, but eventually her rage began to drain away, replaced by a bone-deep weariness. She stopped lashing the cow and with a tired thought commanded the tentacle whip to wrap around her left forearm. The whip obeyed, moving almost sleepily, as if sated. Lirra felt the slick warmth coating the symbiont as it coiled around her flesh, but she thought nothing of it. She was too tired to think. All she wanted to do was find someplace where she could lie down, close her eyes, and escape into the emptiness of sleep for a time.
“Here now, what do you think you’re doing?”
At first Lirra didn’t react to the voice, for she assumed it was merely another thought planted in her mind by the symbiont. But after a moment she realized that someone else was speaking, and that he’d done so aloud. Barely able to stay on her feet, she turned toward the man, and just then the cloud cover broke. Silver moonlight filtered down from the heavens, illuminating the pasture and giving Lirra a good look at who she was facing. The man was middle-aged, big and broad-shouldered, and though his belly was rather sizeable, he had the look of a man who’d been in good shape once. He was mostly bald, with thick, fleshy features, and a prominent scar that
