The woman speared Behroun like a fish with her glinting stare. Behroun wriggled and gasped until she turned back to regard Japheth. She said, 'You look confused, poor human. For all your stolen power, you're only a plaything here. All of you are, Behroun too, though he thinks himself the ringleader.' She sighed and looked to the ceiling as if bored beyond the capacity for words.
The Lord of Bats sucked down another bloody red tomato and announced, matter-of-factly, 'I shall murder each of you in a manner so grisly that veteran warriors shall shudder and weep when they hear of it.'
The woman continued to inspect the ceiling, her face managing to convey weariness for all its otherworldly perfection.
Behroun spluttered, his features draining of color, 'But once I break the pact stone, you will have all you desire, Neifion! You'll have your powers returned, with Japheth here to punish-'
'The longer you delay your side of our agreement, the greater latitude I'll have in interpreting our deal,' declared the Lord of Bats, his dead-white lips smacking in anticipation.
Behroun glanced at Malyanna, then he snapped his attention around to Japheth. 'Warlock! How goes the mission? How close are you to retrieving this object, what did the captain call it, the Dreamheart?'
With a dull voice, Japheth replied, 'We sail to the lair of the creature that holds it even now.'
'You hear?' asked the shipping magnate in too loud a voice. 'Once I get the Dreamheart, Japheth'll be yours. I'll have all I need to press my claim on Impiltur. With a relic as potent as Captain Thoster claims this one is in my hand, I won't have to be satisfied with a mere seat on the nascent Grand Council. No, with an eladrin queen of the Feywild at my side-'
Malyanna's voice drowned out Behroun with a simple, 'Please, don't you ever cease your mortal prattle?'
Behroun's face crumpled. Trying to recover, he snapped his fingers at Japheth. 'Shouldn't you get back to your ship?'
Japheth looked at the man. A small man with grand ambitions was Lord Marhana. He had no power of his own, only a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Though he possessed no moral sense, he had a mean, rat-like cleverness.
The warlock once confronted Behroun, asking the merchant why he should do Behroun's bidding. After all, if Japheth did not, Behroun promised to smash the pact stone. On the other hand, Behroun had implied that at some future date he would return the pact stone to the Lord of Bats, who would promptly smash it.
Either way, the stone would be smashed and Japheth would wind up dead. So why, the warlock had yelled, should he do what Behroun wanted when his choice was to die now or die later? Behroun had winked and replied that he didn't actually intend to ever give the pact stone back to the Lord of Bats. Japheth did his bidding, promised Lord Marhana; Japheth could live out his life without fear of being slain by a vicious Feywild spirit bent on brutal revenge.
The memory evaporated in a haze of reignited hate. Emotion burned the warlock's throat as he stepped forward a pace. He was only about ten feet from Lord Marhana's chair.
Japheth asked in a casual tone that belied his anger, 'Do you have the pact stone with you now, Behroun?'
Both the woman and the Lord of Bats simultaneously swung their heads around to regard Behroun, real interest animating Malyanna's face for the first time.
'What does that matter?' snapped Behroun.
Japheth advanced another pace. As he did so, he saw the image of someone behind him reflected in a silver decanter. A figure in full, articulated plate armor that shone like gold. The figure held a long sword as if it were weightless. Surprised, he glanced back. Nobody was there. But when he looked in the decanter once more, he saw again the figure. This time, he also noted the armored warrior was limned in small blue and black flames. The cuirass was molded to a figure with a distinctively feminine cast.
Anusha? If so, she didn't look anything like the meek dream image he'd glimpsed before. Was she, as he had half suspected, really working for Behroun? Would she attack him if he threatened her half-witted half brother, who might very well have left the pact stone back in the world? If he struck suddenly enough to kill Behroun, then he could return to the world and retrieve his pact stone from wherever Behroun had secreted it. He'd be free!
Indecision cost him. Malyanna rose from her chair, pushing it back so hard it slammed into the wall and splintered. She did not stand-no, she hovered in the air with no support, her hair whipping dramatically in a wind as cold as the Hammer's worst blizzard. She pointed a finger at Japheth and said, 'Think not to harm this fool. Behroun is under my protection… for now.'
Japheth realized he was flanked by enemies. A dream assassin at his back, maybe, and an eladrin noble before him, whose abilities he couldn't gauge, though he suspected she was formidable.
And he didn't have his cloak.
Japheth smiled at the floating woman, at the still seated Lord of Bats who watched the proceedings with great interest even as he nibbled on an apple, and finally at Behroun, whose struggle to stand up ended with both him and his chair sprawled on the floor.
He said, 'I'm done with fear, Behroun. You should have brought the pact stone with you.'
Japheth uttered his most potent curse, aimed it at Behroun, and loosed it as if it were a hunting kestrel.
A blaze of fire swept down upon Behroun, who already sprawled behind his fallen chair. When the flames settled over the man, he began to scream.
The hovering eladrin noble sang out a single syllable. The motes of flame bedeviling Behroun instantly died in puffs of white smoke. A backwash of cold air touched Japheth's cheeks.
The Lord of Bats began to laugh, even as he reached for a platter of sugar-crusted toast.
The warlock reflexively moved to step back into his cloak, «to retreat into shadow. He failed, of course he failed; his cloak still served as a bridge between Darroch Castle and the Green Siren back in the outer cavern! He cursed anew, this time with | words devoid of arcane power; they were merely fragments of j frustration and renewed fear.
Malyanna looked down her nose at him. A hint of interest, passion even, animated her eyes. She said something in a tongue Japheth didn't know a language that would have been beautiful in nearly any other creature's mouth. In her mouth, it seemed sinister. Suddenly she switched to Common and said, 'I will kill you now.'
A skirling blast of winter began to chase around her upraised hand and arm. She flung it at Japheth. It raked him as if an ice-clawed beast.
The warlock uttered a counter chant, sending eldritch rays of red light to nip and bite at the eladrin's flesh. She flinched with each impact, but her eyes only grew wider and more excited, even as the miniature storm of ice she'd summoned continued to enfold Japheth.
He began to bleed, but his blood froze before it could drip on the floor.
This woman was powerful. Too powerful to be a moon elf native to Faerыn who'd spent her life wondering about stories of a fey realm nearly unreachable, until now. No, this was an eladrin who'd lived always within the Feywild. She had never suffered a separation from her homeland as so many of her kin had. Now that the Spellplague had reunited the world and Fairie, moon and sun elves of Faerыn could seek their ancestral homeland. For the first time, it occurred to Japheth that eladrin might have an interest in Faerыn equal to what the moon and sun elves of Faerыn had in the Feywild.
The woman's strength was, he recognized, too much for him. Its chilling cold communicated an old and deadly determination. Ice crystals accumulated and began to encase his skin. He sent another red bolt Malyanna's way, which she caught on a shield of ice and deflected. He wondered if he had met his end. Without his cloak, it could be. His cloak, which indeed was once the Lord of Bats's, contained half his power.
'No!' yelled Behroun, trying to shout over the Lord of Bats's insane mirth. 'Malyanna, we need him! If you kill him, all our plans will be for nothing!'
Malyanna sniffed. 'Another will serve. That pirate captain of yours will get the relic. Thoster? This one is mine. My blood's up, and I mean to finish.' She drifted forward, her hand still outstretched, her fingers subtly whirling with the icy winds that thieved away Japheth's life. Her eyes were rapacious, as unlike a moon elf s as any he'd ever witnessed.
Japheth drew a breath to utter his last true curse, but the air was like sandpaper granulated with ice crystals. Instead, he fell into a coughing fit. His cloak! He needed it! Could he summon it to him? Try, damn it, he pleaded with himself. But he was so cold…
