The man couldn’t see what was going on inside, but no matter. He had seen enough. The journey from Dunwall to here had been nothing—he had been following Daud for months, tracking him ever since word had reached his mistress that the former assassin was hiding in Wei-Ghon.
But now time was pressing—and preparations were almost complete. After so long planning, the day was fast approaching.
The spy couldn’t lose Daud now, not when the culmination of his mistress’s plan was so near at hand.
It was time to make his report—perhaps his final one.
Collapsing the spyglass, the man turned and hobbled away from the edge of the cliff, out of sight of any potential onlookers. It would be dark for hours yet and if anything the storm was getting worse, but there was no need to take any risks. The village—save for the harbormaster’s tower—appeared to be shuttered up for the night, but there was always a chance someone was watching. His mistress called him paranoid, but the man preferred to think of himself as prepared. But, more importantly, he could not risk being seen now. Although he didn’t place any particular value on his own life, he knew that if he was seen, and perhaps chased, there was no way he would be able to escape a village warden, not in these less than ideal conditions.
So no, he couldn’t risk it. Sliding in the mud, soaked to the skin, his long black hair a heavy, matted weight against his back, he skidded back toward the woods. He felt no discomfort at the weather. All he could feel was the pain, the constant, unending agony that only one person in all the Isles could alleviate.
His mistress—his love. And she was waiting, hundreds of miles away, patiently waiting for his report.
At the edge of the woods, the ground was cratered and scattered with large boulders. The man nearly fell behind one, then pulled himself up and sat with his back against it. Wiping the sodden hair from his face, he reached inside his cloak and pulled out a brass framework, a cat’s cradle of struts and panels and hinges, the basket-like object unfolding in his hands. The main part of the device consisted of four triangular brass panels, each finely pierced with geometric shapes and symbols that had their own particular meaning. Once hinged into place, the panels formed a tetrahedron, with a gap at the apex, underneath which was a three-fingered claw formed by folded-out silver prongs.
From another pocket the man pulled a dark gemstone about the size of a plum, the surface cut into a perfect polyhedron. Buffeted by the wind and rain, the man shuffled into a cross-legged position and balanced the assembled device across his knees. He took the gemstone in both hands, and carefully slotted it into the gap at the top of the device, the crystal locking in place between the claw and the three points of the brass panels.
The man exhaled.
Assembling the thing was the easy part. Using it was another task altogether, because communicating with his mistress over such a distance required power, and lots of it. And the only place it drew from was his own mind.
One day, his service to his mistress would kill him—he knew that, and accepted the fact. But he didn’t care. If it was this last report that did it, then so be it. If he died then it would be in glorious service to his mistress, the mistress who loved him and whom he loved, the mistress who understood his pain, and who promised to alleviate it.
Even if she was the cause of it in the first place.
He stared into the depths of the dark gemstone. He gritted his teeth and began hyperventilating, in anticipation of the agony to come.
“My lady,” he said, raising his voice against the storm thrashing around him. “My lady, he is here. He is come. It is as you said. He follows the path. He follows your will.”
The man paused and took a deep breath. He could feel it begin, at first a soft sensation across his eyes, then slowly encircling his whole head. After a few seconds, the pressure was vise-like, his skull feeling as if it would be crushed as his life force was drained to power the communicator.
“My lady! Can you hear me, my lady? Can you see me? Please, speak to me, speak to me.”
The wind picked up and lightning flashed, and when the thunder rolled the man couldn’t hear it. He was lost in the crystal, his eyes wide and fixed on its myriad depths.
He felt the chill first, the deep ache like his bones were made of ice carved from a Tyvian glacier. From within the crystal, a blue light sparked into being, then brightened, growing and bouncing against the inside planes of the gem, until the crystal was nothing but a glowing ball of cold, blue fire.
And then he felt the pain as the pressure around his head suddenly transformed into a searing, jagged agony, bisecting his skull and then traveling down his entire body. He was rooted to the spot, every muscle in his body rigid, caught in a terrible, bone-crushing spasm. Foam fleckedhis lips as his frozen chest heaved for breath. Lightning flashed again, and a small part of the man’s mind that remained free and his own wished the lightning would strike and put an end to his misery.
Seconds. Minutes. Maybe hours passed. All he could do was stare at the gemstone, watch with unmoving, unblinking eyes as his calloused hands gripped the edges of the communicator, the sharp edges of the frame cutting into his flesh, his blood running freely down his wrists, mixing with the rain.
Just before his eyes rolled up into his head and he passed out, he heard her voice. Her glorious, beautiful voice, carried
