kalashtar had taken those months ago. At one intersection, though, she had to stop. To the right, the plank street broadened into a wide and busy thoroughfare lined with fine, large homes.
To the left, it became narrow and crooked, leading away into an older, more rundown part of the city.
It would have made more sense for the house with blue doors to be to the right-it was big and very pleasant and would have fit that neighborhood. Memory, however, suggested that the kalashtar had turned left at this spot.
Tetkashtai, she asked, which way?
The frightened presence confirmed her memory. Left. Dandra moved on, turning where memory prompted her. The district, however, was nothing like she remembered. Empty windows gaped like black eyes form the faces of dilapidated houses. Occasionally, feet scampered on the wood ahead as figures scrambled back into the shadows.
'Squatters,' said Singe.
Not all of the figures ducked away. A lanky orc-full-blooded, with coarse features, lean muscles under his gray-green skin, and heavy tusks that made Natrac's look small-stared at them from the shadows of one house, red eyes gleaming. His clothes were rough and swamp-stained; he looked like some kind of marsh nomad, looking for easier prey in the lawless places of Zarash'ak. Dandra's grip tightened on her spear and Geth made sure that the orc saw the heavy sword at his side.
'Dandra,' he asked, 'are you sure about this?'
'Yes,' she said. She turned a corner.
In her memory, the house with blue doors was a grand and luxurious building, three stories high with dormers along the pitched roof. It stood alone on its own platform, surely a luxury in a city where walkways and platforms had grown haphazardly together over time. The doors that had stuck in her memory and in the minds of the kalashtar were tall and striking, their bright polished surface painted a deep blue that was exactly the color of an autumn night's sky.
The building that she faced now might once have been much like what she remembered. It had the shape of something grand, but it had been a long time since it could have been considered luxurious. Much of the roof had fallen in and the dormers with it, leaving the house looking like a crushed skull. The wood of the house had gone gray with age. If it stood alone on its own platform, it was because its neighbors seemed to lean away, as if shunning the decaying structure.
The blue doors were still there, as tall and striking as in her memory, but the color on them was faded and old, a stain on the wood. One door hung askew. Dandra could say nothing, struck dumb by her memory's betrayal. 'This isn't what we saw,' she managed finally.
'Dandra, is it possible that Dah'mir's domination of you and the kalashtar began before he met them?' asked Singe after a moment. 'Some kind of illusion spun into your minds…'
Dandra nodded slowly. 'It's possible, I suppose. This is the house, though. I'm sure of it.'
'If this isn't the right place, we don't have anything to worry about,' said Geth. 'If it is the right place, they'll be expecting us. Be ready.' The shifter studied the broken house carefully, then loosened his sword in its scabbard. 'We should make getting Natrac back and out of here our goal, but I don't think dealing with Ashi and Vennet would be a bad thing either.'
'I agree.' Dandra shifted her grip on her spear and took a step into the air, skimming the ground and ready for combat.
They moved forward, stepping cautiously over the gap that had opened between the building's platform and the planks of the street. The murky water that lapped the shadows beneath Zarash'ak was visible far down below. Dandra glided up to the faded doors. She was about to put a hand to them when Geth pointed at the step beneath her feet. 'No dust,' he said. 'It's been swept clean.'
'Wind or rain?' suggested Singe.
The shifter shook his head. 'Probably not.'
Dandra pushed open the door. She recalled a beautiful foyer with stairs rising up to the second floor and the distant sound of trickling water. What actually lay beyond the door was a rickety, broken room with huge gaps in the walls. Stairs-every second step seemingly broken-rose to a second floor that sagged so badly she wasn't sure she would have risked crossing it. The sound of water was the splashing of the river, echoing up from somewhere below.
A trail of blood led deeper into the house. Dandra gestured silently to the trail and started across the floor.
'No, Dandra!' snapped Geth. 'There was no blood outside-'
His warning was too slow. A chunk of hurled wood cracked against the side of Dandra's head and sent her stumbling to the ground. Gasping in pain and with Tetkashtai screeching in alarm, she twisted around. She caught a glimpse of movement as Singe shouted and darted to her side-only to be met by Ashi's screaming battle cry as she leaped down through a broad hole in the ceiling. A kick caught Singe's shoulder, spinning him around and driving him to the floor-
— which cracked and broke under the impact of Ashi's landing. The tall woman's battle cry turned into a yelp of alarm as the crumbling floorboards gave way beneath her and Singe. Stunned by Ashi's blow, Dandra froze as both the hunter and the wizard plunged down into the darkness below.
CHAPTER 10
'Rat!' Geth sprang to the splintered edge of the hole as two solid impacts below shook through the frame of the old house. Debris rained down around him. He held his gauntlet over his head and peered down. Singe and Ashi lay, tangled together and stunned, on the floor of a lower level about fifteen feet down and apparently much more solid than the one above.
There were shouts of alarm coming up from below as well. Ashi and Vennet weren't alone! Geth glanced up at Dandra.
'Looks like this is the right house!' he spat. He spun around and slithered backward past the edge of the hole, lowering himself swiftly down. When his fingers clenched wood and he hung from outstretched arms, he grunted and kicked out.
Old wood screeched in protest but held firm as he swung and released, arcing through the air to hit the ground in a roll. He came up in a crouch and spun around as Ashi wrenched herself away from Singe. Geth leaped forward to stand over the wizard, his gauntlet up, his sword clearing its scabbard in one fluid movement. He had only a moment to take in the great chamber around him. Once it might have been a private water landing of some kind: there was a huge square opening in the center of the buckled floor with broad stairs running down and the sound of lapping water drifting up. Another long flight of stairs rose to the upper levels of the ruined house. Holes broken in the high ceiling let day's light stab into the shadows.
Ashi drew her own sword and took a fast pace back-and then took another as Dandra fell through the hole above to land with an unnatural grace and lightness. Her spear glittered in her hand. Alarmed shouts turned to frightened cries, but one voice rode above them all.
'Hold your ground!' roared Vennet in a voice used to calling across the deck of a ship at sea. 'Follow the plan, Fause! Temmen, be careful not to hurt the woman!'
The Lyrandar captain, his cutlass drawn, charged around the hole in the floor. A lean man wielding a thick quarterstaff followed close behind. From the hole's far side rose the unified chanting of half a dozen men and women dressed in dark, shapeless robes, a wild-haired man with a look of madness on his face leading them. 'Powers of Khyber, great Dragon Below, hear our prayer and lay low our enemies!'
'Grandfather Rat's naked tail!' cursed Geth. Had he really thought an easy rescue might be possible?
Natrac slumped against the wall behind the chanting cultists. His already-fouled clothes were drenched with blood; his right hand had been brutally amputated at the wrist, the wound fire-seared to seal it. The half-orc's skin looked waxy, but he was still breathing. He needed a healer. Geth had an unpleasant certainty that if they got out of the chamber alive, they would all need a visit to a healer.
He shifted and leaped at Ashi. He could feel the magic called down by the cultists fall over him like a shadow,
