crack where two of the troughs joined, providing a cooling shower for the travelers trudging below.
Arvin had expected to be the only one on the road; summer was a grueling time to be undertaking a climb into the mountains north of the city. He was surprised by the number of people who were heading in the same direction that he was. They turned out to be devotees of Talos the Destroyer, on their way to Mount Ugruth to view the most recent venting of the volcano. Every so often-whenever they caught sight of the plume of smoke rising from the peak of the mountain-the pilgrims would fall to their knees, tear their shirts, and claw at the earth until their fingers bled. A few even went so far as to claw at their faces, opening bloody wounds they displayed proudly to one another, bragging that this would speed the flow of lava down the mountain’s sides and the destruction of all in its path.
Arvin, reminded of the excesses of the priests who had run the orphanage, kept well away from these fanatics. What point was there in worshiping a god who offered only death and destruction as rewards for faithful service? Surely that was madness.
Yet it was madness that offered the perfect cover. As he drew nearer to the top of the first pass, Arvin stepped into the trees, out of sight from the road. When he emerged again, his shirt hung in tatters, his trouser knees were dirty and his hair and face were streaked with blood from a cut he’d opened on one finger. Raising his hands to the distant volcano, he continued up the road.
Up ahead on the left was a blocky cliff that had been cut into the forested hillside-one of the quarries that had provided the stone used to build the aqueduct. Chunks of partially squared stone littered the ground; travelers in years gone by had used these to create rough, unmortared shelters. Their crude walls were roofed with tree branches, hacked from the nearby forest. Many of the shelters had fallen to pieces, but at least two or three were currently in use, judging by the thin wavers of smoke that rose from them into the summer sky.
Arvin entered the old quarry and began going from one shelter to the next, mumbling nonsense about death and ashes under his breath. But every shelter that he looked inside held only pilgrims. They beamed at Arvin, waving him inside, then shrugged as he turned and stumbled away.
After peering inside the last of the shelters, Arvin slowed. Had Tanju already gone? The tracker had promised to wait until Evening, but perhaps Sunset had marked the end of his patience.
Arvin turned and stared back in the direction from which he’d come. Hlondeth lay far below, a dark spot at the edge of the vast expanse of blue that was the Vilhon Reach. Far away across the water, Arvin could just make out the opposite shore, where the Barony of Sespech lay. Clouds were gathering above the Reach, indicating that the muggy heat would soon break.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve, Arvin wet his lips. He certainly could use a drink of water. Then again, he was equally drawn by the heat he could feel rising from the sun-warmed stone on which he stood. Exhausted after a full day of walking, he yearned to curl up on it and soak up the last few rays of the setting sun. Perhaps if he drowsed, the headache that had been plaguing him would finally ebb. Tilting his face up to the sun, he closed his eyes and stretched…
He heard a faint tinkling, like the sound of chimes being stirred by the wind. An instant later pain lanced through his skull, staggering him. Gasping, he clutched his head. The pain was unbearable; it pierced his skull from temple to temple. He heard the familiar
Tanju was still at the quarry, after all.
He… dares… attack… me? thought the part of Arvin’s mind that had been seeded.
Then he crumpled to the ground.
25 Kythorn, Evening
Arvin came to his senses suddenly, sputtering from the cold water that had just been dashed on his face. Blinking it out of his eyes, he saw that he was inside one of the crude shelters in the old quarry. Moonlight shone in through the loose lacing of branches that constituted the roof, revealing a shadowed form sitting cross-legged on the opposite side of the shelter: Tanju. The tracker stared silently at Arvin, his hands raised above his head and palms pressed together, his hairless chest visible through rips in his shirt. His eyes were filled with shifting points of colored light; it was as if hundreds of tiny candle flames of differing hues were flickering in their depths.
Standing next to Tanju was a young man with pale, close-cropped hair who held a dripping leather bucket in one hand. His shirt was also torn like those of the pilgrims; through the rents in his sleeve Arvin could see three chevrons on his left forearm. That, and the peculiarly rigged crossbow that hung from his belt, marked him as a militiaman. Arvin’s backpack lay near his feet.
Arvin tried to rise but found that he was unable to move. Cool, wet tendrils of what looked like white mist encased his body from head to foot, leaving only his eyes and nose uncovered. They shifted back and forth across his body like drifting clouds, but though they left a damp film on Arvin’s hair and skin, he was unable to slip out of them. When he strained against them, they held firm, as solid as any rope. The knowledge of what they were came to him out of one of Zelia’s memories. They were strands of ectoplasm, drawn from the astral plane by force of will and twined around the victim with a quick twist of thought. The resulting “ectoplasmic cocoon” was almost impossible to escape. If cut, the strands would just regenerate.
Much like a length of trollgut, Arvin thought, his mind still groggy.
The flickering points of light disappeared from Tanju’s eyes. He lowered his hands. “This isn’t Gonthril,” he told the other man. “His aura is wrong. Very wrong.”
The militiaman frowned. “He looks like Gonthril.”
“Gonthril wouldn’t have allowed himself to be captured like this.”
Arvin tried to speak, but the strands of ectoplasm pressed against his lips and held his jaw firmly shut. All he could manage was a muffled exhalation that sounded like a hiss.
Tanju waved a hand in front of Arvin’s face, as if fanning a candle flame, and the strands shifted away from Arvin’s mouth. “Who are you?” he asked.
Arvin wet his lips nervously. “My name’s Arvin,” he said. “I’m a rope maker from Hlondeth. Unfortunately, I look like this Gonthril fellow you’re searching for. You mistook me for him in the Mortal Coil two mornings ago.”
“That was you?” Tanju asked.
“Yes.”
“Why did you flee?”
Arvin tried to gesture with his head, but could not. “Take a look at my left forearm,” he suggested. “The militia were rounding up men for a galley. The thought of four years of pulling an oar didn’t appeal to me.”
“I see,” Tanju said. He didn’t bother to inspect Arvin’s arm. “How do you know Gonthril’s name?”
“I overheard one of the militia mention it when I was hiding in the pottery factory,” Arvin said. “ ‘There’s a ten thousand gold piece bounty coming to the man who captures Gonthril,’ he said. I figured that was the name of the person you were looking for.”
“Why did you claim to be him?” Tanju asked.
“I didn’t think you’d agree to meet with me otherwise.” Arvin was uncomfortable inside the cocoon of ectoplasm. The slippery feel of the strands reminded him of the unpleasant cling of sewer muck. His clothes and hair were growing damper by the moment. At least the ectoplasm was odorless, the gods be thanked for small mercies.
The militiaman standing beside Tanju snorted as he placed the bucket back on the ground. “It’s a trick, Tanju,” he said. “The stormlord is trying to stall us-and we fell for it. We’ve already lost an entire day.”
Tanju gave the militiaman a sharp look, as if the other man had just said something he shouldn’t have. “Our quarry knows nothing about the rebels, least of all what their leader looks like.”
“What if we were wrong?” the militiaman suggested. “Maybe the rogues were, in fact, rebels and the theft nothing more than a plot to draw you out of the city.”
