Except that her still eyes were filled with the anticipation of a snake, the hatred of a wolf, and hunger of an ogre. And lying beside her was my glove, the one I had abandoned in the judge’s house.
The little girl sobbed.
Moving very, very slowly, I bent down to pick up my crossbow from where it was lying on the floor. At the precise moment when my fingers closed on the weapon, the little girl sobbed for the last time and then gave a quiet, malevolent laugh.
I froze. So we had met at last. This was the Jolly Weeper in person.
The eyes of the creature—I can’t carry on calling it a child—glinted, a wall of rotten air struck me in the face, and I went flying back against the opposite wall. The magical light started blinking and fading rapidly. It was swiftly getting dark in the room, with only those green eyes radiating light, hypnotizing me and suppressing my will, flooding my brain with a sticky mist of calmness.
“Don’t sleep! Shoot!” someone’s cool, imperious voice ordered, and the mist in my head began dissipating rapidly.
My ears were assaulted by a shriek of protest. The creature could feel that it was losing control over me. I could move again now and, taking my aim at those poisonous green eyes, I pressed both triggers of the crossbow almost simultaneously. The first, ordinary bolt stuck the laughing creature in the shoulder, spinning it halfway round, but it only gave a triumphant little chuckle and continued moving toward me without even pausing.
The magical bolt of fire followed its ordinary brother home and struck the creature in the chest.
A bright flash of fire liberated from its magical captivity, a rumbling sound, and a squeal of protest.
One . . . two . . . three . . . I took my hands away from my face and cautiously opened my eyes. The room was empty. The light from the magical trinket was gradually growing stronger, timidly illuminating the old room and the carnage that had been wrought in it.
The Jolly Weeper had disappeared; there wasn’t even any ash left behind. Either the fire had really destroyed it, or the vile creature had cleared off to somewhere a bit less hot. To be quite honest, it was all the same to me, as long as it was nowhere near me any longer.
“Thank you, Valder. You popped up at just the right moment,” I mumbled, but there was no reply.
Walking out of the room, I saw a wooden stairway leading downward. I had no more desire to travel across the ancient roofs. I had enough bruises already and I didn’t feel like tempting fate yet again.
I slipped out onto the Street of the Magicians. The final drops of time were draining away into the sand. One hour, or even less, and the horizon that was still dark would flare up in the bright flash of an irrepressible summer dawn.
I started moving faster, slipping through the shadows, forward—to where the narrow street broadened out into a small square.
I didn’t even notice how I got there. I simply stopped, enveloped in the cloak of shadow cast by an old two- story house with no roof. Opposite me there was another house, the final beacon of human habitation before the empty square.
And there ahead of me the appalling two-story stump of the old Tower of the Order stood in mute, agonizing reproach, alone and dead. The power of the Kronk-a-Mor had not spared it; there was nothing left of the structure’s former grandeur and elegance. The black blizzard had made short work of the once-beautiful creation of the magicians of the Order.
“What have you done, Zemmel!” Valder groaned.
Yes, an appalling catastrophe had taken place here, and I certainly didn’t envy those who had been nearby when the raging elements had broken free of control. There wasn’t a single stone left on the square, it was absolutely bare, surrounded by the skeletons of houses and flooded by the light of the setting moon, like some meadow in a fairy tale.
The tower had once had not just three, but many floors, and when the explosion happened, the debris should have been scattered right across the square. But it wasn’t there. The square was clean and empty. As if the rubble had just evaporated.
“How long are we going to go on standing here? Time’s wasting.” The sudden sound of a voice from the dense darkness of the house across the road startled me out of my mournful thoughts. I stared across the road in amazement.
The words had obviously been spoken by a living man, not some insubstantial phantom.
“Calm down, Shnyg. Or do you want to end up like good old Rostgish?” a repulsive, squeaky voice replied.
“Calm down Shnyg, calm down Shnyg,” the first voice grumbled. “It was Rostgish’s own fault. He let his guard down and let a dead man get his teeth into him. Let’s get those plans then cut and run.”
“Just how do you suggest we get into that damned tower? We have to think the whole business through, or we won’t get out of this alive.”
“You do the thinking, Nightingale,” Shnyg said angrily. “Morning’s already on the way, it’s time to get out of here.”
“Shut up, will you! I’m thinking,” Nightingale barked, and Shnyg shut up.
Right. I know those names. The two master thieves Shnyg and Nightingale work for the guild, and that means they work for the slimebag Markun.
They’re not such bad lads, really, but their work’s a bit sloppy.
And I knew Rostgish, too, may he rest in the light. He appeared in Avendoom a couple of years ago and attached himself to this pair. Not a master thief. He drank too much. Those must have been his remains that I came across on the Street of the Sleepy Cat.
I wonder what in the name of Darkness they want in the Forbidden Territory?
