almost certainly wake the soldiers up in time to perish in agony in the flames.
Deploring a squandered opportunity, the spirit led Master to the other watch posts. The warriors stationed to the south and west succumbed as easily as the first detachment, but matters fell out a bit differently at the last stop on their circuit, a fragrant perfumery, the shelves behind the counter lined with porcelain and crystal bottles. After the blowpipe discharged its contents, one warrior remained on his feet, a lean, middle-aged man with a stern, humorless mouth, pale, narrow eyes, and a grizzled widow's peak. Judging from the markings on the blue surcoat he wore over his mail, he was probably Jander Orvist, captain of the Uskevren household guard.
Though surely startled by the sudden collapse of his men, Jander nonetheless reacted quickly. He drew his long sword and charged the wizard. Giving ground, Master plucked a packet of folded paper from his mantle, brandished it, and spoke a word of power.
Jander was only a stride away from being close enough to attack when the spell took hold. A smear of slick white slime materialized beneath his boots. Slipping, he cut at the wizard anyway, a stroke that would have landed had not Master parried it with his staff. Purple radiance sizzled from the black wood, down the blade of the long sword, and into Jander's body, playing about his armored limbs as he fell.
Twitching and shuddering, Jander tried to flounder back to his feet, made it as far as his knees, and, realizing he could go no farther, drew in a ragged breath to shout. Master rattled off a brief incantation and spun his arm in an intricate gesture that ended with him planting his hand on the fallen captain's shoulder.
Magenta light and a kind of ragged darkness flickered about the point of contact. His mouth drawn in a rictus of agony, Jander convulsed and then collapsed, his sinewy warrior's body now withered to little more than skin and bones.
Bileworm leered. 'He should have skipped off to dreamland with his men.'
'He couldn't,' Master replied, 'his spirit was too strong.' Evidently having run out of dust to charge it, he set the blowpipe down atop the counter. 'Let's fetch Garris and the others.'
Brom had been to the theater before, but had generally found himself in the cheap seats far back from the stage, or even squashed in the press of groundlings standing in the open area in front of it. It was still a novel experience to sit up close with plenty of elbow room in a box overlooking the stage, and he wished he had the leisure to enjoy it.
But he didn't. Like the warriors in mufti stationed about the playhouse, he had to watch for the first signs of an attempt on Master Talbot's life.
He would have found it easier had all the members of the audience been content to sit or stand and watch the performance. Unfortunately, however, the Wide Realms was a raucous carnival of diversions, of which the tragedy unfolding onstage sometimes seemed the least compelling. People were chattering to their friends, munching pears and sausages, passing wineskins and jugs of ale and applejack around, playing cards, throwing dice, tossing a knife in a game of mumblety-peg, and conducting assignations with their sweethearts or bawds. It all combined to make a shifting, churning confusion, in which even the most blatant sign of hostile intent might go unnoticed for a few moments. Brom worried that for all their vigilance, he and his comrades would fail to spot it in time.
Yet when trouble erupted, it did so in the one place where no one could have missed it, on the stage itself.
A shaggy white wig on his head and long, snowy whiskers gummed to his chin, leaning heavily on his gnarled staff, Talbot railed at his absent son for betraying him. Some of the groundlings yelled to tell him that no, the prince was faithful, the evil counselor had lied, but of course the deluded old monarch Talbot was portraying mustn't hear them, or else it would ruin the story.
The part of King Imre was a departure for Tal, who was usually cast in secondary roles that showed off his theatrical fencing more than his acting ability, and he was enjoying the challenge, though not as much as he might have if he weren't waiting for someone to try to murder him. In the wings, Mistress Quickly and some of the other players watched his performance with encouraging smiles.
Behind them sat an iron cage, a prop, but also Tal's prison on nights of the full moon. He thought briefly how odd, even sad, it was that he'd never felt able to tell his own family of his transformations, yet had nonetheless confided in the members of the troupe. Perhaps it was because, while he didn't necessarily love them any more than he did his parents, Tazi, or even Tamlin, he supposed, he trusted his fellow players not to judge him.
A chorus of shouts jarred him from his momentary reverie. For a second, he thought the groundlings were still trying to enlighten old Imre about his heir, then realized they were crying, 'Look up! Look up!'
Nothing in the scene should have provoked such an outburst. He turned, lifted his head, and beheld a pair of black spiders, each as big as a donkey, leaping down from the balcony stage above.
The only other actor on stage was Lommy, playing the role of Imre's court fool. His fantastic yellow motley and clown makeup concealed the fact that he wasn't human but a tasloi, with the greenish skin, thin black fur, golden eyes, and apish frame of his kind. When he spotted the spiders, he fled.
Talbot was relieved to see his unarmed friend take himself out of harm's way. He was confident that neither of the spiders would chase after the tasloi, because these were clearly summoned creatures like the ones Tamlin had encountered, charged with the task of killing one specific victim.
Since Tal was that victim, he reached for the long sword hanging at his side. Brom had cast a glamour on it to keep anyone from seeing it, but it became visible as it scraped clear of the scabbard. The noble wore a brigandine as well, the armor concealed beneath Imre's crimson robes.
The spiders scuttled toward him, and he willed himself to be calm. Certain members of the audience were screaming, some sincerely, others in the giddy manner of folk relishing an imaginary peril. Apparently, unfazed by the fact that the sick, doddering old king had inexplicably turned into a swordsman, or that giant arachnids invading the royal palace would seem to have nothing to do with the rest of the plot, these latter assumed the spiders were part of the show.
Fortunately, the hideous creatures didn't work in concert as men might have done. They came at him separately, and one closed the distance before the other. Hoping to dispatch it before its comrade entered the fray, Talbot lunged at it at once.
His blade sank deep into the spider's mask, bursting two of its clustered, globular eyes, but the creature kept scuttling forward, drops of oily amber venom glistening at the ends of its fangs.
Talbot scrambled out of the spider's path, ripped the long sword free, and, knowing he could have at most a second or two left before the other arachnid pounced at him, cut at the place where the wounded creature's head joined its thorax.
The blow half severed the head. The spider continued to turn in his direction, and he feared he still hadn't killed it.
Then it crumpled.
Tal heard footsteps drumming up behind, spun around, and cut. His sword sheared off one of the second spider's chitinous front legs. The arachnid lurched off balance for a moment, then scuttled toward him scarcely less nimbly than before.
Shouting a battle cry, Talbot lunged to meet it, and his point slammed deep into the center of the spider's pulsing mouth. It still kept coming, ramming into him, knocking him down, and crouching on top of him. Heedless of the fact that it was driving his blade even deeper inside its body, the creature dipped its head and bit him. Talbot went rigid with terror, but only felt a pressure, not the agony he'd expected. The steel plates riveted on the brigandine kept the poisonous fangs from penetrating his flesh on the first try, and the spider never got a second. Rather, it convulsed and slumped on top of him.
Tal clambered out from beneath the carcass and yanked the long sword free. Some members of the audience were still cheering and whooping, but more were now screaming in earnest. The noble peered about, trying to make out the totality of what was going on, and why none of his retainers had yet rushed to his aid. He was still struggling to sort out the chaos before him when he heard the door at the rear of the stage bang open, and something scratching and scrambling in the balconies above. He pivoted and came on guard.
Galvanized by the appearance of the spiders, Brom sprang from his chair, spun the head of his staff in a mystic pass, and began to recite an incantation that would launch darts of destructive force at the creatures. Then something, perhaps a sight half-glimpsed from the corner of his eye, perhaps simply an intuition honed in scores of battles, warned him that he was in danger. Abandoning his conjuration, he threw himself flat.
Crossbow bolts whizzed over his head and cracked into the walls. An instant later, a blast of cold swept over
