his knees, lurched against the canyon wall, and nocked another arrow.
Scrambling to his feet, he saw the leucrotta lying on its side several feet away, twitching and spasming, slime and odorous blood gushing from its thrashing head. An arrow — his arrow-stuck in the creature's belly, while another, Kit's, protruded from the leucrotta's neck. Kit slumped against the opposite wall, obviously dazed but unhurt. With some effort, she gave him a nod of assurance.
Nellthis walked over to the beast. Pain seared his back, yet with it came the exhilaration of the kill. He stood for a moment, lording it over his fallen prey, then shot an arrow into its brain. Almost instantly the leucrotta expelled its final breath and lay still.
Kit came over to stare down at the monstrous creature, every bit as formidable and ugly in death as in life. The surviving retainer hastened to their side. He raised his peaked cap, a signal to those above to raise a raucous cheer.
'I suppose I should thank you for saving my life,' said Nellthis almost wistfully.
'Are you disappointed, Uncle?' asked Kit. 'I don't think my arrow killed him. I think it was both at once… yours and mine.'
He looked at his young niece, with her dark eyes and solemn expression, and knew that she wouldn't be saying so if she didn't believe it to be true. 'Yes, both,' he said, with a glow of satisfaction.
Elferturm scrambled down the side of the gorge, the first of the hunting band to join them. His chest puffed out importantly. 'A good kill,' he offered.
Nellthis's glow disappeared. He turned on his chief tracker with a snarl. 'No thanks to you. The next time you think you've come up with a useful bit of strategy, make certain I know about it first, or it will be the last hunting you ever do in Lemish.'
Elferturm flushed an angry red, as Kit and her uncle turned their backs on him and walked away.
Hours later, after hauling the heavy creature out of the gorge, tying it on a travois behind the horses, and burying the luckless man who had lost his life to the leucrotta, Nellthis, Kit, and the band of hunters rode triumphantly into the castle courtyard.
All of Nellthis's servants and workers gathered 'round to congratulate their master, who ordered a celebration feast for that evening. He stood there, comically squat and bristling with pride, shrugging off concerns for the bruises on his back. To all who listened, he gave his niece equal credit for the trophy.
On the sidelines, Kit observed him with a mixture of affection and amusement. She was about to return to her room when she saw Nellthis take notice of a shadowy figure behind a curtain in one of the windows above signal down to him. Kit couldn't make out who it was, but Nellthis briskly gave orders for the preservation of the trophy and excused himself from Kit and the others. Quickly he walked toward the nearby kitchen entrance of the castle and disappeared behind the oaken door.
This wasn't the first time Kit had noticed such behavior on the part of her uncle. Nellthis seemed to be full of mysterious doings these days. Kitiara tried to figure out what he did with most of his time, where he disappeared to, sometimes for days on end. She had attempted to wheedle the information out of him, but to no avail. That was one of the things she liked about her uncle, his perpetual air of conspiracy. And if he chose to be secretive, that was his business, even if Kit thought that at some point she might try in earnest to make it hers.
'It was your arrow that done it, Kitiara Uth Matar,' said Ladin Elferturm, coming up behind her and touching her arm awkwardly. The hunter searched Kit's eyes for some encouragement.
'It was both arrows,' Kit said tersely, shaking his arm off. 'And even if Nell this weren't my uncle, I would vow that it is disloyal of you to say that behind his back when you know the trophy is so important to him.' She started to stride away.
Elferturm grabbed her strongly by the wrist, holding her back. 'What's come over you, Kitiara?' he tried to whisper, knowing his voice was clumsily loud and his words all wrong for this high-spirited woman. 'I thought… I thought there was, uh'-his tongue was all in knots-'something between us.'
Kitiara was about to reply witheringly when someone grabbed Elferturm from behind, whirling him around. Kurth, the castle smithy, stood there glowering at the hunter. The tall, broadly muscled smithy clenched his fists nervously at his side as he spoke. Having come directly from the forge, he still wore his apron.
'I warned you to stop pestering Kitiara, Ladin,' said Kurth forcefully. 'She's mine and couldn't care a whit about the likes of you.'
'I'm sick of your interfering,' said Elferturm, thrusting his chest up against Kurth's, their gazes locked murderously.
Elferturm had abandoned his grip on Kitiara. She inched backward. They had all but forgotten her, pushing and shoving and threatening each other.
Let them have it out, she thought. She was tired of both of them. They were as dumb as cheese, shouting her name and proclaiming their love. Kitiara glided away and was just vanishing behind kitchen doors when Kurth took his first swing, missing, and Elferturm reacted, landing a roundhouse to the smithy's outthrust chin.
Deep in the bowels of Nellthis's castle, in a small basement room where the most expensive wines were stored, a room bolted from the inside although it was off limits to the castle help, Nellthis of Lemish was holding a parley. Nellthis sat at a wooden table in the room, illuminated by a single candle that burned with a blue flame. The room was dank, and the candle sputtered as if gasping for air. Spiders crawled over the racks of bottles.
Nellthis was joined at the parley by three companions, or it might be more accurate to say three murky figures. Their humanity remained in question, since they were swaddled in clothing and kept to the shadows even in the dim illumination cast by the candle.
One, tall and lean, wore a cowl that drooped over his forehead and around his face so that little but his eyes, mere slivers of green, could be discerned. It was this one, a male by the sound of his sonorous voice, who took the lead in discussions with Nellthis and who seemed to have authority over the other two.
One of these, a stooped, almost hunchbacked figure, stood next to the cowled one but said nothing other than an occasional sharp word in a northern dialect that Nellthis himself could not interpret.
The third was the most peculiar, and the one that, judging by the watchful movements of the others, was the object of both curiosity and fear. This one stuck to a corner of the small room, a corner that was darkened and cob-webbed. Nellthis knew he ought not to stare, so instead he stole unobtrusive glances at this third member of the trio, who wore long dark robes, a hood, and a mask.
The back of his robes fluttered with evidence of some appendage whenever he moved or shifted position. Oddly, when the robes shifted to reveal glimpses of his body underneath, he seemed to give off fissures of light, like mottled scales reflecting the candlelight. Despite the darkness, this one's eyes shone blood red. Nellthis couldn't make out the face, but he couldn't help flinching every time he heard the telltale sizzle, followed by the sulfurous smell, occasioned by the acidic drool from the evil being.
Nellthis took his time studying the messages and reports spread out on the table in front of him. Carefully he read each of the directives, and then reread them to be certain of the contents. The others had to be patient with his fussy caution, although after almost half an hour of waiting, the figure in the corner stirred and rumbled ominously. More of the spittle pitted the floor, sending acrid fumes into the moldy basement air.
Nellthis finally seemed satisfied and, with a theatrical flourish, put his signature to each of the documents in turn. When he was finished, he picked them up, rolled them together, and handed them over to the tall, cowled figure.
'Our mistress will be pleased,' the cowled figure said without emotion, 'and you will be rewarded.'
'My reward,' said Nellthis grandly, 'is to serve.'
The three, even the sinister one in the corner, bowed respectfully. Nellthis went over to one of the wine racks, and tugged at two bottles on an upper shelf. The rack slid forward soundlessly. Behind it, the wall opened, revealing a narrow passageway that led under the castle courtyard and came up several miles away in an isolated patch of forest. The three ducked under the archway and headed down the dark stairway. The one from the corner was the last to leave. As he passed, Nellthis, noting the creature's fangs and spiny tail, couldn't stifle a shudder.
But the moment passed. Minutes later, Nellthis had closed the wine room and was rubbing his hands together cheerily while trotting up flights of stone steps to his quarters.
Kitiara lay on her back on a huge bed in the plush room Nellthis had set aside for her at the top of the north
