Djimon turned at the sound of the familiar, piercing shriek that he had been forced to put up with for the past week, ever since his last excursion into the city. It was midafternoon, and he was sitting atop Cyric's Hammer, a dangerous perch that boasted only one safe path from its base to its wide, flat head. Rumors had it that a hundred men had died trying to find a nontreacherous route to the top. When they mere inches from achieving their desire, the stones would shift to dislodge all who were foolish enough to challenge the rock, sending them screaming to the sharp rocks at the base. The pillar had earned its name when a wandering sage pronounced the rock accursed by the god of misery and death.
Djimon had shrugged off all rumors and had scaled the five-hundred-foot pillar without trouble, further adding to his near-mythical standing. He now looked to the horizon and saw the portents of what would be a terrible storm when it finally arrived. A tiny flicker that might have been lightning flashed in the heart of the deep gray clouds, a rare sight in the Calim Desert. He decided that he would give the buyers another half hour to appear, then he would give his men the order to abandon the Hammer. The storm troubled him. Last night he had dreamt of a storm that carried with it a collection of piercing, merciless eyes; there were eyes everywhere in his dream, and they were always in sets of three, groups of six eyes. What did they signify?
The scream came again. 'What?' he shouted impatiently.
A voice that he instantly identified as belonging to Jurgon Rutsche, his tall, swarthy-skinned second-in- command, called, 'She tried to leap off again. The child seems to think she can fly!'
Djimon sighed. A part of him wished she had succeeded, though her death would have been difficult to explain to the buyers. There was no sense in trying to avoid his duties. The girl had lived, and so it was time for his daily speech. He screwed his most nefarious expression into place, spat twice, then gestured for his second-in- command to bring the girl to him.
The child was young, just past the age where she would have experienced her first bleeding. She wore the traditional wrappings expected of a woman in their nomadic society, though she refused to keep her face covered. He stared into her devastating blue eyes, studying the unusual slivers of gold he found there. The child was a brunette with a trim, athletic build. Her cheekbones were high and strong, and her lips were full, a rich scarlet without augmentation. Jurgon Rutsche had pinned her arms behind her back and was shoving her in front of him with considerable effort. She had lost one sandal by trying to dig her heels into the unyielding stone and was now struggling like a creature possessed to free herself from Jurgon's hold. There were chains around her wrists and ankles, but they barely restrained her.
The first thing out of her mouth that was not a high-pitched, eardrum-rattling scream, was a curse she had learned in Dji-mon's language, linking his parentage to goats, demons, and whores.
He struck her with a backhanded blow that caused her head to whip around with a sharp crack. She looked back at him with a wicked, triumphant expression as she licked the blood from the corner of her mouth. 'Now I'm damaged goods.'
Djimon forced himself to gain control of his emotions. A large, ugly bruise was already starting to form on the child's face where she had been struck. He moved in close so that she could smell his rancid breath.
'Know this, child. If we had not found a buyer for you so quickly, I would have allowed my men to take you. They would not have stopped until they had drunk their heart's content of the pleasures your young body has to offer. Then I would have fed you to the vultures for the trouble you have caused.'
'Charmer.' She spat and tried to kick him in the crotch. Only his sharp reflexes allowed him to move out of the way in time. He restrained himself and did not strike her again. His buyers had been promised a fourteen-year- old blue-eyed virgin in perfect condition, and, by Cyric's fiery hell, he was going to make good on that pledge. On the other hand, the degradation and shock of being brutally raped by a dozen or so of his men might serve to break her spirit and make her a more docile-and therefore more valuable-commodity.
He was contemplating this issue when the girl began to scream, 'Kill me! Kill me!' at the top of her lungs. The raider marveled at the girl's talent for widening his options. He leaned close and said, 'Child, I warn you-' With a howl of delight she brought her knee up to the space between his legs. This time the short desert raider was not able to move out of the blow's path. He squealed as her knee connected, then he doubled over, his face inches from hers. She leaned in and bit at his exposed ear even as Jurgon yanked her away from his master. Djimon screamed even louder as the lower half of his ear was torn away. In alarm, Jurgon relaxed his grip on the child's arm, giving her the opportunity to slip from his hands and launch herself forward, toward the lip of the pillar's flat top. Her chains caught her legs and she tripped, spitting out the bloody chunk of flesh that she had bitten from Djimon's head. She did not allow the bonds to defeat her; the freedom of death was within her grasp, a mere ten feet away. Rolling with her fall, the girl used her momentum and twisted her body until she had covered the ten feet and was about to make one final turn, which would send her plunging to her death.
She stopped and laughed at the men who were now running toward her. 'My name is not 'child,' you ignorant spawn of whores. My name is Krystin!'
With that, she rolled off the edge and somehow suppressed a scream as she plummeted through the air, the ground rapidly reaching up to meet her.
At the lip of the flat, Djimon and Jurgon came to a halt, their chests heaving with exertion. Djimon held his savaged ear and issued a stream of curses.
He stopped only when he heard the sound of laughter from the pillar's base. Kneeling, he looked over the thin, crumbling ledge to see Krystin suspended in midair, her flight impossibly arrested. For once, the child was speechless. She floated gently downward, toward a group of six people that included a tall, gaunt man who was pointing his hands at the girl and gesturing: Magic.
Djimon ignored the pain long enough to issue yet another curse. His operations had proceeded without the opposition of mages for close to a year. The formerly stringent measures he had taken to protect himself against practitioners of the art had become lax, a seemingly unnecessary burden on himself and his people. He considered himself fortunate to realize his error in this manner. The party below had been shielded by a spell of invisibility, or some type of cloaking incantation that had allowed them to blend with the endless vista of sand as they approached. From Cyric's Hammer, he could see the main route between Calimport and Memnon in the distance. Even now his buyers appeared on the well-traveled road. He thought of the humiliation he would face for the rest of his life when the story got out of how a fourteen-year-old child had taken the legendary Godslayer's ear, and the thought was almost too horrible to accept.
From the ground below, Djimon heard the group's youngest member, a man close to twenty years in age, howl, 'Well, that solves the problem of how to get her down without having to engage all of these louts.' The young man rested his hands on his thighs and shook his head in amazement.
'They actually think this is over,' Djimon said as he rose to his feet and barked a string of commands to his people. He could not control the future, but in that moment he swore that he would have his vengeance on the child and her rescuers.
At the base of the pillar, Lucius Cardoc levitated the girl to the ground, then fell back, exhausted.
'You've done well, mage,' Burke said as he caught the man and helped to steady him. All the Harpers' faces were red and blistered despite the hoods they wore to protect their skin. Varina and Reisz still sat on their mounts, holding the reins of two other horses.
'Would that all of our quests were completed with such ease,' Reisz said darkly.
'What's that supposed to mean?' Burke asked.
'Nothing. I hope.'
Several feet away from the party, the girl they had rescued held up her chained hands. Myrmeen broke from the group and approached her tentatively. The sun was in Myrmeen's eyes and she was not able to get a decent look at the child until she was practically on top of her. For an instant she felt as if she were staring at a much younger reflection of herself: The child had her eyes.
'If you're done gawking, could you break these chains?' Krystin asked impatiently. 'We have to get out of here.'
Myrmeen smiled. The strange, deep-blue eyes with slivers of gold were not all the girl had inherited.
'I'm serious. Djimon keeps guards down here,' Krystin said urgently.
'No more,' Myrmeen replied, indicating with a slight nod the trio of bodies lying in the shadows near the pillar's base, where Djimon's route to the top began. She could not keep herself from staring at the girl in adulation, though she knew she must have appeared to be a dull-witted fool from her vacant expression and hesitancy. This was her daughter; it was actually her. Dak had told her the truth.
