great distance. He couldn't get enough air, his legs and arms wanted to cramp, and exhaustion made him tremble.
Warian had to get out of the tavern while the onlookers remained cowed. He stumbled back to the table where his card game had been interrupted. Shem backed away. With careful nonchalance, Warian slid the contents of the pot to his pouch. He looked at Shem. 'I would have won anyway, if not for the distraction. I had a Bahamut in my hand.'
So saying, Warian revealed the stern visage of the dragon and its thirteen points. With a shrug, he threw the card in with the rest of the coins. 'It seems like a reasonable recompense for the transgression against my person. No harm done, I say.' Shem nodded quickly, fearfully. 'Right, right-no harm done!' Warian turned toward the exit. A few patrons gathered around Yasha. One crouched, saying,
'Yasha? You still with us?' Warian's feet propelled him from the tavern before he could discover Yasha's fate. He didn't want to know, especially if… well, he didn't want to know.
Warian Datharathi rode east down the trade road on a newly purchased and outfitted horse the stableman had called Majeed. He rode south, rather than north toward Delzimmer. He traveled toward the port city of Cathyr, where he could catch a courier ship up the coast all the way to the Golden Water. Then, on to Vaelan. The answers to his questions lay in Vaelan. Despite his past vows, the time had come to return to the family business. Datharathi Minerals stood for all the rules and family expectations he'd left behind when he'd fled five years ago. He didn't have a head for business, or a desire to acquire one. All the scheming between businesses to get the absolute best price on every wooden nail; the constant worry about whether Datharathi Minerals could retain its high standing from year to year; the making of less-than-honest deals with other businesses, trade guilds, and private regulatory councils, in pursuit of the almighty coin… it all turned Warian's stomach. He had his own way of making a living-gambling. Well, he supposed that some folk might see a parallel. But everyone knew the risks when they sat down at a table for a game of chance. In business, the risks were mostly those raised by underhanded dealings. Warian sighed and patted Majeed. He didn't want to return home, but something terrifyingly strange had happened with his artificial arm, the arm that had been a gift from his family.
The prosthesis was carved from crystal mined from a secret lode that Datharathi Minerals jealously guarded. The proprietary crystal had an affinity for taking enchantment. The family business had made a handsome profit by selling small quantities of the substance to powerful and rich nobles and merchants in Vaelan and beyond. To Warian's knowledge, no piece of so-called Datharathi crystal had ever before exhibited as startling a transformation as what had happened to him in the tavern. Warian sighed as he weighed his decision. After he had lost his arm in a rock fall while inspecting one of the family mines, his will to fly in the face of family demands temporarily crumbled. The trauma of losing a limb shattered his confidence.
Against his better judgment, he allowed Grandfather Shaddon to give him an experimental prosthesis. To Warian's surprise, the false limb, the first of its kind, served him well, almost as well as a real arm.
Accepting the prosthesis was the only time he'd done as his family asked and found that the result was good. Warian had been so overcome with relief after receiving the arm that he almost changed his mind about the business, and nearly accepted a position under his Uncle Xaemar, who sat at the head of the family council. If not for his sister Eined, who talked sense into him, Warian might have been sitting on the family council at that very moment. After conferring with Eined late into many nights, Warian had skipped town. Eined had convinced her kid brother that he needed to see what the world was all about before becoming another cog in the Datharathi empire, however highly placed. Thank the gods for Eined's counsel. Free of Uncle Xaemar's decrees, Grandfather Shaddon's schemes, Uncle Zel's unscrupulous deals, and Aunt Sevaera's crazy impositions, Warian realized life was a far more wonderful and wide stage than he'd previously imagined. Eventually, he cut his ties with the family permanently. He never returned to Vaelan. In all the time since, the only thing he'd missed was Eined. Warian shuddered. And now someone lay hurt, maybe even dead, because of his arm. Had he killed Yasha?
He'd never before taken a life. For a moment, he comforted himself with something his old sword instructor had told him: To kill a person is far more difficult than is commonly believed. But what about when mortal strength was overcome by crazy bursts of potency and perception? 'Why did you wake up?' Warian addressed his arm, as he had done before. His prosthesis remained dull and barely responsive, offering no clues. He tried to will it back to life, yet nothing happened, as if nothing had ever happened. All his attempts to elicit a response from his arm since he'd fled the tavern had proven equally fruitless. 'It must be something they're experimenting with back in Vaelan,' Warian murmured. Something he needed to know about, and soon.
If he accidentally hurt Yasha, who might he inadvertently harm next?
Or worse, kill? Was Xaemar pushing Shaddon to empower the crystal lode with power in some mad scheme to propel Datharathi Minerals to the top of the trade empire in Durpar? Or was Shaddon, always a sneaky bastard in Warian's estimation, pursuing some crazy plot of his own? A plot that had momentarily woken a dangerous strength in Warian's prosthesis. A strength, truth to tell, Warian wished to wield again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Thormud Horn used his moon white selenite rod to scribe a circle in the fine gravel. His grimy hands, thick with the soil of the world he so cherished, guided the rod with supernatural grace and accuracy.
So it was when the dwarf geomancer immersed himself in the medium of his expertise. Thormud's constant companion, a tiny replica of a dragon carved in opal, roosted on the dwarf's right shoulder. Its name was Xet. Kiril Duskmourn took a pull from her hip flask. The whisky hit the back of her throat like smoke, cleared her nostrils, and trickled down to warm her stomach. She watched the dwarf continue his methodical inscription in the loose soil atop the mesa. Kiril had watched Thormud inscribe similar circles nearly every day for the last ten years, or so it sometimes seemed. Kiril's sword was rarely required to protect her employer, thank all the gods of Sildeyuir. Yet she maintained her vigil. Thormud's coin was good, but more importantly, few of her own elf race (or any race, for that matter) would put up with her. Kiril's excessive cursing and bouts of near-alcoholism were traits elves generally shunned. As a rule, elves preferred the fruit of the vine, not the distilled products of root and fruit. But who could carry such a burden as hers without some comfort? Kiril's ill-famed blade was her strength and her curse, and the whisky helped her through. She doubted any of her hidden kin would last a hundred days, let alone a hundred years, with Angul strapped to a hip. Kiril upended her flask, her eyesight threatening to blur and her hand shaking slightly. She'd reached an accommodation with her fate that suited her. Thormud paused for a time, then he spoke.
'Again, the prognostication fails.' Thormud's voice was low and melodious, a voice that belonged to a trained performer on the streets of Gheldaneth, not to a crusty dwarf geomancer who lived alone in the Mulhorand scrublands. Alone but for his surly bodyguard and diminutive familiar. 'Again, you say,' said Kiril in a lazy, I-don't- much-care tone. Thormud looked at her, one hand rubbing the chin hidden below his black and gray beard. Xet loosed a call like a chime and launched from the dwarf's shoulder into the hazy sunshine. A few rags of white cloud fluttered in the otherwise vacuous blue sky. Kiril watched the tiny construct fly toward the edge of the mesa, then dip below its rim, out of sight. 'Good riddance,' she muttered. Thormud spoke. 'Yes, Kiril. As you no doubt recall, all my recent prognostications have come to naught.' Kiril sighed, then said, 'And you still don't know why? Maybe your wits are departing as age creeps up on you.' Thormud considered and nodded. 'I checked that possibility. Fortunately for your continued commission, I find my faculties remain as sharp as ever. The trouble lies elsewhere.' 'Trouble?' wondered Kiril, slightly interested despite her studied detachment. 'As you've heard me expound on more than one occasion, dear Kiril, the stone and mineral beneath the feet of all the quick green foliage enjoys an unhurried life all its own. Information flows through the earth in telluric currents and tides, but slowly.' Kiril said, 'I've noticed the slowness.' Thormud shook off the elf's subtle provocation. He continued. 'Something has disrupted those currents. Something far to the southeast.' 'Disrupted currents of the earth? I've heard you yammer too much over the years not to learn a little-disrupting the flow would take a massive event, right? Another volcano? I hate those.' Kiril fingered an ugly burn scar on the back of her left hand as she spoke. 'No.' Thormud shook his head. 'For all their fury, volcanoes are natural disturbances, and as such would only modify telluric currents, adding their voice to the flow of the earth. I'm experiencing outright interruption. Only something inherently unnatural, large, and powerful could disrupt my work.' Kiril grunted. The dwarf gazed into the headpiece of his selenite rod, his
