It was a clear night. The stars were out early. A warm wind rolled through town ahead of us. I remembered the last night I had known like that, how peaceful it had been, how everything had gone along fine right up to the end.
'Gonna miss you in a way,' said Orun. His axe was tied to his belt. He walked with a broad, quick stride, matching my pace.
The comment caught me off guard. 'How is that?'
'Well, you know all you are here for is for findin' your killer man. When it's over, you go, too.'
I had suspected as much, but it didn't bother me. Dying a second time seemed like such a small trade for seeing my killer go first.
'Just lemme know when you see 'im,' Orun added.
I wanted to laugh, but it wasn't in me. 'You'll know.'
As we entered the broad dirt streets of Twisting Creek, several people walked by us, giving me looks of disgust at the condition of my clothing and probably my smell. None of them even glanced at Orun. Dwarven merchants came here all the time from Kaolyn.
We passed rows of families sitting on the sides of the road, children chasing each other or fighting. Almost as many people in town had no home as those who did, thanks to the war. I recognized many of them, but none of them seemed to know me in the darkness.
'You followin' your man?' Orun asked quietly.
'He's not far.'
Orun sniffed and smiled.
My senses led me on through town toward the other side. I had a strange feeling of dread when I realized I was walking in the direction of my uncle's farm.
We rounded the blacksmith's shop and stable. I looked up and saw a small manor house on a low hill, only a few hundred yards away. It was lit by yellow globes of glass set along the sides of the house and up the front walkway. The long rail fence I remembered repairing in life surrounded it and the farm buildings behind.
There,' I said, stopping. 'He's in there.'
Orun stopped, too, and squinted. 'Nice place.'
I nodded slowly as I started off again. 'My uncle's.'
Orun glanced at me, face hard. 'He's in there with your kin?'
I said nothing. My uncle was a good man. He had his flaws, but if he was hurt, it would be one more thing I would owe the Theiwar when we met.
We turned at the half-circle wagon path that led up to the doors of the manor. Balls of yellow crystal set on posts lit the way. My uncle had imported them from the city of Solanthus — glass spheres with magical light in them that never went out. Always the best, he liked to say. Always get the best.
No one was outdoors as we approached. The place hadn't changed a bit since I was here last.
Orun pushed back his oilskin cloak and undid the strap on his axe.
I needed nothing but my hands.
We mounted the steps, slowing down, and reached the door. I hesitated, sensing my prey so strongly I felt I could touch him.
He was inside on the right. That would be my uncle's private study, to the side of the entry hall. Maybe he was holding everyone hostage, or he'd broken in and was borrowing a few things for his own use.
I wondered if, when I met him, I'd ask him why he'd killed me before I killed him.
I raised my hand and knocked hard, three times, and listened to the echo. Then we waited.
The lock clicked. The front door heaved, then pulled open. It was our elderly manservant, Roggis. His face went white when he saw me, his eyes growing big and round.
'Evredd!' he gasped. 'Blessed gods, what happened?'
'I'm home,' I said softly as I pushed past the old man and went in, Orun at my heels. The entry hall was brightly lit. The great curved stairs to the second-floor bedrooms ascended from either side of the room.
Something inside me tore free. I wanted to see my killer's face, NOW. The study door was closed, but I was there in a moment, with the door handle in my hand, pulling it open.
The cabinet- and bookshelf-lined study was before me. Yellow light fell from the globes hanging from the ceiling. Only one person was in the room, sitting at the center table's far end with a pile of ledgers in front of him. He was big, fleshy-faced, with a hooked nose and a receding hairline. He looked up with irritation as the door swung open.
My murderer, sang the cold in my blood.
My uncle, said my eyes.
'Can't you — ' he began, before he actually saw me. He leaped back from his chair, knocking it over. His face went slack with terror. He grabbed for something on a stool beside him.
'Uncle,' I said. I couldn't believe it, but I knew it. HE had killed me. 'What — '
My uncle swung around. He held a heavy wooden device in his hands. He pulled the trigger. A dwarven-made crossbow. The bowstring snapped.
The crossbow bolt slammed into my chest with the force of a mule's kick, tearing through my right lung and breaking a rib. The impact knocked me back several steps, almost into Orun, before I caught myself.
The bolt didn't hurt a bit.
I ran and lunged across the table for my uncle, my fingers out like claws.
He flung the crossbow at me, missing, and dodged back. My fingers locked on his clothes, ripping them. I tried to get to his throat.
There was faint popping noise in the air, a flash of light. My uncle was gone.
In his place stood a waist-high dwarf, clad in filthy black clothing. I held his torn shirt in my hands. His mushroom-white face showed only a dirty blond beard, watery blue eyes that bulged out like goose eggs, and a black-toothed mouth that was open like a wound. He was the ugliest dwarf I'd ever seen, and he gave out a shriek that would have sent me to my grave if I hadn't already been there. My uncle… a destroyed man…
The Theiwar had used an illusion spell to disguise himself. I knew then what must have happened to my uncle, and why he had seemed to have changed lately. And who had really killed my cousins. Likely, they'd begun to suspect something.
Garith's gonna live like a huuu-man now, the hobgoblin had said.
'Garith!' shouted Orun from the door. The dwarf shut it behind him, cutting off Roggis's cries in the hall outside.
Panicked, the Theiwar ran under the table to escape me. I shoved myself off the table and snatched at a heavy wooden chair, swinging it up and over and down into the tabletop. The chair shattered; the table split in half and collapsed. Books and papers poured across the floor — and a bag full of rotting gray ears spilled with them. Some of the ears were gnawed.
I stepped back. The Theiwar had vanished.
'Garith!' roared Orun, his axe high. 'You a dead boy, too, now! You a dead little white rat, you hear me!'
I caught something from the comer of my eye. The Theiwar had reappeared in a comer of the room, far from Orun and me. His hands leaped out of hidden pockets in his black clothing.
'Orkiska Shakatan Sekis!' he called out in a hoarse, high voice, holding something like a cloth and a glass rod and rubbing them together. He was aiming them at me.
'Reorx damn us!' shouted Orun, as I leaped for the Theiwar. 'Evredd, he's — '
There was more light then than I'd ever seen in my life or afterwards. My body was suspended in the air, buoyed up by a writhing white ribbon of power that poured from the Theiwar's hands. For the first time since I'd died, I felt true pain. It was unearthly, burning into every muscle, every nerve, every inch of skin, and I couldn't even scream.
Then it was gone. I crashed to the floor. Smoke billowed from the smoldering rags I wore. My soot-stained limbs jerked madly as if I were the marionette of a bad puppeteer.
I flopped over on my stomach. The Theiwar was climbing a freestanding wall cabinet like a spider. Orun threw his axe. The weapon struck something in the air just before it reached the Theiwar and bounced away with a clanging noise, falling next to my head.
